Well this past weekend I sold my work for the first time at an art festival, Cary's Spring Daze Arts and Crafts Festival. It was a juried event, meaning many people entered and then a jury reviewed the applicants and picked who could be a vendor for the event. I was very excited to be picked and had absolutely no idea how things would go.

I had a LOT of inventory printed. I did some of my favorite prints in both metal and canvas and chose a selection of bird, wildlife, and landscape photos. I also printed a ton of fine art paper prints in 5x7", 8x10", and 11x14" and then matted them. I was very nervous leading up to the event, no just on how things would go but also about how to display my prints and hang them on the tent walls safely. I watched a bunch of videos and read several blogs giving advice. In the end, I used a heavy duty mesh tarp wall to hang the prints from and am very happy with how it worked. It did not arrive though until Friday afternoon, which gave me crazy anxiety.

The morning of the show finally arrived and with my wonderful mother's help, we had the booth set up and ready for patrons just a little after opening. I had a ton of visitors and got a lot of wonderful feedback on my work. People asked lots of questions both about where I take my photos and how I capture my images. I also got several of the "YOU took all these pictures?" Yes, indeed, I did take these pictures. Every single one of them. I had one young boy, about 10 years old, come up with his father standing proudly behind him and ask me questions about my camera equipment and what shutterspeed and exposure settings I used. He went on to ask about the post-processing editing software I used. He was super knowledgable for his age and listened avidly while I tried to thoroughly answer his questions. I also had other photographers and artist give me feedback on composition, lighting, and the emotional response my pictures evoked. It was really cool.

I sold a lot of paper prints, a few metal prints, and one of the large canvas landscapes. It was altogether a great first festival and a very good learning experience. I plan on doing more in the future and may look into doing some of the local pop-up type markets with mostly just my paper prints for sale.

The day ended in a rush to pack everything up and then get it all loaded into the van. Well that's when the down pour came! When I say down pour, I mean someone poured a bucket of water over us. Thankfully most of the stuff stayed dry and was all well packaged but boy did my mother and I get soaked to the skin. Then when I got home I needed to unload EVERYTHING from the van so that it could all dry out in the garage rather than stinking up the car with soagy cardboard smell. I sorted, cleaned, and stored everything away this morning and nothing was damaged thankfully. It is now all ready to go for the next show!