Marketing Your Photography Work

Randy Hufford discusses how to expose your work.

If you really do have a dream about your art, if you really do have a dream about things that you like to really have in your life. It will be easy for you to fall through with talking galleries, gift stores, licensing rights, adding value to get your work in front of people. The key is, is having a goal. What we’re going to talk about now is, is we’re going to talk about some practical things that you can do to your art in front of people. One of the first and obvious ones is galleries. How do you approach in a gallery? The easiest thing to do is a have a portfolio and I usually, always like to bring one of my finished product prints. Completely finished print at least one example and with a portfolio and it’s a matter of going in. Find out who the director is, find out who the owner is and try trying to arrange appointments to show your work. Most galleries are totally open for your bring in work and show work. When you’re negotiating with the gallery to talk to them, one of the biggest things that you need to consider is how you feel about a gallery. Before I go and I approach a gallery, first stop, I go look at the gallery, I get a feeling of how the consultants are, I get a feeling of how the directors. I get a feeling of their layout, I get a feeling of the type of art that’s in that gallery and so I’m really making a decision, does my work really fit in with there and do I get a good feeling about it. Most galleries are going to want you to go in on consignment. Consignment means that you have to print a work. You have to finish a work, and you have to frame the work and bring in completed and then you don’t get, see any money till after that piece sells and that’s usually even 30 to 60 days after that piece sells. Consignment is a way to majority of galleries work. Once you acquire name and you get a name for yourself, then it becomes much easier to do pre sells to galleries and there’s even some galleries that they actually believed in best selling artist and run limited editions of those artists. It depends on your influence, okay? Your ability to influence those galleries. One of the things that you can do is that you can drive sells to the galleries and you can become popular so to say by exposure of your images. Another words, if you take your images and you’re able to get displays in to restaurants and to other places of businesses like doctor’s offices. Another high traffic business location, beautiful to get your work hang in hose locations and what it does is that it benefits the business because they get art hang in their business and it benefits you because you got to put your name up and have your art shown and it’s getting in front of people. A lot of times, just that influence of having your work in really high traffic locations, where a lot of time you even get favor with the galleries. One important aspect that you consider about a gallery is your feeling you get from the gallery and your rapport you have with the owners. It doesn’t do any good to have your work put in the galleries in beyond consignment and have your work hang on the galleries if they don’t display your work and if they don’t talk about your work and then not excited about your work to the report that you get the with the gallery is a really important factor. The other important factor to consider about a gallery is your relationship and rapport with that gallery owner and you feel to trust them that they’re going to actually pay you. A lot of galleries are in such high retail rent locations that they have trouble making all their in skin met. And a lot of times they’re not really good about paying their artists, so you need to make sure that you have a good enough relationship with that gallery that you feel comfortable that they’re really will pay you. An example of a successful gallery of a photographer that’s done it with his own gallery is Peter Lik. Peter Lik is an Australian photographer and he now has opened over 19 galleries in United States. He’s been extremely successful and he has a theme or certain style. All of his are super high gloss prints under Plexiglas with big bold frames and their display in the galleries are always really dark walls and the colors look like you get to dive in to the colors. He has a certain theme or a look that he has in most galleries. He is been extremely successful operating and opening his own galleries but of course that’s way more financial commitment to do this type of application, but he’s been so successful doing millions of dollars every month in his galleries. That’s its really inspirational that it is possible for all of us to sell our work and acquire funds to fulfill all of our dreams. Once you found a gallery, what do you expect for a percentage? Galleries range, I’ve seen galleries that giving artists giving only 30% of the sale and I think galleries go all the day to give an artist up 60% of their sales. It just depends on the location of the gallery. It depends on how much marketing or promoting the gallery does, it depends on how well and known a name that you have. There are lots of factors involved, so that’s something that you negotiate. A standard is usually most galleries will split half-and-half 50% each way, and most of the galleries where were in, Lahaina. Lahaina Maui, which is the second in the world, that art sales, most of those galleries only give their artists 30%. But if they’re giving you advertising, if they’re promoting you, if they’re giving good wall space and they’re actually selling pieces that could be a good thing. You really have to make that decision yourself. A lot of galleries also, want to have exclusive rights, in other words, if you have images hanging in the gallery. They don’t want those images hang in other galleries in the same city and they don’t want those images on the internet on your website selling for less than in their gallery, so that’s something else to consider. So negotiation with the gallery used to require first stop, how good a space you’ll going to get, are you going to advertise or they going to advertise? A lot of times going in to a gallery you can have favor release if you’re offering something to a gallery. For instance, I have a friend of mine that has, he works for a magazine, a photographer for a really well-known magazine and has great circulation on Maui and what he did is he went in to the gallery and he negotiated and got front space on there. A really high profile wall, because what he did is he donated a full page ad in that publication that he had earned with his photography. He donated that as an ad for the gallery. The gallery really wanted that advertising space and didn’t pass so many things except giving him front space. So one of the things when going in and talking to galleries and negotiating with them is understanding that there are things that you could bring to the table that could be beneficial to that gallery and then it could give you a better percentage. It could give you better location in the hanging in the gallery. It could give you better favor in that gallery, again my main stress that I have to give to you is you’re feeling good about that gallery and you really feeling like your work can fit in to that gallery. One of the things we talked about is that the key there for selling your art is getting your art in front of people. One of the most powerful ways getting your art in front of people is through the internet. Having a really high profile internet page, having good search themes in the internet. Not being in a conflict with your galleries or gallery stores where you’re selling at, but using the internet to have exposure. There are some really successful artists selling in the internet, a lot of them are just using the backup for their displaying and selling in other locations, but the internet have done with the right search words. Done with a right creativity, done with a right techniques can be really influential of a lot of people, so consider the internet and brainstorming some ideas or ways that you could use your images that would create a lot of traffic. A lot of people, thousands, ideally 10, 20 thousand people a day will look at your site because there’re something unique that you do to that site.