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by CoralNerd on Mon Feb 25, 2019 3:06 pm
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Good afternoon community members. As a little introduction, I am a biologist whom has been doing nature photography since I was ten. I also sell prints in a co-op art gallery. One pain point I regularly run into is print qualities in relation to costs to keep my margins down and quality high. I have been playing with a printing method to maintain high quality prints and lower costs. This is part of an entrepreneurship degree I am persuing, along with some personal career goals I have. Before launching and developing the idea further I wanted to reach out to communities and start a discussion on other peoples oppinions and experiences in the world of photo printing and printing services. After all my experiences are subjective, so expanding on what people value is useful. Bellow are some questions to prime discussion. 

1: What made you fall in love with photography?
2: Do you use online photo printing services, don’t print at all, brick and mortar labs, or print yourself?
3: What made you choose to print at those services/with those methods?
4: Is there a time you ordered from those services and were not satisfied?
5: What do you wish would be an option when printing photos? Any dream ideas to push your work to new heights?
7: What do you value in a print?  
 

by CoralNerd on Tue Feb 26, 2019 2:48 pm
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archfotos wrote:what about raising the price you sell your art so as not worry about the production costs?  I mean when the costs of the printing outweighs the value of your vision then why?  

    [font=Verdana, sans-serif] It is not that it is not profitable because there is no margin, or a loss of profit. Say you have a 24*36 print and you wish to print on aluminum, then you are looking at a little over $200 to produce it depending on who you go with. Now a print of that size often goes between $400-800 in most average gallery spaces. It may go for even more or less if you are popular, unpopular, selling online, in stores, galleries, co-op galleries, etc. You also must account for other costs like distribution, commission if you hang it somewhere, website fees, sales tax, and so on. As a result one might make between 100-400 dollars per print. To turn a significant profit you have to sell quite a large amount of prints. This is why many photographers also teach workshops and do other related activities to boost profitability. [/font]
[font=Verdana, sans-serif] [/font]
[font=Verdana, sans-serif]    You could always sell in other mediums, at other sizes, etc. And this is a valid point, but we see aluminum and acrylics as large entrants into the market due to specific qualities they poses. After all, photography and art are very saturated industries, and as such being competitive in that landscape is important.  [/font]
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Feb 27, 2019 11:32 am
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