That is really nice to read: your work is personal and that gives you concerns about showing it to strangers. I think that is rather unusual, and valuable. I know so much middle-of-the-road, impersonal photography (some of it my own, I freely admit). It sounds like showing your work might be helpful for reasons other than financial.
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I'll just add, my comment wasn't so much about selling prints as much as exhibiting them. I have never quite understood why most photographers so willingly obscure their work behind mats and glass. Is it really to protect the print, or just because it's what everybody else does?
In any case, whatever you do that sets your work apart from the pack and lets people appreciate it more directly will probably benefit you. Besides that, when you need to set up a lot of prints, frames can be damn expensive!
Thanks!
Let me tell you a story. It will shed lights on several things.
In 1993, I put two 8x10 b/w photos in the county fair. They were dry mounted and hung as per fair rules. I liked them and I thought they were some of my better work but I had no illusions about winning top prize.
(Besides, what's top prize at a county fair? $10.00?)
On judging day, I went in to see which photos won awards. I didn't get any. I was disappointed, of course. You don't put an entry into the fair unless you want to win. Right? But it was more of an "Aw, shucks..." moment than a real disappointment.
I wasn't really upset until I looked around at the rest of the photos and saw which ones did win awards.
NO black and white photos won any award.
NO unframed photos won any award.
NONE of the name cards that you affix to the back had any scores or judges intials written on them. Basically, the judges walked down the row and pointed out their picks and ignored the rest.
There were several photos there that were better than mine. If I was one of the judges, I probably would have given my photos honorable mention or, maybe, third place. Tops.
The photo that did win was a a picture of a cat, lying on the floor. It was out of focus, taken with an instamatic, disposable, "one-shot" camera. It was in one of those gaudy-ass Wal-Mart frames.
I made some comments about the situation to people I knew. (Not strangers. Not the judges.) I just got treated like I was being a spoil sport, even after I showed them pictures that were better than mine which did not win.
I was really pissed off. I left that night. I came back at the end of fair week and picked up my stuff. Since then, I have set foot on the fair grounds, maybe, one time in 17 years.
I put my camera in the closet and I took only a few photos in that time period. I bundled up all my negatives and prints and stored them in the attic.
I dabbled with digital photos but I never really got into it. I have a Canon "Digital Elph" camera. It's about 10 years old, now. I never really had the gumption or the money to buy a good digital camera.
The reason I picked up photography again is because, right around Christmas time, my brother's apartment building burned down. He lost almost everything. Strangely enough, one of the few things that survived the fire was his photo collection.
I volunteered to help rescue his photos. It took me a couple of weeks to stabilize them and get them put in archival albums and make them safe again.
As I was going through my brother's photos, I started getting the desire to go through my own photo collection. I found a couple of them that I really liked. I rediscovered a few that I didn't think much of at the time but, when I looked at them again after 15 years, I thought they were good.
I also found some boxes of my father's old negatives that I inherited when he died 20-something years ago. There are more than 100 4x5 negs and lots of 120 rollfilm.
I've been taking my own photos and making my own prints again, only since January of 2010. I took a severe cut to my income last month and I have to think of ways to make ends meet. That's the reason I am giving serious thought to selling photos to others. I need to do something.
Bottom line: I'd rather have 100 people tell me that my photos suck than to have 1 person tell me they are good. I'd rather not make any photos at all than to make a dozen and have nobody comment at all.
I have never met another person who understood this. Maybe my father understood. That's probably why I never saw many of his photos until after he died. But, outside of that, most people probably think I'm strange to feel this way.
I'm going to go get some matte board and some cloth tape and matte up a few prints and see how they look.
Who knows? Maybe this could be my nitche?