postcards – Tales from Wild Wales

Postcard talk.

*M327 – Snowdon from the Cob, Porthmadog*

Earlier in my career as a photographer I had a whole range of activities which each brought in a certain amount of dosh. Examples include exhibition rental, print sales, calendar sales, book production and sales, and commissioned work. For a number of years I freelanced for the Wales Tourist Board, which was the closest I ever had to a money spinner. But it was a soul-less activity and I felt just like a cog in a machine. Throughout all this time my bread and butter income was through the sale of postcards. But I always felt that with a growing track record like mine I would be able to drop the postcards and work on bigger projects for prestigious clients.

How wrong I was! The bigger projects dropped away for all sorts of reasons and with some minor exceptions all I’m left with is postcard sales. Sales are nothing like they were at their peak say 15 years ago (about 30%) but they do seem to have bottomed out in recent years. There is a whole host of reasons for this – like the use of mobile phones, the ridiculous cost of postage, and shop closures. For example, in the last 18 months three of my very few outlets in south Pembrokeshire have closed; one is now a cafe, one a toy shop and another sells secondhand books. None are interested in postcards. And yes, you do have to develop a very thick skin……

I’m not sure how many people understand how postcards are printed. To cut a long story short, commercial litho printing involves pulling a large sheet of paper/card through a machine. In the case of my postcards, and depending on the machine, the sheet holds 16 or 32 different designs. For the lowest unit price the sheet needs to be full. The drawback is that you end up with the same number of each individual design. And of course some postcards sell much better than others. There are always difficult decisions to be made.

I had been using the same printer for a number of years and their machine held 32 designs. But I began to get frustrated by some aspects of dealing with them and sometimes with the actual printing quality. I decided to look around for another printer last summer. The company I eventually settled on had a machine which used a sheet holding sixteen designs. I didn’t realise at the time that my main competitor had used them as well, but I suppose that is a kind of recommendation. Anyway, the printing went well, and if anything the print quality was better. Things were looking up! I contacted them over the winter to discuss another order.

There had been changes. They had disposed of their litho machine and installed a digital printer. My experience of commercial digital printing had been very poor but I was reassured that this was not your typical digital machine. Some samples were printed for me from the files that had been used for my last job and they were virtually identical. I couldn’t fault them. The biggest advantage was that it is now possible to have any number of each design printed. So if I needed 1000 of one design and 400 of another that was absolutely fine. The unit cost depended only on the total number of cards printed. So I decided to take a punt.

The cards are absolutely fine. Printing quality seems to be as good as the litho printer, and I’m able to tailor the order more closely to what I think will sell. I can’t help wishing these machines had been available many years ago.

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This looks like a winner to me.

Following the completion of the Bird/land project I realised it was time to step back from bird photography for a while. My bread-and -butter income still comes from the sale of postcards and some of them were beginning to look a bit tired. Rather than reprint them again I decided to spend some time replacing them with new designs. So it was time to put my landscape photographer’s hat on again……

Taking photographs for postcards must be easy…..right? Well, er…..no! Somehow one must be able to sum up a well-known location in just one image, the sense of the place, if you like, and ideally in a way that has not been done before. Take the Brecon Beacons, for example. They may not be the most dramatic mountain range in the UK but they are very popular. I had seen a photograph on a flyer for a holiday cottage rental company showing a former farmhouse idyllically situated in the foreground with the main peaks behind it. It looked like it would be worth searching out the location. When I eventually found it, I couldn’t believe it was the same place. The original photograph appeared to have been taken from well above ground level, and there was a string of electricity cables and phone lines running to the house. It had been photoshopped out of almost all recognition!

Whilst on the lookout for a new viewpoint I’ve spent hours driving and walking around the narrow, high-hedged lines between the Beacons and Brecon. Every so often I would catch a glimpse of the view I wanted through a gap or a gate but on closer inspection there was always a snag. I eventually narrowed it down to a couple of fields, through which no public right of way existed. A friendly farmer gave me permission to cross his land to reach the spot but on the two occasions I was there during the autumn conditions were just not good enough. So that particular view will have to wait for another year. And even then, I have a horrible feeling there will be a snag there too.

What I did find earlier in the year after many hours searching, was a view of the Beacons from the graveyard at Brecon. The image may not have a great deal of merit in an artistic sense but as a postcard it looks like a winner. I’m not sure yet what I’ll use as a caption!

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Seeking enlightenment?

You can get very close for £75k, according to this estate agent.

It’s been a quiet time recently for me photography-wise. I’ve taken delivery of 48,000 of my Wild Wales postcards, beautifully printed for me by a local printer, and now I have to get out on the road and sell them! Just waiting on the first batch of fridge magnets too, being air-freighted from China. At first the idea of producing fridge magnets seemed a bit tacky, but I gradually came around to the idea. Depending on the image (and the quality of the printing) they can be quite attractive. We’ll have to see how they go.

For some reason I happened to glance in the window of a local estate agent this morning. We know they tend to enhance the positives of their properties but this is surely going too far…..!

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