>small fraction of digital. A tiny fraction. I really don't want to
>share what my costs for the most premium-grade fiber-based B&W paper
>is, but it's so low as to be almost laughable.
Not like it is much of a secret: Price out paper. Add $0.25 (or less) per
8x10 for chemistry. That's the basic cost of materials. (e.g. $1-2/print
or so for 8x10 on Ilford Galerie FB or whatever). Color RA4 is even
cheaper than that. I can do 8x10 RA4 color @ home for well under $1/print.
>>I think that in the short term at least I will create 6 x 17
>>images using my E3 and tripod, and use Hugin to make small panorama
>>shots, and crop to the desired dimensions using the crop feature of
>>Faststone.
I see a few issues here with this train of thought. WIthout seeing the
images to compare with, it's hard to say for sure. (E.g. Maybe his images
are much better photography? That could be possible.) Assuming your
photography is of equal artistic and technical merit:
1. Trying to mimic optically-enlarged 6x17 film (or contact prints?) with
ANY digital (particularly cropped shots from an E3) is just not going to
be comparable. Sophisticated buyers will know the difference easily.
Unless you get a 6x17 camera, master it, and do your own optical printing,
don't bother trying to compete on this point.
2. Your costs need to drop by 10x at least, to be competitive. There's
plenty of online places that will do RA4 prints from digital files. Faster
and cheaper (and better, in most ways) than anything from a home inkjet
printer is going to produce, for the most part. (Yes, high-end inkjet
printers can do nice work, but costs and time become an issue, IMNHSO).
3. Don't bother Matting unless you really think you can add value and
recoup costs with that. Maybe, maybe not. Offer things both ways I'd say.
4. Find a subject matter niche that others are not exploiting. Maybe
something that relates to your own expertise (Forestry?).
95% of photos I see at similar "art show" type touristy venues and places
like that, just suck. Most are poorly printed digital crap, with overblown
saturation, blown highlights, and mediocre artistic merit. The digital B&W
conversions are even worse, usually. If what you can produce avoids those
obvious flaws, you will be far ahead of the game and on the way to more
sales.
FWIW
-Ed
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