Restart

Slightly left field story for today.

I had been considering that my life as a commercial photographer was in my past, and I told myself there was no unfinished business.

Well it is possible that I was wrong.

Sometimes what life throws at you strikes hard and sends you off in a direction that was not on your route map.

So it would seem I realised there is still some life in me and some unfinished business in photography.

Today I received a new set of business cards. chose ones with pictures on them. lets see where this goes.

February. Where did it go?

Well it looks as though February has gone missing from my life and as far as new images goes it is true, February has been a bit of a desert, but for what goes on behind the scenes with my photography I am coming to the end of a very productive spell.

I decided I needed to catch up with my Alamy submissions. First I needed to sort out my quality control. I was having far too many submissions rejected, A closer eye for detail and dust and not trying to push images that were taken at the limits of the capabilities of my cameras. Getting this sorted has meant that I have had no rejected submissions since last October. At that point I had about 3500 images uploaded, as of now I have 5000 images online with another 150 still to upload. 

I have worked my way back through all my collections until I got back to the point I had finished submitting in 2010. 

All the images are keywords and captioned and they have been examined at 100% in Photoshop and all dust removed. 

With the Key wording I have set up Lightroom so that it working the way I want with all my keywords sorted to make the process quick and easy. 

So although there is little in the way of new images lots of work has been accomplished.

Letting go of Old Friends.

I am sure I have said this before but the time has now come to start saying good-bye to some old friends.

We have been together for almost a quarter of a century. Been through all sorts of scrapes together. Shared some bad times and some amazing times, seen things that many people will never have the chance to see. Both of us have come out the other side looking slightly older and with more character, also we are both functioning almost as well as we did 'back in the day'

click on 'Read More'  to meet my old friend.

Test Prints

I received back some test prints today. They were produce on an Epson 3800, and run with generic profiles, so in some ways can be taken as the worst case prints form this machine.

The results were fantastic, far better than I had been running from my own very geriatric printer. 

One set was printed on Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper. This is a paper I know well as I have been using it for most of the printing I have produced over the past few years. It has a high gloss surface and looks very similar to a traditional gloss RC photographic paper. 

The second printed on Somerset Enhanced Textured paper. This looks like a water colour paper with quite a rough texture. The images printed on this have a better 'feel' than the gloss finish. 

I see that Epson have just announced the 3880 which is the next generation printer in this range. 

With the slightly improved ink set in the x880 printer range, a custom profile, and some experiment with colour space for my images.  I know I will see some fantastic prints from whatever printer I choose to buy.

Penshurst Craft Fair

A few more shots off poppy seed heads in  the studio tonight. Followed by plans for to visit to Penshurst Craft Fair The trip is for information only. To see if anyone is doing what I am planning. 

Are there any photographers selling prints?, if so what are they shooting? what is the product? charges? Stand layout? 

It should be an interesting day.

This is where things are now.

Where to go now?

A diversified set of income streams are needed!

At the moment commissioned work and speculative stock images, make up my photography income. I have a great many images that I have taken over the past few years which are not the sort of images that are suitable for licensing through a stock portal such as Alamy.

The question is how to produce a profitable income stream.

Some of the possible options are, in no particular order.

Print sales via the web.
Self publishing of cards either for direct sales or through retail outlets.
Art/Craft fair, selling prints and cards direct.

It is possible that these will act as a form of marketing for commissioned work, and for stock images.

The time now is to start investigating any and all options.