PORTRAITS: Creativity and payment

Yuri Pautov

Priviet (In Russian Hello), dear friends!
I have received a lot of comments on my exhibition post. And a lot of them had wishes about selling my photos.
Must say it was a surprise for me.
Maybe its only here in Russia, but
1. Photographs are not the subject of selling (a lot of pirates, downloading photos for free for adv. for example). If you'll make a wonderful landscape, it will be very hard to sell it...
2. Portraits of other people are even more (except maybe Putin, and some movie/music stars :-)
3. Yes, we have some exclusion - for example fashionable photographers (like Ekaterina Rozhdestvenskaya

http://www.mdf.ru/english/search/authors/rozhdestvenskaya



) but one puts > $1 million to make them popular and then make their photos expensive to return money (the same story with painters, singers etc...).
4. Usual thing - weddings or family portraits.
A.
So, it is interesting to me: do you think that portraits of (again for example) my 'models' could be sold? Do you think that there are people, who will pay money for portraits such as this one:

Who are they? What will they do with the photo?
I think that only famous NAME of the photographer can be the reason...
Or model...
B.
Some of the pros I talked with told me that at the start they thought that they will leave 30% of their time to creativity...
But then they found they couldn find even 3%...
And the oreder of 20 portraits of graduate...

Yes, I know you will tell me - one can be creative doing his/her job...

Agree...
But still...

I present my photos and dont ask for money...
I'm an amateur photographer and I think that this job (photographing) is VERY hard and (maybe only here) leads from creativity...
What do you think?
Spasibo and sorry for my English...
Yuri

dragon300zx

Yuri Pautov wrote:

I think that only famous NAME of the photographer can be the reason...

Ahh but Yuri, your forgetting. You are a famous photographer. You are known by hundreds if not thousands of people across the globe. Heck there was even a "Yuri" sighting at the shootout in Bryce. I forget who it was exactly but I remember hearing "Hey, That looks like Yuri."

Scott_Quier

The buying/selling of portraits is a cultural thing. In some cultures, you will NEVER find a portrait of a person in their home - such a thing is sometimes viewed as very self-absorbed. This holds, if I understand correctly in, for example, Sweden. I don't know that of my own knowledge, it's just something I seem to recall reading.

In other cultures, like the US, it's very strange NOT to find portraits of family members on the walls. Sometimes, very large ones indeed.

If the photographer is famous (like you! :-) ) or the model is famous, selling the work as a collector's item can sometimes be the motivation.

On the other hand, the portrait you have posted here could very easily be manipulated to be come a real work of art and not "just" a portrait. In this case, it could be quite easy to sell the image as a work of art.

Re-reading that, it's clear that I had problems expressing my thoughts. Even so, I hope I was able to communicate my thoughts. Portraits can be bought/sold, but, as with all things bought/sold, to the right person, for a reason that seems right to the buyer.

saurora

My uneducated guess would be that a portrait artist such as yourself with an exhibition would garner commissions from new clients for future business rather than sales of the images on display. Portraits are generally more personal. If you had a showing here, Yuri...you would be hounded by women wanting to look as beautiful as those in your work!!! These might be used in stock photo, but I really don't know. Yuri, you call yourself an 'amateur'. The only difference between an amateur of your status and a professional, is that the later charges for his work. :saurora

cocasana

Wonderful subtle portrait, Yuri! I love the way the ear ring gives a glance the her left cheek!
Carlo