I am a damn good photographer. No brag, just fact.
I got that way because I understand three things about how lenses work: perspective, depth of field, and angle of view. When you understand these three things, you can be a damn good photographer too.
Last year I toyed with the idea of selling my photos at craft fairs and street festivals. When I was volunteering at Oregon’s Memaloose State Park in the Columbia River Gorge, there was a cherry blossom festival in The Dalles, a small town with a large history – it is where the Oregon Trail ended. The region is a huge cherry growing area and they have an annual festival attended by thousands. But this particular street fair, run by the local chamber of commerce, demanded vendors have liability insurance. And the only policy I could get was for $3 million at a cost of $350 for two days. I simply couldn’t afford it and was also rather peeved. I was selling photos. How much insurance did I need for a potential paper cut?
But I started making 8x10” prints, several hundred, of my best photos. In the autumn, I found myself in the Port Jervis, NY tri-state (NY-NJ-PA) area and a friend was involved in a local craft fair. For $20 I couldn’t go wrong so I set up a booth. And made $2.50. The fair, located in a bad location with no advertising, was competing with a major craft show at a local church and a film festival across the river.
While a financial flop, it gave me some ideas of what did and didn’t work. Staples has an annual sale on large format photos and I had about 20 made up. I showed them to friends in New Jersey and they gave me some advice about what sold. I also spent Christmas with a friend in North Carolina who exhibited at a local artist co-op gallery. Looking at how he set up his photos and how other artists worked their exhibits gave me some ideas about presentation.
I am currently in Georgia’s Unicoi State Park and Lodge, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains. They have an annual Fireside Craft Show that is supposed to be a big deal, but they do not permit photographers. However, the folks offered me a “visiting artist” exhibit on the Valentines Day/Presidents Day weekend. The weekend featured a country music concert on Saturday night and the lodge and campgrounds were heavily booked.
But the days before the exhibit were brutal as a major ice storm paralyzed Atlanta, where most of the people were coming from. And while the roads were clear and easy, the people reacted in typical Southerner fashion – panic. More than half the lodge reservations were cancelled. We were expecting a full (50 sites) campground but only 4 RVs showed up – one staying beyond Sunday morning. The show, which had expected to draw about 150, got around 75 people. I estimate that about 50 people actually viewed my exhibit. I made around $100 in sales, some of which was on Sunday when I knocked things down to half price – my cost. The locals also stayed away from the Sunday buffet, a popular after-church venue. I suppose they also wanted to take time to rest following the storms, which mainly dumped snow in our area but also felled hundreds of trees – one large pine tree missing my trailer by about 20 feet.
Setup from my visiting artist exhibit at Unicoi State Park in Georgia
Further problems involved Wal-Mart. I purchased fifteen 16x20” frames and about half of them fell apart when I tried to put the pictures in them. At $18 each with tax, that was a potential $270 loss. Even those that held together when I mounted the photos had problems. One fell apart when a customer picked it up and another simply fell off the wall after the clamp ripped off the back. Following the show, I had to return the entire purchase, much of it in pieces. I was too afraid to keep the intact ones.
Things were much worse for the servers in the restaurant. Customers, and thus tips. were very few and I suppose I can consider myself lucky. All I really wasted was time.
But I continue to learn. Perhaps the most important thing was that my photos are really, really good. Many of the people who saw the exhibit asked if they were my photos. They were so good that people thought I was selling stock art. Another important lesson was that there is a story behind every photo I took and I enjoyed sharing the stories with customers.
I have one photo of the dam at Speedwell Lake in Morristown, NJ – my hometown. I shared how my father and I used to skip stones along the lake. I also mentioned that Samuel Morse, who developed the telegraph and invented Morse code, had his lab across the street. Stories about Oregon, the Dakotas, Yellowstone, and, of course, Unicoi, came easily from my lips.
Speedwell Lake Dam in Morristown, NJ a photo many people asked about.
The optimist in me says I made about $2 per person and if I did a large show, like the one in The Dalles, it might work out. And so I am now contemplating one last show before I leave Georgia. At the end of March, there is a Dogwood festival at a small town in the southern part of the state that features a craft fair. It’s supposed to draw around 4,000 people and they will probably be in more of a buying mode. I’ve asked a friend in Florida who does woodturning to consider sharing a booth with me and they offer camping for only $5 a night. I will focus on my 8x10”s and sell the 16x20s for $10 each, slightly above my cost, simply to get rid of them. There’s also a one-day show in the South Dakota town I am spending the summer at and I have lots of local photos from there.
And so I proceed on, still thinking that besides being a damn good photographer, I just might be an “artist.’ Though the words “starving,” “struggling,” “unknown,” and other adjectives continue to remind me that my optimist side may be way off base.
