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The Coconut Grove Arts Festival Visiting Artist
Program |
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Larry Berman
e-mail:larry@bermanart.com
Po Box 265 Russellton, PA 15076
412-767-8644 800-350-9289 |
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Using Current Technology
to Create, Promote and
Market Your Art |
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page as a PDF file and print it out
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Larry Berman (2nd from left) and teacher Colette
Stemple (far right)
Coral Reef Senior High School - 3/12/2004
taken by one of the students with my digital camera
"It's not about how to paint a painting or take a
photograph. It's about how to use that information in a real world
situation to earn a living."
Quote by Larry used on the NBC local news |
Personal History
I have both a strong technical and artistic background in
photography. My wife Mary and I have been selling our photography at art
shows for approximately 30 years. In the mid 1970s I was staff
photographer for a professional basketball team. I spent almost 20 years
shooting stock photography and was represented by a large stock photo
agency. Currently, besides doing art shows, I work with a partner Chris
Maher doing web design for artists with a client list of about 150 sites.
We also write about digital imaging and the latest technology for
Shutterbug Magazine. In 2003 we coauthored a book called “50 Fast
Digital Camera Techniques”. You don't need the latest and greatest
digital camera to take creative photographs. My current body of work is created with a
four-year-old discontinued digital camera. I believe in carrying a
camera and shooting all the time. It keeps me thinking creatively. |
| I’m always
receptive to questions sent by
e-mail. |
| Examples of my current photography |
| I look for abstractions in the
everyday world as can be seen on the top row. The original subject matter
is almost irrelevant to the interpretation of it. For example, the triangle piece on
the left is the entranceway to a fast food restaurant. The bottom row is
an example of applying my unusual technique to a more commercial type of
subject and producing saleable images. |
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| Be Creative |
 | Carry a camera all the time and use it to express
yourself.
 | Digital has freed me from the expense of shooting
film and has allowed me to be more creative and experimental in my work
than at any other time in my life. |
| Tip – I keep a
digital camera in a belt pouch by the door and every time I leave, it
goes with me. |
| It doesn’t have to be the latest technology. You
can even find something used on eBay to start with. |
| Example – the
current body of work I create and sell is taken with a four-year old 2 megapixel camera that was discontinued three years ago. |
| Tip – For
inexpensive high quality prints, try Costco, Sam’s Club or
Wal-Mart in
their one-hour photo department where they use Fuji Frontier or
Noritsu digital printers. They are also starting to put them into Walgreens drug stores. Costco has the lowest
print price per print but
requires a membership. Wal-Mart limits the size they'll print. |
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| Build a web site with logical navigation,
good-looking fast-loading visuals, and relevant words.
| This will be your base of operations for years to
come. |
| Use “what you see is what you get” programs like
FrontPage (PC only), Dreamweaver, Go Live for web design. |
| Use programs like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements,
PaintShop Pro, PhotoImpact for graphics. |
| Tip - I
recommend Elements as it has most of the important features of full
Photoshop and can usually be found for about $50 when there's a
rebate. It sometimes comes bundled with scanners or printers. |
| Tip – Don't use
Flash because it loads too slowly on dial up connections. |
| Tip - Don't
build a frame web site because individual pages can't be bookmarked.
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| Use incoming links to increase ranking in the
search engines like Google. |
| Make it a resource site so people come back again and
will want to link to you.
| Example
– I've built BermanGraphics.com as a major asset to people
using digital cameras or interested in selling photography at art
shows. It gets over 125,000 page views per month. |
| Example
– I write for Shutterbug Magazine and eDigitalPhoto Magazine and
put the unedited articles up on my web site for people to read. |
| Example
– I create new articles on the fly about topics I’m interested in and
have a “what’s new” section on the top of the contents page. |
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| Promote Yourself |
| Create an e-mail signature with a link to your web
site. |
| Join user forums that deal with specific topics
you’re interested in and that your web site is designed around and offer
advice on topics you understand.
| Example
- To share the information I've accumulated in my art show career, I wrote an extensive article for
Shutterbug Magazine and started a user forum that now has over 800
members. I've even gotten some web site jobs because of the article
and forum. |
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| Create web pages to illustrate and answer questions
and post links to them in your forum posts.
| Tip – I save
every post I’ve ever made to the user forums and many of them have
become the basis for magazine articles or web pages. |
| Tip – I use
Eudora for e-mail as it’s the most customizable and lets me save
everything without letting it get in the way. |
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| Market Yourself and Your Art |
| I’ve been selling my photography at Art Show for
approximately 30 years.
| Tip – I give
out cards with my web site URL to get follow up sales. |
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| Using my knowledge of the Internet and key words on
my web pages, I get found by people searching for words related to my
photographs.
| Example
– I just made a sale to an Advertising agency for a photo to be used
as part of a full page ad in the New York Times. |
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| I use eBay as a way to both sell my photographs and
as a way to bring interested people to my web site.
| Example
– I had the film from my sports photography days stored away in the
basement for over 25 years. In April 2003, using the latest
technology, I started scanning the film to produce high quality prints
to sell and built a web site. BermanSports.com to market them. I use eBay as a way to
get my photographs discovered. Between eBay and the web site I have
sold over 1,000 prints. |
| Tip - eBay
doesn’t allow direct links to web sites as they can take sales away
but you can create an “about me” page on eBay and link to it in your
auctions. |
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| Discover What Others Are Doing |
| Do searches on Google for topics that you’re interested in
and look at the web sites that you find. Analyze what you find
attractive in them and how they get their message across.
| Bookmark those web sites so you can return. |
| Tip – I use a
program called PowerMarks to manage my bookmarks. I have over
5,000 bookmarks and can find anything in seconds. |
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| Look at web sites in the signatures of people’s forum
posts.
| Example
- I discovered an amazing digital artist last year on one of the
forums. Her name is Asya Schween and she takes self-portraits with her
digital camera. Each is like a theatrical production. She’s now 23
years old and a Russian exchange student studying higher mathematics
at USC. |
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Examples of Asya Schween's self
portraits that I discovered on the Internet |
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| Links |
| Larry Berman's web sites and related
articles: |
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BermanGraphics.com
| A resource site for my web design business, digital
photography and art shows. |
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BermanSports.com
| 1970s sports photography from my days as the staff
photographer of the ABA New York Nets. |
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BermanArt.com
| Fine art photography by Larry and Mary Berman that
we’ve sold at art shows for years. |
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LarryBerman.com
| A retrospective of 30 years of shooting photographs
professionally including a list of recently published tear sheets and
clients. |
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AlternatePhoto.com
| Infrared photography with a consumer digital
camera. My latest body of work which I’m also using to apply to art
shows with. |
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ArtShowPhoto.com
| A companion web site to the forum I host for people
interested in selling photography at art shows. Includes an extensive
resource section of suppliers that sell wholesale so you can afford to
resell your work. |
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Selling
Photography at Art Shows
| The unedited article that ran in Shutterbug
Magazine. |
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Using the Fuji
Frontier (or Noritsu) digital printer
| Tips for getting excellent prints from your digital
camera files. |
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Preparing images for
the web or e-mail attachments
| Using Photoshop or Elements - the principals apply
to any graphics program. |
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| Other Related Links |
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Web site contents copyright
Larry Berman
e-mail:larry@bermanart.com
Po Box 265 Russellton, PA 15076
412-767-8644 800-350-9289 |
