Recently I had the unexpected experience of having to pick out from my collection 12 photographs that I wanted to sell. Or that I thought would sell. Or that I thought people would like enough to buy. Or that I simply thought were good enough to frame and offer to the world. It was nerve wracking, because I have never given serious thought about selling my work. Up until now I have never had to make decisions based on anything other than asking myself if I am proud enough of this piece to post it online. My photographs have always been for me, and something I shared with other people that I mostly do not really know. In simpler terms, I never really had to doubt myself before (regarding photography) in a way that would bring back verifiable results.
But the chance to test that prevalent online comment, “I’d buy that as a print,” came along, and I took it.
Four days before some unexpected spots opened up in an acquaintance’s craft market for local artist, the organizer messaged me about setting up and selling some prints. I was excited for the opportunity, but woefully unprepared. Prior to this event I had only ever shown work in a gallery at an Alice in Wonderland themed event. That was a different kind of preparation altogether. It had a theme, for one, so I could only pull from my Alice photos (which was all I was doing at the time anyway) and I had no intention or realistic expectation of selling anything, or maybe I just didn’t care. A market though, that is different. A gallery is there to show, but a market is there to sell. That is how my mind perceived the opportunity.
*** What do you think? Are galleries more about exposure than selling? Are they just fancier markets? Would you prepare for a gallery showing the same as placing your product in a store?
I had to put my print order in the very same night if I wanted to participate and so I limited myself first to only photos from 2016. This would ensure that anything I picked was taken with my DSLR and the file sizes would be big enough to print the size I needed. (For my gallery showing, I was only using my phone and some photos did not make it because they looked horrible when printed larger than 4×6.) I knew that I wanted to bring a broad representation of what I have been up to so I started looking in my Lego, Metroid, TARDIS, HO Scale, and Alice folders. And that is when I had my first realisation.
I do not capture photographs with an 8 by 8 frame in mind. Yet, all I had available were twelve 8 by 8 frames. This immediately made some photos ineligible. Having to crop to a square completely changed certain photos in ways I could not justify. And that just opened the floodgates. As I considered if I could “get away” with certain crops I started looking at my proudest works and wondering if they were good enough. “Do you deserve a frame? I only have 12,” I kept asking myself. It was an exercise in self-doubt, disguised as consumerism that I had not come into contact with before precisely because I have never set out to sell photographs.
Friendship
“Is this good enough?”
Free Crutch
“Does the crop change this too much?”
Light Bringer
“Would someone buy this?”
Shine On
“Would anybody like this enough to pay money for it?”
Scale
“Would I pay money for this?”
Perhaps because of the way my experiences fell, I was not this thoughtful about my gallery showing. Those photos were a simple matter of, is this file size large enough, and do I like this one? No self doubt, no fretting about what the consumers would want. It was much preferable to what I felt choosing photos with the express intent to sell.
*** Have you ever shown your work in a gallery, and did the idea of sales affect which photographs you chose for that showing? Have you ever picked out photos with the largely sole intent to sell them? What process did you use to choose what you would present for sale?
In the end, I want to tell myself I remembered the innocence of my gallery showing and I picked photos solely based on my creative vision, much as the way I capture them. But I know I didn’t. I know I thought about the consumer because when I look at my end choices there are still a few that I feel betrayed by. There are still a few that I know I included because they did well on Instagram, even though they are not my favorites.
But hey, bright side, finally found a good use for how to use likes on Instagram!
Really interesting post.
I’ve never considered a consumer focus for my photos, but the photo book exchange last year was incredibly hard to choose photos from so I can only imagine how tricky it was!
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading !
I can imagine selecting for a market and for the yearly photo books share much in common. It is one thing to be out and about capturing photos for yourself. It is another thing entirely to really think about what it must be like to view them without having the experience of capturing them in the first place.
I think of it like trying to watch season 2 of a character driven show without watching season 1. You’ll be able to watch and understand what is going on, but you are missing the backstory of the characters set up in the first season.
Thank you for sharing your experience! I have been selling my small pocket Wowflutes for over five years and have sold over 40,000 of them. I have recently been including my toy photography in the form of 8×8 matted prints and it was difficult to choose at first. I have found that most of my customers enjoy a simple photo that is up close to the minifigure and a fill the frame shot similar to my banana guy image and my Stay Puft marshmallow man with mini marshmallows. The other images I chose get lots of laughs from people that come to my booth – but they haven’t sold. I like to consider that most folks look at Lego and toys as a child’s world and therefore they automatically think of their children when making a purchase. They like happy, colorful shots that would look good in the child’s room. Although I sold all of my stay Puft marshmallow man prints to full-grown men that informed me it was going into their man cave! I hope you have lots of sales and continue to take awesome toy photography!
Thanks for sharing your experiences Joecow! I think have very valid points about how a majority of people see toy photography. At my gallery showing I got many comments about how cool and funny it was – something different from the usual Alice in Wonderland stuff, but little interest in purchasing it.
Perhaps my pricing was too high, but I suspect the hard association that toy = child had and has something to do with it. It is a challenge, but also something that forces me to think about what I am doing when I press the shutter button.
Great experience. And I am having similar troubles. I am having an exhibition of my pictures in a bit more than a month and it is soooo difficult to select your best pictures to showcase and sell. I have been working on this exhibition for several months, now and I have been back and forth with my selection.
I whish you the best for your sale!
Thank you Ballou!
With so much time to go, I can only imagine how much back and forth you must be going through! I would love to hear more about your selection process, as well as the factors that make you swap certain photos for others.
I suppose my short time period to choose was good in this regard. I didn’t have time to agonise over and swap my choices!
Good luck!
Well, to be honest, I could write an article on the subject.
But you are right, it seems great to have time to prepare but it has its disadvantages. One of the biggest one is that you have time…time to think. So I hesitated a lot and I may change my mind until the exhibition day.
But to select my pictures, I first looked at the statistics of my pictures. I post them on IG and Flickr (mainly). And when you look at them, you can see that the population is not the same and your “best – more liked” picture on IG is not the same as on Flickr. So, I decided not to use them.
I did not want to select them alone, because, I knew that I would not be able to make choice. When I started that way, I selected more than 40 pictures that I liked enough to be displayed (according to me). That was way too much…
So I set up rules: only 15 pictures displayed and no limit on age (I only started legography a bit more than a year ago). Possibility to have different way of displaying (4 pictures on Dibond and 11 framed pictures).
So I created 15 folders and I decided to fill them with 15 different style/theme that I wanted to showcase. Some folders had one picture, some had a few (5-6).
Then, I shared them with my family and asked them individually to select, in each folder, their best pictures.
It is interesting to see what people like and dislike. Even your family which can have totally different views/opinions on your art.
As a result, I had some selections which were easy to make (even though sometimes it would not have been my choice at first) but sometimes the choices were evenly spread among the pictures, it was not clear cut. So I had to make the final choice.
That way I had 15 pictures.
But, always listen to your audience.
When making those selections, for some pictures, my parents and sister all said that they would not use any of them (in a particular folder). That’s when I decided to remove those pictures from the selection and once again, one spot was open.
On the other side, I had a remark from my mother who said to me: “Why did not you put more of your star wars pictures, like the one with the pandas, I like them a lot?” (My mother has never seen StarWars but she seems to like my SW pictures). So I put that picture instead.
And I also had the case of one picture I selected that my parents did not like but that I am keeping anyway for the show because it has a lot of meaning for me as it is the first picture I posted that people reacted positively to. After posting that picture, I knew that what I did was ok. And I like it a lot and use it as my computer wallpaper since then.
And finally, I would like to add that as I continue to make pictures, I have nice new ones that I appreciate and that I may want to add to the show but I have to refrain myself because at some point you have to say stop.
Was my choice a good one? Do I showcase my best pictures? Will people like them? buy them?
I have no idea… The only thing I know is that I am happy with the pictures I have and I can’t wait to see people reaction.
Wow, thank you for sharing this! It is a very thought out process. It seems to have worked out for you too, which is all any process can be judged on. I hope your show is successful. Do let me know how it goes!
Hi
What a great piece. I have just started to create my own portfolio with the intent of selling the prints.
I would love to showcase them at local craft markets and the like but only have around 16 images at present.
I sometimes lie awake in bed at night and my head is buzzing with ideas, sometimes I get so giddy I tell my wife ( she’s very supportive, even buying me figures I will use for photoshoots )
I never started out with a consumer market as my main focus it was just to hear heart warming comments and to put upon our own wall but somebody said the fatal words ” you should sell them ” and that was that.
If my photo’s can make somebody smile whether they buy the prints or not I feel complete and proud of the time and effort that I put into the image. Not every image is going to appeal to everybody but there will be that one image that will capture somebodies heart.
The funniest part of this fantastic journey is I find myself hiding my son’s toys in the cabinet so he doesn’t scratch them before I use them for a shoot.
Anyway, good luck with your journey because it’s magical one in my eyes and as Mr Disney said “It’s a small world after all”
Paul
Thank you Paul! I’m excited to hear you are at a similar point right now. The jump from artist to business can at times be challenging, but I can assure you that it is worth it. You are going to get perspectives you can’t obtain anywhere else. Please keep me updated! I would love to hear about your journey!
I certainly will. I am totally new to these blog sites and was wondering where the option to post an image was ?
I have started a facebook, Instagram page and website to help with the portfolio as it builds.
Fun times indeed.
You can link to an image by as you would any hyperlink, but you can’t directly post an image in a comment. Is your name on Instagram the same as here? I’d like to follow your journey!
Doh! off course LOL
It’s toyographyuk
😀
I’ve spent most of my summer pondering about where I’m going with my photography (both toy and non toy related) and your post has been feeding my thoughts for the last days. Personally I would approach the opportunity to sell pictures the same way I would approach an exhibition in a gallery or… the book exchange that Lizzi mentioned. I would avoid thinking too much as a marketer and focus on being a creative person, trying to get a vision of what I want to show, not what others want to see.
Sound advice.
I’m glad I could give you did for thought! That’s the highest compliment for writing in my opinion. I think you have a solid approach. It’s the approach I wanted to take, but I know I didn’t. Oddly enough, the photo I felt most betrayed for taking with me (because I liked it the least but knew it was popular) was the first one to sell. So I felt right back at the beginning of my conundrum!