Over the years like a lot of people I have taken a very large number of photographs. Some have been printed, and some shared online. I have recently started a shop on Redbubble.com and of course this means that I need images to stock it with. The question is how do you chose the pictures to put out in the hope of a sale?
One school of thought tells me that I should be developing a distinctive artistic style and dedicating the shop to this style. This approach has strong artistic merit. It makes a statement about the work that I produce and creates a direction for the future.
This is all well and good but it completely ignores the back catalogue. Sure my current work is of a more consistent quality and does have more fingerprints to identify me with than pictures created in the past, but should I be precluding the past. Amongst the past are a number of pieces that have been well peer reviewed by others – which means the merit of these photographs is a known thing. So why not include them, and if I want to be sure of an artistic statement, surely the past is a signpost to the present.
I think you can guess how my decision worked out.
I’ve decide to slowly increase the library in Redbubble using my latest images and a selection from the past. I won’t load up everything at once. I’ll load it a rate of a few a week. This way I can put on pictures from the now and the past and think of why each picture is loaded. I believe that thinking about the work is far better than just dumping in photographs and hoping for the best.
So without ado here are links to the first 3 pictures to benefit from this process – The Tropical Set.