Warning: AG-style stream-of-consciousness post ahead:
So the last couple of years I’ve known something wasn’t working, I just
couldn’t put my finger on it. Logic and deductive reasoning failed me. (Either
that, of it was my self-editing mechanism, which also is known as my ability to
argue with myself to the point of distraction—and sometimes self-destruction.)
As most of you know, the past several months have been something of a strain.
Mostly personal, but professional as well. At one point I told Esteemed Wife
that I knew the experience was going to hit me hard in some
yet-to-be-determined way. I knew everything was going to change, I just didn’t
know how. Since leaving the hospital, and now that Ben is doing very well and
on his way to what appears to be full recovery, I find that comet is closer
than I thought.
With some degree of crisis-induced clarity, I’ve determined that the 2012
season here in Maine is not going to be business as usual. First and foremost,
the mass-production mentality is kaput. This business of making many different
sizes of prints for many different venues is putting a strain on my mental
health and not producing the desired result, i.e., profit and artistic
satisfaction.
So, I’m dropping a couple of venues, most notably the gallery at Southwest
Harbor, on Mt. Desert. It just isn’t doing what it should for me, and I’ve got
a lot of time and money tied up in inventory and effort. Wave of the wand.
Gone. (Actually, a letter and a trip to pick up inventory, but you know what I
mean.)
Secondly, I reckon this will be my last year at the Pemaquid Craft Co-op in New
Harbor. That’s where I do the bulk of my business. It’s also where my business
is bulk. Same image, different sizes, and lots of phone calls to see if they
can get a big image smaller. (Every now and then it goes the other way, about 1
in 1,000.) There’s also a gracious plenty of hack work: I shoot a lot of
sense-of-place pictures, and a lot of them I print and market not because I
like them but rather because I know I’ll sell a few.
That’s not good enough anymore. I want to produce the work I want to produce,
the work that moves me and shakes me and at the same time maybe moves others.
So this will be something of a sell-down year at Pemaquid. Inventory reduction,
as it were. Then more sizes will disappear as I begin to concentrate entirely
on the gallery and the web. As His Mooseness noted a while back, some images
just look better at some sizes, and that’s where I’m headed.
Which goes hand-in-hand with something else: my kit is out of control. I
haven’t been making much profit lately because I’ve been dumping it all into
acquiring a kit that now totals a good thirty pounds. That’s too much. Well,
maybe it’s not too much for some people, but it’s too much for me. It’s not fun
anymore. There have been times when I thought about grabbing the bag and
heading out the door and have resisted the urge because I didn’t want to mess
with the kit. More kit, fewer pictures.
It ain’t supposed to work that way.
I guess what I’m saying is this: I’ve wandered off the path and need to find my
way back to what it is I really enjoy. The old business model of pretty
pictures for tourists just isn’t cutting it anymore. I don’t have any artistic
pretensions, but I do presume to redirect my efforts more toward an excess of
quality rather than quantity. Perhaps even in a less commercial way than
before. God knows how many pictures I haven’t taken because they didn’t conform
to the business model.
That ain’t right, either.
Maybe I’ll buy a motorcycle (those new Triumphs are SWEET) and a Fuji x-100 and
call it good. Or a Nikon D800, and two lenses (two and only TWO) and call it
good.
Stay tuned, or be prepared to hit you delete button.
--Bob
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