Before I get to the exciting stuff, let me cover some brief history for those who aren’t aware. Back in 2019, when I was living in Oklahoma City, I started making fine art prints of my photography and tried selling these at art shows and gallery exhibitions. I really enjoyed it, but it didn’t go well at all as far as selling prints. It ended up being a big money sink. Thankfully I had a job at the time that could support that. COVID didn’t help, as that shut down most art shows for 2020. In late 2020 I made the decision to do a “life reset” (quit my job, sell my house, and hike the CDT) in 2021, and as part of that I gave up making fine art prints, with the goal to get back into it at some point.
Now to the exciting (and scary) part: I have reached that point! Over the last few weeks I have been working on getting an LLC set up again, getting the needed equipment and supplies, and getting prints made. While I’m really excited, it’s also a bit scary since it didn’t go well the first time. Also, the job I have now doesn’t pay near as well as my last job, so I don’t have the money to dump into it like I had before, unless I want to eat into savings. Although print sales didn’t go well during the first attempt, there were a lot of lessons learned and knowledge gained, which has been super helpful in getting going this time, and which I’m using to make some adjustments this time around. Here are a few of the things I’ll be doing differently:
- Using a smaller printer. This was much cheaper and takes up much less space compared to the huge printer I had previously, while still being a great printer. This means I won’t be able to make the large size prints I could previously, but that’s not a big deal for me at this point.
- Buying pre-cut mats. My mat cutter was another piece of equipment that took up a lot of space, and mat cutting often caused me a lot of frustration, so I’m foregoing cutting my own mats for now and trying out buying mats that are pre-cut. This also means I don’t have to store large sheets of foam board and mat board, which saves even more space.
- Reducing edition counts. Previously, for my medium size limited editions, the edition size was 50. Going forward it will be 5. For most images I’ll still offer smaller open edition prints that don’t have a limit on prints made.
- Focusing on galleries and businesses instead of art shows. While I love traveling to and participating in art shows, between entry fees, hotels, gas, etc., they get really expensive. It is also a huge pain from a tax/business perspective doing out of state shows. So for the time being my goal is to keep it simple starting out and try to get into a couple galleries in NWA, and hopefully be able to rotate some pieces through a few local businesses (I already have a couple of these lined up). I also have an online shop set up, although it’s still a bit of a work in progress.
- Finding opportunities where I can use prints to give back to places, causes, and organizations that are somehow tied to my photography. I already have a couple cool opportunities lined up for this. More details on this to come later.
Overall, the prints themselves won’t change a whole lot, other than using a different printer to make them. I’m sticking with the same sizes and presentation style I used previously, at least for now. More information about my prints and purchasing prints can be found on my Print Info page and Purchasing Info page.
During the month of March I will have a few prints on display and available for purchase at Brick Lane Books in Rogers, AR. I’m super excited to be able to show some of my work in the local book store I use to get some new books to read. I will be hanging out in the store for the Art on the Bricks event on Mar 9, so if you’ll be out checking out some art, be sure to stop by and say hello.
If you would like to stay up to date on future news, events, etc., subscribe to this blog and follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram. For now I’m going to use this blog for longer form posts/announcements instead of using a newsletter list. I don’t anticipate posting on the blog much, but it will be nice to have if I do need to make a longer post/announcement. I look forward to sharing round two of this adventure with y’all!
P.S.: If you have any recommendations for businesses in NWA to approach about displaying my art, let me know!
Brent Umphlett Photography Blog 