A few days ago I started questioning myself, about the path I chose as a photographer, specifically the style, form and method of my art; questions regarding monetizing and selling.
It is true that I deeply enjoy taking pictures and creating awesome things, but it’s still in my mind the question of how to sell Art, and making it sustain itself.
As an engineer I am well aware that projects happen or not depending of one major factor; Money.
more accurately, funding.
Even if a piece of technology could solve global warming it will never happen without funding, and to get funding you need Cost of investment and sales return of investment. not a very bright epiphany but that’s probably 80% of the information I’m asked for when I’m developing a new project.
“how will the company make money out of it?, what’s the cost/benefit?”
Well, so far I’ve been able to create good Art pieces without a big budget, but in order to continue creating I definitely need to find a way for my Art to sustain itself.
First thoughts after this, were of deep self-doubt, about the things I’m doing wrong, not enough marketing, not enough exposure, not enough Public Relations, not enough time, not enough commitment… until it boiled down to, not good enough art.
Which is hard, it really is, to think about yourself like that… I needed to solve this, I needed to find a way to sell my art: I started to look out for “Successful Photographers” and I found some great great ones, doing very basic but beautiful photography.
that was it, that was what I was doing wrong, I thought to myself, my art was too complicated, it was in the wrong format, it took too much to create, I needed more volume! which reflected into more exposure, and then into making a brand out of it.
I was on the “wrong path to success”. I had made a mistake, I should have taken my photography into another direction… and this meant that all of my foundation was now trembling, many years wasted…
but then, as sudden as I realized all of this It come to my attention that this path I’m currently in, although not easy, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong, or that it doesn’t lead to success… what is success anyway?,
I remembered how much I enjoy the things that I do, no matter how little money I make out of it and the fact that I found a popular way to success doesn’t mean its the only one, I must find other photographers that are in the same trend as I am and grow with them, because at the very least, the path that we are in it’s less crowded.
Ivan Beoulve, I’m a Fine Art Photographer that fiddles with Surrealism, dances with Aesthethics and overthinks stuff so I write them down as rants.