What Makes a sellable photograph?

[LeeSimmons]

Relevancy to the buyer

Memory. - Are people buying a memory or a dream. I created a gallery on Banff ave in the Canadian Rockies. My images still sell there but I am no longer involved. They sold because they were well crafted mountain scenics and people wanted a beautiful memory of the area. (Remove the images from Banff and their sales plummet).

Icons - through masterful technique and long term style. Micheal Kenna and say John Sexton. People are buying the from masters of the craft. Flawless images, vision, celebrity and investment.

Peter Lik - Superb marketing with well rounded popular photography. Say what you will about his images he out sells everyone.

If I create an identical image to a popular high selling artist does it mean it is worth that sum as well. No it's not if I haven't created demand. Every good selling artist has to created demand. Why should someone care about your images? What is your story?

That is some of my thoughts hope it helps the journey.

Regards Lee

[goamules]

What sells today? Shock value. Anything that varies from the high resolution, perfect captures of every cell phone. In other words, surreal super saturated colors in landscapes, like a Thomas Kincade painting. New age photographers that catch logs on fire in Arches Nat'l Monument. Or Hollywood productions and sets to take one photo of a deadpan housewife in eerie lighting.

In content, dead people, nude women with tattoos and studs in noses (and gas masks Mark!), street photography of jackbooted cops.

Stuff like that.

[Corran]

Location, location, location.

Yep

The current price for prints in 16x20 aluminum frames is $50.

Good Lord why even bother, that's barely the cost of materials?

[Bob Salomon]

1: Someone likes it.
2: They can afford it.

[Michael Rosenberg]

In the Southeast documentary photographs sell more than any other.

A lot of my sales have been architectural, e.g. the Durham American Tobacco Factory project that I completed 9 years ago. The opening image on my web site has sold the most of any singular image. At the opening of a showing of the Tobacco Factory prints people made a lot of comments, and were absorbed by the images. Six sold that day - two to a woman who came back with her husband just before closing. One of those was very abstract of pipe shadows on a brick wall.

Landscapes that sell seem to be ones that pull in the viewer and keep them in the image. I made a 42x52 inch digital print of a swamp that I had only offered before in silver gelatin at 16x20. People would walk up to it and when a few feet away slow down and inch forward. Six months after the show a couple who had seen it at the show came and bought it - they said they could not keep it out of their mind.

Where are they sold? Some galleries do a better job at presenting than others.

I found that I have to price my images to be comparable. And I have to price them so the gallery will make money too. Framing sometimes is a loss after the gallery gets there cut, but a nice frame helps sell the print.

Mike

[Kirk Gittings]

This I know personally. When I am in the field and I make a photograph that I think will sell, it rarely does. When I am in the moment and making images that personally really move me-those sell.

Just to be clear. When I make an image where the main reason is because I think it will sell-it doesn't. When I make an image because it simply gets me excited-it does. There is something about a motivation that is primarily trying to second guess the public's taste that falls flat (or at least that is what I believe). So I try never to even consider that when I take the time to set up a VC. At this point in my life it takes something special to get me to set up a VC and on many outings I never do and that is fine too.

[Tin Can]

1: Someone likes it.
2: They can afford it.

Yes

[Darin Boville]

This question has an easy answer really. What makes a sellable photograph--I think you mean what makes a photograph that will sell well--is this: a salesman. Usually that is the photographer himself, even if they would object to the idea that they are a salesman for their own work.

People need direction, people need reassurance, people need a backstory to the image, people need to be told what to do. The rest of it follows. If your prices are too high, the salesman will soon find out. Wrong sort of imagery, the salesman will soon find out.

Ideally you want someone else to sell the work--often this is a spouse.

Things rarely sell themselves.

--Darin

[Drew Wiley]

I dunno. I never had to talk anybody into anything. But then I never sold a single picture in my life to a tourist. Mostly wealthy art collector types and other photographers, a few of whom would be on anyone's A-list. In this city art sells poorly, but we have more restaurants per capita than any other city in the country. I know a few people who did become quite wealthy on local gourmet restaurants. Buy the odds are 9 to 1 that you'll go broke trying, even here. If you want to make a lot of sales and a lot of money, open a MacDonald's Franchise or a greasy Pizza dive. You get the analogy. I have no interest making a lot of money if it involves something I hate, and robs me of the time to do what I can be proud of. We'll see... I'm looking at getting back in the game. Just crossing all my t's and dotting all my i's in terms of lab equipment and workspace at the moment. Then my odds are, probably .... you guessed it, 9 to 1 against. Nice to have other sources of income, just in case....

[Alan Gales]

I don't care what the picture is of (landscape, portrait, architecture, etc.) I want something unique. Something that reaches out and grabs me for some reason.

As for the masses? Well, unfortunately we all know what they like.