Photographers who shoot landscapes, nature, and other fine art will often consider participating in a local art or craft fair as a means to sell their work and for the “exposure”. I’ve participated in both craft and fine art fairs and suggest that photographers need to be in fine art fairs rather than craft fairs. I started in craft fairs years ago at the beginning because I didn’t know what I was doing or that there was a difference.
The “craft” crowd is not the crowd looking for fine art, they don’t expect to see it at a craft fair, nor are they able to afford it. This is a generalized statement but mostly true. The booth fees for craft shows are generally low and they are typically not juried, so quality of product and presentation is all across the board since the cost of entry is relatively low. If you show up with high end framed fine art prints and set up next to mom & pop and their tin can puppets on one side and Old Country cut-outs of roosters, cowboy sayings and Raggedy Ann on the other, you might feel a bit out of place.
You want to look for juried shows catering to the fine artist and the fine art shopper. Look for shows like the Cherry Creek Art Festival in Denver, or Anacortes Island in Washington. I don’t remember the titles right off, but there are a couple directories of shows you can purchase that give the rundown on nearly every show in the country.
I don’t do shows much anymore because of the following (those of you doing shows already know this, but others might find this useful):
1. Shows are very hard work, especially if you travel to them. Some photographers make their living (or most of it) traveling from show to show. It’s nearly all they do, however, so if this isn’t something you want to do full time you might reconsider. A weekend show (Fri - Sun) might take you a week to prepare for: making prints, pricing, printing brochures, collecting your wares and equipment, part or most of the day loading your vehicle/trailer, a day or longer traveling to the show venue, part of a day setting up, working the show (rain or shine, cold or wind, dust, dirt, heat, sun, no people, too many people), then reverse the process either back home or to the next show.
2. There is no guarantee you will make any money, much less break even. Some shows are good, others aren’t so good (sales wise) and the good shows can be bad in any given year. It’s a crap shoot. Weather, economy, competing events, vagaries of whatever, all have an effect on who and how many show up to a given fair and whether they are in the buying mood. I suspect this year and for some time in the future, shows will be a question mark regarding their success, even some of the perennially “good” ones.
3. Cost of inventory and other booth furniture. You have to have prepared inventory and a means to display it, a 10×10 or 10×20 canopy, display panels or bins or both, signage, sales materials (brochures, business cards, credit card processor, receipts, packaging materials, etc.). Plus, a means to transport it all. An SUV and/or trailer, some artists use a motorhome or camper so they don’t have the expense of a hotel. Again, if you only plan to do a couple shows a year, this might be more expense than it’s worth since this expense can run several hundred dollars.
4. Booth fees, on top of inventory and travel, can range from $150 - $300+ in addition to any jury fees. Some shows also charge a commission on top (10 - 15%). An example is Art in the Park here in Boise, which is a fundraiser for the Boise Art Museum. It’s somewhere near $500 - $700 for a booth plus 10% of sales.
5. Clean up from weather. Humidity, wind, dirt and dust, sun, viewer fingers sticky with caramel, cotton candy, bar-b-q sauce or whatever all over your clean glass or plxi, can take a day or more. During one show a huge dust storm blew up with a cold front and I spent two days afterward taking all my frames apart to clean out dirt. Luckily it wasn’t bad enough to need to replace any prints. I’ve seen booths blow over and roll across the ground like a beach ball, tumbling its contents along to the sound of breaking glass and crashing into other booths unfortunately in the way. I’ve stood for over an hour, holding onto the frame of a neighbor’s booth to help keep it rooted during a storm because they didn’t come prepared (both to help protect their stuff, mine, and the other vendors nearby).
6. Insurance, make sure you have plenty of insurance.
7. The need to plan ahead. Many juried shows, especially if they are popular, need to be registered many months in advance. If you are engaged in other photography work, like weddings, commercial work, travel, etc. you will probably need to make a decision at some point which is more important and do one or the other when there is a scheduling conflict. In either case, you will lose some amount of money in the process.
When it works, shows can be very fun to do, and the travel allows opportunities for photography in other places. But, when it goes bad it can cost you. A person interested in pursuing art shows needs to be aware of all the things that can go wrong and accept those possible losses before taking on that expense.