A Brave New World…of Handmade Cutting Boards

I'm about to embark on a great new adventure in my professional life. It's been about a year since I started my business, and this dream came along with it, but I didn't have all my stuff together during calendar year 2014 to pull it off. Seeing all the work I've been putting into it for 2015, there's no way I could have managed it before now, anyhow.
What the heck am I talking about? Why "handmade cutting boards?"

Craft Fairs.
You've all been to them, probably many times. Often spur-of-the-moment or by whim. Some are themed, and some are part of larger assemblies of people. But you're all familiar with the small booths and tents set up with scented soaps, organic dog treats, homemade jewelry and… photography. There's always photography.

And so I venture into the 2015 craft season with my own stack of lovely photos to sell to folks. I'm not sure how many items I will be able to sell. Nor am I sure how many shows I will do before things wind down in the fall. Or which shows will be best suited for me. The interrelationship of these factors will become more apparent as the year goes by.

I DO know I'll start to figure it out while at the enormous NH Made show in Manchester, NH this April 17-19.

It's a very good thing that I'm excited about it, because it's uncertain whether this business model and I are compatible, and it's a tremendous amount of work to get up and running. But, my enthusiasm keeps me confident of financial success and keeps me pushing through the huge to-do list I have. I'm not complaining. Some folks need to ship truckloads of stuff, arrange for people to unload them, hire helpers, pay for electricity, pay for internet. and then actually have to sweat and toil the whole time they're there, cooking things and doing demonstrations. I have it easy. I'll be sitting on my stool, being charming and answering questions, while my photos hang on my walls doing the heavy lifting for me.

Still, the amount of things I had to tackle has added up to a mountain. Thanks to Bob Estrin for his handy guide!

I didn't have a mobile selling space. That meant buying ready-to-assemble walls, bins, tables, and a rug. And getting it all decked out with signage that I'm designing.

I didn't have a way to take peoples' money. That meant I had to sign up with a mobile card-reading service, like Square or Amazon Local Register and connecting it to my bank.

I didn't have a selling strategy or list of prices. That meant doing a lot of pricing research and creating a spreadsheet containing every single cost for every single product, in hopes that my efforts will be properly rewarded.

I did have a photography website set up, and they have a preferred printer. Still, that meant revisiting all 50+ images I hope to sell, re-cropping them to fit standard sizes, and painstakingly re-adjusting each one to my printer's preferences using a color profile, so that I'll know (more-or-less) that my prints will come out looking as I expect them to.

Lastly, I didn't have a gigantic pile of images to sell. That meant paying for several small prints of each image, and then again in both medium and large sizes. And buying hundreds of bags and cardboard mats. Being signed up with several printing outlets and hawkishly coupon-watching has kept my costs way down. And that means affordable prints, for you, dear customers.

Some of these many costs won't have to be repeated, as I will re-order things that sell and re-use my booth hardware (until I need a tent for outdoor shows, that is!)

So look for me in the brave new world of kitten outfits, soy candles, water purification systems, and the teak cheese boards. And treat yourself to a lovely photograph while you're there.

An efficient trip to the mountains

I'm very lucky that I have a wise and patient wife. I seem bent on combining my business trips with our pleasure trips. We had a nice stay at a favorite bed & breakfast, got to see the beautiful White Mountains of New Hampshire, ate some great food, and had a fabulous day of cross-country skiing.  All good.

But I had a short list of things I wanted to photograph. Oh, and two retail stores to check out. Also, a couple owners to meet. Somehow, I managed to do all that while keeping my wife entertained. The retail part of the trip went just fine. I've been scouting many brick-and-mortar stores throughout New Hampshire that might be interested in selling my Hidden New Hampshire calendar for 2016. Every time I wander more than a few miles from my home, I've got my list of stores handy so I can kill at least two birds with one chunk of Granite.

So far, the responses I've gotten have mostly been very positive. It's been fun meeting business owners like me who love New Hampshire and want to celebrate it. Thankfully, I'm now confident enough showing my photographs to them that I can ask them to carry my product. Some are really good photographers themselves, which is usually helpful, but sometimes intimidating.

Of course, any trip to the White Mountains would be a waste if I didn't have my camera ready to capture some cool, lesser-known spots. It was beautiful out the day we wandered around, so getting a good view of Cathedral Ledge wasn't too hard. The ice-climbers made me nervous, though. Props!

Diana's Baths is a fabulous place to wander around the other three seasons of the year, but Winter at the Baths was rather magical, too. Not just for the frozen waterfalls and pools, but the sounds of mountain streams rushing under them all, too.

Traveling the nearly-famous Kancamagus Highway was less successful, though. Many of the scenic overlooks and pull-offs are not maintained between Fall and Spring and were therefore inaccessible. We did stop at one view, where I plopped down in the snow for a good angle of the mountains to the north, but the light was high and flat, and the experience of being there wasn't going to translate well into a 2-D image. Granted, the other tourists had a better time than I did, seeing a lunatic laying on a windy, snow-covered hillside to take a few pictures.

There's lots to see and explore on "The Kanc" in Winter, but my wife and I were not keen on spending a lot of time there. We had forgotten our snowshoes, and needed to travel a while longer to find much-needed lunches. So I was hoping serendipity would strike the few times we hopped out of the car. It did not.

Still, it was a great trip from all accounts. I should endeavor to be so efficient for the rest of my trips into the far corners of this great state.

When humans couldn't see blue

I recently read an extremely interesting article about the perception of color. Of course, I was drawn in by the title, "No one could see the color blue until modern times." What??
But really interesting things about humanity's past were revealed, as relating to language and perception. It struck me that this subject related to my profession, as well. Actually, it relates to everyone's profession, and proficiency in general. And what it means to be an expert.

If you don't have time right now to read this very interesting article by Kevin Loria, I can use some quotes to sum up before moving on.

Until relatively recently in human history, "blue" didn't exist, not in the way we think of it.

…ancient languages didn't have a word for blue — not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew. And without a word for the color, there is evidence that they may not have seen it at all.

The only ancient culture to develop a word for blue was the Egyptians — and as it happens, they were also the only culture that had a way to produce a blue dye. 

So before we had a word for it, did people not naturally see blue? 

…without a word for a color, without a way of identifying it as different, it is much harder for us to notice what is unique about it — even though our eyes are physically seeing… it in the same way. 

So before blue became a common concept, maybe humans saw it. But it seems they did not know they were seeing it.

If you see something yet can't see it, does it exist? 

There's even a physical test included in the article that perfectly demonstrates that when people use different sets of tools (words), some won't see a simple distinction that you and I easily make every day – and vice versa! At first, I thought I was staring at eleven blocks of identical green, until the author asked me to pick out the one that was different! It took me a few moments, but I was able to. I imagine some of you would not.

The vast majority of people can name every color in a box of 8, 16 and maybe even 24 crayons. But do you know what mauve is? Or chartreuse? You can probably "see" them, as the ancients "saw" blue, but either cannot distinguish them from their neighbors purple and green, or must resort to using extra modifiers like "dull-" or "bright-."

Did you know that Brazilians, with a populace comprised of every shade of human being, make no fewer than 14 racial distinctions? It's just something they think about a lot more than we do.

Which brings me to the professions in the visual arts – designer, decorator, photographer, artist. Yes, we see blue. But we're also SO used to seeing blue in all its varying shades that we probably make more distinctions than the average person can. Can you imagine an interior decorator who accidentally reupholstered your sectional to match sky blue instead of navy blue? It wouldn't happen because people in visual professions have the language, the words, and the mindsets to deal with appropriate subtleties and complexities.

Here's a color test I took to determine my own color acuity. My eyes almost fell out of my head, but I'm happy to say I scored (low being good) a 3 out of 99. How will you do?

I humbly ask that you respect an artist who might criticize a photo as being blurry, out-of-focus, grainy, low in contrast, undersaturated, overcooked, jaggy, banded or blown out, while you only saw "not so good." 

And I promise to defer to your own expertise, in kind.