cards! like in Note Cards!

post #262
        Photographers make money -- or not -- in a multitude of ways. One of my efforts in the earning direction consists of making photo note cards and hand selling most of them. This has become a way both to share my work and to use new photos which I feel work as cards. I don't make much money this way, but I consider it a kind of advertising. It also makes my work accessible to many who are not up to buying even a single larger framed photo. 
       Some buyers use my cards to, get this, write NOTES for various occasions! I say bravo to them!!  While I appreciate the compliment that someone doesn't like to send off a card because he or she likes it so much, this approach obviously presents challenges to my bottom line. I am not complaining -- I am happy for them -- but I'm just saying.
        For now I am sticking with my Appalachian images, mostly those in eastern Kentucky.

iris

a swarm of tree hugging bees

There goes the sun.

         There are certain hazards in this line of work. For one thing, I have a hard time giving up a card I like. The consequence of that is I have too many different cards available at any one time. Yet I realized only yesterday that I have never put my cards in the blog! How did that happen?? So I instantly decided to feature random card images and titles for a few weeks. 
         I'd like to say I have an organized way to sell the cards on line, but at the moment I do not. (First I need someone who could work with me on a parttime basis; living where I do, at some distance from town, makes this tricky to pull off. I can dream, though.) The Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, KY probably sells the most of any place I wholesale to. (Is wholesale really a verb?)
        

A Bee on the Zinnia

Ms. Bluebird

hay rows and shadows

female cardinal

         Part of the fun of the cards for me is choosing which color paper to use to accent each photo, which are 4x6 in size. I also get to decide on a title, sometimes with the help of friends. I LOVE GETTING A GOOD WORDS/IMAGE MATCH, especially if there is some humor involved. I attach the photo to the front of the folded paper with two strips of double sided tape, since as a former migraine person I have an adversion to the strong smells of glues and such. For today's card post, I am not showing the photo with its choice of paper color, but I will be preparing a few samples to show next week.
          Note: the hay rows and shadows photo was used for Wendell Berry's editor's reprint of the WB poetry collection Farming: a Hand Book, first printed in 1971 and reissued in 2011 by Counterpoint Press. Thank you, Wendell.
       

Golden Day

spring falls in our woods

two mourning dove buddies

 

in Donny's barn

truck shot

milkweed moment, summer frog

rooster pride

      This last photo (above) is one of my "best sellers." Of course there is a story to the photo, which I made while at my friend Peg Taylor's B&B "Farm House Inn" in southeast Kentucky (McCreary County).  She and I had gone for a walk in their woods, and, when we returned, he was still up on that fence, struttin' and crowin'! I figured he really wanted his photo made....  More stories next week ....