hi Tom,

I'm by no means an expert in this area but I do have a bit of past experience selling prints off the back of an exhibition. Certainly I can sympathise that getting the whole thing together inevitably ends up costing a fair bit more than initially anticipated, especially in my case as I currently handle my own printing at home.. also pretty time expensive... ideally I'd have liked to have had a number of copies of each print I thought would do well on hand, ready for sale, but stockpiling before knowing demand is often a recipe for disaster..

My rather humble "student on a budget" way around it was to number each image on display, and then set out a couple of folders in well-indicated places so that people could place orders. Each A4 sheet in the folder contained the image number (and a small colour thumbnail) as well as a table for filling out details such as print size request, contact details etc. In addition to a range of sizes and glossy/matt papers, I offered the option to have the picture mounted and framed, or just mounted. I have a local guy who does me good rates so I quoted him and his details and incorporated that into the finished price. In case you were wondering, all of the sales I made from that exhibition were print only.. I'm not sure whether that's a general thing, but personally I don't think you'd be losing any sales by not offering framing. It may help present a professional approach to offer at least mounting however, although i wouldn't deem it essential.

Is the exhibition solely of your work? If so I'd say you are more likely to make an impact and if you do make a good impression with a potential buyer I'd say they'd be more likely to order and wait for a print to arrive than, say, at an art fair where so much is available everywhere you look at seemingly knock-down prices - in this environment I'd imagine your average punter wants to get in, get what they want, and get out. The level of trust in the seller in the crowded environment probably wouldn't be as high as if you met the artist at their own exhibition, as is likely in your case. I think the best case scenario would be to have plenty of everything, but like I said above, stockpiling is expensive and possibly wasteful... you'll have to decide based on your budget, but the improvised method of sale I adopted on that occasion seemed to work ok.. ;)

good luck with it all!

Adam

today was easily the nicest day of the year so far round these parts, and irresistible to be outside... the light hasn't been that good in aaages and I thought it sensible to shoot while the light remained and continue working once it was dark.... well at nearly 4:30am I've made up for that lost time and taking a final break to put this up here before some much needed kip!!

... I actually wasn't really shooting with this challenge in mind, I was on an mission for stock shots of the Old Course (and got plenty) - but I turned up this 'U' along the way... for any golfers, or those who know the course, this is the burn which runs through the 1st and 18th holes.

very good entries so far everyone!

Adam

love the ladybird and also your latest one there Joe

ah, missed posting up the others when I said I would.. oh well, they're nothing earth-moving anyway, just in the spirit of participation.... may get round to doing them later in the week  =)

gonna get back to work now but will upload the other two later this evening when taking a break.. enjoy =)

focal length 50mm
shutter speed 1/500 sec
aperture f/1.8
iso 100

I have another 3 to come from various shoots these past couple of weeks, hope you like it!

Adam

focal length 10mm
shutter speed 1/200 sec
aperture f/4 (wide open)
iso 160

hehe, that works really nicely

I've shot a number of things with this thread in mind over the past week or two and will try to find time to post them soon ;)

nice touch positioning it next to photographer/photography too!

very cool Joe, great framing AND multiple viewpoints offered!

ok, apologies for my misinformation in that case.. it seems Nikon and Canon have gone about the 'smaller raw' process a slightly different way.... I can only offer my input on what I know and much as I like Nikon stuff I confess I'm not well read up on it.... on a side note, the sRAW format seems to be a bit of a bugger in terms of compatability, not opening on certain machines etc, and from my point of view at the moment it's a bit of a waste of time as Adobe's DNG converter doesn't seem to recognise the format (and my CS2 setup doesn't recognise the 40d's RAW files straight out of camera...)

Adam

my Canon 40d has the option to shoot either RAW or sRAW, which as I understand it outputs a raw file of approx 6 megapixels, with all the raw flexibility of the other one but less of the resolution, hence smaller file size.

could be it's different with your camera/ other brands, but the smaller one should be essentially just as high in quality, just fewer megapixels to play with, so probably not the best choice if you were considering larger prints from the shot.

Adam

Attached Link: Resizing photos for print

after then for specific image sizes just google for print dimensions or something similar... I typically print at A3 and A4 as I do my own prints and the paper is easier to come across in those sizes... for an A3 for example, I'll make sure that the image fills the screen and that it's at 420mm by 297mm, A4 is 297mm by 210mm, but you can obviously change to see inches and then just put in 10 x 8... anyway watch the video, it should help

Adam

I think the sharpness/detail in the second one is better, although it also seems to have brought out the noise in the sky slightly... maybe use the second method but mask out the bits you don't need sharpening? I agree the third one may be a little OTT with the colours..
Adam

Geert, thank you so much!

on my desktop it's ok, on my laptop, I agree with you... need to get myself some monitor calibration software....

hehehe well... I do appreciate all the nice comments... but I'm not really any nearer to finding out what it is! I'm sporadically trying different froggy identification guides but haven't seen one which looks the same yet...

very nice work on that one, the lighting and process are great.

I'm curious, is it because you intend to tonemap you would like a sharp scene from front to back? I ask because on this one, I personally would have used a larger aperture and blurred a bit of the background fence, as the patterns catch the eye and lead it away from the subject a little... I've had bad experiences trying to tonemap images with short depth of field, was wondering if you'd had the same and this why you're drawn to a-dep?

by the way I forgot to mention earlier I think you're dead on about film photographers being the true masters.. the advances in digital have made creating a 'correct' exposure pretty much automatic, but to shoot with everything in manual obviously gives much greater creative control/freedom... these days I too find myself metering then shooting in manual most of the time... I do have it in my mind to check the exposure on the screen, one of the true gifts of digital, as I also know what I will be capable of doing with the image in post.... but instead of just thinking "that'll do, I'll correct it later" I'm consciously trying to get the exposures right in the camera first time, perhaps for the same reason - wanna spend less time postworking! .. but prolly the best thing I can do to help that is to change to a computer which doesn't crash when it senses it might be an inopportune moment! =D

Adam