Category: Artwork

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Photography & Business Goals for the New Year

Foreseeable, attainable and lofty goals to move my business forward.

A wise man, Benjamin Franklin, once said, “If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.” With that in mind, I’ve been looking at a few marketing goals for my Bill Swartwout Photography business for the coming year.

Attainable goal: A couple weeks ago I started back at my earliest upload folder and began making black and white versions of images where B&W actually “works” well. In doing that, I am updating (cleaning, culling, rearranging) keywords and adjusting descriptions as needed. I have been selling a few black and white images and, with a greatly increased inventory, hope to sell even more in 2021. That project will likely add 500 +/- images to my current gallery total at USPictures.com.

Attainable goal #2: Increase my web presence of individual sites (blog and image style) that support my better-selling themes/collections.
Examples: https://www.FortMcHenry.net – https://www.IndianRiverBridge.com – https://www.MyPhoneography.com.

Attainable goal #3: Redefine my personal website to better focus on photography. I’m trying to be/act (more) retired – so I want to eliminate all old affiliate marketing “stuff” and clean out extraneous and obviously dated posts/articles.

Lofty goal: Double my current inventory by the end of 2021.

But – first and foremost – my photography must remain fun.

YOUR THOUGHTS? Please leave a comment…

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To Watermark or Not to Watermark Images For Sale

Some say watermarks deter buyers from purchasing Art, others say it doesn’t.

It’s true that there are many comments on line leaning one way or the other. What I tend to do is listen to those with the most experience. Should I listen to folks who sell a couple dozen works a year or the folks who sell thousands of pieces a year. Amazon, eBay, Fine Art America and ImageKind, who sell thousands of units have run A/B tests and have determined that watermarking degrades sales. They are not artists with egos – they are Internet marketers looking to improve the bottom line.

Indian River Inlet Bridge
Charles W. Cullen Bridge at Indian River Inlet – with an example of my usual watermark.

In my case, I choose to NOT watermark the images I upload for sale at Imagekind or Fine Art America and other POD (Print On Demand) art companies. If the unscrupulous want to steal an image – they will – and there is nothing you or I can do to stop them. Anyone with rudimentary image editing skills can remove your watermark in a matter of minutes.

On the other hand I DO watermark images that I post to social media and on other websites. Why, you ask? Well, there I want people to see where the image can be found. My watermarks include a URL – in most cases my USPictures.com domain. I can have that domain point to whichever POD I choose (and I can change that at any time).

CLICK: Bill Swartwout Photography

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My Favorite Cat Artist in the Whole World

Dora Hathazi Mendes has a pure talent for depicting cats in watercolor.

Dora is an artist colleague who lives with her husband and family in Portugal. We have collaborated on various art activities over the last two years. We are colleagues in that we both use Fine Art America as our Print On Demand (POD) art production facility. (FAA is the largest fine art POD in the world. )

If you like cats, as most people do, and find them fun to be around, you might just find that Dora’s art a real joy to see. That’s why I decided to share some of my favorites here on my personal website. I hope you like her paintings as much as I do.

Here is an assortment of snapshots of the above work-in-progress. There are many steps involved in creating such a lifelike likeness of the black kitten – especially in the medium of watercolor on fine art paper.

Of course some cats take a more laid back approach to life. Here is Dora’s watercolor of a ginger Maine Coon cat. The Maine Coon is the largest of domesticated cats and, even though they have active hunting skills, are laid back, fluffy and friendly. Below you can see this artwork on a notebook cover, one of the popular items also produced by Fine Art America from original art. BE sure to click the picture to see the actual piece.

Here are links (click below) to Dora Hathazi Mendes and her art at Fine Art America:

Note, please, that this is not a “sales pitch” – but should you decide to purchase something from Fine Art America, Dora will earn her artist fee and FAA will pay me a (very) small ad fee.

Dora has contributed to the success of my new Artistic Face Masks website where her designer face masks have proven to be popular sellers.

You can see my work at Bill Swartwout Photography.