Turning Your Images into Gold - Marketing your photos to the Consumer

I found this session extremely informative. Because nature photography is my first love, I think this is a direction I would like to explore. I can visualize some of my best work framed on someone's wall.

The moderator was Jeff Sedlik. He runs his own business and distributes posters himself. He did a great job presenting the pros and cons of doing it yourself versus being represented by an agency.
Jeff Sedlik
Jeff Sedlik - Jazz and Blues Master

Martin Lawlor from Bruce McGraw Graphics (I'll add a link here when I find a good one for his company) and Phil Jackson from Bruce Teleky - American Vision Gallery (an art print poster distributor) both gave presentations using photos they market.
Bruce Teleky - American Vision Gallery

The highlights of information from this:I gathered that when you are marketing posters from these big entities - they would prefer to have an exclusive arrangement with you. They have many distribution channels and are already connected with the big retail chains, home interior networks, furniture stores, etc.

When targeting consumers, you are talking about posters, framed prints, greeting cards, mugs, t-shirts, calendars, mousepads, bags, etc. Branding your name will help increase sales of these products.

When thinking of prints for home decorating, one interesting aspect is thinking in terms of pairs of photos that can be displayed together.

One of the advantages of going into the retail market is that it diversifies your income stream. At Kathy Adam's Clarke's "How to Survive Your First Five Years", she talked about having many different ways of generating income (pieces of a pie so to speak) in order to earn your living with photography.

There will be a pdf that I am looking forward to receiving. While I won't pass much of that on - as I consider that it might be proprietary and was intended for those of us that paid to attend the seminar, you can get information about these kinds of companies from the book, "The Photographer's Market."

John Lund finished the presentation. I immediately recognized his work - think the dogs playing poker. He has done an excellent job finding innovative ways to market his work.
John Lund

While I don't know yet if my work is high enough quality, I am certainly planning to explore this area of photo marketing.