Behind the Camera: Buy the Cow

Welcome back to the final Behind the Camera of 2021, and I hope that everyone is enjoying the holiday season thus far.  I’m also betting that you are a little confused about the title of this entry.  Each month I use this platform to answer a question that has come up during the month, or to discuss something that has been weighing on my mind.  This month, I’m going to go with the latter and discuss something that has been weighing so heavily on my mind that it has affected my will to go out and capture new Photographs.  If you have been following my recent entries, you will probably know that I have been in a rather deep creative slump and I just can’t seem to shake it.  Of course, this isn’t the first creative slump that I’ve gone through and there have been worse ones, but this one is pretty bad.  What is going to follow will seem like a rant, and I guess that it kind of is, but I feel like I really need to get this off of my chest so that I can move on and get back to business again.

Back to that title, “Buy the Cow.”  What in the world can I mean by this?  Well, you know the old saying, why buy the cow when you are getting the milk for free?  That is how I have been feeling here for the past six months or more.  Sure, part of it is depression that I always go through this time of year, but part of it is based in reality and actual events.  You will certainly remember in the latter months of 2019 when I made the choice to leave my full-time career for a chance to do photography much more seriously.  Things were going so well for me back then and I was working with two different Art Galleries which were selling my prints to commercial clients.  I was also making regular print sales and my workshops were going quite well.  I even managed to squeak through the COVID shutdowns thanks to an increase in print sales which helped to offset my forced cancelling of about a half dozen workshops in 2020.  I wasn’t seeing the success in business that I was hoping for, but I was making due.  I spoke a bit about that in my one-year update here in Behind the Camera and said something to the effect that as a business I had pretty much failed, but I was still committed to continuing on with my photography.

Since that time, we are now another year into me being a full-time photographer.  During that year, I have really developed a love/hate relationship with social media.  In the past six months or so, that has gotten even worse.  I have this daily routine where I post a photograph to roughly 20-25 groups a day on Facebook, and that same photo will get shared on Instagram with 30 hashtags.  For years, this has helped to build my own profiles on the respective platforms and bring clients to my website.  I have sold many prints online through Facebook contacts, and have made other significant sales through Instagram.  My workshop attendance has been facilitated through Facebook largely.  It is these benefits that kept me posting to these platforms even though it takes hours a day to answer comments and keep up the dialogs with potential clients.  This is part of marketing and I don’t have any issue with it as long as it is working.  Since late Spring this year, I’ve seen a decline in results from social media even though interaction has increased greatly.

“Beautiful, thanks for sharing.”

“Awesome”

“You have such a gift, thanks for sharing.”

“Incredible”

“This reminds me of ___________ from my past, I just love it.”

“I would love to paint this because it is so beautiful”

“Your photos never cease to amaze me”

These are some of the regular comments I get when I post photos on social media.  While I really do appreciate the sentiment behind them, the theme that is starting to develop here is that my photos are enjoyed as content on the social media platforms, but aren’t worth much more than that.  I’m thanked for sharing my work which is exactly what I am doing.  I am sharing it…putting it out there for free for folks to enjoy.  While that is noble and something that I fully understand is part of the game a photographer must play, there comes a time when it no longer makes sense.

That is where I’m at right now.  Looking back over the quarterly reports that I have to file for sales tax, I am seeing a very disturbing trend developing.  It is kind of cruel that the state requires me to look at sales each quarter and compare them to the previous.  I’ve seen income dwindle and fall off to where for the third quarter, I had a gross income of under $1000.  Halfway through the last quarter, I’m looking at a gross income of just half of that.  When you figure in my operating costs for website, supplies, software, and travel, I’m already in the negative by quite a bit.  Folks, it costs money for me to get out and capture the images that I do.  I can go out and drive for 100 miles just to get just a single photograph.  That is five gallons of gas in my 4Runner at 3.29/gal or so depending on how much it costs at the current time.  I have spent 4-5 hours driving around, an hour or more to capture each scene in photograph, followed by another hour per image to edit.  Then there is the blog entry which is another 2-3 hours with uploads to the gallery etc.  All of this is with the hopes that I will sell a print which is then printed on paper that will cost a few dollars a sheet, with ink that adds up to a dollar or two for a print.  Selling a single print from that one trek doesn’t even cover what I have in the capture and that is all before the actual camera, lens, filters, tripod, and other gear gets added into the equation.

Do I expect to make money back on every image that I shoot?  Of course I don’t!  That would be fantastic, but it’s not a realistic expectation at all.  Overall, do I expect to make an income with photography?  Yes, I do, and I think that is reasonable.  Looking at the income I have been getting from print sales and workshops falling through the year, I have been forced to look at other sources of income.  Back in the Spring, I decided to open up to the possibility of doing portraiture which I have resisted for many years now.  The more I delved into it, the more I realized that I was really not prepared to be able to do this style of photography so I learned as much as I could to get started on that path.  I used the last bit of savings that I had to get the gear needed for doing this type of photography.  I did several sessions for free for practice and exposure.  At this point, I have hundreds of hours invested in education, and roughly $6,000 in added equipment.

Once I got to that point, I started to book clients.  My first one was a maternity shoot which I quoted a very low price considering I was going to be working with a couple at a location 70 miles away from home.  The plan was a combination of natural light and mixed lighting so I was going to be bringing a lot of equipment with me to get the look that they were going for.  They started to get flaky as the time approached and the day before said that they were going to need to reschedule.  I gave them an open invitation for a date and time as my schedule was open for the next two weeks.  She said they would get back to me and were looking for something in the next two weeks.  I never heard back from them, and that has been six weeks ago.

My next client was scheduled for a studio session with three outfits and I quoted a very low price for the time that was going to be involved as well as full access to all of my studio gear.  That price just covered the floor drop and a specific background that I purchased specifically for this shoot to go with the look that she was after.  Essentially, I was going to make nothing on the shoot, but would have the background available for future sessions which was not a bad thing.  Well, she decided a few days before that she didn’t want to drive all the way out here which was fine.  She wanted to do the shoot at her house and didn’t want to spend that much money.  I knocked the price down and we agreed on a single outfit and less poses, with much less gear involved.  Due to space constraints, I had no choice but to go with speedlites and simple modifiers which worked fairly well.  There wasn’t room to get many different poses, but we worked through it.  When it was all said and done, she had 10 digital photographs from just under two hours at her home.  I had lost $100 to do the shoot, and then had to travel there in order to do it, which represented another two hours of time.  The client was happy and that was the main concern ultimately, but I had to look at this as a business venture which it was.  Essentially, I had paid over $100 for the session and donated my time on top of that.  Even somebody with no business sense can see that this is not the way of doing things.

Fast forward a few weeks and I was contacted by a client who wished to purchase a print of a barn that I had shot a few weeks before.  It was on his son’s property so I immediately let him know about my policy of a free 8×10 print for property owners that let me photograph on their property, even though I had shot the scene from across the street right on the shoulder of the road.  He was interested in a 13×19″ print so I deducted the retail price of the smaller print off of that size and gave him the quote.  He didn’t want to spend that much on the print so he decided to go with the free print instead.  I have no problem with that at all, but it kind of stings when a client comes to me looking for a 13×19″ print and doesn’t see that it is worth the discounted price and instead goes with a very small print for free.

That experience popped back up again a week later when I was approached by another client who was interested in purchasing two 13×19″ prints of a family home that I had photographed previously.    My policy is that I will do the free small print as a thank you, so I deducted that price off of not one, but both of the prints and quoted the price that way.  Even with the lower cost due to the paper they opted for, they weren’t wanting to spend the money to get the two prints.  I reminded them that I would do a free small print for them, but they decided that they wanted to think about it and get back to me.  I haven’t heard back from them yet, and that has been over two weeks ago.

I know that this sounds petty, but there is just a point where I can’t take it any more.  Photographers get very little credit as artists these days as it is.  I’ve talked about this at length, but the concepts are coming back to me with a vengeance now.  We are so used to being able to pull out our telephones which we carry in our pocket and open the camera app to take a picture that we have forgotten the photographic process.  These phone cameras have become the death of photography and the value behind the photographer.  I’m going to use one of my recent images for this example because it is pretty standard when it comes to the cost to produce.  This is a 50mp image on a full frame sensor (physically larger than a cell phone camera sensor by many times) which can easily make a print large enough to fill up a wall while still retaining pin sharp quality.

Here is what it cost to create this image:

Camera body, Canon EOS 5DSR                    $3900.00 when released

Lens, Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L MK2                  $1899.00

Lee 100 filter mount                                         $115.50

Lee 100 polarizer mount                                  $58.50

Lee 82mm adapter ring                                   $74.50

Singh-Ray Color Combo Polarizer (105mm)   $650.00

RRS L-Bracket                                                $185.00

Acratech GP-SS Ballhead                               $417.95

Manfrotto 055CX-Pro3 Tripod                         $579.88

This all adds up to $7880.33 in equipment that was used to capture this scene.  That is not including the business insurance I carry at over $400 a year to protect this equipment, the Lightroom subscription I maintain at $127 a year to edit the images, and the computer and monitor that I use to process the image which is roughly $2500.  There was also the 160 or so miles that I traveled during this day over about 4-5 hours.  Now, none of that makes any difference without the years of experience that I have and the continued learning that I do to maintain my techniques and skills.  Do I expect to see a 100% return on this image?  Absolutely not.  It is a cumulative venture and the idea is that over time I will see a return on my investment.  I just want folks to realize that when I price a 13×19″ print at $125 you are getting a huge deal because even that print represents a certain cost when you look at the price of the fine art paper, the ink, and the fact that it is printed on a special printer designed for photographic prints.  Somewhere in there, I am hoping to get paid for my creative vision and artistic talents such that they are.

When I see that I’m getting pushback on my prices I am always inclined to lower the prices to make the sale so I can start to pay for some of my overhead.  However, I am doing a disservice to myself and other photographers out there by undervaluing our work.  The other end of that is I sell much less than volume photographers that just go out and get a picture of a sunset and sell it on canvas for $20 each.  If I wanted to work in volume, I would just go through stock agencies and get pennies on a sale.  My vision for my work is that those who have my prints have something special.  They have something that is to be prized and cherished because in all actuality, every one of my prints is a limited edition as I have not broken 10 issues on any single image yet.  They are not mass produced, and are marketed in such a way that exclusivity is built into the purchase, and that is by design.

Getting back to that cow that I mentioned earlier, I’ve always felt that sharing my photos on social media has a way of degrading that exclusivity, but I always felt that it was a fair exchange for getting my work seen by potential clients.  The longer that I’m at it, the more comments that I get which tell me that they are glad that I am “sharing” my work…with the hidden caveat of “for free.”  It is very interesting that I have 15,000 followers on Facebook and nearly 9000 on Instagram, yet the only way that I can get more than a few hundred views on a Facebook posting is to share to the groups which will generally only allow for a few thousand views.  I know that the algorithms are crazy and ever changing with social media, but it seems crazy that I have worked so many years to build audiences of this quantity to not be able to get the material to them.  I get the same folks commenting daily saying the same things on every picture, and with only a few exceptions never even inquire about purchasing a print.  I have plenty asking to share the photo, or to use it as a page banner, and even more asking to paint them.  For me, the artist, this is very disheartening and has forced me into a pretty bad depression here lately.

I know that I am producing some of the strongest photographs that I have ever created, but yet my sales have dropped to nearly nothing.  I get that there is inflation and that money doesn’t go as far as it used to.  I have actually kept my prices the same for the last several years although I combined shipping into the print cost now for simplicity with the ever-changing shipping rates.  That inflation does affect me though as it costs more to travel for my photographs than it has in many years and the materials that I use to make the prints have risen in price.  With no income to be had from my photography, I am reluctant to go out for several hours looking for new scenes to photograph and then pulling out all of that equipment to capture a scene before spending an hour or so processing it just to have a bunch of comments saying they appreciate me sharing the picture with them.

I’ve alluded to being a social media photographer many times over the years and that is something that I never wanted to be, and still don’t.  I’m not an influencer that gets paid for providing content as so many are these days.  I am not sponsored, nor supported financially to create the photographs that I do.  The only time I get paid for my photography is when a print is purchased, or I can teach a workshop.  Both of those avenues have dwindled away to nearly nothing over the last two years and that begs the question “is there a reason to continue with my photography?”

Here is a great video by Julia Bausenhardt that has just come up in my YouTube feed and since I was working on this particular entry, I wanted to see what she had to say.  I have to say that I agree with her on pretty much every point she makes.  I’ve experienced some of the same thoughts that she has and am currently sitting firmly in that abyss that she is talking about.  Her solution seems quite simple and it makes tremendous sense to me.  I’ve been batting around the idea of leaving social media for probably the last two years.  As Julia mentions, when an artist shares their work on social media, they are giving it away for free (which you might recall was just what I said earlier in this entry).  That undervalues their own art as well as the art of others (again, this sounds familiar).  She goes further to say that the artists that share their work on social media are feeding the machine and adding content which is the whole purpose of social media so that adds can be sold, and somebody else can make money from the free content.  I guess I kind of realized that before, especially when I was talking about sharing to the groups.  I’m adding content for free so that the group can get views and traffic.  I get a few seconds of visibility and a string of comments that I am convinced are just the automatic comment suggestions on the viewer’s screen.  This even applies to my own pages because that content still benefits the social media platform before all else, and they control who gets to see my posts.  It is a full-time game trying to figure out the algorithms and the minute you figure them out, they get changed.  I’m no better than a trained monkey at this point jumping through the hoops that are set in front of me.  It really is no longer about my photography….my art, but whether or not I can jump through the right hoops to get likes and comments that don’t pay the bills in the first place.

Social media takes a lot of my time every day as I’ve mentioned and it adds a great deal of stress as well.  I sift through hundreds of comments each day trying to make sure that I don’t miss a single comment that might result in a sale or other significant connection.  I watch my messages and plan out the next post for the next day.  I look at the hashtags that I am going to use, I think about the different groups that I am going to post to, and then have to deal with the fallout when I get called out for breaking group rules by having a picture shared with a link as to how to purchase a print.  So, I’m allowed to share my photographs, but I can’t let anyone know that I sell them??  How is that fair?  I’ve created content for that group which brings about interaction and I’m left defending myself for trying to subtly sneak into the post that you can buy a print.  All the while, I have to constantly be on the lookout for my photographs being stolen and posted by others as their own.  I’m chasing so many tails and to what end?  Likes and comments translate into nothing that helps to support my photography or my business.  The time would be much better spent in other directions.

That brings me to what I am thinking is going to be my solution.  I’m going to ultimately do away with Instagram completely.  I’ll leave the profile up as a calling card, but I don’t plan on doing anything else there.  I’ll limit Facebook to just sharing my blog entries which should drive the traffic here to my website where I don’t have to worry about community standards, or group rules.  There…I sound so confident about this and it sounds like I’m doing great things.  The reality is, I’m going to see a long period where I won’t have much web traffic because any time I’ve taken any breaks from social media things go quiet here.  That is going to be the hard part for me.  I’m going to have to start over with different marketing plans and start finding other ways to get seen by potential clients.  As of this writing, I have just over 100 subscribers to the blog which is wonderful.  I would encourage those of you reading this to subscribe on the homepage (www.gkiserphotography.com) and to suggest that you share it with others that you think might enjoy my photography.

I’m working on getting my business registered with Google currently and by the time you are reading this I hope to have my profile out there for folks to search out and even review.  While doing that, I’ve gone ahead and done a Yelp page as well which will allow for reviews and help with search visibility.  I’ve contacted local interior designers here in Western NC in the hopes of creating partnerships similar to what I had in the Piedmont.  I’ll continue to foster whatever relationships that I can along the way and will search out potential clients any way that I can.  When it comes to my portraiture, I’ll likely be doing some more test shoots for folks in order to get the much needed practice and exposure.  It is going to be a completely different ballgame and I suspect that it is going to be an uphill battle.  I think that the end result will be a much stronger client base though, and that is what I am after.  I just can’t continue giving my work away for free through social media for likes and comments with an occasional 8×10″ print sold.

What value is there to art these days?  This is a question that I pose to you.  I think that we all have to sit back and really consider that question.  Have we gotten to a point where art only has value when seen for a few seconds on social media?  Does it only have value for the one creating it?  Have we gotten so numb to art that we are completely satisfied by going to the local retail establishment in the Home Decor section to look through a stack of 5 identical framed photographs or paintings to see which frame is the least boogered up; then look to see if the $25.00 piece is on sale this week before we decide to buy it?  Have we gotten to that point where we are satisfied seeing a beautiful picture online and saving it to our phones to look at from time to time?  What happened to wanting to express your own individuality and personal style by putting up framed wall art, or even canvasses created by somebody that has a particular talent for creating that kind of art?

I have a certain canvas hanging in our living room that I absolutely love to look at.  It is always there, and always visible.  It makes me think about a lot of things and it relaxes me.  It is a conversation piece when we have guests and that allows me to talk about what makes it special to me.  That just can’t happen with a picture stored on a phone or computer.  I mean how often do you really look at a photograph, or other art that is stored digitally, and even then, are you really enjoying it to the fullest?  The canvas in the living room is around 5 feet long and nearly a foot and a half tall.  It has texture, and the colors are not dependent on the screen that you are viewing it on.  It is exactly how I envisioned it during the creation of the piece.  There is no comparison in viewing opportunity.

That is only one of my photographs out of tens of thousands that I have captured since 2005.  I would say that 99% of my photographs live on my computer and online which was never the intended method of display.  I’ve mentioned it many times here in this blog that I shoot every photograph with the intention of it ending up on the wall in a frame, or as a canvas or metal print.  Of course, there is no way that I can have that many prints done as wall art here at home, but the intention is that others will want a print to hang on their walls.  I’ve been very fortunate that a good many of my photographs have ended up in just that capacity over the years.  Those prints outnumber the ones that I am able to hang personally many times over and for that I am truly grateful.  Things have just slowed down over the last couple of years to where my photography is no longer paying for itself, much less providing a workable income for me.

The danger for times like this is that it feeds into my own insecurities about my art which I talked about in this entry a while back.  It has me questioning my own self-worth as a photographer as well as financially limiting just how far I can go to create images.  I am to that point where I have to look at how far I will be driving and the potential for images before I head out.  Gone are the days that I can just go out and get lost to find new and different scenes on a whim.  I have to consider gas prices, how much gas I have left, when money will be available and so on.  These types of financial decisions and concerns limit the creative process and put far too much pressure on me to create something each and every time I go out.  I have a very hard time working in this fashion and I miss a lot of opportunities along the way because I just can’t afford to go out and give it a try like I once could.

When you purchase artwork, either from me or somebody else, you are not only giving them the psychological support that we really do need, you are giving the financial support needed to continue to create their art.  You are sending a message to that artist that they are worth being seen, and their efforts are appreciated.  Comments and likes on social media only go so far, and I’ve ridden that bus as far as I care to.  I have to make the decisions that will get me to a specific destination when it comes to my photography.  Unfortunately, that will come at a cost for me and for you.  For me, I will have much less exposure to potential clients, but will have the time to focus on finding new specific clientele.  For you, there will be less ease of access in finding my images as they will be limited to this website and blog.  There will have to be more effort from you in order to see my images.  The good news is that the effort is pretty much a single act of subscribing to my blog which you can do on the front page.  This will give you notifications for every blog entry that I do which will include every new image that I add to my collection.  The galleries here play host to those images that I think are truly special out of the bunch.  You will have access to workshops, portraiture, etc through this website.  I would encourage you to share this website with your friends and family that you think might enjoy my specific type of art.  Since my art won’t be shared across social media platforms to pop up regularly, if there is a particular photograph that you love, I hope that you will be more inclined to purchase your very own print so that you can enjoy it in much the same way that I enjoy the canvas print in the living room here at home.

One other thing that you can do which will help me out a little bit is by using the links that I provide for both B&H and Amazon.  I am an affiliate with both of these retailers and if you use the links that I provide to enter those online entities, it doesn’t matter what you ultimately buy from there, I will get a small commission.  This costs you nothing at all, and you won’t even notice a difference in your shopping experience, but you will be helping me with a few dollars here and there.  Same goes with Singh-Ray, although if you use the code KISER10, you will get 10% off of your purchase, and I will get a few dollars off of the sale as well.

For those of you who have stood by me through my journey thus far and have supported me, I really appreciate you and couldn’t have gone this far without you.  Whether you have purchased a print, attended a workshop, or had me do a presentation, these are all aspects that have brought me to this point and I am thankful to you all.  I know that this has sounded like a very negative entry and I suppose that it has been.  That is just where my head has been for the last couple of months now.  I do feel much better getting this off my chest and I’m starting to look forward to creating more images.  I’m also looking forward to this next challenge of marketing my art outside of social media platforms.  I refuse to see my photography as a failure and have chosen to look at it as a failure on my part to get seen in the right circles.  Things will hopefully be different going forward and I hope to see some level of success from my photography going forward.

As of the close of November, I am already seeing a change in fortunes.  I’ve had the opportunity to do a virtual presentation for the Charlotte Camera Club on the topic of Decay Photography which has turned into the opportunity to actually put together a workshop for them which will be held this coming Sunday.  I’ve also reached out to Hampton House Art and Framing just to touch base with them.  That quick email has turned into a proposal for one of their clients that included 49 potential prints.  Who knows, things could be turning around here at the end of 2021.  I certainly hope so.

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