[...]I was surprised that no one said they did fine art work with film, as that is probably the last hold out because time is not all that important. [...] I guess with film you have to present the finished print to the buyer and then hope they buy it.
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I feel sure that there are many members here on APUG around the world that do produce work to fine art standard from film (e.g. especially B&W). And doubtless they make money from it in whatever way happens by.
The production I undertook over the years certainly qualified as fine art in the sense of very high quality finished work (printed, matted and framed) or it would not have had a following by a small number of loyal clients, only two of which remain sticking by me as we navigate the often fraught and testy waters of digital production. Many, many studio photographers are producing fine art predominantly B&W work from MF and LF, often with obscure media e.g. lith, xray, composite media etc. It's not always professionals making the money, but students and amateurs, particularly those in final year university studies or folio presentations, and those working to old methods. There will always be rebel elements in tertiary education that cheerfully thumb their noses at the current vogue (e.g. digital) and explore creative pathways with film. A case in point is at a Christmas alternative lifestyle festsival: amidst a sea of mud-covered bodies in a clapped out dusty farmer's paddock, a woman completing a Masters by research (fine art) wandered about the teeming, seething mass of humanity hauling a monster Linhof on a tripod over her shoulders. All around here people carelessly wielded digital, but not her. And the work she produced from that camera was so breathtakingly simple and beautiful that the lot sold out at exhibition, at a mean price of $900 per framed image. Don't get the impression you need a Linhof to make a stratospheric income. The skill was in her composition, technical grasp, energy and highly refined, engaging people skills.
On your second observation, clients are more likely to take an interest in photographers who have been sticking to the same thing over many years and have consistently produced to the same high standard, without variation, polemic or rhetoric. All I did was landscape and scenics on 35mm and it sold I often hoped it would sell, but never pressed it. Others doubtless overtook me over the yearrs and made a fortune with the larger formats in all their crippling detail-rich beauty.
Getting talking with people and showing them a folio of your best work, is one of the tricks I used repeatedly, packing APs in a viewing folder and 'introducing' people to my work in anything from campsites to outback cafés.
Saturday morning markets that put your best works on display are a good springboard to earning a bit of income. Friends doing this prints-from-film market hop in the coastal markets near my home lament that for all the cost of producing the work, stall costs, materials etc., they will be very lucky to come away with $40 for all the money and labour invested, and it goes toward set up costs. Often they come home with nothing.