If you're interested in printing your photography, why not double down on creativity and turn those images into mixed media art. In this video, Irene Rudnyk walks you through how she created some stunning works by combining physical artistic techniques with prints of digital images.
The longer I work in this industry, the rarer it becomes that I say "why didn't I think of that?!" This video by Irene Rudnyk is the first time in a while and I'm interested to know if this is a common practice I had just never seen before.
The concept is simple: create a high-quality print of one of your photographs and then work on that print physically with artistic techniques. There are, for all intents and purposes, no limits to what you can do with this; from a distressed look through to fleshing the creation out into a 3-dimensional model. It is a brilliant way to add texture to an otherwise reasonably flat image.
My favorite technique Rudnyk uses in this video and one I certainly want to try is using wax. By melting a white candle onto the surface of the image, you gain a textured, distressed, and raised look to the image which can then be combined with complementary or analogous colors to yield beautiful results.
Have you ever turned your prints into mixed media? Share the results in the comments below.
As a photographers trying to sell our work as "art" can be challenging in a world where everyone with a cell phone is a photographer, and even talented photographers have been reduced to selling their work via a 3rd party like Smugmug.
Professionally (and I did this as a career for almost 30 years) I'm dead set against using a 3rd party vendor. You can't track your sales - you take their word for it. Your prospects know what your costs are and decide if your markup is acceptable. And the "If I sell an 8x10 for $10 and make $2 profit then I'll sell 1,000 of them and get rich!" concept really doesn't work. It doesn't work because you're very pricing says you're not worth that much. And how do you separate yourself from the crowd?
Well lately I've been looking at the work of Thomas Dodd, and his approach to his work, and this is pretty much how he's selling his work. This allows each piece to be a unique work of art and, most importantly, a very limited edition. And how much does his work sell for? You won't see prices on his site - that's how much they sell for.
I'm still the "Ansel Adams" kind of purist when it comes to photography, but this concept is worth considering.