Update 2024/11/26: I’ve now switched to Pixels.com instead of Darkroom. It seems a more mature service and they offer more types of products. Puzzles, anyone? I’ve decided to leave the images from previous months available as it was requested by some people.
There are many reasons why I love printing my own photographs. At the end of the road, it makes me a better photographer by allowing (or forcing) me to spend more time with my photos and understanding them better.
I also love making photo books, but that’s another story.
You may have noticed that I offer some of my photos available as prints via Darkroom’s print on demand. Now, curating this gallery of prints has turned out to be not really fullfilling for me, and I also believe that this kind of arrangement does not really engage potential buyers. Photography is not my job, but I would like to make prints a viable way to raise some money for travel and gear, so it makes sense to try and optimize this revenue stream. I also reckon there is abundance of excellent photo prints out there and that is part of the equation.
Scarcity
Instead of offering more prints, I plan to offer less. In fact, I am going to offer just one.
Enter Print of The Month. Each month I will select and publish just one photo in several formats and sizes. The next month, a fresh image will take its place.
I think this approach offers serveral benefits. Of course, potential buyers will have something new to consider each month, but above all it will give me a monthly deadline that will force me to better curate and select which photographs are print-worthy. As a final consideration, I hope that this monthly event will somehow drive some interest to my work. You see, creating scarcity is one of the pillars of marketing and Print of The Month aims at that.
Genre and Content
This is the hard part. I pride myself in trying to curate my portfolio so that it makes sense even if it contains multiple genres and subjects, so I want to build on that and do the same with Print of The Month.
This means that one month you may find a pure landscape image, the next a harsh urban scene, or maybe an abstract, and so on. All will be perfectly my style and language. Plus, I will make sure that each image works great when printed and hung on a wall: you will only find prints that I’d love to display in my own home!
Timing
I plan to publish the new print within the seventh day of each month, unless I’m traveling: in that case it will take a little longer. I will try to include some backstory about each image right here in my blog.
After I publish the new photograph, the previous will be gone.
I don’t want to make promises about limited editions or the fact that a print will never, ever be available again, so I won’t. It’s all an experiment, so forcing myself into something that might not work doesn’t feel right.
July 2024: Chimera
We can argue that most good landscape images exist because the photographer is in the right place at the right moment. Of course, that requires some luck, but also perseverance and the ability to make the most out of the location and the moment – the ability to see.
In my mind, I saw Chimera well before I could actually see it for real. I had to move to the right spot and compose with care, but I knew that the lone tree, the orange grass, and the hazy mountains in the background were all I needed for this shot.
Events like that are not frequent, so when they happen they give me a real burst of joy and fullfillment.