crated!

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I'll follow you all once I get mine up and running! I like that they handle the printing, and I've got a huge back-catalog of wall-art-looking photos that I'm sure someone would like...
 
Still very skeptical about this. Let's see it that way.

Case 1 : I'm someone fond of photography and use to read photobooks and to attend photo exhibitions but don't take photos myself. I'd like to have some photos hanging on my walls. So, I'll try to get some prints out of some great iconic photos that I like : I will use some online stores like those mentioned above. Other possibility : I will ask friends, who take nice photos themselves, for some prints of theirs, because I like them a lot.

Will I buy photos online which don't stand out from the average and massive production we all can see on flickr, tumblr, etc ? Probably not.

Case 2 : same as Case 1 but I am a photographer myself and don't dislike some of the prints I am producing in my wet darkroom or out of my digital workflow. So, I will have some of my own photos framed and put on my walls. In addition to what the Case 1 may bring into my house as well.

Exception to both cases : I sometimes stumble accross some photos taken by strangers and unknown people and which strike my eyes. Example : two years ago, a RFF fellow here had for sale in the Classifieds a stunning and very graphic analog print of a photo shot with his Rolleiflex under a railroad bridge in Kansas City during "the golden hour" (I almost clicked the "Buy It Now" button but didn't do it eventually - I now regret it).

Let's be realistic.

Plus : I don't know what "wall-art-looking photos" means. Do they have to match the wallpaper colors ? Or look like what some MDs and dentists hang on their waiting rooms walls - usually free posters given to them by some labs ?
 
The truth is, many folks with a camera will prefer their own shot of their cat, dog, grandchild, holiday landscape or bird shot - usually overblown to a size that it gets disturbingly unsharp, printed cheap in a cheap frame, or on canvas, or in a worse case, first digitally transformed with some sort of "artistic filter" and THEN printed on canvas - against a photo of anybody else.
And nowadays everybody has a camera, or two.
We are all photo artists.

So i kinda agree with Highway 61's explanation.
You gotta be really, really lucky to get a shot sold to a complete stranger, on the Net.
Moreover, cheesy shots make up most of the demand (and flood the market).

When i was moving into my current house, i bought a print for my kitchen wall. I happened to pass by a shop where it was hanging, a nicely done print of hot peppers and since it's my main spice used in kitchen :), i fell in love with it. It wasn't cheap and it is not from some bigh famous artist, but it helped that it was nanging there in front of me nicely printed. I dont think i would have started browsing the Net to find a shot.

Just these days we are discussing with my wife (yea i got married in the meanwhile, folks!) that we should hang something on our bedroom wall to make it more "personal". It looks nice but it's too much like a hotelroom. But that also means we'll pick something from our own "portfolio". (Probably it's gonna be a panoramic we just made in monument valley - does not fit the couch but does fit the wall, lol).

What i want to say is, what matters to most people when buying "art" is
-personal connection
-big name behind (for the wealthier buyers...)
-decorative enough according to their own taste (or lack of taste)
-tangible first impression (most people still only buy stuff they can see/touch in person, even if found on Internet)

Wityh all this, i wish you all the best of luck and please do prove me wrong :)
 
I'm going to be very blunt here, but I hope you take it as constructive criticism.

I personally wouldn't put a majority of those prints on my wall. I wouldn't want a photo of a random woman, a half eaten muffin with a dirt cup beside it, or a photo of a poster of rick ross, and I'm sure there are many people that feel the same way.

You need to select your best!

Even if you have a gem of a photo in there, photos that aren't as refined can throw off the whole body of work. They can make buyers, who are interested in other pieces, second guess themselves.

If you're looking to sell, you're going to have to make your work stand out. You're also going to have to figure out how to get people to see your work. As someone else mentioned, you're not going to come up on any Google searches, and crated doesn't seem to have an established name in the market yet.

One strategy could be to get some of your relatives/close friends to purchase work and leave comments/like. I'm sure that'll increase your standing within the site.

I admire the hustle and I hope you get the sales you're looking for.
 
Always be your own harshest critic. That said, so long as any critic criticises the photograph (and NOT the photographer) it can often be useful advice or feedback. Criticising the photographer is a very personal attack and shouldn't be tolerated, in my opinion. Offering random comments without any suggestion of how to improve the photo is not criticism - it's just opinion. Opinion can be useful but it can also just be someone wanting to feel superior.

If you want to be commercial, look at the style of photography you wish to emulate / adapt and see what's in / popular. If you're just interested in shooting what you want to shoot, you risk viewers having to sift through gallery after gallery to find something and I know, from experience, I get bored after a couple of minutes.

As the previous poster said, pick and post only your very best. It's got to be sharp, colour corrected (or mono in the way you want it to be). Have a consistent "look" / layout. It shows you think about presentation.

I like your stuff but getting people to part with hard-earned cash must be very difficult. Best wishes.
 
Stock photo places send "want" lists to their photographers. You want to sell stock? That's what this is. There are photos for decoration -- sailboats, sunsets, nature -- pleasing photos to look at everyday -- and photos with different color themes that people might select to go with their decor.

Then there are commercially usable photos -- still lifes -- glass of wine, cup of coffee, cash register, businessmen (not identifiable unless model released), farm scenes, Thanksgiving Dinner table, Xmas tree, mailbox, children sledding, wrapped presents, sports.

To make a gallery of photos to fulfill one's desire to show work is more about vanity than commerce. You could have the best street photo in the world and yet the chances of many people wanting to hang it on their wall may be slim -- it also might not have any commercial value -- and of course the issue of a model release for this type of usage is a no-go.

There are many on-line stock photo places. I have no clue as to the merits of these. Seems like a lot of time and expense for the photographer with very little financial incentive. Just read their contracts and then say to yourself -- hmmmm?

My advice -- throw the photos on the site, don't bother reading comments, if it makes a dollar or two fantastic, if not -- no big deal.
 
NY_Dan said:
throw the photos on the site, don't bother reading comments, if it makes a dollar or two fantastic, if not -- no big deal.
Click to expand...

Exactly! It doesn't cost anything but a little of my time. If I sell something, great; if not, that's fine too. It does not take away from the fun of sharing images with others.

Having said that, the types of photos that are preferred or well-liked in online markets such as crated tend to be aesthetically different than the types of images that are typically posted on RFF.
 
Joe, have you looked to see what is selling on Crated? That could give you an idea of what to put up from your portfolio. Doesn't have to be same subjects, but style is an important factor. Who knows, maybe the folks shopping on Crated just love over-saturated landscapes, or deeply moody monochromatic night scenes.

PF
 
So this is another non-editorial image hosting service, where everyone is allowed to dump and mark it "for sale"? Like 500px?
Good luck with it.
 
kxl said:
Exactly! It doesn't cost anything but a little of my time. If I sell something, great; if not, that's fine too. It does not take away from the fun of sharing images with others.
Click to expand...

So just share then instead of trying to make a buck....

Because that is the problem I see here in Joe's case, none of the work or the way it is presented speaks to me as someone who is truly a committed artist who understands who his competition is and how to rise above it, just a shot in the dark and if it does not work, no big deal and that is the way it comes across.

The work is just not all that strong and lacks cohesion and style in my opinion. Look...in a world filled with trillions of images, everyone on every street knows someone who is the neighborhood "photographer" so there is personal connection there. In order to make someone pay for a stranger's photo who they have no personal relationship with.....on the net, the image is going to have to be extraordinary.

Great work in a well thought out niche that is properly marketed to always sells. Everything else has been swallowed up by "Sharing" which is Freetography.
 
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