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The Business of Fine Art Photography - Continued

So we're going to continue on the business path here, but we're going to be going over the more practical side of things image licensing galleries print all that stuff. So I heard that there are quite a few questions in the chat rooms about printing, and we're going to be talking all about that, so we're gonna have you covered hopefully and if not, then well answer so I wouldn't talk about gallery's first and some common questions that people have regarding galleries s o am I qualified to be in a gallery is the first one that I hear all the time? You know, what does an artist have to do to be in a gallery? How do I start with the gallery is another one that we're going to cover? How do I create prince and then how to cost get split so the logistics of actually working with a gallery how do I make a sale? So am I qualified to be in a gallery? The answer's? Yes, you're qualified to be in a gallery, all you have to do is create the prince for it, so you do not have to have an art degree t...

o be in a gallery, you don't have to know somebody who knows somebody to be in a gallery, there are a lot of galleries who are going to take you just as you are you don't have a fine arts degree, but you just have to have a cohesive body of work if you don't have that cohesive body of work than a gallery isn't really going to be able to sell what you have to offer. So if you think of it this way, if you have a whole series of images that go together that can be seen one after the other, they make sense together they look great together, then a gallery is much more likely to sell multiple prints that day from somebody who likes a certain peace than if you have one picture over here and then another one that looks nothing like a totally different subject. You know, the person who likes this one might not necessarily like this one, so they want their clients to come in and see a cohesive show where they're going to buy multiple prints from you. So being qualified to be in a gallery or cohesive body of work is going to get the gallery's attention. Most likely so we are going to be talking to the gallery lives, so we're going to see what they have to say personally, but in my experience, having a body of work that I can call a siri's is going to be so important when it comes to getting into that gallery. So make sure that your images make sense together it really isn't going to fly to great if you have three different portfolios mixed into one and then you show that to a gallery. So if you're thinking about approaching a gallery, you know your technical expertise isn't going to mean as much as the impact that it has personally to that gallery. So if you put your wedding images in there because they're technically amazing and you want to show the gallery how you khun light something you know, gallery owners aren't often photographers themselves where they're going to be concerned with how well you can light something they're looking at the impact that your art has so make sure the oven of pictures to present its another thing now when it comes to how many pictures should you have that's a little bit of a difficult question to answer, but I would say a minimum of ten great pictures in your portfolio that's what I try to work towards and I don't want to overwhelm the gallery so I'm not going to put you know, fifty or a hundred prints in my portfolio and then bring that to them and ask them to look at that because that's going to take them forever to go through every one of those prints they just need to see that you have enough prints to hang in there gallery that are cohesive and work together so make sure that your personal style comes through like we've been talking about style. It is so important they want to be able to market you as ex photographer who does this, whatever that may be, they need to say, okay, brooke shading is a fine art photographer, and she does surreal and whimsical artwork, and then if I start doing something totally different, they're not going to know how to market that and their client base who comes to their gallery to buy my prince is not going to come back to buy my prince. What would you have question? Yes, just really quick when you go to a gallery to show your portfolio are those the prince that you want the gallery to represent? Or is that say he was a sample? My work? Can I bring you something? Or is that exactly we say here's? What I have to put on your walls if I'm actually going into a gallery, I show them a sample, so I try to show them something that I would like to print for them or that I already have printed even if you if you already have something, but what I'm showing them is them saying, you know, this is serious, that I have. And, you know, this might work really well in your gallery, it's cohesive, and I'm not saying all those things to them, so I don't want to presume, but but I'm trying to show them something where they think to themselves immediately this could go up right now on the walls because I don't want them to worry about, you know, well, these get printed nicely or this and that and that's why we're going to talk about paper leader, but yeah, so that's the kind of thing I'm thinking about, but in that same vein, when I am showing prints to a gallery, I am showing them in a way where I'm saying, ok, this is a cohesive body of work, some of these are part of a siri's some of these air knocked, so I'm letting them know that yes, this is one siri's and all usually include about five prints from the same siri's and then another five prints that aren't from that siri's that showed the breath of my work, but that do not go with that particular siri's that way they're getting a mix. It also goes together because my work is very cohesive, but there's one specific siri's in there and then some extras to show them what else? Aiken d'oh, so how do I begin working with the gallery? Now, I had no idea how to do this. When I started, it was way over my head. I didn't know if you were supposed to approach galleries if you were supposed to go into a gallery to show them your work, I had no idea, but you have to go out and find the gallery that's what I learned most important thing now it has happened since the first year of my photography, where a gallery has approached me to do a show, and the first time that happened was with my gallery representation in amsterdam called maurin galleries, and they approached me and they said, we saw your work online and do you want to have a show? And that was amazing to me because that was the first time that it happened out of fifteen different shows that I had so that's the kind of thing that still doesn't happen that often to me, you know, I don't have a ton of galleries knocking on my door saying, we want to show your work on dh that's fine, that just means that I have to hustle a little bit more and get out there, put my name out there. So I do internet searches a lot. I am constantly looking on the internet for which galleries air representing the artist that I love, because if a gallery khun represent an artist that I respect, that I respect about gallery, so I'm looking for galleries where we're going to have a good energy together, and we're both going to respect each other drive by searches. I like to call them often times if I'm in a new city, especially, and I'm driving down the street and I see a gallery that looks really, really awesome. I'm going to write that name down, maybe even going to introduce myself, but never bring in a body of work right away. You don't want to overwhelm the gallery and take advantage of their time, so I never see a gallery that I love have my prints with me and go in and say, hi, can you look at my prince? Because you don't know what their schedule is, so you don't want to presume that they have time to sit there and look at your art, or that your art is so amazing that they need to look at it. So I do searches like that. In fact, just down the street here in seattle, I saw a gallery that looked so awesome, and I was just looking in that window, thinking wow that's amazing working gallery and I wrote down the name of it because I want to be able to go back there and look out look at their websites see if it might be a good fit for me so how do I begin working with a gallery no this could be a little bit tricky because it takes a lot of know how on your part to approach a gallery so look for galleries that makes sense now great example of this is how in the very very first year of my photography I approached several galleries about a hundred of them but I I approached several that just didn't work at all with my style for example I rodent email to a gallery that only shows nineteenth century japanese art now obviously my work does not fit in that genre so there was no point in me contacting them I wasted my time I wasted their time so make sure that it makes sense so when it makes sense what I'm talking about is does it have art with the same themes so does your work fit conceptually with what they're trying to do now that doesn't mean that it has to be that way but that's one good indication to look for and then do the artist to photography that they represent so is the gallery strictly oil paintings are strictly sculpture if they are then they're probably not interested in venturing out into photography and then do they exhibit new artists are only well known artists, so if you have a gallery you're looking at this website and they're showing ansel adams and that's it, then chances are they don't want new artists they're looking for extremely, extremely well known artists who are going to sell prints no matter what at high prices. So that's the point where I'm not going to go to them and say, hey, I started photography a year ago, can I please have an exhibition? They're going to say no, actually they're not even going to write back most likely so is the gallery in your vicinity? This is a really important thing to think about because shipping artwork to a gallery is so expensive creating prince framing prince, doing the shipping it's a lot, a lot of money to put into it. Okay, so are you prepared to send an email? You have to make sure that you have your cv, which is your resume, your portfolio and your bio you have to have all of that easily found and ready to go. So this is what I make sure that I have in place before I ever contact a gallery and make sure that it's updated, I make sure that they're going to see what I want them to see when they hit my website, so creating a resume the gallery shows that you've participated in that's a great thing to put on their if you've never had a show that's fine put in there, what kind of art you do, any publications that you've been in anything like that, you're just letting them know what you've done now your portfolio is going to stand out more than your resume is in most cases. So that's why I think about this last when I'm looking at my website in updating it, but if I have something that's relevant, I absolutely want to put that on there, make sure that you write out any publications and awards that you have especially notable ones, if you don't have anything notable right down the west, notable ones and it's fine, at least you've been published somewhere. Your education history is the other thing that you should always have on that cv and the notable events in features. So I'm going to go through each of these individually to show you what I would put on my resume to try to catch the attention of a gallery. So my exhibitions now I'm going to write down basically everything that I want that gallery to see to make them. I want to show my work and this is giving them confidence, so I'm listing my shows that I've had recently different things that might catch their attention. So for example, I'm putting on there the fact that I've had solo shows that shows them that galleries outside of what they do have taken a chance on me to sell on lee my work in their in their gallery, so if they're doing that, that means that I must be selling for them that's not always the case, I've had lots of solo shows where I sold nothing, but that gallery doesn't need to know that they're looking for confidence I've put on here that I was part of a documentary that's very, very relevant to them, because that means that somebody took the time to film my process, so that means that there might be an audience out there because of that documentary. I hate showing this, by the way, I just want to put that out there. I really don't like talking about this stuff, but it's relevant, so I'm going to keep going. Eso publications features an award it's something that's also really important to put on there, so for example, I have that I was featured on the adobe photoshopped website that gives them an idea of what my heart is like and who respects it in the industry. I'm putting on their any awards or contest that I've won things like that notable names things that they would recognize and then my education so I'm just letting them know what my background is and it's usually really irrelevant to a gallery because you know they're not necessarily looking for someone who has a fine arts degree in fact in most cases they don't care and in my experience I've never had a gallery you know basic decision on if I've been to art school or not so I don't worry about that but I do included just so then they know what my history is so this is sort of the big slide that I wanted to share with you and this is literally the email that I sent to galleries now before we go over and I want to tell you a story of how I failed at this so miserably before when I was in my first year of showing in galleries I decided that I would write a mass email to one hundred different galleries I did all this research picked out the gallery's no matter what they were they were completely irrelevant galleries but I chose him anyways because I didn't know any better so I put them all in the two line of my email instead of the blind carbon copy line I wrote a really generic e mail to everybody I said hi my name's brooke I'd liketo you know submit my portfolio to baba bought, and I got maybe one or two responses, and they both said no, and that was it didn't hear anything from anybody else. Surely I burned bridges, I, you know, lost those relationships because they could see that I was just writing to everybody I didn't care about, they're gallery, I cared about getting into a gallery, so I want to show galleries that, you know, it's, not all about me. I respect you and your business, and I want to be a part of it. So what if they changed a few things about my approach? I decided, okay, I'm not going, tio, you know, write a mass email, I'm not going to say anything generic, I want to make it as personal as possible, and I'm on ly going to write to the galleries that makes sense. So what I'm doing when I am looking at this email, I'm saying, dear, so and so and the so once I was important, because you have to find a name, so I'm not saying, you know, to whom it may concern or anything like that. I'm making sure that I find a name to associate with the gallery, usually it'll be on the website it'll say the director, the assistant somebody will be listed on the website if not give them a call and say hey do you know where I consent submissions to they might say we don't take submissions they might give you an e mail that might give you a phone number they're going to help you in some way whether it's to say nowhere yes so make sure you get a name I say my name is brooke shade in I'm a fine art photographer so first sentence I'm letting them know who I am and what I do I specialize in whimsical portraiture with surreal and dark twist so I'm letting them know the genre of my art what they can expect to see so if they read that and they think, well I only do black and white nudes or something like that then maybe my stuff isn't quite what they're looking for I don't want to waste their time I want to give them something that will adequately describe what I do I'm interested in exhibiting at your gallery should you have the availability in your future so in this sentence really important because I'm telling them that I want an exhibition if you just send them an email and say here's my portfolio or something like that they might just think that you want a portfolio review because a lot of galleries do portfolio reviews so if that's the case if they think that you want that they might eh not take you seriously as a photographer because you're just looking for feedback or be you just won't get what you want out of that gallery so we want to make sure that we're giving them enough informations than they know what you want um so I'm saying I love looking through your website and especially admired such and such artists that you represent so I'm letting them know that I have done the research I admire the artist that they represent I might say something like I love the space of your gallery but I'm being sincere about it some actually finding galleries that I connect with that I love something about it I'm letting them know that you know, I might say I think that the hardwood floors and your gallery look amazing and make the art look look wonderful something like that just to let them know I've done my research and then I say you confined my work at brooke shade in dot com that's also really important to list your website and not to attach pictures. So if you think about it if you're attaching images to an email, not only can it take a long time to load but you can only attach so many so aye it might go to their drunk male because you've sent attachments along you never know, but the bad thing about doing that not only attaching but I'm betting images is that you're giving them a select few pictures from your portfolio and they're going to judge you based on on lee those pictures if they don't like what they see that they're never going to go through to your website. So I want them to go through my website where I've got everything that they can look at and they can click on what catches their eye first, so they're much more likely to see images that they enjoy rather than me attaching them, so I just give them a thanks, and I always sign my emails with a smiley face and then sign my name and that's it. Okay? So when emailing never sent a mass email always personalize it always link to your website, don't attach her in bed pictures and always state your intent. So these are all of the things that I am making sure that I do when I sent that email. So how to work with a gallery? Usually a fifty fifty split for the profit is standard that's been my experience, the only time where that hasn't been. My experience is in the galleries that aren't selling as high end of art, so they're what I like to call starter galleries out there that won't necessarily take anybody. But they're much more willing to take artists who are willing to pay them for the space, so there are galleries who really make their money on artists, giving them a certain amount of money to hang their work on their walls. Tohave that exposure so these starter galleries are ones that have big group shows a lot of the time, they're not showing two person in our solo shows or things like that. Typically, they have really obvious submission page on their web site and a form to fill out in all that stuff, and they're really looking to drive traffic of a younger crowd because they're looking to sell drinks out there, gallery and sell little prince that are going to sell for, you know, twenty dollars, fifty dollars, things like that. So the artist isn't making a lot of money on these shows, but you're getting exposure. The gallery isn't making money from the art, but they're getting people foot traffic coming through, buying other things and the artist paying them a swell so the artists usually pays for prince. This has been my experience most of the time and it's always good to create a contract, so the's are the things that I keep in mind when I am approaching a gallery, I'm probably going to put out the money for the prince and the framing and all of that. And I need to have a contract because I'm putting out that money for the gallery, okay, so now this is going to be a really, really, really intense amount of information, so I'm just warning you right now, the contract information, though I really want to talk about this because if you don't have a great contract in place, you could get screwed, and I don't want anybody to have that happen. So contract information stuff that I've learned over the years of having people take advantage of my artwork and, you know, not coming out in a good situation because of that, so I've had, you know, galleries damage my prince and not pay for it ruined my prints completely, you know, little things like that that you need to make sure that you're covered. So if you are planning on approaching a gallery, keep all of these tips in mind if you're going to go approach them, because if you don't have this stuff in your contract, then you might regret it later. So who pays? Who is paying for the framing? The shipping, the prince make sure that you talk about that up front. I've had galleries say, well, if you can't afford the prince, then we're not gonna have a show. I've had gallery say well maybe I can help you with the framing if you could do the prince so it just depends on you know let them know honestly what your situation is and how much you khun dio don't agree to more than you khun d'oh because chances are in your first show you're not going to make a ton of money off of it so that's something to keep in mind is that you're probably going to lose money on your first show so when I printed my first show I had to pay for all the prince I created that show on canvas so they were wrapped around wooden structures and that show I hung fifteen prints and it cost me about thirty five hundred dollars to dio so I created my prince gave them to the gallery sold one piece and embarrassingly it was to the gallery owners and I think they just took pity on me so um but the good thing about that show was that I was able to take those same prints to all these other galleries so I didn't have to create a new show a new show, a new show I took the same show and traveled with it so I had fifteen prints but then I had about I don't know I think thirteen more shows that year so I kept taking those prints kept taking those prints I sold for prints that year still not good still didn't quite make my money back, but because of those shows, I could move on to a better gallery because I had that better gallery. I started making more sales, all right, so always important to let the gallery know that they have to open the print package within twenty four hours. Now the issue with shipping prince is that thie insurance won't cover it if the package hasn't been opened within a certain period of time, so you don't want to be stuck with that bill if something is damaged in shipping, what percentage of profit the gallery gets. Definitely something to nail down right away because you don't want to be in the awkward situation of demanding more money later on. So always be very, very clear about that also be clear. For example, I've had a gallery who's created prince for me, and they front the cost, but then that cost gets deducted from the sales that they make to make sure that, you know exactly who's getting what percentage of what? So the gallery assumes responsibility for the prince upon receipt, something that you might not think to put in your contract, but it has to be stated the fact that once those prints are out of your hands, somebody else seems to take care of them, and they're responsible for them. So you have to have a minimum advance notice for print creation now what this means is say a client orders a print and that gallery doesn't have the physical print it needs to be created well in that case you're gonna have to let the gallery no okay well if you want this new print it's going to take me seven days to create that print and they need to let the client know that so then that way you're gallery can't say oh my gosh I need this print tomorrow you have to do it and then you don't want to feel obligated because you've got a life you know and prince take awhile to create sometimes so I tell my galleries that I need two weeks to have that print shipped out to the client depending on it from traveling or you know what what's going on I need that time all right some more contract information how much can a prince be discounted so obviously want the gallery to make sales for you and if a client comes in and says well can we do a ten percent discount thie gallery may or may not say yes it depends on what you tell them so I tell my galleries you know you khun discount x amount for certain situations and that way they know with my permission that they can take that price down or negotiate a little bit depending on who the client is so that said, that means that the gallery doesn't have to call me every single time they want to negotiate a price that gets a little bit overwhelming. I've had that happen, and I put this in my contract and fixed it, so an understanding of what sizes in additions are available now, you don't want the gallery that you're with telling clients that you can make a sixty inch print if that file can only go to thirty inches. So something really important to keep in mind? If that gallery promises a client, a giant print and you can't do it, then they have to go back and embarrass themselves and say, oh, actually, sorry that that one can't be printed that big, so we don't want to make promises that we can't keep. So who pays for accidental print damages and neglect? Um, same thing is who assumes responsibility, so making sure that, you know it's put into place who's going to actually shell out the money for the damages, how many shows are required per contract period? Another important one because if you start showing with a gallery and they never, ever, ever put your stuff on the walls than your prints are just tied up for no reason, and they're not getting shown to anybody, so I like to just sort of say, okay, I need one show with you for the year and then at least I know that my prints are in good hands and they're getting seen by people the length of the contract a very obvious one but you have to know how long the contract's gonna last and then twenty four hour notice upon sale of print title edition in size. So what this means is say I've sold a print I want to make sure that that gallery tells me within twenty four hours that I have sold that print because I have my prints with other galleries aiken cell prince personally so let's say that somebody buys that print I don't know it and then I sell the same print to somebody else I'm in big legal trouble over that, so they need to tell me right away what the print was, what size it was and what addition it wass we're going to be talking about prince sizes in additions and all of that very shortly so a gallery must pay within two weeks of receiving payment. Now what this means pretty obvious, but once they get paid, I have to get paid within two weeks of that. So that way you're not having to deal with the gallery taking your money or, you know, not sending it or taking two months to send it when you really needed it that week or something like that who pays breach or termination fees so breacher termination fees basically let's say that you're in a contract with the gallery things you think are going great but the gallery doesn't and they want to terminate the contract early. Well, what I have in place is basically saying if you do that you have to pay me x amount of dollars per month that the contract would have been going on for because I could have made money in those months with you but now you're taking that away from me so whatever amount you want to pick whatever you think is a a good amount for that monthly period I choose that amount and I say this is the potential money that you're making me lose so you have to pay that to me if you breach the contract and same goes the other way I asked the gallery the same thing you know how much money what could we agree on? And then I will pay you that if I breached the contract so bilateral penalty for perm onthe of breach contract exactly what I just said so bilateral penalty just meaning it goes both ways. We both bear that responsibility if we breach the contract private sales versus gallery sales and I find that this one doesn't really happen as much with artists and other mediums because they're not really using the social networking sites as muchas photographers are so photographers or sharing in communities and posting their pictures online and it's this very social thing because of that I have people coming to me personally to make prints sales, so that means I can either make the print sale myself and not give it to a gallery or I can give it directly to the gallery now this was a big deal for me when I started because my gallery's did not understand this, they had mostly painters coming in selling their work, and those painters were relying on the galleries to get the word out about what they do. So this was something that I had to work out personally. Now with my contracts, I reserve the right to make a personal sale if I know that that person found me through my own advertising. If somebody finds me via a gallery via some ad that the gallery placed, that means that I want to give them that sale because they did the work, they paid the money for that so that's kind of how we work it. Although recently I've just been giving all of my sales to my galleries because I don't make many sales personally when people are writing to me, I think they tend to assume that my prints, they're going to be twenty dollars, fifty dollars, things like that, so I just let my gallery's handled but higher and sales it's very rare that I make a sale myself personally I do from time to time depending on the situation but uh very rarely know and then residual sales so residual sales is referring tio you have your contract period your contract is up you remove your art from the gallery but let say eight months later somebody walks in and they say oh, hey, I saw that brooke shade and show that you had up a year ago and I'd like to finally by one of those prints then that gallery is the one who got that person to buy the print so with residual sales you're saying teo to the person okay to the gallery so you're saying you have one year after our contract is terminated to make that sale on my behalf if somebody goes directly to you after that one year you have to send them directly to me so that's what residual sales means okay, before I get into prince eyes there are there any questions about all of those contract terms? Yes. Questions in the studio audience? Yeah, I think I have a question. Did you have an attorney do all that for you or did you do it yourself a little bit of both? Some of it was just common sense after having made mistakes and then others of it was meeting with a lawyer and getting it all fleshed out so maybe just, um a general question when somebody is doing making the step for the first time like what is a good percentage that you can kind of tell people even in some of those smaller galleries when they're first going in just so that they're not getting taken advantage of yes, that is their kind of ah range yes, I will not take less than fifty percent in the gallery but the starter galleries actually the ones that are having group shows actually usually give the artist more so in those situations I was often making seventy percent of the sale while the gallery was making thirty percent and that's because they're not working as hard to promote you as the artist so they're not placing ads in magazines and stuff like that to promote you there just promoting their galleries in general so that was pretty typical but I mean I've had people e mail me saying this gallery wants take ninety percent is that standard know it's not standard you need to get paid more than ten percent of the sail esso I try to encourage people to keep that in mind and try to work it around a fifty percent range awesome thank you I think that's gonna help a lot of people good, good. I have a question from eva richie who says do you feel that selling your prints on online marketplace places make the gallery think twice before wanting to showcase your art in their gallery yes, I d'oh and not necessarily it depends on if you're with an online gallery or if you're in something like red bubble or one of those sites where you can put your art for sale yourself a lot of times on those websites, I see artists telling their prints for fifty dollars, which is fine if that's what you want to dio but a gallery is likely going to want to make more than twenty five dollars on your print, so if they see that you're selling your art for a certain price that doesn't match their pricing plan and they're obviously not going to want to work with you because you're selling your prince fur yeah, not enough money so that's generally the issue with that, but it doesn't have to be an issue if you're with a reputable online gallery or something like that, it should be fine okay, maybe another one before we move on ok or two we have so many okay, marco in the netherlands um says, is there somewhere a standard contract to download where all of these things they're covered can you don't meant any resources? I don't know on the side of someone's that you're giving yeah that's all I know that's kind of why I made these slides because I have not seen anywhere where I found all of that contract information in one place but that's not to say there isn't one I just have not found it myself okay so we're going to talk about prince we're going to talk about auditioning prince printing brings all of that fun stuff okay so let's get into it because it's gonna be a lot of stuff okay so size of prince we need thio when we approach a gallery understand what sizes we can create and how many sizes we have represented so size of prince limited editions if you're showing with the gallery it's a really good idea tto have of limited editions on your prince I will be talking about all of these things individually size of the additions talking about that paper type is really important and the framing is really important so these air all of the things that I am to think about when I approach a gallery okay so print editions and I'd like to say dun dun dun because it could be really confusing to understand print editions and hopefully I can make it not very confusing for you so a print edition depends on three things it depends on the paper that you use the size that you print that and how many prints you're going to create so let me just grab this print real quick for you I'll just pull one out of here uh so this is one of my prince now this is the smallest size that I have available this is ten by ten inches and that's for where the actual ink goes to not the size of the paper this's probably twelve inches or something like that because there's about an inch border all around it so this print basically what I am doing here is saying ok this is my ten inch size there were only ever be fifteen of this exact image at this size so that's what my addition is and I'll go into more detail about that in just a second okay someone talk about my paper and I will show you my edition sizes and prices and all that stuff in just a second so I use elegance velvet fine art paper that's what this is it's a really you can see it's really really sturdy and has a lot of texture to it and that's what I'm looking for in my images now I'm just gonna hand these over to you real quick I'll let you guys use them without dropping them so you could just take a look feel free to pull them out if you want and feel them all right let me just set myself back up here okay so I used elegance velvet fine art paper that's the paper that I personally like but there are so many amazing papers out there so another popular paper is han emiel or han amiel depending on your accent so that's, another great one, it's. A really great resource. I don't even have a reason for not using it. I just found this one first and I really liked it. You have to choose a paper that's complimentary to your work. Now, oftentimes a gallery isn't going to like a really high gloss print in there on their walls if it's on paper so I try to stay away from that so much. But I do choose the paper that's complimentary, some minds, very thick. It has a lot of texture to it. And that represents my art. Really? Well. So do you want a textured paper? Smooth paper? Do you want gloss or matt? You want thin or thick the's. The things you have to think about when you're creating your prints. Your paper has to be archival certified for one hundred plus years. That's how you know that you're getting a real fine art print. So think about it. If somebody buys your print and then in ten years it fades. And it looks terrible than in that case. You have not given them a real fine art print. So you have to make sure it's not make that mistake. So these are some really good sites to check out breathing color dot com that's going to give you a lot of different paper types. You can order samples things like that and there's. Also hannah meal dot com, which has all the hand in your papers. So these are two sites that you can check out. If you want to get your work printed, you want to try some different papers. Of course, you can also find a local printer, and that is what I recommend doing a lot of the time. If you're going to be creating fine art prince, of course, there are sites that have this online. You can go to a white house, and you can get a fine art paper from them. I go to a local printer to get my princeton it's, somebody that I can go in, sit next to them, look at the the image on their computer, do a proof and it's all a very personal process. But if you do go into a printer, you have that ability to see all of their paper types, all lots of different examples of what different images look like printed on them. So that could be really awesome to dio. So how big should I print? And that really depends on how big your file khun go and how large your comfortable printing so when I am not sure about how large an image can be printed, I take that file to my printer, he looks at it on in photo shop, he zooms in real close, makes it larger, makes it smaller, figures out how large it can go without losing quality, and then he lets me know he'll say what you have here is a thirty inch print next, or he'll say this one can go to fifty inches or this one could be sixty he lets me know so that I can tell my gallery, you know what, I've got this new image, and we can print that at x, y and z sizes, so it's average to have two to six different sizes available, so the artist agrees never to print outside of those boundaries. So what that means is I, for example, have five different sizes I do believe, and I'm not going to print a single image outside of those five sizes, so that doesn't mean that I can't print a sixty inch print one day a really, really big print, but then I might not have the tenants size is an option, for example, so figure out how large you can print and then ask the professionals because that is my best advice, I never want to assume some of that could be printed on a certain size how should I addition, my prince? So the larger the print, smaller edition size that's pretty typical. So if you have a really big print, then you're going to make a fewer number of those prints. Edition size refers to how many prints you're going to create a single photograph at that particular size, so I'm going toe show you my sizing in addition ing here. So my first size, which is what I just showed you guys is ten by ten inches. All of my are square, so you're going to see lots of squares here and that's an addition of fifteen, so I will never make more than fifteen prints of that singular image at that size. Twenty by twenty inches edition of ten so you can see it's getting bigger. My print is getting bigger. My edition size is getting smaller, thirty by thirty inches edition of seven forty by forty inches edition of five and then fifty by fifty inches, which is my new size that I've just introduced and that's edition of three so as you can tell, if somebody's buying a fifty by fifty inch print, they're getting something much more valuable and rare than a ten inch print because they're going to be more of them made. So an average edition size it is very hard to say but anywhere between three and two hundred now that's not to say that a gallery's going toe want youto have in addition of two hundred but if you're say a very popular painter and you've been dead and somebody is reproducing your art two hundred might be a good size so twenty five is often preferred fifty khun b okay but honestly I don't see any point in going anywhere above that because the likelihood of fifty different people buying every single one of your prints that you have available is so slim in your lifetime that you'd be a really lucky artist to have that happen so the smaller your addition in size the more you can charge so if you're making it more rare than you could make it more valuable put a higher price tag on that all right yes going back to the additions s o the ten by ten you have twenty so let's take this this image you have right here is the ten by ten behind you um thank you so you have fifteen of the ten by ten you'll have ten of the twenty by twenty all these air all of the same image yes. Okay, so once those fifteen ten by ten zehr sold they're no longer in existence for eternity for eternity wow okay um also on on this you said that you go to your local printer you found a local print of that print what anyone print thes by themselves because I'm not bothersome excellent like printers out there would you suggest that or would you suggest it depends on what kind of a person you are if you have that kind of time and energy to put into that thin shore it is extremely expensive so if you're not printing in mass than it's probably not going to offset your costs enough that's why I go into a printer's greats they have tons of clients they're making their money it can be very costly just that the ink alone is thousands of dollars sometimes so so I wouldn't do it personally because I don't that's not where I want to put my energy but yeah it's definitely certainly possible and I know people do it okay and kind of a two parter so you only print on this paper you don't print campus you don't print any other correct me that's what I do now now I also have an acrylic print that I started so if I'm doing a fifty inch print it's on ly on acrylic so that is the copy out there because if I am so twenty I mean ten twenty, thirty forty inch prints all on paper, fifty inch prints all on acrylic so what I'm doing for that is actually printing on an archival certified high gloss print sandwiching that in between acrylic and then it's presented as that frameless giant acrylic piece ready to hang. So let me just zoom through here, okay? So framing so a lot of artists sell prints that are unframed. So what I mean by that is two things if somebody contacts the gallery for a print and she doesn't know the gallery doesn't have that print already made, then we're going to make that print and just shipped the print. I'm not shipping the madding I'm not shipping the framing unless the client specifically asked for that. So when I give my prices, it really doesn't change very much between if something has a frame and if it doesn't, because the frame is not what we're accounting for, the frame is just the, you know, one hundred dollars on top of that that you have to put into making it look nice for a show, so framing a print is very expensive and framing leads to damages when shipping. So if I am shipping my prince, I try not to frame them. First, I shipped them on framed, and even if I have to say to the gallery, you need to get these framed, but I'll pay for it it's a lot better than having the frame crack during shipping and then scratching the print. So I use a simple blacker antique frame when I go ahead and frame my prince and I do that because almost half of the time that somebody buys a print in a gallery they take it out of the frame and give it back to me because they don't want the frame because they already have a decor picked out so they're not worried about hanging you know that frame that they have just purchased they know that they're buying the photograph not the frame all right so is zooming through here again pricing there prince now this is a really touchy subject and I was not sure if I should talk about this because I don't even know why I'm not ashamed of it but it's just a strange thing to talk about with people pricing so pricing your prints it depends on the size of the print the addition number the hour spent conceptualizing shooting, editing, printing delivering all of this has to go into your pricing so this is the little analogy that I like to use say you're a secretary in a company you might make ten dollars an hour that's because you don't have a lot of responsibility you're sitting behind a desk you're taking phone calls and for me at my secretary job I was basically editing pictures all day long hill on my computer if you're an assistant at a company, then you have a lot more response ability you're supporting somebody doing the work you're the ceo that means you own that company you are everything that you have is invested in that company so you kind of have to think of yourself as the ceo of your company you need to pay yourself accordingly you're not goingto pay yourself a salary salary of a secretary if you're putting all of that work into it so I want to get into, um pricing the prince so the more time that you put into it the harder work you d'oh then that means you have to price it accordingly have to pay yourself for that time because nobody else is going to pay you so when I'm selling a print it's not like I'm also getting paid by all these clients that I have where I'm shooting their weddings or shooting there portrait ce I don't have that income so my income is prince so a photographer is a highly specialized job you also have to remember that you're doing a job that not everybody khun do you're doing it in a very unique way and you're offering art to somebody not just a service all right, so let's get into my print prices so what I have is my ten inch print it's in addition of fifteen priced at four hundred fifty dollars okay, so these prints right here that is what you would be getting if you paid that price twenty by twenty inches edition of ten and that's priced at thirteen fifty so as the size goes up the addition size goes down and the price inflates thirty by thirty inches edition of seven that's priced at twenty eight hundred dollars forty by forty inches edition of five and that's thirty two hundred dollars and then a fifty into print edition of three, sixty four hundred dollars and we're making a big junk there because thie addition size is so small and it's such a large print so you can kind of see the pricing structure that I have in place and a little note about pricing now when I went into a much more reputable gallery I approached the gallery show them my prince and I had my edition sizes said it fifty so it's a very large edition size and I had my print prices far, far, far less than they are now I went into that gallery and they said you know what if you want to show here than what you have to do is you have to lower your additions you have to double your prices and I said whoa why and they said because that's our clientele are clients want to feel like they're getting something special they want to feel like they're getting something unique and very very expensive so I went into that gallery I doubled my print prices and I doubled my print sales as well that year so it just goes to show that people want to feel like they're getting something special, and us and artists need to believe in yourself enough to price your work appropriately. So image licensing we are going to go back to the galleries in the prince and all of that. But if we want to get into image licensing, this is selling high res image files for things like book covers, album art, website design, product art, things like that anything where you're not making the actual print and you're selling the file for somebody else to do with it as they choose that is image licensing. These are some different websites that you can use to license your images these air just for out of a million trillion dot com trigger dot com ark angel dot com and getty dot com now, I'm pretty sure that you can guess which one I don't like, based on how I formatted the slide. Uh, it's? Not that I mean, I'm sure that people have great experiences of getty sometimes I've never heard of one, but but but I do not like the getty contract I've been approached by getti, as many people have ifyou're on flicker, you can have that sort of relationship put in place where you can opt tohave getty! Request images from you from flicker I don't think that they pay their artists enough, and I want to make sure that I'm getting what my art is worth. If it's going to be on a book cover on an album, cover something like that, all right, so you have to keep track of which images you've sold, so you have to make sure that you keep very, very detailed record of what is happening with your pictures. So if you sell a book cover and that is a contract where you can't sell to anybody else, it has to only be that book cover for one year. You can't sell that picture anywhere else. Well, then that means that you have to keep that contract. If your picture the same picture pops up on another book cover, then you can get sued, so make sure that you keep very, very, very good track of where images are being sold exclusive or non exclusive. Make sure that's in your contract for licensing, make sure you're letting the company know that your licensing, too, if you can sell that image elsewhere, or if it's a non exclusive contract or exclusive, so either you can sell it elsewhere, you can't, so you have to also say if the licensor can alter the image or not. For example book covers can they put text on top of your image could they all through the color's a little bit things like that how far are you willing to let them alter the image to match their project yes brooke I'm a little confused on this is this on top of your prints? Okay. Great question I'm so glad you asked that I was just thinking I need to say that s oh no totally separate so if I'm selling you know say I've sold this print and I've done all fifteen editions that is still available toe license as a file so it's totally separate okay, so these air my prices for licensing images and now I've never had anybody say this is what you should do where this is what the standard is I have no idea I just know what works for me and the prices that I am still making sales without losing people cause I'm selling for too much so online these only three hundred dollars minimum so that means that you know if it's a giant online company and they can pay more in the distribution is going to be more than that means that I'm probably going up the price from three hundred a little but three hundred is my minimum if it's an online and limited print run then I'm doing five hundred dollars minimum and that's for a print run of one thousand copies or smaller and then online, plus a large print run, I charge a thousand dollars minimum and that's, if you have a print run of over one thousand and one copies, all right, so with business, sometimes you have to say no to be able to say yes, that is the biggest thing that I have learned over the course of my career is that the more I said no to things that I didn't want to do, the more I could say yes to the things that I did want to dio and the more opportunities opened up for me. So there's, so many questions, okay, so so, so many questions have a seat, john. Yeah, I see so paulo photo said, brooke, how many galleries can you handle at a time without feeling overwhelmed? And thanks for the workshop also, um, that's a great question, because it could be a lot to juggle different galleries and things like that. I'm really not at that point where I've got, you know, twenty galleries wanting different things for me. So I think that that if I if I'm having a solo show, you know, a big show that I'm trying not to have another big show at the same time in a similar vicinity, so I would have, you know, I would have a show. I mean, in in california, let's, say, maybe one in amsterdam, because they're so far apart. But I just try not to overlap the shows that I have going on that's, the only thing that I'm trying not to do, really so photo, andrea says, um, do you ever keep any of your prints for yourself, and how does that affect your addition count? There are actually a lot of questions about the absolutely so with your prints, you can have an artist proof, and that is basically saying that you can either sell it because it's more valuable, so you can put a higher price tag on it. You can keep it for yourself, because it is the artist proof. So that's, sort of how you get around that a little bit.