Black and White Photography Blog

PART TWO

Oh, and buried behind a pile of drying prints is an unopened Zazzle calendar which I forgot all about.  I’m going to take a look at it now.

They always do a good packaging job.

The calendar (the small one) is okay, but it does exhibit a fair amount of magenta metamerism that I find with Print on Demand services. It’s pretty easy to notice since one bulb is daylight temp. and another is tungsten, and you can watch the color shift from neutral under daylight to magenta under tungsten.

MyPublisher did the best job as far as calendar quality and lack of color shift.

Next step, to order a few posters.   I went through a year of futzing with all this when I was doing the print-on-demand book thing.  As I say in that article, MyPublisher was the best at printing b&w (given the price) and SharedInk was better in terms of thickness of paper and also did a good job with the ink but was more expensive.  Both, MyPublisher and SharedInk were too expensive for me to make any sort of decent profit on a book.

Zazzle allows you to set your own royalty percentage. They have a lot of tools for building up exposure for your products.  The one thing I have learned is that it is dumb to spend a lot of time working on a product that from the start is doomed not to make any money.

I’ve see people at Zazzle with a 90% royalty for their posters.

Okay, just bought three zazzle posters, (60 percent off today only) each on a different sort of paper, starting with their standard low end, and going up to gold.  When I first saw the different media levels of Bronze, Silver and Gold, I though they were talking about the tint of the print or something.  No, it’s the weight and archival quality of the print.  So this should be interesting and if nothing else – I can use them for Christmas presents. (UPS 3-5 days).  I’m really hoping the posters turn out well, at least at the Silver level.  I also want to try them on canvas.  According to their notes, there will be no color shift on canvas.

Here’s the posters I bought:

Poet’s Walk – Central Park by ansel51
See other artwork at zazzle.com

Night Storm Poster by ansel51
Poster printing from zazzle

Manhattan Bridge Poster by ansel51
More Bridges Posters

These are all either from large format or medium format cameras, and I put the largest files up that they allowed.

* * *

PART ONE

Today I’m going to order a bunch of my own posters from Zazzle since they are offering a 60% discount with the code: 12DEALZAZZLE

Even I can’t resist that, and frankly I’ve just gotten the posters into formats that make sense.  When I first began making the posters I was letting the software decide on the proper size, now what I do is decide what size (there’s a list of common sizes on the make poster page) and I pick the one that makes sense, and I don’t crop the picture but leave it in it’s natural proportions and just leave white space around it.

In other words, one of the differences between the posters and the prints, is that the image on the poster isn’t cropped whereas if you order a 5 x 7 print (for example) of an image that was shot at 4×5 proportions – of course it is going to be cropped.  No one can seem to understand that.  I have spent hours on the phone with designers trying to explain that when they ask for an image that began as a 4×5 negative and they want it at 40 x 60 inches, of course it will be cropped.  I have not met a designer or interior decorator that understood that idea without my explaining it first.

Anyway, this will give me a chance to check out the quality of the posters and whether the basic design stuff I’m doing with them makes sense.  I also had the bright idea of making a poster for two nearby stores that have offered to hang my prints.  Instead of a print – why not a poster, already framed, with my name and website.

Another cool thing, is that once I get my large png files up there (yes they fully support png) I can reuse them for various purposes, and marketing is one of them.  In other words, I’m going to make up something inexpensive that I can send along with orders.  If I order in bulk I can get a pretty good price on cards, etc.

Well, that’s it from the marketing people at Beckerman-Zazzle for now.  Today is my day to really get cracking at prints.  My plan is to try and get everything out this week.  Period.  I have my own Christmas shopping to do – and then it would be enjoyable to take a trip to a rest home that doesn’t allow cameras.

New York Dogs by ansel51
See other Dogs Calendars

Another “cool” thing about the Zazzle calendars is that you the buyer can customize the start month of the calendar, along with a bunch of other stuff, like size and style and even the color of the wire that holds it together. I couldn’t figure it out at first, so I wrote up a little help page about how to change the first month. I’ve also been redoing the calendars so that they are common sizes and have that “calendar look.” And I finally ordered a mug for myself. Now there’s one more area I need to look into, and that’s the “private section.” I think I can create stuff there, for the family, friends etc. and keep it private and either buy it myself, or send links to see if anyone wants a hat with my dad’s picture on it.

Anyway – as you can see – I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing today (printing) but did another calendar. I didn’t think I had enough good dog shots for a calendar, but as I went through the catalogs, there was plenty to work with.

Of course a cat calendar will be even easier as I have tons of cat shots that still hold up.

And of course, the one I’m really eager to do: Strangers In New York (or weirdos I have known and loved). Current working title: Weird New York. The challenge is to try and get the images to match up with the seasons. But I have enough so that I could just do a Weird Subway Calendar. Tomorrow I’ll buckle down again.

Times Square, 2008 (infrared flash)

This is a google book preview from The Elements of Photography which is a photography textbook published a year or two ago and already in it’s second or third printing. Scroll down a bit ’til you hit one of my images, enlarge the text. This is as good a bit of writing as you’ll find about principles used in my photographs, and yet… there is something… well, to be honest… it takes me back to my college years where we would write papers about Kafka or some other great writer, trying to point out various techniques that he used. Even way back then, I remember thinking that it would be a better exercise to ask students to write their own Kafkaesque story.

How can anyone ever explain how he came up with the idea of a man waking up to discover that he’s become a roach. There is one way – and that is by reading his journals. I don’t know if they’re still in print, but I had a two volume set of his journals, and you could get glimmers of how he would get these fixed ideas, and go back to them over and over again until they either disappeared, never to return… or would suddenly, after months or years of lying dormant suddenly pop up into fully realized stories. I think that writers and artists – as a general rule – are like that. Reaching into the subconscious, digging around in there until they get a grasp something and pull it out.

The textbook, unfortunately, begins with the finished creation and dissects it. It is odd to remember where you were, and what you were thinking when you took a shot. That Manhattan Mall shot – I was just returning with what I hoped was my fixed Leica. I wanted to do a test shot before getting on the train and saw the Manhattan Mall sign. I simply framed it so that the word Manhattan would be in frame and set the f-stop so there would be enough depth of field to also get the background. Click, and onto the train. I was aware of the hotel across the street being well-known – and used the sign as a label. Reflections in the shiny metal were a bonus.

I reached the point with the Zazzle posters where I think I’m ready to order one for my own walls.  I really don’t have any of my own prints on the walls, and for some strange reason I feel more comfortable with a calendar (ordered) or a poster.  Cards came today as well and they were beautiful (the one with the kid looking at the gingerbread house).  I suppose I’ve got a very sentimental side.

Next up – Lester suggested a Dog calendar.  I do have lots of good dog shots.  So it’s fun now to narrow them down.  Which was how I came across this shot.  I was looking for dog shots and found this.  Recently someone wrote asking if I had any photographs of fire-escapes and alleys.  That he was a collector of that sort of image.  It seems funny when someone writes with such a specific request – but it just so happens that I completely understand that and am also fascinated with alleys and fire-escapes.  What I continue to find intriguing about subject material is that it doesn’t change over the years.  One of the first images that I ever framed was an alley between two buildings with fire-escapes.  Maybe I was 13.    And to boot there were clotheslines.  That’s something I miss on the upper-east side.  No clotheslines.

You know – it all goes back to what made an impression on me as a kid.  The kitchen window looked out across a concrete space that was strung with clotheslines.  It was one of the chores I didn’t mind helping my mother with.  Lines went all over the place and besides hanging clothes, we’d pass notes from one apartment to another.  You’d think you couldn’t get into trouble with clotheslines, but my friend and I once strung water balloons from the line, and moved it so that it was directly in the middle of the alley where the super and his daughter entered the building.  We didn’t have bb guns (not allowed) but we had bb’s and pea shooters and – well you can guess the rest.  It wasn’t a direct hit on the super’s daughter but of course she looked up at the busted bit of balloon and immediately knew it was us – and there was another pretty good spanking for that.

I didn’t mind a spanking.  Compared to getting that “I’m ashamed of you” talk – a spanking was nothing.  You walked out with your dignity intact.  It was those long father and son talks that I dreaded.  Words were much more dangerous than spankings.

I’m reading an interesting book that my dad sent me, that was a result of the arguments we had at Thanksgiving where I was saying that talent is something you’re born with, and with the proper environment and practice you can to that outlier point on the right side of the bell curve.  In other words, what it takes to be great in a particular activity.  The book, by Malcolm Gladwell begins with a story about a doctor who finds that the rate of heart disease in a small town in Maine is half the U.S. rate.

They find that the people in the town (are all from the same small town in Italy).  But they have adopted American eating habits.  Many are overweight.  Many smoke.  But the conclusion is that the environment where everyone knows each other, where there are extended families living together, in short, the social network which has been transported from the small Italian town is the critical factor.

From there, the author looks at hockey players, and discovers that the best players were all born in the first third of the year.  He finds this in other sports as well.  And to make it short discovers that the reason that there are so many great players who were born in the first third of the year goes back to a relationship between how much bigger and more mature these kids were in the early school grades.  In other words, since these kids were nine months older than the other kids, they were more coordinated at sports, and were chosen for special sports leagues at an early age.  And this leads to them getting more playing time, which leads to them getting better…  The point is, that these kids, and in fact almost all geniuses that he looks at (including Mozart) had 10,000 hours of practice before they became great.  In Mozart’s case, although he wrote a number of fair scores at an early age, he didn’t really write his first great piece until he was 21 years old, and the author calculates that this was around the time that he had had 10,000 hours of practice.

Only up to chapter two – but so far this all makes sense to me.  Talent alone is not enough.  There are factors that must be in place that give you enough time to work at your craft in order for that talent to blossom.  He’s going through one case at a time.  Right now talking about the guy who wrote a lot of Unix, who also was lucky enough to be able to hit 10,000 hours of programming by the time he was in his early twenties.

So there you have it.  Start early.  And make sure you are born at the right time so that you are older than the other kids in your class when you are in the first grade.  Oh, and be good at something.

I put the dreaded “today is the last day for Christmas orders” up on the home page today.  It’s not that I couldn’t get an order out in time if it came in over the weekend, or even later, but I have a backlog of orders, maybe still another 25 to get through.  That’s all I have to write today.  I’m about to drop off another 6 orders at Fedex, and then I’m coming back for a nap.  I’m beginning to make mistakes, i.e. I didn’t notice that I was almost out of yellow ink until it was too late and just did a rush order with ShadesOfPaper.com which will arrive tomorrow.  So no more printing today.

I’ve recommended ShadesOfPaper.com before.  I don’t get any kickbacks for it.  I just like to mention vendors that have treated me as a human being.  And that is rare.  No charge from them for the overnight delivery.  And they have paper sales for particular brands – usually one brand a day – and when they had the 50% sale on Epson Exhibition Paper I really stocked up.  So if it’s worth it to get their newsletter just so you can get notified when they have a sale on the paper you use.

The other company that is top-notch is Uline.com  Since they have warehouses scattered around the country, I always get next day delivery for ground prices from them.  I have a shipment of the large stay flat mailers arriving tomorrow.  Those are really the most versatile shipping stuff I’ve found.  For smaller prints you can fold them over twice and use less cardboard.  For large prints, you can stack them, one per mailer with cardboard between the stacks and that works really well for two or three large prints.  After that I have to use the large folding cartons which I still have to cut down to custom sizes.

As you can see – I’m too tired to write creatively…  just some stuff that might be of use to someone out there.

* * *

“Delete the Poet’s walk poster from dazzle…People should continue to pay you for your signature image…
No free rides!” – Matt

What about something like this? Or, since I’m not Ansel Adams, I can make the title larger and my name smaller underneath the title.

Poet’s Walk – Central Park by ansel51

Whatcha doin’ man?

Just takin’ pictures of people workin’ at night.

Oh, that’s cool.

Are you gonna ride the truck now?

No man, gotta pickup crap from the other side of the street.

Okay – have a good night.

You too.

* * *

I’ve been working at night due to the influx of orders.  During the last two days I printed, matted, packaged and shipped about 15 prints, mostly 11 x 14 and 12 x 18 size.  I just looked at the order inbox.  I still have 35 prints to go (assuming I don’t get any other Christmas orders).

My father ordered a copy of Judith’s book from Amazon – well actually he had me order it since he had trouble figuring out how to find it.  He’s so happy to see this book stuff, assuming it will as if it will give me a good pr bump.  I doubt that.  But I also doubted that the book would ever get finished.  I doubt just about anything and everyone.

Judith tells me it’s much better for her if you order the book directly from her site, since Amazon takes a huge cut of the sale.  Her site is: http://www.dearjohnlennon.com/main.html

However, my “crackbrained” idea with Zazzle has worked out well so far, but the holidays aren’t a fair test.  I expect next year, even with my various new income streams (lessons, zazzle, and prints) that it will still be a struggle unless something big happens.

I don’t know what that “big thing” will be – and I expect that eventually it will happen – I just hope it happens before Matt and I are racing scooters at 10 mph down Fifth Avenue.  I think I’ll have the senile street shooting edge because of my Mr. Gadget experience.  My scooter will have a small tripod attached to one of the arms that with a video feed to my eyeglasses and a switch to “stagger” the speed of the scooter while I take a shot, and then continue on, emulating what I do when I’m walking with the camera.  Matt will still be with his Leica, but he’ll be forced to make his own film in the bathtub at night since film will have disappeared or become too expensive for someone on social security.

Nevertheless, he will christen his scooter the TruthMobile.

New York Couples Calendar by Dave Beckerman

This is my favorite one so far. I narrowed down about 50 possible prints, and gave it an order that reflected the arc of a romance (sort of). The calendars, where I only need to use 12 to 14 images are perfect for my own somewhat limited attention span and allow me to choose what I think are the best shots (unlike this blog where you never know what will appear next).

Lester, who I kept hectoring about how he was shooting (using flash, looking at every image after shooting etc.) did a beautiful tribute of the signing. The video is also (of course) now available on YouTube.  Here’s the link if you want to pass it around:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgk079bPnCo

Well, that really went well. By the time I left Judith had just about sold out all the john lennon: in their own write books. And I was happy to see that Sid Bernstein showed up, and not only that but he was an absolute doll to work with. 90 years old, and he offered me half of his danish when he arrived. This has been an object lesson in perseverance, on the part of Judith.

Amazing coincidence – the woman in the second photo next to Judith has several parrots.  I recognized her as someone I had photographed at the Mermaid Day parade.  We both remembered that day – a few years back – and the shot of the parrots.  Maybe I’ll see if I can find it.

It was also a nice reunion – for me to see my sister meet Lester who she hasn’t seen in – must be over 20 years.  I was also able to have Ross (the videographer) come and I got to do a short interview with Sid (yes, after a few minutes you find yourself calling him Sid).  On top of that, I forced Lester to bring a CD of his songs and pass it off to Sid’s PR person who promised to give it a listen.

Photo by Lester

And yes – that’s me laughing in the plaid shirt (a birthday gift). Cast of Characters, from left to right: Judith Furedi (author), me (photographer for book), Sid Bernstein (the one and only), Ross (videographer), and I forgot her name (PR person for Sid).  One of the few shots that caught me in a happy, engaged moment.

Before eHarmony (b.e.)