Palm trees are not native to California

…Palm trees are the great Southern California location icon. But they are not native to Southern California, or really any parts of California. I know that there is a project perculating here, and if I remember correctly, a number of them have been done about SoCal palm trees. I just have not done mine yet. And I guess that’s all that matters to me. So why worry about palm trees?  Because I see a lot of them here in Napa, which is Northern California.  And so I have found myself photographing them here too. Palm trees of all things.

Well, tomorrow early, I drive back down to Southern California for the next eight hours. Maybe I’ll photograph some more Palm trees and get them out of my system…..and maybe again, not…

Best regards, Doug

ArtBiz101 – Finance

….I will be traveling on Friday, thus the ArtBiz101 series is being posted a day early.

Finance for an artists business plan is an attempt to look at the long range cash flow and for a small business plan, not more than five years. You may be making investements over a longer peroid, such as a house/studio, but as you try to understand the potential cash flow, it is difficult to go much beyond five years. One expection is to be putting a little away for eventually “retirement”, when you are unable to create artworks.

Finance also encompasess immediate cash flow record keeping. For the day to day finance issues (also known as accounting and bookkeeping), I will address those asepects next Friday. So what follows is very simple and I am not a tax expert, so this is just some advice about things to thing about. If you have any questions about what you can or can not do, please consult a tax expert or accountant.

One of the key aspects of Finance is to help make long term startegy decisions. Do you need to supplement your artistic income while the demand for your artworks grow? If so, how much for how long? What do you need to purchase now, versus later? How much cash do you need to live on? How will that change over the next five years. What do you expect to sell over the next five years? What volume at what price will give you that sales volume? Do you need to apply for grants to bridge the cash flow? Can you provide artwork to a gallery on consignment or are you going to need to get some amount of cash up front? What are going to be the effects of a galleries commission if they will pay you 40% of sales? Or 50% of sales?

The best way to develop a nice Financial plan is to set up seven columns, labeled: Item, Year 0, Year 1, Year 2, etc. Then below the Item you will have Sales and next Expenses. Leave a bunch of rows blank. Then under Sales, what are you going to sell or received cash from? Could be prints, teaching, books, speaking, grants, or another  job. For each of these, try to determine what the cash recieved will be for each of the yearly colums. Don’t work about what it cost for the print that is sold, that will be in the next section. What I find best is to have on another sheet how was this number calculated. Such as 50 prints at an average price of $500 each, or 10 20×30 prints at $1,000 each and 40 16×20 prints at $550 each. The more detail, the more chance to track what actually happens to adjust the budget the next time. 

Repeat this same process for where you are going to spend the cash for creating your artwork, which we call Expenses. Such as film, printing paper, and other expense items. Also include commission expenses paid to a gallery.  These are all business expenses that you don’t pay taxes on. Some items may need to be depreciated, which is a purchase made for a large expense item that you can take a tax credit for over a number of years. This is where having an accountant or CPA (Certified Public Accountant) is going to come in handy to help with the pros and cons of large investments.

The difference between the Sales and the Expenses is the profit, from which taxes will need to be paid. In the U.S.A, we have Federal taxes and State taxes. We all pay Federal Taxes. Some states don’t have taxes. Maybe a reason to relocate? And there all sorts of other taxes, but you will probably pay about 30% or more of your profits to taxes. Now we have the estimated amount that we can pay ourselves and live on. Is it enough? If not, you may need to work on some alternatives to help provide more money to live on.

You will want to repeat this for non-business personal budgeting, include your presonal expesnses; food, housing, utilities, clothes, incidentals etc. This will help you decide if your profits figured above are going to be enough.

A little financial planning now can possibly save some big money headaches later on!

Best regards, Doug

Editioning

…..Since I write about photography (mostly), I will add one of my earlier posted images to help with the site feel. and yes I am still in Napa, CA for another couple of more days, driving down to my Studio in Southern CA on Friday. Hope to make LA early enough to pick up a print from my framer, but that will mean driving through LA in bad traffic on a Summer Friday. That could be a three hour experience just to get from the San Franando Valley to South Orange Co. I pefer not to think about it any more right now.

Now back to the subject at hand: Editioning. I find myself mulling this over and I think that I understand the pros and cons well enough at this time of Limited Editions. Since I do not have a gallery owner breathing down my neck requesting (demanding) Limited Editions, this is a self induced issue. I’d rather deceide on my own what works for me and then that will be how it is, until I change my mind again.

Unless I am making a Polaroid or hand painting the images, what I can print is relatively limitless. My own stamina and interest may be the deceiding issue. So a Limited Edition is mostly a marketing decision. The question is will this hurt or help? I do know that the for-profit galleries like it to help raise prices. Sometimes the Museums seem to like it. Collectors I think like it as they hope that the image really goes up in value, to their benefit. But what does that do for me?

In talking with other photographers, Limited Editions (LE) are the maximum potential prints that they will make. Meaning they are printing images on demand, and usually not printing the entire edition at one time. To print the full LE would consume a lot of time and printing expense and take up a lot of storage space. Especially if these prints don’t sell very fast (if at all). And if you decided to LE different size prints of the same image, even more time, expense and space.

In the 70’s & 80’s, LE photographic prints were usually printed as Portfolios, with 10 to 12 images in an edition of 25 to 100, with 100 probably closer to the norm. I do not see LE Portfolios being offered very much these days, perhaps the LE book has taken its place. An intreging alternative that I recently came across was written by Brooks Jensen and he wrote it best, so here is the full article. He is against LE, but has two alternatives; Editioning and Numbering, with his own preference as Editioning. 

This is Editioning as you would find for books, e.g. First Edition, Second Edition, Third Edition. And then there would be the printings of those Editions, e.g. First Printing, Second Printing, etc. If you printed an Edition and then changed the content of the image, such as a tonal shift to a more contrasty image, then you have a new Edition. But if you did not change anything to the image (file) but printed five today (e.g. Second Edition, Second Printing) and then printed another five next month, you have a new printing (now Second Edition, Third Printing). No Limits to ME. If I find that a new technology comes along (CS3 and a new fine art printer), I may be able to create a much finer print that I would find very satisfying. And I would not be struggling with the issue of having a completed LE and not able to work on that image. Yes, I know that there are other games you can play to give yourself options, but then you are really doing Editioning, not LE of the image. I would still keep my records and provide the Edition print status to those who purchase. And I would have the option to make very few prints to have on hand from each printing.

I just know that I had better make up my mind by the time I fill in the documentation for the delivery of my image Tired Bones to the Orange County Museum of Art by the end of this month. I can say that Editioning as defined by Brooks is looking very interesting and seems to be where I am headed…..

Best regards, Doug

Added Note: Using Editioning, then I would docuement the print for OCMA was a First Edition, Third Printing (1/1). The slight purplish hue print that I did not like, Jeannie likes a lot, so that would be a keeper and be the First Edition, Second Printing (1/1) and the framed print that just came back from the Irvine Fine Arts Center would then be First Edition, First Printing (1/1). hmmm, this may work! So let me know if you are interested in the framed First Edition, First Printing (1/1) of Tired Bones that hung at the Irvine Fine Arts Center.

Photo delay…

…as Rosie had noticed, my recent posts this week are without photographs, which is correct, I am using a proxy email computer and I do not have the capability of uploading photographs at the moment while I am traveling. So until this weekend, it will be a text only week, unless you all would perfer to see again some images that I have uploaded and posted earlier on Singular Images?

I had been thinking about this issue for a while and I will share my thoughts as I get things worked out. One alternative is to bring a portable computer with Photoshop loaded, so that I can download the camera RAW files and create jpgs for posting while “on the fly”. My concern with that is that I am not a “photo of the day” type of blogger.

When I travel like this for my day-job, I have very long client work days, so getting a bite in the evening and maybe looking at the landscape for some images to capture, not much time left to work on an image to post. With the time available, I find it easier to just blog my thoughts. I need some time to mull this over…..

Best regards, Doug

Napa Memorial tolerant

…I am begining to believe that Napa County and prehaps the area near the city of Napa is memorial tolerant. After finding the two memorials yesterday, I have now found a total of five in this area. One of which I must have driven past three times, but probably looking on the wrong side of the road. I have a little Paul Lester in me, such that if someone wants to stop and chat with me while I am photographing, I stop and chat! But I have learned the hard way many years ago, either talk or take photographs, I can’t do those two things at the same time. Okay, I’m a guy and I’m hard wired to do one thing at a time.

That is how I found a little more unusual memorial closer into Napa. While we were talking, this jogger asked if I had photographed the motorcycle memorial in town. Now as I was currently photographing the scooter memorial as the only one that I knew of concerning a cycle accident, I asked where this other one was. The jogger told me where and that every year a bunch of folks on their Harley’s come into town to work on this memorial and it was getting a little more elaborate each year.

I almost missed it a fourth time, as it incorporated the city’s speed sign, which is not where I would look for such a memorial. That is what I would consider as Memorial tolerant. And it was an actual growing memorial with all sorts of sunflowers and roses planted, as well as having solar lights near the Harley embrazen cross. Now I knew that this might be a bit different memorial photograph, so after photographing it during the day, I planned to return after dark to take advantage of the solar lights if they were working. …and yes they were working tonight.

This was my first night time photograph of a memorial, although I did photograph this at very late dusk evening to get some sky seperation with the background trees. I think that I ended up with about 8 night exposusers at 30 seconds. Since this memorial was near the highway, I do have some background car light streaks, but this could be an interesting photograph, or at least it is in color (yikes, the “color” word, I need to be careful that someone does not start thinking that I am a contemporary artist).  At the moment, I am having a little trouble post-visualizing these images in Black and white with the toning that I am using. So this should be interesting….

Best regards, Doug

Insomnia series continues

…I had sort of run out of steam photographing my Insomnia series during my long protracted stay in Northern LA County, so the time at home was refreshing in many ways. Now on this shorter duration in Napa, I found myself late last night wondering around the hotel grounds again with the camera on the tripod, with fresh eyes and some renewed energy.

As a result of the start of my I-15  (regretfully, I do not have any images to share yet) series last month, I am experimenting with some new compositional and exposure elements last night. A quick review indicates some potentials and so I find myself looking forward to this evening’s venture. Another one of the delights of the DSLR, the very quick feedback!

 Okay, it’s still early this morning and I have budgeted some time to return to the memorials that I photographed yesterday late afternoon. You could say that I am going out to see them in a “new” light!

Best regards, Doug

Memorials in Napa

…on our 7 hour drive to Napa from Orange County, I think that I saw only one memorial and since we were in bumper to bumber SF Bay traffic, one that I made a mental note to look for another time. It seems that when ever I am driving, I am keeping my senses aware for these.  For these to survive in CA, they have a tendency to blend in with the surrondings.

My goal  this weekend was to enjoy some time together and enduge in some wine tasting along with some nice meals. We were very successful! Over the three days, I found myself toting my little 4 Mp Canon G2 taking a few “snapshoots” at the verious winery grounds. Odd that I did not see one memorial until the end of the day Sunday driving back to the Hotel. hmmm maybe the wine tasting was toooo much fun. oh well. Since I am also here for work, I made note of the location to come back and investigate the following late afternoon.

I found the memorial easy enough and stopped to read the writings and look at the faded photos that were attached to the tree in back of the memorial. I believe that the memorial was put in place in 2004 and the writings & photographs were almost totally bleached out. This is one of those memorials that has not been maintained recently. Nature was slowly reclaiming the site and the memories are probably equally fading.

Noticing a frontage road, I then thought I might try another composition, so I drove down until I found a cross road and circled back. Amazingly, almost parallel to the first memorial, I found another. Two within 80 yards of each other. The second was more recent and different. A much smaller memorial with different artifacts. Tellingly, one part was a small toy scooter in among the memorial. While standing there and looking at it, I realized that there were two telephone poles right next to me, one new and the older one was cracked at its base.   The realization of the type of accident that probably occured became aparent to me.  A car would have snapped the pole, but a small scooter hitting a pole at high velocity would only slightly damage it. To  actually hit the pole hard enough to render the pole unusable requires a lot of force.

Which reminds me again that life is fragile and that I  need to call me scooter riding son tonight to tell him that I love him.

Best regards, Doug

Little Holiday!

…as I had mentioned yesterday, we will be on a little holiday mixed with a client assignment in Napa, California, one of the best known wine areas of the U.S.  Thus I will be off line until sometime next week.

We wil also be stopping at one of our friends custom framing shop to get my print Tired Bones prepared for OCMA.

Cheers, Doug

Hahnemuhle Photo Rag

…I have been bugged by the slight “purplish” hue in the extreme highlights of the Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308 (HPR), which for my landscape images, is the entire sky. Especially for the print that I am making for the Orange County Museum of Art. I observed this hue effect in my smaller prints, but not as pronuced as it is with the large 15 x 33″ print. So now I have spent the last two days trying to fix this print issue, thus no image to post with this today.

Until now, I have been using the Epson Enhance Matte (EEM) medium profile in my print dialog with CS/CS3 and my Epson 4800 printer. I have read repeatedly where other photographers have stated that the profile for EEM is identical to the profile needed to print the HPR. Well perhaps for the ink lay down, but not for the color! …and certainly not for me…

So I finally decided that it made sense to get the .icc download from Hahnemuhle for the HPR I am using, vesus continue beating my head against a very hard brick wall. did I mention that I was an engineer? Well the download did not go entirely to plan with my PC. So after reading multiple PS books on color management, I sent a call to friends. Kjell (blog: The Lentic Blog) came to my rescue: essentially to try reading Hahnemuhles download instructions for a PC. He said it very nice. He did not even ask if I’m an engineer. Thank you, Kjell!

Okay, the HPR .icc was loaded into the PC profiles, but then I followed the rest of the HPR recommendations. Nope, that was not going to work for me. Very, very dark prints. So after testing different print set-up options and a number of sheets of 8-1/2 x11 HPR, I found my solution. I do need to use the print color control. Very nice, no purplish cast, neutral with the slight warm tone from my Hue/Saturation adjustment layer that I want.

Well, the latest HPR version of Tired Bones just came out of the printer as I write this, so now I am off to find some appropriate light to evaluate it.

Best regads, Doug

ArtBiz101 – Legal Structure

Tranquility  (from the series: Insomnia; Hotel Noir)

…My Friday ArtBiz101 is early this week as we will be leaving Friday for a holiday/client project in Northern California, so next week may have some posts, just not many images!

This week I am going to discuss for the U.S. artists a little about lawyers and the legal structure of a business. Last week I had discussed suppliers and support team, but I left off the lawyers for this week. For most artist, a lawyer will probably not be neccesary, but it is nice to know one. If you are going to incorporate yourself, sign binding contracts for representation, sign a building lease for a studio or gallery, a legal review of the documents may save your skin in the long run. Realize that most of these contracts have already been reviewed by their lawyer to cover their best interests. Especially if you are signing a lease for five years, or some other exclusive arrangement.

In the U.S. there are three principal business entities that is recognized by the IRS; indivdual/sole propiertor, partnership and a corporation. For corporations, there are three different basic types: Type C, Type S and a Limited Liablity Company (LLC). Most artists will probably only need to worry about being an indivdual propiertor or perhaps a partnership. If you are considering a corporation because you are going to start a gallery or have a large organization for commercial art, you should be working with BOTH your accountant (CPA) and your lawyer as there are a lot of tax implications and risk managment with each of the forms of corporation.

For tax purposes, you should have a separate checking account to keep your personnal money seperate from your business money. The IRS then has an easier time recognizing that you are really in business. For most states, if your business name is the same as your own name (e.g. Douglas Stockdale), then you will not need a dba (doing business as). The dba is also known as a fictious name (e.g. “Big Tripod Photographic Artist”) and your will have to usually have a seperate checking account and do a dba announcement in your local newspaper. Again, each communnity and state have unique requirements, check with them.

The other item that you will want is a resale license/permitt (called by different names in each state) so that you can purchase items at wholesale without the state tax. There are also a lot of do’s and don’ts with resale permitts, again, your local state office should have a lot of literature explaining what you can and cannot do. The “cannot does” can get you fined, lose your permit or go the hoose-cow (jail).

Last advice is that if you do choose to go into partnership with someone, then you should write out a formal partnership contract that explains who does what and what each is responsible for. Since 50% of marriages end up in divorce, then probably a 50% chance that you and your partner are going to part ways some time in the future.

Best regards, Doug