Investing More Into My Photography - Printing

One of my frustrations is not having 100% control of the final product with my photographs. I look at my photographs as a full process that I cannot complete, and the next step in my photography world is printing.

Currently, I need to send out for each and every print. I've tested many online sites spending money on proofs, different papers, and so on. One of the things that I dislike greatly is turn around time. For example, a new image is ready for printing. I don't like to make prints available prior to me seeing what they look like on at least at 13x19 inch print. So this means I must go online, submit my order, and wait about a week for an order. If it doesn't turn out right, I need to repeat it until it is correct.  My screen is calibrated, but not calibrated with the printers I send to (which is a different issue).

I've been looking into what I need to be able to do printing at home, professional grade, up to a 13" print. I have been mainly looking at the Epson and Canon line due to their history and quality of prints in the inkjet world. I first came across the Epson R2000 and R3000 series. After initial review, the R3000 series was the number one pick due to the higher quality black and white photos. Next, I compared prices of what I was doing for prints, what type of media can I print on, and ease of use.

I have found that the R3000 has created a huge buzz in the photography world.  Amazing prints in both color formats, the large amount of printing options (including canvas), and would allow me to save up to 82% on printing costs (costs just based off of ink costs)! This would overall reduce prices of my prints, turn around time, and I would then have 100% control of my prints that are 13x19" or less on just about all mediums. For example, an 8x10 shouldn't cost more than $1 to product, and it costs me double.

To determine if a printer was a good route to go, or to continue with what I am doing, I had to crunch some numbers and ask some questions. How many prints have I done in a year? How many more prints can I expect to do at a lower cost? Can I maintain the demand?

With what I have currently sold and I assume, I could increase sales by 33% with the lower prices, I would almost be able to pay off the printer in a three years time. However, I also thought of some of the projects I could do with local businesses and events now that I have this at home, and it may be possible to increase sales by just printing photos for people. So I put numbers together of what I would need to do in a year to make up the printer cost. Why a year? That is the warranty on the printer. I can 100% foresee no additional cost with the printer on repairs or maintenance during the warranty time, and therefore create a better model of paying off the printer. I also included extended warranty models as well.

Example Sale Requirements

If I was able to dish out about 1600 general prints (not my own) of 8x10 size in a year, I could pay for the printer. Looking at the 600 number may seem like a lot of prints, but that is only 133 prints a month, and that does not include selling my photographs on this printer. Also, another key is to see that 16x24 have even more profit. Here is one of the example tables I came up with, this is no way actual numbers that I sell images for at the current time.



So with this I would  need to sell seven 5x7, forty 8x10, three 11x14, and five 13x19 a month to pay this off in a year. I don't know about you, but those numbers seem very possible with just printing for people. These numbers do not include selling my photos, but only printing other folks prints for them. Once we include figures for my photos, it would be cut down that number even more. These numbers proved that I should purchase a printer for myself next year, with the additional feature of printing other people's prints. Even if I don't pay it off in a year, the rest of the cost of me being able to control a print from shutter release to drying the ink is worth it as well.

With the holiday season coming around, I thought it would be the perfect time to purchase one of these printers. I was right! $200 off of the price, which means I could print even less to pay for the printer. Half of the amount of 4x6s and only fifty 13x19's in a year!  However, I found out that Epson has announced a new printer that looks absolutely amazing, including my love for printing amazing panoramas and high-capacity ink cartridges. It is able to print on canvas and art boards!

I hope that helps you look into my world of what I can do to make my workflows more of my own, how to lower prices of my prints while maintaining quality, and showing you my next step in my journey of making my photography more than just a hobby!

If you have any questions or subjects you would like me to cover feel free to leave a comment or find me at one of the following sites:

• Twitter - @SteveSFoto
• Facebook - www.facebook.com/StevenSantamourPhotography.com
• New Online Gallery - fineartamerica.com/profiles/steven-santamour.html

2013 Year Review - The Good & Bad

I was able to think on this for a very long time and I felt it was worthwhile to share with those who read my blog. Part of this blog is to give those who want to start on the same trail as I did; make your hobby of photographing into something more.

Now that it is 2014, I can look back and go over the good and bad things that I ran into. I'll start with the bad.

The Bad:

Starting up is the second hardest thing with moving your photography from a simply hobby to something more. The amount of money to become a legitimate name to sell items was crazy. That alone took  7% of my earnings the first year. Getting an EIN, getting the tax number, application fees, license fees, fees, fees, and more fees. I started of not thinking this was a great idea, but it was. Make it your first year goal to make double your fee's, cover any cost through the year, and you can call it a successful year because you didn't spend one dime on photography (if you don't purchase any gear).

Time is the hardest thing for me. I work a full time job that can take 40-60+ hours a week of my time, all during the day hours. Since I like to take wildlife and landscape photos, this is the peek time for me to do that. So that narrowed my time to days off and weekends. Weekends I had to balance with family and friends, and last year they got the tail-end of the deal. I did two weddings, over a dozen portrait sessions, and some volunteer work. One wedding was about a total of 50 hours for all of the editing and live coverage, so you put that on top of the 40 I already work there isn't much time for a social life. I decided weddings are not something that will be in my 2014 goal, unless it is for a direct friend.

Selling photos was the third hardest part. Pricing things is one of the trickiest things. You don't want to be to cheap to not be taken serious, and you don't want to be to expensive to not get the sale. Pricing your prints to where if someone really wants it they will buy it is the goal. I think I found the price point mid year through, but it had very little profit in it for me. This made me re-think of what I wanted to do with my photos, which is covered in the Good part!

The Good:

The portrait lens I purchased; paid off. Quarter of my camera body; paid off. Web hosting, licensing fees, and operation costs; paid off. Extra gear I purchased this year; half paid off. I made more money on this the first year than I thought I would. I was almost able to come off this year as even, and I probably could have if I didn't turn down as many gigs as I did. Look above at the time paragraph in the Bad Section above.

I had fun. Once past the bad part of getting everything started up, I had a lot of fun. I met a lot of fun people, learned more than I thought a was available, and really found something I enjoy doing. This first year was simply a test for me to see if this was something I wanted to get into, and at the end of the year to see if my interest is the same as it was a year ago. To my surprise it was not, it is actually more than what I started out with. I'm looking into buying hunting blinds, camo gear, booking cruises/tours to get out of Wisconsin photographs, and doing youtube videos on how I edit my photos. This is something I really want to do and for the longest time it was hard for me to concentrate on anything but work.

A New Year. I'm continuing to go through with selling my photographs but at a different level. I sold over a 150 prints, ranging from 4x6 all the way up to 24"x36". Those large photos are extra special to me as I know they are being hung up where more than just the family can see them. They found that photograph to be something special that they wanted on their wall to make them feel happier and anyone else that walks by and looks at it. So instead of just selling prints, I have now decided to sell this more as an art instead of as a product to get out. The smallest print will now be 8:x12" and the largest is 40"x60" and also removed a lot of the "just have it on there as an option because it's cheap".

So hopefully the above gave you an insight of what I had to go through last year and helps you decide if you are ready to take the next step in your photography. I can already see the first question; "How much time total last year did you spend on photography". Well, I was always on my computer looking at my past images and playing with them. If we put that to the side and count the actual time photography for money and for product; less than 1000 hours. Which ends up being just over 40 days out of the year, so if we round that out to actual days worked; about quarter of the year was spent on photography.


If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them here, or visit my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/StevenSantamourPhotography

I hope you had a great 2013 and hope you take 2014 by the grip and get your photographs you dream of! My New Years resolution is to get more wild life photos, which requires blinds and traveling.

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