Lol @ gradient!
Dress code is for an indoor event as you had guessed, but looking at my shoot outline includes photos of celebs on a ski lift .. brrrr :) Perhaps snow shoes, as the other photographer I'll be working with has skis.

Great discussion here! I'm getting a reader tomorrow due to assignments with more than one system. It also makes so much more sense to me as those tiny little connectors on the cam side really don't look all that road worthy to me. Speaking of the road, yikes!, I have to pack for a shoot in Vail CO, have virtually no real winter clothes, and can't ski lol ....  :) And I'm doing an event where the dress code is "Mountain Chic"  What the heck that means I have no clue, have to wing it I guess.
"Cover me, I'm going in" ha ha
Cheers,

Kurt

Sorry for my belated congrats Jean-Louis!

All the best, and your gallery rocks!

Kurt

Authentication is really a "Mini Contract" either created by an artist or an agent of the artist. When in volved with "Museum Pieces", that is a factor of 10 above lol. Simply a 2x3 card size statement mounted on the back that states that this is an original work by"_____".
The info also states the Name of the piece, the Medium, the year,  the # out of within a limited series, and a statement that includes the printing method and the life expectancy of that method.
Most of my prints are supposed to last 70-100 years, but hey, I'll never see that lol :) As this label is really a personal statement, I suppose that one could do a non archival piece with such a statement. If you look at famous prints from famous photographers and artists, on the back most often there will be an "Certifiacate" on the back, that most often were created by the artist.

And Kort, as to the "display card", thats where I still use foam core lol. Simple info with Artist, Medium, Size, # within edition and Price. Some galleries allow personal contact info, many will not.
But like all mediums, the better the presentation, the better the reaction and hopefully a big sale :)

This is a fun discussion!

Kurt

To scoleman123,

I really dissagree with your low percentages :) And something I should have mentioned, all of my pieces are limited, signed and authenticated limited to 10-20 on large works, and 50 on medium works. Single commissions is really your call, with friends and family getting the best break :)
You have to consider yourself as an artist, and the worth that you offer. It was only just over a year ago I broke that "magic barrier" of $1000 for a single piece, with a young couple purchasing two canvas works (one was 43" x 84"  and the other 36" x 47" both framed by a reknowned gallery)
The hard costs alone were just over $1200, take away a 50% commission with a $ 3000 sale and I ended up with a whopping  $300 for about 50 hours of work. The thing that artists forget is their time creating a piece, let alone preparing, color correction etc in the final image prep. A decent target for profit is $0.35 to $0.45 per square inch. ( I should mention that both were not straight photos, but highly manipulated abstacts using multiple photos, hence the time factor) Both are in my gallery here at R'R, "Forest Floor" and "Metamorph". When doing shows as well, I always have lower priced clear bagged bin stock matted images that are far more affordable. This has saved my butt many times lol!

And to the foam core thangy, heat, humidity and the type of adhesive used are all factors. Since I deal with all of those factors during transporting a show, gave up on the stuff entirely except for corporate demos. And yes, gator board, though more expensive saved me money by not having to reprint and remount warped art.

All the best!

Kurt

Hi Kort,

I recommend a minimum of 35%,  because as an artist, you are actually spending very much time working on this for that client. What kind of blows chunks in a gallery show, is that a gallery will take 30%-50% as a commission.  15% makes no sense to me, too much work for that low of a percentage. (I do admit to going that low in the past, but prefer not to go that low again)

Kurt

When printing that large (which I often do), the first and foremost is the largest file size as possible. I always start with a 50-75 meg raw tiff file (from both my digital Canon and analog Nikon Coolscan V 35mm Slide scanner) and expand to 24"x36" at 300 DPI at 3x4 ..or much wider (3x6-3x7) for my panoramics. Thats my "working size".  If your source film is medium-large format, a high resolution drum scan is recommended. This allows mural size prints with fairly decent resolution.  Tis ram and hard drive hungry with a 256 meg -1 gig  single layer size, but I have printed archival Giclees on Silk (real Silk)  Satin Paper and Canvas up to 7 feet wide using my older Epson 10000 since 2005, and more recently with my friends newer Epson 9800. (The 10000 is still easier with ink choices though, and handles two rolls of paper at a time for easy paper roll changes)  The 10000 though did not travel with me to Seattle :( As is the size of a piano)
I have looked at some of the "enlargement" software out there, and have yet to try some yet.  I recall the early days of "Jag" lol :)
If someone has some experience with some of the newer enlargment software, I would love to hear about it. And an old school trick: if your file does not look that good enlarged, there is the use of a slight Gaussian Blur, then Unsharp Mask a few pixels above the lower Blur setting in PS. **
Oh, and far as mounting large pieces... Standard Foam Core is a No No!!! It bends, curls and gets wacky with moisture and heat changes!!!**!!!  Going with the stronger and more resiliant Gator Board, or MDF is a must, and a requirement at many galleries that have experience with large pieces. After 24+ gallery shows, I learned the hard way :)

Cheers

Kurt

I did not receive a notification :) Went to see manually if there was a response ...

I have not gotten R'R bot reports of my fave artists uploads for two days now (perhaps a hidden blessing, as I'm slammed with work, and is kind of nice to not have 20-30 new emails in my in-box when I get home) I was shocked tonight finding only 4 new emails "A special offer from Dominos Pizza", "A free Tarot Reading", "New Projects", and a new Myspace Friend request :) Now something really odd, my Yahoo IM deleted folks who I have not contacted in a long time.. That was an odd, but grateful purge..

Cheers,

Kurt

Thanks for the additional info Lew, and best of luck for your son!

Quote - Take a look at Richard Rosenman's plugins. He has a lens distortion correction plug in I find very useful
http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/downloads/

Thanks for the tip and link! I will check out tomorrow..

Kurt

All the best,

Kurt

Lol Ariana :)

As a pisces I often get side tracked~ I tend to let serindipidy lead the way during new adventures, but stick close to what I feel comfortable working with as an anchor :) Im currently on a "renewed adventure", having moved back to the Pacific Northwest after 5 years, where no one knew I have been doing gallery shows for the last 3 1/2 years in 2 other states. (I was talked into doing my first show in St. Louis during a graphics/web design meeting, did that at her Cafe/Gallery, and got hooked!)
24 shows later in Colorado, I decided to move back to a place that I have the most cantacts with. I might add that why I jumped to CS2 then CS3 (to see if they improved CS2), was the "warp" diistortion tool, which is useful for my architectural photography. Honestly with the pure clunkiness of CS-2 and 3, I'm considering a 3rd party lens distortion tool to use in the original CS (PS 8). And yes, I'm looking into shift/tilt lenses for my cameras, but a software solution is much more cost effective at this time.

Cheers!
Kurt

I use Illustrator, only because it is one of the industry standards for print. Corel is not. Since I also do Ad and print work, I have to stick with what magazine printers accept. Plus, Corel ruined Painter lol.. Got from an elegant, fun program to a mess that uses too much Ram, with a horrible interface and is so slow (even with 2 gig of RAM). :)

So my minor rant against Corel lol ..

Kurt

Lol Lew ("Illustrator gives me the heebie-jeebies")  I do use that quite a bit, but I'm not an expert. PS I am quite adept at since I started with version 2.0 ~ dates me lol.I also am a Premier guy, just getting into Final Cut, Not yet sold on InDesign, a Quark guy here:), and moving from Pro-Tools 7.0 to 7.3 he he .. My biggest dissapointment with Adobe is when they stopped supporting Live Motion, as that interface was so premier like.
And Arianna, best of luck! I plan to purchase Vue soon, which as a typical guy, will not even open the manual unless absolutely necessary. As a side note, why on earth Adobe added "the Bridge" in CS-2 and beyond .. Really slows down the work pace, so most often I still revert to the more elegant v 8, "CS". Additionally, I am a Mac guy that also can run OS9, where I can launch PS 5.5 so I can use my old KPT filters...

All the best!

Kurt