A Few Hours Left

Orders for our current Print Offer close today at 12 noon Pacific U.S. Time, which is 8:00 p.m. in London. We only run each of our sales for a limited time, and when they're over, they're over. So today is Last Chance day on this one! Don't delay.

[UPDATE 12 noon Pacific Time Friday 6/5/15: Sale has ended. Thanks for your interest! If you need to contact him, you can email Ctein at [email protected]. —Ed.]

(By the bye, if I can be permitted a little editorializing—and isn't that what a blog is all about?—let me just admit that, yes, I turn salesman during our print sales. And that is organic. I've long been a bit of an evangelist for original prints. I especially love getting real prints into the hands of people who might not otherwise buy art from living, practicing artists. Hearing from our first-time buyers is always a satisfying sidelight of our modest little print offers.

The origin of this proselytizing impulse comes from long ago. I was working as a handyman at a garden center close to downtown Washington, D.C., and had just taken up photography. To learn how to mat and frame my own work (which I have never done since, but never mind that), I took a job moonlighting at a frame shop run by a woman named Sue.

I learned a lot at Sue's frame shop, not least of which was that all work and no play made Mike a dull and sullen boy—I think I peaked at 66 hours of wage-earning work a week, and, I discovered, that was more than I cared to slog away, nose-to-grindstone, week-in and week-out. I was not an angry young man, but although I was pleasant and good humored to outward appearances most of the time, I was more often peevish, cynical and somewhat irascible on the interior; lots of things about the way the world worked irked me. One thing that bugged me was the parade of customers who would come filing in with the same tired cheap-ass posters to frame, all of them thinking they were exercising taste and that their taste was unique and they weren't sheep. Well, that was obnoxious of me...wasn't my place or my business to judge them like that. Told you I was pettish then. Callow and green.

But the other thing that still rankles me a bit is that most people out in the great mass of the public at large (all present company excepted, I assure you!—TOP readers being all good-looking and well above average) will not spend as much on what they put in a frame as they will spend on a frame. That, if I recall, was Sue's guideline for the art she'd put on the frameshop walls—it had to cost less than the shop's own custom frame that might contain it.

Her belief seemed justified by her customers. Of course, there was a welter of self-interest and selection bias at work in that small sample I was reacting to, but it still seems like a shame that people can think less of art than they do of the frames meant to hold it.

Another great thing about our print sales is their nice effect on our featured artists. It's very gratifying to them to earn several thousand dollars at a pop from their photography. Too often, even good—sometimes even great—photographers feel themselves toiling in undeserved anonymity, with no society of interested parties to support them. This has been a nice week for Kate, I am guessing, just as each sales week is a happy time for most of our featured photographers.

I think I should end this parenthetical now.)

More later, after this sale closes. I've finally decided which one to buy for myself; it has taken me months to decide.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jack: "I can attest to the pleasure a TOP print offer photographer gets from receiving orders from around the world over a five day period. For me last June [here's Jack's sale —Ed.] it covered four continents, and 13 countries, with little alerts from PayPal for each order. Ctein is perhaps jaded by now, but I suspect for Kate every order was fun."

R. A. Krajnyak: "Thanks for the opportunity to purchase one of Kate's lovely prints. I immediately fell in love with her work after your first post about her. I went to her site and looked at everything she had posted. One image in particular resonated with me a bit more than the others. I had little hope that out of all Kate's work on her website it would be offered in the sale. Imagine my delight when it was one of the images in the print sale. I wasted no time Monday putting in my order for Bird At Window Feeder. Thanks again...."

Ruby: "What you say about frames is so true, and has long baffled me. My husband's sister has several paintings displayed—the sort of thing one might expect in a hotel room—and when she points them out she'll say, 'Look at this frame,' referring to some wide, hideous, lumpy, pseudo-gilded, appalling-to-my-eye monstrosity that is in some cases two or three times the size of the art it contains. She gave something similar to her mother, lovingly pointing out the enormous, ghastly frame dwarfing and overwhelming a tiny and largely uninteresting beach scene. I guess to her the frame is the art, and the picture is merely an excuse to display it."

Comments

[Gustaf]

This is a bit frustrating, as Kate is my favourite photographer amongst the one I've discovered at TOP... But I'm moving house at the end of the month, and thus have no funds, and no idea of where new prints would go. I sincerely hope you'll have another print sale with her in the future!

[I've suggested to Kate that we have a second sale of her work next year. So maybe. --Mike]

[Dave New]

Actually I think folks get blind-sided into paying a lot for mounting, framing, and glass, if they've not been in a custom framing shop recently, or because they haven't discovered their local Michael's.

At that point, their bargain-priced print suddenly ends up costing them a lot more than they thought it was going to. But having entered with print/poster in hand, they are too embarrassed to back out, and end up spending far more than they thought possible to frame that $5 poster they purchased.

Those folks are never going to pay what we might want to think is the 'going rate' for fine art prints, especially after having had their wallet walloped at the framing counter. They are not what we in the trade would call 'collectors'.

Folks that are about to cross over into collector-land usually start out by buying art that reminds them of a time, place, or invokes some emotional response. Artists get access to those buyers by fulfilling what the buyers are looking for and supplying it to them as a finished product (signed, mounted and matted at the least, could be framed, always comes with a guarantee against fading, and sometimes a 'try it or trade' offer, in case the print doesn't match their couch/decor).

Artists that have created name recognition have access to folks that are willing to pay for the name. That's when the artist can start commanding higher prices for his work, and will have access to art collectors that follow his work.

You won't find those folks standing in line at the frame shop with a $5 poster in hand, or buying their frames at Michael's.

[Gordon]

I think I'm an example of a different but related problem: I do own a couple of original prints from well known photographers but they are not really the people who need the support. They are widely collected and certainly successful - they're long past the recognition hump. But I still find myself reluctant to purchase prints from those who would benefit the most from my doing so, relative unknowns or up-and-coming artists. I'll have to think on this...

[Roger]

Yep. I waited until the last minute. Your print sale finally aligned with available discretionary funds--thanks eBay--and a print I desired. Just took the entire week for me to pull the trigger.

[vbsoto]

I have long shared the sentiment that art should cost more than the frame/matte etc. When I have charged for my work, I always kept that threshold in mind in pricing or at least in mind in case pricing came up with some of my clients.

[Neil]

It took me less than 10 seconds to decide which to buy, and thankfully my wife agreed (unprompted) on the same photo in the same timescale. As I scrolled through the images I thought "lovely but not for my wall" a couple of times, then BAMMM! ...had an immediate connection with Road in the Rain.

[Speed]

Mike wrote, "I think I should end this parenthetical now.)"

I was waiting. And waiting. I knew you would.

[Chester Williams]

Just curious but can you share the number of prints that were ordered. Or is it confidential.

[Ger Lawlor]

Mike, the cost of framing is interesting, especially for pro 'togs trying to make some profit! Might be worth a post? G.

[Alberto]

Before the first small exhibition I made of my photographs 10 years ago a photographer I knew told me: "Buy your own matting equipment and learn to use it, it will pay for itself with this show."

Better advice will be hard to find, I still have the mat cutter and other implements and it was paid over many many times.