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.