Getting your images out there!

So, why do we take fine art photographs and what are they?

Everyone will have their own interpretation - to me, "fine art" photographs are images that are not record shots or family shots or holidays snapshots - in other words images where composition, aesthetics, message etc are considered consciously by the artist or the viewer.

So why take them? I think there are a few reasons:
1) Self expression and artistic outlet.
2) Charting ones own progress as a photographer
3) Creation of art
4) Gaining recognition and/or noteriety
5) Sharing our view of the world
6) Provoking thought/getting our message across.
7) Money (ha!)
8) Provision of an aesthetic.

To me the most important reason is to allow an artistic outpouring of creativity that is missing in my life otherwise. I do also write poetry but it is truly awful, far too embaressing to publish and makes the Vogons look like Wordsworth. If no-one else ever saw my images I would get just as much joy from taking them and using them to remember the fun I had in the process of taking them.

Having said that, I like my ego to be massaged, I like to be flattered and most importantly I like to feel that I am learning, so I enter competitions, lap up any praise and try to improve based on the critiques I get. I measure my success by the marks and positions I am given. Of course if I don't do well, then the judge is obviously new to this and not a particularly bright fellow.

And of course, if I could turn a couple of bob from it all that would be grand too. After all photography is an expensive business, equipment costs a bomb, software is rediculously expensive and even printing costs a fair bit when you go above A4 (And pictures always look a lot better at A3 - even snaps become fine art if you print them big enough!) So how do you make money from your fine art? There are plenty of sales sites on the Web, but it's just not that simple. There are too many! Why should someone find your image instead of mine?

Like anything in sales, it comes down to marketing. You have to get your images out there and in everyones face! Recently I stumbled across one of the many blogs run by "1 Green Thumb". This is a dude with a plan! He has lots of tips and hints on how to turn your hobby into a little cash and offset the costs of some of those lenses. My take on his message is that you snag viewers (potential customers) and boost your rankings by connecting to lots of websites through holding many of your own. You interconnect your websites and form a trawling net and point the whole lot at your main sales vehicle.

It all seesm to make sense to me, but being only partially able at techy computery things, and having been scared to dip my toe in the water in the past I'm still a little daunted. But, I've been inspired and so I am following his plan. This blog is the first step, the second step is to build myself a free web page - here is mine so far "AndyMacDs Images of Scotland", which I am aiming to complete next month in January 2010. Then it's on to a Flickr account, Adsense and so on.

I'll keep you posted on how I get on. In fact once I'm up and running I'll keep a tally on this blog of how much cash I make. Let's see, what have I spent on photography so far... probably about £2500-£3000. So I'm 3 Grand down at the start. I might have to sell a lot of images and get you guys to click the Adsense banners an awful lot! Who knows, in time, it may become a multipound industry. But for now (and for tax purposes) it'll stay strictly a hobbyist income to help with my materials.

A Fair Weather Photographer

So what weather do you like to go shooting in?

Most people think a bright summers day with blue skies is ideal, and it does provide great bright light to freeze action shots, but...

Recently I went to a talk by one of the Paisley Colour exponents - Robert Fulton. Robert is simply excellent at landscapes - he not only is compositionally spot on, but he also has the gumsheon to get up early for morning shots, is technically excellent, and is willing to stand up to the welly tops in icy cold rivers for a shot of a frozen tree as viewed by the ducks (which are at this point huddled together on dry land).

The point is, Robert never shoots on summers days. In the summer he is pottering in his garden enjoying the sunshine. His camera is resting in his kit bag. He only photographs in the autumn and winter. He takes most of his images on cold frosty or misty mornings when the sun is struggling to get through the cloud, colours are strong but subtle and the light is diffuse. As a result he takes incredibly atmospheric images. My own best shots are taken up the hills when no-one is there , between storms, when the sky is black and the sun is low and lighting the foreground.

I was lucky enough to have a chat with Robert and to my delight discovered that not only does he have the same gear as me (unusually NOT shooting with a full frame sensor) but he also takes the images that I aim for wonderfully well, uses photoshop with the same ethos that I do and seeks out his subjects in much the same way I do in the location that I had earmarked for the coming years' photography. He certainly gave me something to aim at! On discussing his set up for landscapes I found out that our work flow is almost identical - almost...

We both shoot in aperture mode almost exclusively, using a tripod and preferring the 2 second delay to the fuss of a remote release, we both use hyperfocal depth of field, we both use polarisers and warm up filters and we both post process by masking areas and playing with exposure, shadow/highlight and contrast to bring selective areas of our images up or down.

So what were the differences? That is aside from his skill, eye and experience:

1) I tend to use f/11 or so to reduce chromatic aberation at the expense of sharpness in the distance. Robert said "What's chromatic aberation, I don't bother worrying about that - use f/22. play around with your digital camera and compare the results, see what works for you". Well, f/22 here I come - the huge difference between his images and mine was the critical sharpness at a distance.

2) I'm an evening person, taking most of my landscapes at dusk, conversely Robert gets up early (only shooting in the autumn and winter due to the later sunrises), drives for an hour or so to his favourite spots and then waits for the sun to start to come up. The result, soft colours, golden glows and atmospheric mists on cold morning (no doubt he also suffers a lot of dissappointing wasted trips, but we won't dwell on those). Mist is Roberts trademark and he makes GREAT use of it.

3) Finally, I wait for my shot, take the image and move on. Robert tends to bracket his exposures, rattle off a few shots, wait for the light to change and do it again. He gets lots of similar images and is able to choose the best from a batch of quality images.

So I got what I hoped for from his talk, and more - tips, inspiration and best of all I learned something that was directly relevant to my own photography. I learned that I need to strat getting up earlier in the morning and I learned that "bad" weather is the landscape photographers friend.

Charitable Togging

Every year my daughters school does a fund raising event where kids parents and teachers travel to the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena and scare themselves silly going over the aerial assualt course, 100 feet above the arena's stone floor. It's a terrifying accomplishment for many of them - every year someone decides to confront their fear of heights and give it a go.

Last year I went along to support friends, took my camera along and snapped away for fun. The pictures came out OK and I ended up sticking them on a CD and giving them to the school, license free. I figured that they could use the images to advertise for future years fund raising or, because I had been careful to get a picture of everyone who did the course, they could charge a couple of pounds per image and make a little more money. In fact the school has a projector an for a few days after the event they projected my images on a conutinual cycle for the kids to see as they moved between classes, which went down well with them.

This year however I approached the event with a little more trepedition - daughter #1 had decided to give it a go. I spent a sleepless night worrying about her and picturing her falling off. Still, she was mad keen, so off we set on Sunday to the arena. Happily there were no falls, although there were tears from some but everyone made it round. I found out that instead of charging for my images last year, the school had emailed my images out to all the participants - no charge (which was an opportunity missed for them) and no acknowledgement of the photographer (which was an opportunity missed for me). So my charitable gesture of providing a free photography service and licence free images, was neither exploited or recognised - shame.

So... having taken the images again this year, I considered adopting a different approach. Giving the school 72ppi low quality images with my PBASE web address added at the bottom and then adding the images to my website with an option to purchase the full size prints for a fee (most of the proceeds to the school, and a small amount to cover costs to me.) I considered it..., but fell at my usual hurdle. I love taking images but I can't be bothered putting in the work to turn a buck. Lazy boy.

So the question is, if you are able to turn a thing you love into a job, by turning it into a job do you lose the love?... Should I try to pursue a career that could turn me off the thing I am passionate about?

For now, I'm happy to keep enjoying the photography and I assume that once I am good enough to satisfy myself (and I'm a hard task master!), I won't have to try too hard to actually sell my images. I may be dreaming :-) but at least I'm enjoying myself!