So, Michelle and I are starting a new business venture. As you my long time readers know I love taking pictures, so much that my camera travels with me everywhere. I have a small Panasonic camera I bought at work at a discounted price as it was discontinued. That was a little over two years ago. Unfortunately it's starting to look its age. After dropping it a few times and always being carried either in my pocket but mostly in the back pocket of my tote back the images are not coming out the way I would like them.
However, during these two years I have captured thousands of images with it and have published a huge amount of them in my Arizona... But it's a dry heat! photo blog. During the peak days of Bix.com I entered many of them in various contests and I had many top places including a first place for a sunset in Rocky Point, and some third and fifth places for cars I photographed at a local car show.
My dear friend ChrisJ has even taken some of my images and done some drawing renditions of them. Now Michelle on the other hand has a talent, actually she has so much talent that she doesn't even know what to do with it so I have taken it upon myself to explore it and exploit it -- lol. While I had taken to photograph inanimate things, she is great at photographing people. She is like a candid camera that captures good image after good image.
So, that's why I came with the idea of investing $100.00, the idea was to go buy a couple of frames then enlarge a couple of our images, frame them and then sell them. Well, the first hundred dollars only completed about four frames so I put another $100.00 dollars and that gave us at least six big pictures and some smaller pictures.
I started to advertise with all my family and friends and so did Michelle, I made it sound like we are doing something that has never been done -- lol and it kindda worked. A lot of my family members wanted to see them. Michelle and I have planned for an exposition to be held on the first weekend of April, I was hoping that by then I would have at least 12 frames.
Michelle held a party for her daughter Arielle last Sunday and since most of my family was here they wanted a preview. Needless to say the preview was a huge success, half of what we had sold on the spot and some wanted additional custom work. They will go ahead and let me keep them until we do the expo in April buy told me to make sure to put a SOLD sign on the ones that are spoken for.
To date I have spent a little over $250.00 but we expect to make a good profit once all the pictures sell. Before the month is over we will also launch a blog to showcase all the images that we have framed so far. Our starting price is $20.00 for a framed regular size photo. To our most expensive being $50.00 and then different prices in between depending on the frame and mat size. All the mats have been custom cut and color coordinated to complement the image, and so far we are working with 8 X 10 and 11 X 14 but once we get the funds in we will re-invest and explore with 14 X 16 and bigger.
I have asked Michelle to photograph some of the frames that are already done so we can post them, trust me you will be amazed that my $125.00 camera has captured such frame worthy images. At first they kept asking if we bought the images and framed them. "No, I was there and captured them myself" was my answer time and time again.
So, look for our new blog coming soon and tell us what you think. We are looking for feedback and critiques.
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