Photography: Pricing Up, Limiting Production

Reposted from my Fine Art America Blog: http://fineartamerica.com/blogs/consideration-for-price-up-and-print-run-limited.html

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Consideration for Price Up and Print Run Limited

November 9th, 2011 - 09:07 PM

I confess to neglecting my Fine Art American showcase. Of the reasons why, the nagging question as to whether this venue can or will pull the sales I want (while I'm out playing with a camera or at my computer playing with Lightroom) for each gallery conceptualized has been foremost. For one who has been in and around fine art and art making across a lifetime (creative writing, singing and songwriting, photography -- and for kicks, some waltzing and two-stepping besides), working each art several relationships outside the self, the first being with God and nature: it's good, no, great, playing a guitar and singing to perfection whether or not anyone else happens to be around: just me and you, God, and, by the way, thank you for the chops and the voice.

The same may apply to looking at things--being within and exploring environments visually; sometimes importing objects and working with them in studio conditions--until they look either their best or strange; and I suppose working a character in language, something I haven't done for a while, has also its deeply focused and immersive character. Still, however indulged by fate and indulgent by inclination, artists who have talent, who stick with it, whatever they do, may get awfully good with their tools, and it's natural to wish to seduce the reader, listener, or viewer of the work.

If it engaged me--if it appears here, it did--I wonder did it engage you? And what does that mean to you?

I understand perfectly the compulsion to produce beautiful and fine things, to rest a while in a lovely mystery. I'm less certain of the motives for collecting work with one exception: the owner's appreciation of the exclusive possession of exceptionally expressive works that may engage intimately, if very good and near ineffable, or ineffable, or with a pleasing effect on surrounds. A fair part of what I do may suit for commercial or personal decor, e.g., all those cream-toned garden photos: put them on canvas and hang them in the coffee shop or along the hallway leading to sauna, sun room, or conference room. Then there's work that's not particularly happy or pretty but should have its effect near close to a nexus involving subject, culture, and time or history: that's where I would place the Antietam series. Priced as they are: tourist momento for a boy's room. But say I priced the same at $950 each and sold them at one specified size and removed them from this market after 15 sales?

With a few of the Antietam images, I've produced my own archival ink jet works on 13x19 sheets, but I've been struggling with a miserably cantankerous printing unit, HP's B9180, infamous for its challenges as well as the superb results on gets when, as another photographer said, "it decides to work." My objective is to replace the printer, resume custom production, and move on; for the time being, for most assured printmaking,my work is here, and I'm inclined to control the size of the print, raise my margin, and arbitrarily limit the number of sales per image from Fine Art America.

The more atmospheric and sentimental work: perhaps that should be priced for those who might make a business expense deduction of it.

Whatever I do--for sure, I'm going to continue producing art for a long, long time--I'm not hanging around or hanging out for the ten bucks.

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Comments

[James S. Oppenheim]

Tammy: I think the set both foreboding and haunting . . . not really the thing for the sun room. That freedom, however, to work in other moods, to speak for an object or subject, contributes to a great bandwidth in expression in fine art. Beauty doesn't have to be pretty, and if some is uneasy or provocative, good. --Jim

[Tammy Swofford]

Jim,

I love your Antietam images, and even more so, because we explored the battlefield together one fine October day a couple years ago.

They are your intellectual property. Price them for the time and travel element. But most of all, price them for the beauty factor. The work is beautiful!

Tammy