Has Your Photo Been Published or Exhibited?

Alentejo is certainly something. 99% of my photos are from within five minutes of my front door. After more than ten years here I'm still finding new photo opps right in the streets I walk every day to the market, or the post office, or to pay the water bill.

One day I just might exhaust all the possibilities in my small city and need to travel 20 minutes to Evora for photographs. But I don't think so.
 
Looooong ago I had pictures used by the local paper, when I was a student.

More recently (slightly), I suppose stuff done for work doesn't count - copy-camera work, b/w printing and slide-dupes etc. Since I "became amateur" again, absolutely zilch !

Maybe there is a possibility of an amateur-exhibition in a town office at the end of the year though. That is almost more of an annoyance than a positive thing, due to the time and cost involved. Ho hum.
 
I had an exhibition a couple of years back. Even though I made the price of prints very reasonable indeed I still heard people looking at the catalog and saying stupid things like "I can get a photo printed for €0.19, why is he charging €50".

Yes, €0.19 will give you a tiny print, whereas mine were A3 size and nicely mounted, plus the cost of film plus my skill making the photo. I reckon each photo cost me almost €30, so my price wasn't outrageous.

I didn't sell a single photo. I kept the photos stored for a year or so and then displayed them in my office. Now almost every client mentions the photos on the wall and says how much they like them.
 
As a photoblogger, I've had photos appear in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Time Out Chicago, & on a bunch of web sites/internet magazines/commercial blogs (e.g., Style.com, DCist, New York Magazine's "Grub Street" blog), as well as the web sites for various (mostly local) musicians, burlesque performers, non-profits, etc. I've had 1 of my photos used in a CD from an up & coming (I hope) band down in Chapel Hill (The Old Ceremony). As far as exhibitions, I have a couple shots in an upcoming group show (sponsored by DCist) here in Washington, DC., had 2 displayed as part of the Visual Fringe component of the Capital Fringe Festival last summer, & had a solo show @ a local cafe a few years ago.
 
Jon - I find that the lower the price is on a photo, the more people complain about it.

I've never understood why - I suppose it's a perceived value thing. For an experiment, next time you have a show multiply your price by 5 or 10x and gauge the responses.

I think you'll be suprised. Worst case scenario you still don't sell any. Best case, you do, and you attract a less price concious clientelle who won't gripe over paying more than materials "cost" for a piece of art.
 
It can indeed be a bit frustrating trying to sell photographs when you're not famous. Not only do many people seem to think that they (or the proverbial Uncle Frank) could do it as well as you, but the mechanical nature of image capture makes people more reluctant to spend money on prints, no matter how much work went into them. This may partially explain some of today's vogue for gigantic prints (@ least you're getting something big!). Subject matter is very important, too, of course, as I've found that most people do not want to buy pictures of strangers, unless those strangers are colorfully garbed & exotic residents of the Third World, etc.

Jon Claremont said:
I had an exhibition a couple of years back. Even though I made the price of prints very reasonable indeed I still heard people looking at the catalog and saying stupid things like "I can get a photo printed for €0.19, why is he charging €50".

Yes, €0.19 will give you a tiny print, whereas mine were A3 size and nicely mounted, plus the cost of film plus my skill making the photo. I reckon each photo cost me almost €30, so my price wasn't outrageous.

I didn't sell a single photo. I kept the photos stored for a year or so and then displayed them in my office. Now almost every client mentions the photos on the wall and says how much they like them.
Click to expand...
 
While I've never experienced an increase in interest in my work when I've increased the price (if only that were true), an artist friend once told me, "If it's not going to sell for a $100, it might as well not sell for $1000."

rogue_designer said:
Jon - I find that the lower the price is on a photo, the more people complain about it.

I've never understood why - I suppose it's a perceived value thing. For an experiment, next time you have a show multiply your price by 5 or 10x and gauge the responses.

I think you'll be suprised. Worst case scenario you still don't sell any. Best case, you do, and you attract a less price concious clientelle who won't gripe over paying more than materials "cost" for a piece of art.
Click to expand...
 
Yes, pricing is so tricky. Vincent van Gogh didn't get it right either - that's what I always remember.

Friends and neighbors who are in my photos usually get a free print, but it's distressing to see how they treat the gift. Perhaps because it was free they feel ok about folding it in half. Or perhaps they don't like my photos?
 
Good place to make my bank balance about the idea:

My shot appeared (Kodak game) in Times Square for a day
4 prizes from Agfa (before closing the web photo site in Germany)
(Olympus PS camera, Documents scanner, Philips not cheap DVD player and ...forgot)
1 Exhibited photo in Sibir (Novosibirsk) Bienale - 2006 (B&W done with Lensbaby lens)
1 Published photo in Popular Magazine - July or August 2006)

Total cash intake = $50 from POP Magazine

More:
Minolta site Photograper of the month
Minolta - B&W cover shot for Minolta cameras booklets
Prizes - 4 CF's 256 Mbyte each
 
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I haven't had anybody fold any of my prints, but seeing what happens to them as they hang in the open on office cubicles, refrigerators, etc. has actually taught me a lot about how archival supposedly archival inkjet inks & papers really are & the importance of putting them behind glass/plexiglass.

Jon Claremont said:
Friends and neighbors who are in my photos usually get a free print, but it's distressing to see how they treat the gift. Perhaps because it was free they feel ok about folding it in half. Or perhaps they don't like my photos?
Click to expand...
 
Have won a few contest and salons receiving some cash and medals, but this is my favorite money shot. My father at the helm of the boat we built. Sent it to a magazine and they liked it enough to pay me $300 for use as a cover. M4, 21mm Super Angulon, Ektachrome...

If you shoot covers they need to be verticals with room for mast head/ title.

Glenn
 

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Over the years I had several pictures of Tugboats published in specialist merchant shipping magazines.

At that time tugboats were even more of an obsession than cameras!!🙄

Payment was minimal,but the thrill was enough.

Brian
 
Never a rangefinder photograph.

However, I've had a dozen or so photographs in various sports magazines - all photos of high school basketball players heading to big schools or the NBA. (LeBron James, Sebastian Telfair, etc.) I expect to have a few published after the McDonald's All-American game in a month or so.
 
I've been published rather sporadically over the last fifteen years, so the following is rather less impressive than it might sound at first, but a bit of my work, mostly theatrical shoots, have shown up in New York magazine, the Village Voice, the New York Times, Daily News, Newsday and, yes, the New York Post. I've also had a little work show up in industry magazines such as Railway Age, and for a few non-profit organizations. Some of these gigs paid nicely, but some others simply offered me a byline, free copies for tearsheet material, and bragging rights.

I've been more in hot pursuit of gallery attention than anything else over the last few years, so that's where my efforts are aimed. But I won't turn down a gig such as most of the above.


- Barrett
 
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I regularly had pictures in magazines, nespapers and the odd book. However, it was in a niche market and not many have access to be able to take air-air photos. Or if they do, they make a mess of it because they don't understand how to get the right shots.

Kim
 
I have never had a picture published for itself. I have published pictures in all of my books, most out of print now. See John E.L.Robertson, "Paducah" in the Images of America series by Arcadia Press, 2004. Many of mine were taken with Leica rangefinders and Nikon SLRs.
Johne
 
My photographs were used on a recent book cover (American Morons by Glen Hirshberg [Amazon link]). The main pic is Leica M6TTL w/ VC 15 I believe, but the rest were SLR with a homemade lens.

Also various CD covers, like this one: (Goodnight Nobody by Momzer [Amazon link]), but that was a TLR shot.

Perhaps it doesn't count as being "published" since I designed the covers and (naturally) just chose to use my own pictures...

j
 

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