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My future photography store? Ocean City, Maryland. August, 2024. © Clayton Hauck
I often wonder how my life would be today had a few things played out slightly differently. Specifically, had I decided early on in my photography career to pursuit the path of art instead of (selling out and focusing on) commercial work. Selling prints was always wildly intimidating and confusing to me, so I much preferred to do an assignment, deliver the images, and be done with it. Figuring out how to print images, ship images, price images, sell images… that wasn’t for me. The art world was a scary place and I felt like I was an imposter being in it.
Flash forward a few decades and here I am now, figuring out how to print images, ship images, price images… and sell images? I am learning to become an art photographer, in addition to my main gig as commercial photographer, and let me tell you: it is not easy!
The biggest challenge is: people do not like to spend money on photography! Of course, there are exceptions, however, I think photography has always been sort of the ugly step child of the art world. Paying for a picture seems weird to most people compared to say, paying for a drawing someone made, then photographed, then reprinted a bunch of copies of to sell. I’ve been focusing on a limited-edition series I’ve dubbed The Camera You Have and the three main goals are:
Keep the images fun, light, and loose. Things that people might want to hang on a wall in their home opposed to tucking away in some drawer to save as an “investment”. Conversation pieces. Images with a story. Put out new images fairly regularly. There are now sixteen in the series.
Make the images affordable — without compromising quality! I’ve bought some prints from galleries in the past and have been immediately turned off by the clear indication they were bought en masse from Costco. I’m now printing all the images I sell myself, to ensure the quality is where I want it to be. Of course, this takes time. I think, as photographers, we really need to go above and beyond to differentiate ourselves as worthy artists.
Do small runs and make them limited edition to give them a bit more of a special appeal (I still do feel like limited editions are a bit of a gimmick, but I reluctantly also like that at adds some quantity control). I love the idea of dropping a new image and having it sell out, then moving on to something new (none of the sixteen are sold out yet, however, one of them has just one measly print remaining!). I don’t want to be pumping out the same few images for the rest of my life.
While I think I have succeeded in the first objective, I’m getting pushback on the second and therefore failing at the third.
The consistent pushback I got at the market I participated in over the weekend, either directly or through facial reactions, was that even my most affordable option of $99 is out of many people’s budget. Of course, the most obvious remedy is to focus on a different target market. Go big, limit where I’m showing to “legit” galleries only and not holiday markets and coffee shops, become a mysterious artist with a big following, and sell to collectors who have money. This is kinda-sorta-maybe my longer term plan, however, right now I’m in the have-fun-and-figure-this-out phase and I honestly love the idea of selling more work to more people for less money, while also making sure I am benefiting enough financially to keep the whole effort worthwhile. This is the hard part!
This morning, I woke up from a stress dream with a new idea on how to make the smaller 8x10 editions even more affordable. Previously, I’d been using $99 as my lowest offering, but I may increase the number of prints offered and lower the price on those for future editions. Really, I just want to move more damn prints!
I’ve been joking with people lately that booking $100k+ budget commercial projects is far easier than selling $99 photography prints to strangers. There’s a lot of truth to this, but largely it’s a world I am not yet versed in and learning from the ground up. Finding any audience at all is a big part of the challenge and I don’t have massive social followings to tap into like many photographers who successfully sell prints do. Every single one of my sales so far has taken place from an interaction in the real world, either directly or via my prints hanging in a physical location.
One of the biggest motivating forces pushing me ahead is that I really just want to print more! I’ve really been enjoying it, however, I’m now also developing an inventory, which gets expensive, and I’d love to move some of these things before adding more and more to the pile.
After a year (or two?) of casually pushing my prints, I just added up my total sales for the first time, and I gotta say I’m rather impressed!
Twenty-Six (26) total prints sold, totaling roughly $5,200
On the flip side, I’ve spent well over $10,000 at this point on getting prints made and framed (before I started to do it myself), followed by purchasing a nice printer and lots of paper and ink. So yeah, we’re still not turning a profit in the print shop, but it’s been an enjoyable (while wildly challenging) side hustle. Buy a print of mine, won’t you? I’ve still yet to sell one to a stranger on the internet. It could be you!
-Clayton
