Does anyone have experience/suggestions for selling photos at art fair?

[maccagerl]

Hi!

I have an opportunity to sell photographs at a summer art fair at a popular vacation beach town . I have never done this before, and would love to hear from people who have experience with this.
Specifically, I am wondering what kind of format sells best in terms of size, framed , matted in glassine envelope, or photos pasted on greeting cards.
Also I have no idea how to price any of these various formats.
Thanks for any insights!

 

[Master Mason]

From what I Have seen at other art fairs, people will have some combo of the above Some framed, some in those plastic slip things so they can frame them at home and some post card sized stuff as well.

Good rule of thumb in retail is 50% mark up, which means you have to double your cost. That is for things you purchase. For things you have made, you need to figure in what your time was worth to you and add that as well. And for a picture that time factor has to come into play as well.

Another thing to keep in mind is what are your subjects your attempting to sell. Are they legal to sell in that manner, for example, your not supposed to sell pictures of the castle etc without disney's permission, or if it has people in it, do you have model releases etc?

If it is a pic of the public beach, or a building from the side of the road, etc then you don't have any worries.

just something to keep in mind

 

[Geoff_M]

I'm going to shake things up here just a bit based on a number of legal threads I've read in recent months.... It's true that for "commercial" usage model releases, property release, etc. are needed, but "editorial" (ex. news periodical) usage is exempted from this requirement. The conventional wisdom is that if money changes hands for the photo, then it's commercial. However, that's not 100% true. Legally, selling a plain unframed photo is considered "editorial" usage. Selling it in this manner cannot be differentiated from selling it as part of a newspaper. This is one of the reasons that newspapers are free to sell copies of photos (both previously published, and unpublished) without fear of legal entanglements. However, add a frame to it, use it in a collage, Photoshop it into an illustration, etc. and it becomes an enhanced work and selling it becomes a "commercial" exploitation of the image.

 

[Villainess]

I sell hairbows at craft shows and fairs and photos I've seen were either 5x7 or 8x10 matted in glassine, 8x10 and 16x20 matted and framed and postcards and notecard sets - I believe packages of 8 w/envelopes. They displayed a mix of color and b/w both day and nighttime. One vendor had ariel photos of the shore areas which generated quite a bit of interest as people were finding their houses on them. The pics sold mostly around here are the beach/shore and the shore towns.