Good for you!
Jon
Good for you!
Jon
my black and white photos of the Mendocino Coast: jonshiu.zenfolio.com
Congrats ... I'll stop by on my next visit to HMB ...
As an idea, you might want to read Ted Orland's "The View from the Studio Door," and pay special attention to his chapter on The Salonistas. He gathers a group of artists together monthly to show-and-talk about what they're working on, beginning with a pot-luck supper. In recent correspondence with him, he told me that he's been doing it for 20 years in nearby Santa Cruz. It sounds so good that I'm going to start one here in Maine as soon as my house is built. Using a nice gallery space as a venue sounds delightful, at least it does from 3,000 miles away. The population density and diversity of artists in that area would imply to me that a good group could evolve.
Good luck!
Bruce Barlow
author of "Finely Focused" and "Exercises in Photographic Composition"
www.brucewbarlow.com
well good luck Darin
and over here, the possibility of a 'new pure analog' gallery opening up, is sadly almost nil - digital yes..........................
regards
andrew
May you have and enjoy every success!Originally Posted by Darin Boville
Just a heads up to let people here know that I will soon be opening a photography gallery--a physical, built of metal and wood, honest-to-goodness photography gallery.
It is located in the small, coastal town of Half Moon Bay in northern California--not far from the famous Mavericks surf wave, the one they named the new Apple operating system after. It is located in a funky but cool building on what is essentially the main access road into town. It's got issues--a little hard to pull in and out for one, if you are crossing traffic, but the rent is right and it will be a great place to experiment with a lot of ideas of showing, sharing, and selling photographs.
Thousand of people will drive right by the gallery--and see my large road sign--every day. Every Facebook, Google, Apple, Oracle, etc employee who goes to the beach will see the sign at some point--it is essentially the only road to the beach from that area--not to mention the thousands of domestic and international tourists. Maybe a few people will stop and see what is going on.
Initially I will carry just my own work but the minute I see that people are stopping and looking I want to start carrying work by other photographers, too. My goal is to be different than other photo galleries--easily achieved since I know next to nothing about running a gallery--but I have a number of other ideas and I hope to hear yours, too.
As I said, it will be an experiment.
I would also like to brainstorm with all of you here about what else I can do to make this experiment exciting and fun. Classes, demonstrations? Talks, slideshows? Video photo history archive? Photographer wine drinking club?
What I'd really like is to find people interested in leveraging my gallery and to work with me to help out or lead a project that benefits the photography community.
I'll be putting out a proper call for artists--don't send work now--but my current thinking is to focus--in terms of what I carry for sale--on landscape photography, first related to the San Mateo Coast, then California, then landscape in general. But I'm open to ideas. Traditional methods and modern--even video--will all be welcome.
Anyway, I'd love to talk more about this and I would love to hear your thoughts on how to make this adventure the best it can be. I'll post more--and ask many questions--as time goes on.
RR
Best wishes!
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
Great. I drive through HMB all the time. Looking forward to stopping by when you're open.
Good luck, Darin. Hope you can find a good plan to balance overhead with sales. That's the tricky part. But Half Moon Bay is one of the better towns around here
for having a lot of money pass thru it, since it's relatively close to both SF and the Palo Alto area. Most of the Bay area is brutal in terms of commercial leases,
at least in terms of neighborhoods where you aren't dodging bullets all the time. So you might have a good find there. I doubt classes will attract actual buyers,
though that might be fun in its own right. You might inquire whether it is permissible there to put up portable sandwich signboards which direct weekenders to the
location of your gallery. And wine n' cheese can get fairly expensive, and mostly just sells wine n' cheese (for zero profit, of course), and not prints per se. But
you might be able to partner with other local art and food venues for some kind of seasonal fair, if something like that doesn't already exist.
so
what kind of stuff are you thinking of selling?
Best of luck to you. I wish you all the success in the world.
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