Saturday, May 8, 2010

From hobby to income?

One of my favorite hobbies is photography.  I'm certainly not a professional by any stretch of the imagination (I have friends who are), but I do enjoy taking pictures of my kids, my yard and my adventures in cooking/baking.  A few months ago, I decided that I really loved some of my pictures and that they might look halfway decent on the otherwise empty wall in my front living room.


I really love how this wall turned out.  One of my favorite photographs is featured in the middle:


Several other pictures are featured on either side, some from our yard and two from our trip to Massachusetts last October.

Every time I walk into this room (which is where my hubby is usually stationed at his computer), I stop to think about how proud I am of these photographs, especially since they were taken using the macro function of my tiny little Canon PowerShot SD1000.  I've thought about putting more of them up around the house, but I can't decide where to put them (it would look cluttered to add more in the living room, wouldn't it?).  A friend suggested that I should sell some of my photographs.  That thought has been stirring around in my wee little head for some time now, but I haven't actually done anything about it.

And then a sign appeared at the entrance to our neighborhood.



Two weeks from today, our neighborhood will be holding a community-wide garage sale.

I've been thinking about printing up more pictures ($0.13/print at Costco!), putting them in frames and setting them out at the yard sale.  (OK, let's be honest - I'll be on a plane to Hanoi at that point, so really it will be my husband doing the selling.  I'm an awful wife.)  I have lots of pics to choose from, such as:


...and...


...and...



I'm still mulling this around, and haven't decided yet whether or not I want to go to the trouble.  What if no one buys them?  Would I just put them up around the house?  What if someone does want to buy one?  How much should I charge?

Does anyone have any experience or suggestions or other general insight that can help me with this dilemma?

2 comments:

Nica D said...

You can check sites like etsy.com for prices of stuff like that. Granted theirs might be a little more expensive than you would want to do for a garage sale, but it will give you a good idea. If you're going to frame them too don't forget to add in the cost of the frame. I love close up pics of flowers and plants like that, they look great :)

Shauna said...

Thanks for the tip - I'll definitely have to look into that! It's also good to know that someone else likes these kinds of photos as well, so thanks for the confidence boost! :)