This photo is for sale, you can contact Maria at [email protected]. It’s also on my photo-for-sale gallery.

I’ve learned a lot about selling photos in the last few years, I avoided the idea for a long time. I’ve learned the hard way that getting paid for my work is a good thing, and nothing to be ashamed of.

And paying bills is better than not. My ideas about money and work evolved quickly and radically after the Great Recession. Asking for money is very hard, but if I wish to do this work with the Mansion residents and refugees, there is no other way.

I don’t offer any photos for sale unless I get at least a dozen messages from people wanting to buy them. And even them, I wait a bit. Lots of people say they love a photo or wish to buy it, but most of the time, they don’t.

I’ve come to understand that loving a photograph is a beautiful thing for me, and wishing to buy one is a natural impulse. But people check their bank balances, or have spouses or partners with other opinions, or see something they want or need more.

This is both understandable or natural, and sometimes, people actually do buy the photos. I’ve sold about 80 in the past five or six months, and that is a big change from the days when I was offering them printed and framed for sale for $400 and up, thinking that was the price for art photography. I sold very few.

I’m very happy with this new arrangement, I offer few photos for sale and when someone buys one, I send a full rez file to the Image Loft in Manchester, they do the most wonderful job of printing the photos out on classy rag paper, and leave the framing to the buyer.

This enables me to sell the photos for a lot less than $400 – I usually charge either $130 or $75, depending on the size. Maria handles the sales and takes a commission, as she should. The Image Loft prints the images, ships them to me, and Maria ships them out to the buyer.

There is no printing without a sale, so there is no risk to the seller (or the buyer.) It’s a good system, and I’m fortunate to have figured it out. I am grateful for the Image Loft, they do wonderful work.

It’s easy to misunderstand all of this, though. On my comments recently Mary suggested  “A nice way to get some money raised is to sell this picture and donate 50% to the fund for the retreat.” I had to smile a bit at this suggestion.

It might be a nice idea for Mary, but not for me.

This is how I earn a living and pay my bills, and I have already donated more than $500 of my own money for the Powell House retreat. I believe in it strongly and will pay the balance if necessary. I don’t even want to know how much money I spent on the RISSE Wish List, and I need to be disciplined about this, because if I start giving away a lot of my own money, this work I am doing will come to a halt, quickly.

And if I were paid by the hour for this work, or for writing about it daily,  I would be fat and happy.

I have never mentioned this before, because it’s not relevant to other people, but I should:

I often give out-of-pocket money of my own for smaller needs – food, cosmetics, soaps, boots and shoes, Bingo prizes,  clothing, hats and sweaters, bra and underwear, both for the RISSE kids and the Mansion residents. These are not things I would fund raise for, but they do add up and they do cost money. I ask for help when I don’t have the money, and I did not have $2,100 for a youth program retreat, although I may yet get it.

We do a lot here. There are lots of donors out there, and they generally send small donations, which is a good thing. We usually do small things and my readers are not generally rich.

So, like everybody else, I give what I can and use the rest to pay the mortgage, etc. The Army Of Good has been miraculously generous to the Mansion and RISSE cause, and I do not blame anyone for pausing or resting their bank accounts, or deciding to do something else.

Nobody owes me anything, that is the beauty of it.

Some things click with people, others are slower or fall flat. I don’t ever want people to feel pressured to do anything that is not comfortable for them, that they can’t afford, or is urgently needed elsewhere.

But I’m sorry, Mary,  I can’t be giving away my photos or words or the other things that enable me to be a writer in the post-recession world of publishing, where royalty checks are quite often a thing of the past, and advances have shrunk beyond my imagination.

I mean none of this as a complaint or lament, I could not be happier with my life, and this journey with the Army Of Good is a miraculous thing for me. We have done so much good.

I will get the soccer kids to the Powell House no matter what. But I’m not by offering my photos for sale for half-price. For one thing, that wouldn’t buy dinner at the Powell House,  I don’t sell that many photos, and for another, it’s just a line I can’t cross if I want to keep doing what I’m doing.

We raise a lot of money for these causes, and  I also devote a lot of my life to it. I am not especially wealthy. I thought I ought to explain this a bit. Openness is a faith to me, as you know.

This photo, “Ray Of Hope,” is for sale for $130 plus shipping, printed unframed on quality rag paper, it will be 8.5 inches by 12.5. Anyone interested should contact Maria a [email protected]. And thanks.

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