My favorite way to make money from photography is through what I call PhotoArt. It’s the term I came up with for selling my photos as artwork.
I love selling small-scale prints and cards in local galleries and fairs and markets. Mostly, I sell local images. It’s fun, and I get to mix and mingle with friends, neighbors, and tourists who love my images and are willing to pay for them.
But this year I was looking to add something new and thinking about how I could sell travel images along with my usual PhotoArt prints.
Having traveled to beautiful places like Africa, Jordan, India, Peru, and Europe, my computer is full of thousands of beautiful images, but I find that travel photos are personal and often only really resonate with people who have been there.
I have been playing with textography, or incorporating text into photos, which is popular right now.
With this in mind, I played around in Photoshop, combining travel images with common travel sayings.
I picked travel quotes, like “Not all who wander are lost” or “Life is short and the world is wide,” as they would make great gifts for the travel enthusiast at Christmas time (or anytime).
I created a collection of prints and cards entitled “Wanderlust” for an exhibit at a local gallery’s Christmas show and sale. I presented nine square canvas prints and two 10×20 horizontal framed prints, along with matching blank greeting cards.
This image of camels in Jordan was very popular, selling several canvas prints and a handful of cards.
Total sales that night were around $500, and it was an opportunity to experiment with a new way to showcase my work.
Another small local gallery loved them and is now carrying a selection in their shop after the initial exhibit was done.
It is always fun and inspirational to introduce a new audience to your work and to continually be experimenting with new ideas and shaking up your creativity. And a little extra cash in your pocket doesn’t hurt, either.
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