What do you do with all your photos

[YossarianXXI]

So, what does everyone do with their photos? Obviously the professionals here sell them, but what else?

Submit in competitions? Sell prints? Freelance?

I love photography, and I'm glad I've picked it up, but I'm just been thinking about what I want to do with it (besides learn more). I have some trips and excursions coming up and have a small but, I think, decent little catalogue, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with them besides share them with friends and family.

I've submitted to a few competitions and art galleries, and even had a few accepted, but I wanted to know what everyone here does with theirs.

[Manfred M]

Not too many "professionals" at this site Colin. Most members are amateurs / hobbyists. I'm retired, so I do this for fun; serious photography has been part of my life since I was in my teens. My career had nothing to do with photography.

I primarily do these for myself and given the risk of "digital rot" I do a lot of high quality archival pigment prints that may or may not be appreciated some day. I do around 100 large prints a year. I'm working on several photo books, mostly from my travels and mostly to record how the world is today.

I also compete in recognized, juried competitions; locally, nationally and internationally. I have won many awards for my work. My work has been shown at galleries. I do pro bono work for local charities, artists and organizations that cannot afford the fees of pros.

I have no great interest in selling my work and generally scare away prospective purchasers by setting asking prices designed to scare off most potential buyers. That has generally worked out well.

[rpcrowe]

I shoot mostly for enjoyment - enjoying everything about the shoot: planning, actual shooting and the post processing.

Until, the slowdown of adoptions due to Covid-19, I have done a great deal of shooting for our dog rescue organization. A decent image is the best way to get a dog adopted these days. Until Covid-19 reared its ugly head, I was averaging about a hundred rescue portraits per year.

I do frequently post images on CiC as well as other sites and I belong to two photo oriented organizations here in the San Diego, CA area...

[xpatUSA]

So, what does everyone do with their photos?

These days, I shoot stuff around the property (five woodland acres in rural Texas), very rarely elsewhere. Flora, fauna, work, weather-related, scenery, all for fun or for the record. They sit on my hard drive, occasionally copied to family in England or posted here or over on DPR.

[MrB]

I do around 100 large prints a year.

Manfred, how large is 'large'?

Philip

[William W]

So, what does everyone do with their photos? . . .

Mainly Critique them - solidly. Some I give away (i.e. pro bono jobs)

Sold heaps over many years.

What I make these days are generally 'for me' and I pick them to pieces. One main goal now is to get the perfect Photograph.

As I learn more, each year, fewer are worthwhile printing - however - the ones I do print are better each year.

WW

[Astro]

I've been taking photographs for nearly 60 years now. It was always something I did for my own interest. I have two main archives of images, digital and pre-digital.As you might expect most of the pre-digital are negative and album archives, though I have digitised a proportion of them. As regards what I do with them.... well, I look at them continuosly... these days I have a rollong slide show on my living room TV and they play through continuosly. A lot of the time I probably do not notice them much, but I am always stopping as a particular image pops up and triggers a memory. Quite often this also triggers a rework, as the years roll by I find that the way I would now process and present an image has developed/changed considerably.

(I always enjoy it, when visitors get distracted by an image popping up that catches their eye )

I also print and have far too many which are stored in my study.

I also 'give away' prints to friends and family who over the years have liked much of my imaging.

[escape]

I share some here and with my wife. I haven't printed a picture in 18 years. All photos before 2016 are lost. I am close to releasing my photography website. That's what I will be doing with my photos. Messing with websites is my other hobby.

[Geoff F]

The bulk of my images, just in terms of numbers shot, are insect photos for identification purposes. Somewhere around 100 to 300 per suitable day, for 6 months of the year when the sun is shining. Thinned down to somewhere around 20 to 50 actual species per day.

My photos are used to double check identifications and some get passed on to wildlife organisations. Quite a lot of my records go to a UK wildlife recording scheme called I Record and they need a photo of each record for verification.

https://www.brc.ac.uk/irecord/

Other stuff sometimes gets printed out and hung on my house walls but most is just stored away on external hard drives for archive purposes. Hopefully in about 50 years time some organisation will look at them to see how this area has changed. Which is what we do in the local history society with old photographs from the past 100 years. Today's photographs will become tomorrow's history.

[bhurley]

I mainly take photos for my own enjoyment and artistic growth; I have no commercial aspirations for my photography and refuse all prospective clients. My day job is consulting and I work with clients all the time; I want photography to remain an area where I can follow my own vision and make my own mistakes, and not have to meet someone else's expectations or hew to their aesthetic.

I've been a photographer since the early 1960s and spent a lot of time in a darkroom; with the advent of digital I think I've printed maybe three photos in the last 20 years. I put some of my photos up on Flickr and share some on social media, and occasionally shoot photos of events for friends. Beyond that I have no aspirations other than to just keep getting better, developing my own personal style, and challenging myself. I have loads of projects in mind, but they're all personal projects.

[YossarianXXI]

I shoot mostly for enjoyment - enjoying everything about the shoot: planning, actual shooting and the post processing.

I've found I enjoy this a lot too. As an avid hiker as well, i've found i enjoy scouting a shoot as fun as doing it.

I was talking with my wife about my shoot at the waterfalls i did a few weeks ago. Many visitors stopped by and viewed the falls and were there for an hour or so, and enjoyed themselves and left, and I suspect I'd have done the same if I was just showing up to see them.

But when doing the shoot I really took my time to explore every little nook of the falls and really focus on small details i may want to include in a shot. I ended up with some great shots I really like, but I also ended up with a far more intimate experience with the falls. I find this is an unexpected benefit to nature photography that I really enjoy.

Thank you all for the replies. I like what everyone is doing with them. I hadn't thought of doing "pro bono" work for local charities, but I think that's something I'd love to do. How do those of you who do this get involved with it? Just, call up charities you like and say "I do photos if you ever need someone?"

As for myself, i think I got some ideas from this thread, both in the discussion and me thinking about answers;

• I made some prints, both framed and on canvas, last year of some of my shots for my home and I think it would be a good idea to make more prints and rotate them throughout the year.

• I have 2 work computers and a home computer, and I've been using shots for my background, i can start working more of my shots into that rotation

• Gifts for friends & relatives. In particular, Ikea has decent frames for inexpensive, so it becomes a personal, easy gift

• Contests

• Selling Prints - not necessarily as a career change, but as more of a "local artist hobbyist". For example, every August my town hosts an "affordable art fair" where artists sell their work and every piece must be < $100. Setting up the occasional tent there or at local farmer's markets or art fares would be fun. (My Aunt is also a talented artist, we could share a tent)

• Pro Bono work for charities

♦ Eventually, once i get better and more experienced, I think I'd really love to run photography workshops in remote Colorado wilderness. There's quite a few out there (and I definitely plan on paying to go on some soon) but that strikes me as a good goal - it combines everything i really love: nature, hiking, photography and small groups of people having a good time.

♦ I think another long term goal is to shoot every county in Colorado and organize it as such, for some sort of self-publication.

[DanK]

A few more thoughts:

My experience and that of many other photographers I know is that unless you are doing work for clients, selling photographs is very hard. I've sold almost none. I know a number of people who are doing better at it than I am, but none is making real money. Selling, at least in my opinion, also imposes burdens. I won't offer anything for sale that isn't on museum-grade paper, printed with archival inks, and stored or mounted with only acid-free materials. In my case, that required replacing my printer, and I've got quite a stockpile of expensive paper.

This raises the issue of framing. I sometimes use cheap frames (and cheap paper) for prints that don't matter and that will be replaced. For prints that matter, I use better frames with acid-free backing board and acid-free mat board. These aren't cheap, even if you go for basic frames and use a good discounter. (I buy my frames from framedestination.com and have been satisfied.)

I haven't tried the craft fair option, and that might be a different matter. Most of the photographers I've seen at those have a lot of their photos in a rack or pinned up without full frames, which keeps the cost down.

I give prints away. Little ones I often give away framed. Large ones I give away unframed. E.g., one friend asked for a 17 x 22 print for his living room. I'm printing it next week and giving it to him unframed.

I print quite a bit, not for the archival reasons that Manfred mentioned, but simply because I want to see the print. Viewing only on the computer is just not adequate. When I get results that I like, my final criterion is "is this worth printing?" Unfortunately, I have only so much wall space. So from time to time, I'll replace a print and cut a new mat to fit.

I really like your idea of working for a charity, and I've tried a few times, but so far it hasn't worked out. My most recent idea was to provide photos of healthy post-transplant kids to decorate one of the transplant sections of a children's hospital. Having spent months in one of those, I know first-hand how helpful it is to realize that many of the kids who are in desperate condition will end up being happy, healthy kids down the road. This idea was shot down because of privacy concerns. But shooting for charity is a very appealing idea, and I hope to come up with other ideas.

Re running workshops: the competition is fierce, and IMHO, you'll have to establish yourself as a real expert to have a shot at it. I do training sessions (for free), but I personally would not feel comfortable guiding people on paid, multi-day workshops.

[Manfred M]

Thank you all for the replies. I like what everyone is doing with them. I hadn't thought of doing "pro bono" work for local charities, but I think that's something I'd love to do. How do those of you who do this get involved with it? Just, call up charities you like and say "I do photos if you ever need someone?"

In my case, I'm a fairly well known amateur photographer around town and have a lot of contacts. I am the head of the largest photo club in town and teach studio lighting and portraiture at the local photo clubs. I'm connected with the local portraiture MeetUp group, so contacts in that community as well.

Charity photography often involves photographing the volunteers at the organization, so a strong portraiture background helps. So does having studio lights that you can bring on location.

In one case, a friend of my wife's whose knows the head of a local charity asked if I could do some work for them. In another case, one of my photographer friends was asked to do a shoot and for circumstances outside of his control, the originally scheduled shoot had to be postponed and he could not do the alternate date and asked if I could step in. Someone saw those images and asked one of the people I had photographed as to how to contact me, which they did and I shot another group.

You get the idea; networking plus having a portfolio so people can see your work helps here. None of those images are shown on my website because of privacy concerns.

[YossarianXXI]

My experience and that of many other photographers I know is that unless you are doing work for clients, selling photographs is very hard. I've sold almost none. I know a number of people who are doing better at it than I am, but none is making real money. Selling, at least in my opinion, also imposes burdens. I won't offer anything for sale that isn't on museum-grade paper, printed with archival inks, and stored or mounted with only acid-free materials. In my case, that required replacing my printer, and I've got quite a stockpile of expensive paper.

This raises the issue of framing. I sometimes use cheap frames (and cheap paper) for prints that don't matter and that will be replaced. For prints that matter, I use better frames with acid-free backing board and acid-free mat board. These aren't cheap, even if you go for basic frames and use a good discounter. (I buy my frames from framedestination.com and have been satisfied.)

Yeah, I'm not sure i want to go full professional. I'm certainly not going to try and make this a career, but it would be nice to sell a few here & there at local craft fairs or whatnot, for fun. I have found some online print shops i like and a local printer who does a good job and isn't too pricey. I printed some of my stuff on canvas and was very happy with their work. I'll definitely look at that frame website

Re running workshops: the competition is fierce, and IMHO, you'll have to establish yourself as a real expert to have a shot at it. I do training sessions (for free), but I personally would not feel comfortable guiding people on paid, multi-day workshops.

You get the idea; networking plus having a portfolio so people can see your work helps here. None of those images are shown on my website because of privacy concerns.

I think what I was going for here is an idea of where my photography is, and where I want to go with it. Some of these are short term goals (change out prints in my home, desktops, etc) some are medium term goals (craft fair) and some are long term goals to work towards (workshops / Pro bono work).

I love the art of doing the craft but I also want a way to showcase my work too. I'm not looking at making a lot of money off of it, but it'd be nice to sell some just for the achievement of someone wanting my art enough to pay money for it.