This morning was spent looking at photo books, more specifically Blurb.com books. I read some reviews and began thinking about what to explore in my upcoming fifth year of photography.
I haven't spoken a whole lot to anyone about my fifth year and my personal plans for it, but I will say a little bit now.
This upcoming year, I am going to focus on me, by which I mean I'm going to focus on work I have already shot and then selling myself. I'm going to focus on getting my name out there and starting to print. In all the years I've been shooting, I've only printed twice. I printed one image, a 20x30 a few years ago (which no one has ever seen), and a 16x24 of the GWAR crowd.
Printing is a strange beast for me. Why? Because people don't understand how big of a deal it is to an artist — I feel the more I print the less and less my images are worth. Strange? Sure, yes, very. But, keeping that in mind, I'm also realizing, how am I supposed to find the right mount or frame if I don't experiment a little bit?
Truthfully, I wish I knew someone who thought like me (minus the crazy broken thought process) and who I could simply follow around copy.
Here comes the future and in it, I want to try a little bit of everything, including printing, framing, and books.
http://www.blurb.com/make/books
I have known about Blurb books for quite some time, but fear has held me back. Now, I want to attempt a book.
First, I look at the price and at my potential market. Will the book sell? Am I good enough for people to want to own my art? Or will they buy it only because I'm a friend and they want to support me? Well, hopefully it's a bit of both.
The book will probably cost me around $50 to produce, but I have no idea what size it will be or how many pages it will have or even what paper quality I'll use. Honestly, I can't see myself adding much more to the price, for now I'm more interested in seeing if people will want to own my blood and sweat than I am in making a profit off it.
After a break from searching and some talks with different people, I have come up with a near final idea. I am going to do a full photo book with detailed stories on a few selected images. But only on images that have a story worth telling; I'm a strong photographer, not a writer.