Hi folks, if you've been following I opened a shop through Fine Art America to sell prints and photo giftware. I linked the site to the shop above under Prints and gifts. The direct website is julie-metott.pixels.com. I am still selling calendars through Naturally Adrift Photo Boutique and the 2022 Wildlife Calendar is marked down to net just $1.75 from each sale. Recently I was very excited to find out five prints have sold! Selling prints is hard business but if I can sell a few each month it will help out in the long run.
Marketing is a bit of a challenge and something I need to study but I have been sharing on both Facebook and Instagram. I go by Julie Metott on Instagram if you are interested in following me there and it is Naturally Adrift Photo on Facebook. Fine Art America offers numerous gift options to print photos on. I really like the shower curtains although pricing is quite high I think. Then again the cost of huge amounts of special inks and the curtain itself add up. One of most logical and entertaining gifts are the puzzles. Does anyone write or mail pretty notecards anymore? I have some available in both of my selling locations. I wish I could offer more of a variety of cards in each pack. Cell phone cases are practical and two different styles are offered depending on the type of phone you have. There are also two types of Face masks sold but I am sure most folks are hoping we wont' be needing them soon. Yoga Mats are surprisingly on the list as well. I need to get back into doing yoga on a regular basis! Laugh out loud I would love a new pretty yoga mat but which one to choose. Beach towels and mugs are also available. Pouches of various sizes are also being sold. Need a new pouch for your make-up, pens, pencils, coins, medications the uses are endless! How about a pouch to hold all the pretty stickers also available. Prices for the stickers are comparable to those sold in National Parks. I loved stickers as a kid especially wildlife ones. Do any of your children collect them? I am thinking of ordering a large sticker to use as a band-aid over a large crack in my laptop. They look pretty cool on water bottles too. Ornaments for your tree or wall, it is a pretty big list. I could put the photos on shirts to sell but honestly that just doesn't look right. I would rather wear a tie-dye from In the Fold Apparel. I love that canvas and metal prints are offered as well as traditional prints.. I am using the free version of Fine Art America which limits you to just 25 uploads (or photos). Since people may get bored with current offerings I plan to switch out 20 of those photos quarterly. So if you see a print you love don't put off ordering too long as I cannot guarantee that it will be offered again. I aim to change things up in April. As for life we had a nice visit at a friends home last weekend. My son was beyond happy to play with other kids. We can hardly wait for spring! I haven't gotten out to do photography in quite a while between the cold and rising gas prices. Our bathroom is still growing mold. Our kitchen cabinets are warped and were slowly descending from the ceiling but at least they reattached them. My husband is working with a lawyer to get something done about the smoking and getting the bathroom fixed. For those who don't know we currently rent an apartment and things have not been well since we returned to sewage spewed all over when we returned from our trip out west. I search daily for homes in our price range and can only find ones in ghetto areas. I hope spring brings more to the market. I plan to use earnings from print and gift sales towards getting a home. Rental prices are sky high right now. Too be honest I don't want to rent again after our experiences here. If I were to write an honest ad about this place everyone would flee. I do not know what this year will bring. I do not have any big or little adventures planned as we are fixated on getting a new home, a real home. I will have to find someway to practice photography even if it is just searching the yard like I did most of last year. I have been working on processing photos from the past two years and hope to get everything backed up soon. I have a ton of bird photos. Part of me wishes to move out west where wildlife is more abundant. I loved seeing the buffalo, elk, pronghorn, bear, deer and coyotes when we visited although I do fear the snakes and wildfires. Every region has its pros and cons. Maybe I should explore Pinterest for photo challenges or new ideas to try. I am looking forward to shooting flower Macros in the spring. Well, I guess I am just rambling now. Hopefully I will have something different to blog about next week. Take care everyone! We love pretty pictures but in order to do so photographers often have to omit or Photoshop out the ugliness that us humans leave upon this earth. The thing about getting out in nature is to relax and get away from the things of society, and the clutter of our own homes to breathe and feel free. Trouble is not every one that ventures out into nature practices leave no trace and often our technology or infrastructure can destroy our best views! Is it wrong for photographers to manipulate photos to remove the ugliness of a scene to create a more wondrous neat clean portrayal of a place that has actually been spoiled? Is that deceitful? What do people think when they get to a destination that they saw in photo that was so pristine and clean only to find it trashed or next to fa smog billowing factory? I don't have Photoshop so there is not much manipulation in the development end in my photos although I can and do crop. I crop out all the wires and cables that I possibly can. I have walked away from beautiful would be shots because of cables, wires, signs and other other things that mar the landscape and could not be worked around. It is really frustrating. Should I have made the photo anyways? We do a lot of hiking and camping miles into the woods and have to work around mounds of trash left by other hikers or campers too lazy to pack out their own trash. I can recall a trip to Beaver Lake and the memory makes my stomach churn. I need to make sure we start packing gloves and trash bags! Sometimes I photograph it and sometimes not and generally don't share it because no one wants to see that kind of stuff or do they? I have seen neighbor kids just drop their candy wrappers out in the yard and walk away. When I told them to pick it up and put it in the trash the little miscreants were like, "no and you can't make me!" My son reached over grabbed it off the ground and threw it away for the kid. That kind of defeated the purpose but I can only hope something was learned and not that someone else will always do it for me. The parents paid no attention. What are people teaching their children these days. Do these people want to live in a dump because I certainly do not! We live next to a bunch of storage units next to a wetland and a pond. The owner has stopped cleaning up after its cliental. Broken Power Wheels lay in the swamp, a shatter sink lines the drive, beer cans and bottles are strewn everywhere. The neighbor kids piled up some of the moldy abandoned mattresses and jumped down on to them from rooftops, and made ramps for their bikes out of some of the junk people left. Broken dishes, bags of clothes, microwaves, fake flowers, bits of scrap metal you name it , you can find in our yard! The pretty pond is filled with plastic bags, cans, popped balls and who knows what else! It is very depressing. My son and I started picking some of it up but then the snow came. I guess we have a big project for the spring if we are still stuck here. I guess that is why such photos are more for photojournalists rather than landscape artists. We want to create and see the beauty in the world provide a moment of respite from reality or give hope. Often we have to climb over or work around all the human trash, leaving the photos of true reality to photojournalists! Truthfully we would prefer not to have to see, smell or deal with the trash at all!
Let's do the world a favor and practice leave no trace both in the wild and public spaces. Personally, I have been looking into ways to reduce the amount of trash we produce. Our family of three fills a garbage bag to a bag and a half every week. We recycle a ton. We have switched to a bar shampoo and conditioner called Ethique available on Amazon to cut down on plastic waste. I have also stopped buying paper plates too, as much as I hate washing dishes. We each have a special plate for camping. Now I need to see about getting camp utensils so we can stop using plastic throw away utensils. I have also seen a lot of ads for laundry detergent strips and am very serious about giving them a try too. Those would be either Earth Breeze or True Earth. I don't want my child or grandchildren to have to live on or near a filthy dump so let us all try to do better! It is bad enough the town I grew up in was literally dumped on. A dump was put in next to a wetland just a few miles from the high school. I dread driving through there to visit my folks it smells so bad! So what do you think, should landscape photographer shoot the whole picture or just the pretty part? Yesterday we broke out the cameras for the first time in months and headed to the Onondaga Creek Walk behind Destiny USA to look for Eagles. It was a cloudy overcast day. As we drove in to the parking area we could not spot any Eagles in the trees.
We decided to walk the creek walk in the brisk cold anyways. It had been warmer in the morning. A few ducks and swans swam about in the distance, too far away to photograph. We spotted two juvenile Eagles flying above. They sparred briefly and headed to the trees far away. The light was not good and they literally just looked like dark blobs in the sky. We waited in the cold just a few more minutes but no wildlife came nearer. Preferring to be warm we headed to the car but stopped when I saw a lone Great Blue Heron standing on the ice on the other side of the creek. I raised the camera, my hands freezing and took a few shots. My son had left his gloves in the car so rather than go back earlier I had just given him mine. We walked ahead a little bit more for different perspective and I took a few more shots. I walked about ten more paces and photographed the Great Blue Heron for the last time as it spread its wings and flew up the creek out of sight. That my friends is the end of the adventure. Pretty anti-climatic I know, but sometimes that is just how things go. Don't forget I have some photos available as prints or you can even get some unique photographic gifts like shower curtains, puzzles or even Yoga Mats! To the person who ordered four prints the other day I send a big Thank You! |
Julie MetottNature Photographer, wife, mother, lover of outdoor adventure! Archives
November 2022
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