Photo projects of late: Horses, Goat and friends, Espresso

This is an older image from Big Sur, California: some beautiful horses that I came across in very nice light. I had a good image to work with to start out, but my skills at image editing have improved dramatically, and so today I am able to get much more out of a file than I would have years ago.

This is not a new image either, just a reminder to me that it is one of the few framed images I ever sold on Cafepress, back before they turned to the dark side and succumbed to unreasonable greed ( they reduced our income by two-thirds with a stroke of the pen ). Having that shop for as long as we did-- I supposed we learned that cheaper, novelty type items will sell much more readily than a framed print. On more than one occasion I sold a single greeting card or a sticker, and noted that it had shipped overseas, which gave me a laugh and about a dollar profit. Cafepress mostly sells T-shirts, and T-shirts are usually adorned with slogans, sayings, jokes, or political messages. We quit them because they began stealing more and more profits from the artists and designers, but really we weren't doing all that well over there because we didn't participate enough in doing slogans and jokes-- I'm guessing-- we do know that the fine art and photos don't seem to sell well in that venue. I have a lot of appreciation for product design, and clever wordplay. It's just a different skill than fine art or photography.

Again I've had this image for years but never did anything with it until just now. Bit of a visual joke, makes people laugh. I titled it "Friends." So, in a way it's a crossover image: I'd expect to sell it on a greeting card before it sells as a framed print, and yet it's not just a throw away snapshot either. The light is good and I was pretty meticulous with my editing. I think I cropped in this tight because of the subject matter, otherwise I would have tended to frame a bit wider. Selling is on my mind a lot lately. Christmas is coming and it's a good time to be busy advertising and producing.

But something else is nagging at me and I haven't quite put my finger on it. Sheryl and I know that we need to make some changes but it still seems that change happens so slowly and by incremental steps. We went to Flagstaff recently on business, bit couldn't help noticing how much it reminded us of some of the nicer parts of the Bay Area. It felt like home. Maybe that's what started it, and there is more change in the air than we yet realize.