Opportunities for Fine Art....

[Brian K]

It all depends on what you consider an opportunity and success. If you think that selling a few thousand dollars of very reasonably priced prints at an art fair is good, and that you are satisfied with having some means to help support your photography then there many opportunities for you out there. If you expect to sell prints for thousands of dollars a piece and make a substantial income then there are very few opportunities out there.

Personally speaking, I need galleries to act as my sales and distribution department. I travel a great deal to shoot, 4-5 months a year. It takes at least another month to process all that film. That leaves me with 6 months to print, mat, mount, spot, run a business, take care of my home and my life. Not much available time for selling my work. I have gotten to a point where I am in the process of raising print prices (again), increasing print sizes and lowering edition sizes (again) to better maximize my profit/time ratio. I know that sounds commercial but even if you make your living as an artist, you still have expenses and still have to pay the bills and if you're a landscape shooter and you travel a lot, this can be a very expensive business.

I will now only sell 11x14" prints on a special order basis, so once existing inventories are gone, they will not be readily available and will be sold at the same price as a 16x20. I am doing this because it takes just as much time and effort for me to do 16x20 or 20x24" prints as it does to do 11x14". With an existing backlog of 1 1/2 years of printing ahead of me, I have to prioritize on where my time is best spent.

I have to advise anyone entering the world of selling art that it is extremely competitive, highly volatile and usually stacked against the artist. Whether you like someone's work or not, if they are making a good living as an artist, you gotta give them some respect for making it in such a diificult field.

[Sheldon N]

Thank you for those kind words PViapiano (great psuedonym for a professional musician).

It would be a great pseudonym, except he's a guitar player.

He has a pretty interesting website and blog -

http://www.paulviapiano.com/

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Christopher, I tried Jensen's way and it did not work, at least for me. If you are planning on selling palladium prints for $35 or $40 you will find your wallet getting thinner and thinner. I sold prints on E bay for $45-$50 bucks, and yes I sold a lot of them, but after careful analysis of the money comming vs the money going out I found I was loosing money.

Another thing you might want to consider, if you are lucky enough to sell a lot of prints at these prices, you will spend a lot of time printing, mounting, going to the post office, etc. Time you wont be spending doing new work. When I was selling on E bay for cheap I was averaging about 30 to 40 prints a month, with all the admin, printing, etc, I found I was not taking any new pictures, and those times I stole from printing to go out where unproductive since I was more worried about not being at home printing so I could ship the prints I was already paid for. It is not easy to make 30 to 40 pd prints a month. I am just giving you a heads up, of course if you do try, you can let us know how you did. As Kirk said, Jensens speaks from a position which none here have and IMO very unrealistic.

Interesting. I beg to differ.

Jensen's analysis is just one place a person intersted in this topic could start. It's easy to use the salary and demographic information that's widely available to anyone using the 'net. While you might not agree with what Brook's says, it's easy to verify the veracity of his claims.

As a counterpoint... There is a photographer I know here in town. He does wonderful work. But he is not nationally known in the way Brooks is, nor does he have the kind of web-presence that Lenswork has. Yet, using the kind of analysis Brook's talks about, this photographer is able to realize thousands of dollars a month in revenue from his "art". He's not yet rich. He's not yet famous. But you never know, someday he might be.

[PViapiano]

It would be a great pseudonym, except he's a guitar player.

He has a pretty interesting website and blog -

http://www.paulviapiano.com/

Sheldon...

Ha, ha...you nailed it!

If every fine art photographer had you as a publicist, they'd make millions! ;-)

By the way, I absolutely love those lenses I bought from you...I'll send you a link to some images when I get a chance.

Cheers...

Paul

[Saulius]

This has been a most informative thread. Thanks to all the contributors for sharing your experiences and ideas with us, much appreciated especially by the likes of myself who are looking to get into the game.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

There is a expression in marketing, you may have the best product in the world, and at the right price and right place, but no one will beat a path to your doorstep unless they know about it. Advertise, advertise, advertise.

I like this guy!

[Frank Petronio]

My thinking is the that the majority of the work I see from this forum, traditional "Zone System-like" nature and landscape, even when it is produced at the highest level of profiency, has a very limited and low-end market for any contemporary living artist. Maybe a couple thousand bucks for a large, outstanding image... or fifty bucks for an edition of forty... what's the difference?

And while you may think selling dozens of $2000 prints maybe the road to salvation, I'd remind you to halve or quarter that number by the time you add comissions and marketing costs.

I just don't think it is a viable business model.

I think that in order to make any real money you need to have something NEW. All the marketing and salesmanship is important after that point, but you need a good product to start with. Trying to sell another 16x20 fine print of the Grand Canyon is like selling a commodity item.

It starts with the work. Do something different, new, exciting, original. Then add the Zig Ziglar motivationals.

[Christopher Perez]

We've covered miles of ground in this discussion. I took a deliberately polarizing position as a means of adding/exposing another dimension to the discussion. Then I went back and reread Kirk's opening comments and would like to summarize my thoughts.

Please realize that attempting to rev up my disciplined right brain engineering mind as a means of rationally evaluating a left brain art topic is worse than trying to kick start an ill tuned 850cc Norton Commando motorcycle engine.

... To me a successful artist is one who makes an adequate living primarily from their personal art and who enjoy some respect from their peers. I don't count in this class people who derive most of their income from teaching art photography, these are photo educators...

Making a living purely as an "art" photographer is quite possible, and may be more wide spread than I originally thought. For anyone considering work in this area, there are obviously a few things to consider. These include (but certainly not limited to):

• Is your work "good"? Do you like it? Do others respond to your work in a way that helps you feel you can "make a go of it"?
  
• What approaches to image sales are you aware of? What potential "markets" do you feel might be open to you? Have you talked with practioners in these areas to get feedback on how to sell in those areas? Then choose one (or two) that appeal to you and put in place tools and process for how you address these areas.
  
• Consider whether you are a "people" person or if you would prefer letting someone else represent you. If you want someone to represent you, make sure you do your homework to find the right person (and if you're not a people person, it's all to easy too latch onto the first person who "sounds" like they know what they're talking about). If you are a "people" person then you will be the one engaging potential clients directly.
  
• Are you seriously willing to let the market tell you what your art is worth? Or are you very insistent on telling the market what you "know" you are worth? The market could tell you several things if you're willing to listen. This includes you're too high or low as well as that you've priced something just right and, in the worst case, you don't even belong here. The trick is to pay attention to what the market is honestly telling you.
  
• Take a real hard look at how you personally respond to both success and failure. Does your ego get so bound up in success and expectation of success that failure is difficult to take? Are you capable of, in the clear light of day, stepping out and looking at what failed and why? Similary, are you capable of setting aside the emotional rush of success to look clearly at the true prospects for repeatability?

It is legitimate to work a day job while offering up attractively in the market priced images. A person could work the art fairs, fully realizing that what they can successfully charge for images may be vastly different than something that hangs in a gallery in Taos, New Mexico. This approach also seems to work well for folks who go the eBay route where they let a very large open market decide the relative value of one's work.

In a completely "other" dimension, it is a legitimate approach to accrue much larger overhead in terms of gallery space and/or location as a means of feeding off the monied top 1%. Those fortunate enough to have the mindset and resources to pull this off can realize a fine living (even by capitalist standards). It's a matter of taking into account one's abilities as well as accounting for the total overhead.

Here in Portland, art tends to spill out onto the sidewalks and into the streets. I have visited all the big cities around the US and have never seen such a vibrant art scene as what we have here. It's really quite remarkable. There are many fine artists turning out great work. I really enjoy the accessability to work that in other cities would be much higher priced and placed deep inside an overly snooty gallery. What you pay the artist is what they get to keep. No stuffy middle-person.

As many people have pointed out, there are as many legitimate ways of defining success as there are people pursuing it. My point here is that it's helpful to be brutally honest with one's self. And by "brutal" I don't mean beating or berating one's self. I mean looking as clearly at something/everything as one can from as many dimensions as you are aware of. It's all too easy to get "wooey wooey" about art and fail to address what reality is screaming about at the top of it's lungs at you.

[Greg Miller]

I suppose many artists like Van Gogh were very unsuccessful, according to your definition, as many died poor and often without any esteem of their contemporaries. The focus of so-called "fine artists" on $$$, selling, marketing and being famous or well-known qualifying as 'making it' is very telling and deserves some reflection.

It's a catch 22. If you are the best artist ever in history, and your work is never seen and discovered, then your work is a waste. So markettng must be part of the equation for you efforts to matter.

[Kirk Gittings]

Originally Posted by Dirk Rösler View Post
I suppose many artists like Van Gogh were very unsuccessful, according to your definition, as many died poor and often without any esteem of their contemporaries. The focus of so-called "fine artists" on $$$, selling, marketing and being famous or well-known qualifying as 'making it' is very telling and deserves some reflection.

Dirk,

Sorry that you think my definition is so crass. But since you failed to put forward any definition of your own, I am going to have to interpolate.

I am a realist and have no romantic notions about being a misunderstood genius. You seem to find it acceptable just to obtain success after your dead. I live in here and now with bills to pay, kids to put through college, the whole nine yards. Without some decent return it would hard to put together even the bare necessities to even keep working. As it is my commercial photography subsidises my art work many years.You appear to be a business man and I assume you expect some return on your investment of time. Should artists be any different? You labor under the myth of the heroic artist. You should reflect on your naivete.

Being posthumously famous and making wealthy collectors richer after I die has little appeal for me.

The myth of the heroic starving artist who dies in obsurity only to be discovered after he is dead. Now there is a goal to work for.