obi-wan-yj

<p>Although I'm an avid hobbyist photographer, my professional work has been limited to a handful of side jobs every year. Most of those are commercial events like fund raisers, golf tournaments, & awards ceremonies, where I charge a flat hourly rate for the time I'm on site and then do only minimal editing on the keeper photos. The client gets a disc with the images, since nobody wants prints from those events.<br>

I've just been commissioned by a local car buff (a friend of a friend) to photograph his '64 Chevy pickup that he just finished restoring, and which won first place at a recent car show. These will be personal photos for the owner's scrap book -- not used for any commercial purpose.<br>

I love shooting old cars, but I've never done anything quite like this. I've spent plenty of time shooting the dirty, rusty cars sitting around my parents' farm. I've also spent plenty of time with my macro & ultra-wide lenses shooting shiny surfaces at local car shows. What I'm envisioning for this shoot, aside from the requisite shots of the owner with his car on their acreage, is something along the lines of what Tim Wallace teaches in the Kelby Training videos. For those not familiar, that's a full-on studio shoot with artificial lights and multi-shot composite images. Although I'm pretty familiar with multi-light studio setups for shooting people, and although I feel pretty comfortable with the techniques Tim teaches, I've never actually done a shoot like that before. I may try to play a little bit with my own car before then.<br>

So, my question is, "How do I price this job?" I expect there'll be a fair bit more postprocessing on a shoot like this than there would be for a corporate event, correct? There will also be a definite need for prints from this shoot, although I'm sure the'll also want the digital versions as well. Given that, I was thinking that maybe the flat hourly fee that I usually charge may not be the best way to charge for a classic car shoot.<br>

One reason I'm hesitant about a flat hourly rate is that there will still be some experimentation on this job, and I'm not sure how long it will take me. I don't mind learning on somebody else's dime, but I hate to go overboard with it. If I had to guess, I'd say I'll spend 3-4 hours on this shoot IF I'm able to do the Wallace-style studio composites.<br>

Should I charge a flat hourly fee that's somewhat lower than normal, but then tack on a mandatory minimum charge for prints from my web site (Zenfolio)? Should I bother charging for a disc of digital images, or should the mandatory print minimum just cover that for me?<br>

The thing is, I hate to tell the client that I'm charging by the hour, because I don't want them to cut me off just when I'm getting into the groove with the studio shots. I'd rather just keep going until I've gotten some awesome results. Would I be better off just charging them a fixed amount that I've calculated myself based on how long I think I'll spend on it? If I then stick around a lot longer to "play," then that's coming out of my own pocket.<br>

What say you?</p>

<p>I know that it's traditional for normal photography to be limited to the first three songs during a show. The event organizer, who's been doing this for several years and whose brother is himself an accomplished professional musician, said he didn't think most of the bands would have any problem with it. Still, I've requested that he get approval from our next band before hand.</p>

<p>I know that the group that normally photographs the first few songs from the front of the stage doesn't get any sort of non-commercial release signed. I wonder if it's covered by the standard contract that the performers sign with the venue. I'll check on that...</p>

<p>I would expect that any fee would be based on their usage, not on my day rate. I'm just looking for a good way to calculate that sort of thing.</p>

<p>Our large church frequently hosts concerts for A-list Christian musicians. My wife & I handle all the food & green room setup, and the guy organizing the whole event is a close friend of mine. Each concert involves 12-16 hours of work for scores of volunteers.<br /> <br /> I recently proposed & got verbal approval for shooting a personal project depicting a day in the life of one of these concerts. I'll be wandering the building shooting both volunteers & musicians, including back stage & the green room, and hopefully even from deep within the wings during the show. I'll be shooting all day, from roll-in to roll-out.<br /> <br /> Most of my pro work is corporate events & family candids, which is photographically similar, but this will be the first concert gig that I've done. My intent was to use the images for a personal (not-for-sale) gallery show & allow our church to use them internally (as I always do). I'll also make the images available to the bands for personal use (Facebook, etc) if they like. Although I'm not intending for this to be a money-making venture, the possibility exists that the bands would want to use some of the shots for promotional use.<br /> <br /> If that happens, what sort of releases, licensing, or other paperwork should I have in place before the show starts? I'm assuming that I'd need a model release for any recognizable faces outside of the band's own crew. Wide apertures will help minimize those issues. What else should I be considering?<br /> <br /> Are there any good resources online for sample licensing agreements that I can place on the images before I give them to the bands for personal or Facebook use? Is that something that I would need the tour manager (typically the ranking official) to sign while I've got them on-site, even though I wouldn't send them a CD until a week or more later? Or should I wait to get even a personal-use licensing agreement until after they say they want the disc? Do I even need an agreement for free personal use images, or can I simply declare them to have that license without any signature from the band (much like I do when posting to Flickr or Facebook myself)? Perhaps a signed agreement can wait until they want to pay for increased usage. Of course I would register my copyright on these images before distributing them, just in case.<br /> <br /> Where's a good reference for pricing, just in case the band wants to use my shots for promotional use? Most of my corporate event work has been paid by the hour with no distribution to worry about.</p>

<p>I recently renamed my own business, so this issue is still fresh in my mind. I started out with my name, "Ben Hollingsworth Photography." I changed it for a couple reasons. First, it's long, which causes problems when arranging business cards & the like. Second, there's a young, heartthrob, Hollywood actor with my name. When googling for "Ben Hollingsworth photo" (no quotes), there are 1.4M hits, and while my site ranked fairly high, it got lost amid all the fan sites. I thought about using my initials, but some fly-by-night place already took BHPhoto.com. :-) Seriously, when I looked at options using initials, I found that there were countless other photographers using those initials. I wanted something a bit more unique so that people could just type my business name into the address bar and be guaranteed of getting the correct web site.<br>

<br /> In my opinion, having a name that is easy to pronounce and type nearly correctly the first time is important if you're going to rely on word of mouth to get your business going. I ended up abandoning my own name entirely and went with a business name made from a few simple words: Prairie Rim Images (a home we just bought is on Prairie Rim Rd). I still make sure that my own name appears on many of my web pages so that a google search will be able to find me.<br>

<br /> You haven't told us what your name is, but if it really is unique and is fairly easy to spell phonetically, then that may well be a good one to stick with. If your first name doesn't match it, then drop it from the business name. If your name is a little unusual, it will stick with people and be easy to remember. If it's very unusual, that might go too far in the other direction and discourage people from even trying to remember it. I agree with Marios that you should find a web address that is very easy to spell and short to type, preferably by using initials or an obvious abbreviation of your company name.<br>

<br /> One more word of caution: when you rename your site, be sure to keep the old web address active for quite a while (at least a year) with a 301 redirect to your new address. Also, be sure that somewhere on your new address (perhaps your "about me" page) you have your old company name so that your new site will still show up in google searches for your old business name. You don't want to lose any name recognition that you've already earned in the past year.</p>

<p>I'm not a wedding photographer, but I have started a couple other businesses, and I have several friends who are full-time wedding shooters. I also live in a Midwestern town about the same size as yours. For whatever it's worth, I think you're on the right track with your last paragraph. You should be using your previous wedding portfolio extensively in your advertising in order to get people excited about the quality of your work. Not everybody will care about that quality, but in a town your size, I'm sure enough people will value your quality enough to keep you employed. Don't try to compete with mediocrity. You seem to have a corner on the market for high-quality work until somebody else steps up to your level. Use that to your advantage. Promote yourself as the premier photographer in town.</p>

<p>As for marketing, you probably can't get away without mentioning any of your prices. You don't need to put them on your front page, though. Push quality, not price. Perhaps you could offer a low-end package deal that has a sticker price in the $1500-1700 range, but includes fewer services or products. A la carte products can be added to that for additional money. Mid-range and high-end packages could cost more and include more services & products in the bundle.</p>

<p>If business is slow, you could offer a discount coupon during your startup phase which allows you to bring people in at a lower price while still making it known that your typical prices are higher. A coupon or sale will make the customer feel like they're getting a great deal on work that they know is more valuable than what they're paying.</p>

<p>A good friend of mine in town has three wedding packages, the cheapest of which starts at $3000. He's good at what he does & keeps very busy during wedding season. You can check out his packages here: http://site.elwoodphoto.com/html_info.cfm?menu_itemID=415598&load=html&parentID=415595</p>

 

<p>Matthew,</p>

<p>I do a lot of work for local charities. If it's an organization that I believe in -- one that I might donate my money to anyway -- I usually do the shoot for whatever they can pay. Sometimes that's free; other times it's a small sum like $100 for a 3 hour event. It depends on the organization. When approached, I always make sure to tell the organization what my typical professional fee is ($100/hr) so that they understand what I'm donating, even if I agree to do it for free. It's a shame the IRS doesn't allow us to write off our time as a tax deduction.</p>

<p>Several of these charity events attract high profile attendees, and I do what I can to get my name out to them during or after the event. Always insist on photo credit if the images will be published (like in a calendar or newspaper). Time will tell if these charity events pay off from a marketing standpoint.</p>

<p>I also make sure that the photos are licensed for use only by the charity itself. If the attendees want personal copies, they can pay for them. This setup allows me to still make a little money off charity golf tournaments that I shoot "for free."</p>

<p>Loree,</p>

<p>I'm a little late to this party, but here's my input.</p>

<p>I'm also just starting out in freelance work. So far, I've been charging by the hour that I spend with the client. I've been tracking all the time that I spend on each job, including gear gathering, travel, post, etc. I find that for typical events, I spend about 2-3x as much time on the back end as I do with the client. I'm trying to streamline my workflow to reduce that time, but that's been a consistent number for the last six months. Given that, I decided that charging $100/hr (with the client) is about as low as I'm willing to go. Anything less just isn't worth my time, unless it's for a charity that provides certain intangible rewards. I also provide finished, full-size images on a CD/DVD for this type of event, licensed for personal or internal company use (including facebook). Marketing or publication use requires a new license and more money.</p>

<p>Once you're able to accurately estimate how much time an event will take, it should be possible to quote a flat fee for well-defined events like corporate dinners. For flexible events like parties, charging an hourly rate allows you & the client more flexibility in how long your services are needed.</p>

<p>Howdy Kim,</p>

<p>You may not remember me, but I believe my 8-yr-old daughter & I shot Sandhill cranes alongside you at Ft. Kearney last year. Anyway, I used to work at the larger of the two hospital systems in Lincoln. They actually have a full-time staffer who is solely in charge of interior decorating. All of the art hanging in their buildings is purchased outright rather than acting as a gallery, like Jeff described. Most of it is one-of-a-kind originals, although they do have some of Forsberg's prints as well. That said, most of it was purchased before the recent recession hit, so their policy may have changed in the last few years.</p>

<p>I'm afraid I don't know any of the numbers, although I do have the name & email of the decorator if you want to contact her. My email is in my PN profile.</p>

<p>I've considered trying to get my stuff into local office buildings, perhaps so the office rents photos to fill a space, with the option to trade them out with other pieces of my work every 3 or 6 months. Not sure if that's a viable strategy or not. Treating the business as a gallery, as Jeff described, wouldn't seem to be very lucrative for me, even if the sale price was printed right next to the piece. (And before anybody comments, my PN gallery is pretty old and not very representative of my current work.)</p>

<p>My most embarrassing moment as a photographer came while shooting a business lunch, not a wedding, but since it happened just hours before I found this thread, I wanted to share it. It's good for therapy.</p>

<p>I'm new to the business & trying to get my name out. I'd volunteered to shoot the annual business meeting/luncheon for a prominent local charity at a greatly reduced rate. This was the second gig I'd done for the charity. The meeting was in a large hotel ballroom. Among the 400 in attendance were the mayor and most of our biggest business leaders. The superintendent of schools was giving his keynote address. After getting a couple close shots (bounced flash) from right in front of the stage, I was working my way round the perimeter of the room with my 300mm lens & no flash. I finished my circuit at the front right corner of the room (the wall behind the speaker, about 50 feet to the speaker's left). The doorway to the kitchen happens to be in that corner. I was leaning against the wall, trying to hide in the shadows. All of a sudden, right in the middle of the keynote speech (which is being video taped), I heard a loud mechanical noise behind me and both 4' kitchen doors swung wide open, scaring to death both me and a couple kitchen workers on the other side. I quickly realized that there was a pushbutton panel to open those doors in the corner right where I had been leaning. I must have bumped it with the camera bag on my hip. When I realized what I'd done, I almost darted into the kitchen & didn't return. Fortunately, the doors shut on their own after a few seconds, and I found a nice, big pillar to hide behind for the remainder of the speech. I'm sure I was beet red the rest of the afternoon.</p>

<p>It ended well, though. The charity staff assured me that everybody (except me & the kitchen workers) got a good chuckle out of it, and they've asked me back to shoot another meeting at the same venue in a few weeks. I'll be sure to look before I lean this time! They say in showbusiness, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Problem solved...</p>

<p>In the attached photo, the speaker is by the flag at camera left, and that's my doorway at camera right.</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks for all the suggestions!</p>

<p>Lupo, I'm sure that page is referring to the standard concerts that they host from time to time and not to private parties, but I've emailed them just to make sure. Being a historical venue, they might not take kindly to mounting lights on the balcony railings, but they probably won't mind putting stands on the edge of the stage. Still not sure I want to attract that much attention, though.</p>

<p>I hadn't thought of using my table-top tripod + cold shoe as a flash handle. That's a great idea. I'm sure I can rig up a wrist strap for safety. My old Sunpak 544 (the "potato masher") already has a built-in handle, but as discussed earlier, its "auto" mode can't be dialed down any lower than ISO 800+f/8. Depending on ambient, I'll probably be wanting to work at ISO 1600-3200 and f/4-5.6.</p>

<p>I'll also experiment with making a foamy bounce card. I already have some snoots I made from that same material. Thanks for the great photos, Nadine.</p>

<p>Ellis, how do you use a softbox of that size when working a crowd? Where is your flash mounted? I'm not about to carry a stand around with me all evening.</p>

<p>Pete, that's not a bad idea. I bought a 36" remote flash cord, but I haven't used it since I got my radio triggers. I loved the look of a flash held at arm's length, but it created problems that I couldn't get past for real-world usage. Primarily, with the cord mounted to my hot shoe (I used a Canon Rebel at the time with no PC-sync), there was no place for me to attach the flash if I needed to use my left hand for something else -- like zooming. I do have a sync port on my new 7D, but there's no sync port on my 430EX flash, and none of my other manual flashes have an auto power setting that will work with the camera set more sensitive than ISO 800 + f/8 (already tried).</p>

<p>I could probably live with one-handed shooting if it weren't for the inability to zoom. My 7D + vertical grip is no light-weight, but removing the grip and spare battery helps significantly.</p>

<p>I do have enough gear to hang a couple flashes over the balcony, but again, I don't want to draw quite that much attention to myself, and it still won't reach up under the balcony where the bar and half the seating is located.</p>

<p>It's not so much the size, I suppose. This is a theatre, not a ballroom. The main floor is on an incline and there's a balcony that covers half of the main floor with a dark ceiling. Many of the tables on the main floor are booths with 4-foot-tall walls along the back side. There just isn't much room for corner-standing (or even balcony-mounted) flashes to reach everything. There's a photo of the main floor on the venue's home page: http://www.rococotheatre.com/</p>

<p>Besides, being a HS reunion, the photographer will play a far more minor roll than I would at a wedding. People expect a photographer and his lights to be a major player at a wedding, because wedding photos are important. At this reunion, I'm trying to blend in and capture smaller groups of people having a good time. I don't want the entire house to have to work around my needs and be notified via whole-house strobes every time I shoot three friends over in the corner.</p>

<p>PS, I love my Sunpak 544 as well. It's definitely the big dog in my lighting bag.</p>

<p>I'm going to be shooting a reception (HS reunion, not wedding) in a couple months at a fancy dinner theatre with unusably high ceilings, dark fabric-covered walls, and (typically) very dim lighting. I'm told there will performers of some sort (magician?) on stage, but my primary subjects will be the attendees, not the performers.<br>

<br /> I'm generally a big fan of off-camera flash, but this room is large enough that I don't think it'll work well. I'm looking for some sort of on-camera flash modifier that won't be quite as harsh as a bare flash so that I can work the crowd and shoot groups of old friends having fun. My out-of-town brother uses a Gary Fong Lightsphere when he shoots bar shows, which is probably a similar lighting environment. However, I'm not fond of blinding everybody behind me, or of wasting most of my flash power lighting things outside my field of view. I do prefer the look of having the light source significantly higher than the lens, though.<br>

<br /> Two products that have caught my eye are the Rogue FlashBender (large) and the Lumiquest SoftBox III.<br>

<br /> FB: http://www.expoimaging.com/product_info.php?cPath=18&products_id=26&osCsid=a467nd4hv9a3svdfqv0vclbj54<br>

SB3: http://www.lumiquest.com/products/softbox-iii.htm<br>

<br /> Each costs about $40 and they're similarly sized, but are different styles of modifiers. The SBIII is closer to on-axis with the lens, but I imagine it's more efficient than the FlashBender. Have any of you compared these two modifiers, or do you have any others you'd recommend (please tell me why)?</p>

<p>I've got an unusual situation. I volunteered for a local charity to take pro bono head shots of their largest donors to be used in the charity's annual booklet. My contact at the charity suggested right before the first appointment (half hour slots performed in the charity's office) that if I wanted to sell copies of these prints to the donors to be used as they see fit, that was fine with the charity. Since I was already setup for the photos and the donors were already primped & sitting in front of my camera, half of them have decided to let me take a couple additional frames (besides the husband+wife shot for the charity) to use as their corporate portraits. These are high dollar donors, some well known in the community. They'll just want a digital copy of the image(s) in question.</p>

<p>What do I charge the donors for something like this? It requires only about 10 additional minutes of my time beyond what I'm already doing for the charity, so it's not like I'm doing a special session just for them.</p>

 

<p>I know this is an old thread, but I just ran across it and found the strategy very informative. Would either of you care to fill in some numbers regarding what you actually charge for location, hour, etc? I'm in Lincoln, Nebraska, which is probably a somewhat cheaper market than Dallas. Where are you, Jen?</p>

<p>OK, so I guess I'll be giving my tax accountant a call tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up.</p>

<p>As for the licensing, do you have any pointers on where I can find, clear, straightforward, yet legally correct verbiage that I could hack up to suit my purposes? Mark, your point #2 is well taken.</p>

<p>I'm less than a year into turning my photo hobby into a side job. Thanks to several well-placed friends, I'm going to be doing a fair bit of pro bono work for different non-profit charities during 2011. These are organizations to whom I might otherwise have donated money, so donating my services isn't a problem. Most of them have agreed to write me a receipt for donated services, so I still get the tax benefits for the time I'm investing.</p>

<p>My question is what, if anything, to do about licensing. One of the charities is a big name organization that will be using my portraits and event photos in their state-wide promotional material, and has already verbally agreed to credit me in the publication and on their web site. The portraits are of a couple dozen of their largest donors, and in exchange for using their likeness in promo material, they plan to give said portrait to each donor to be used whenever the donor needs a business portrait. The other charities are smaller scale, but will still probably also use my photos in their promotional material. I'm perfectly OK with this sort of usage, and can't really envision how they might go beyond this in any manner that I care about. I guess I'm mainly not wanting to be taken advantage of in any unforeseen manner where my photo might be distributed or used beyond what would be appropriate for a nonprofit charity. I don't expect this to happen, but I am pretty new at this.</p>

<p>Should I have some sort of licensing contract signed for this sort of thing? Should I just sign over the photos to use however they see fit? Should I still retain copyright on these shots? What would you recommend?</p>

 

<p>A friend of a friend is running for mayor of our mid-sized (250K) city. She needs some new head shots for the campaign. One of our mutual friends, for whose son I shot my very first senior portrait session, convinced her to have me do the shots. I've been doing this sort of thing commercially as a side job for less than a year, and I tend to shy away from posed portraits, but taking the publicity photos for (potentially) our next mayor sounds like a great marketing tool that I'd be foolish to pass up. In this business, it never hurts to make wealthy friends.</p>

<p>For a normal, private portrait session, I typically charge an hourly flat rate and unofficially give rights to unrestricted use. I say "unofficially" because I've never written up a contract to that effect. However, publicity portraits for a public figure could be a whole different matter. I'm thinking it may be wise to get a signed contract that says what the shots can be used for and how I'm to be paid for the shots. However, I have no idea how to go about creating an appropriate contract for this sort of thing. I would love to get your opinions on what type of rights should be granted, as well as how I should get paid, if it's any different from a normal family portrait.</p>

<p>After closer analysis, I discovered that a certain shade of brownish-yellow always had a weird, harsh mottling effect throughout the entire image. Adjacent areas of a slightly different color were nice and smooth. Even my wife replied "ewwwww" when I pointed it out to her. Because of that, I had the printer redo the image. She wasn't able to get acceptable results from her equipment, so she had to outsource it. I'm not sure where she sent it, but the results were excellent. No white spots on this one.</p>

<p>This printer (Brixen Imaging in Lincoln, NE) provided great customer service and prices, and I prefer to use local businesses when I can, but two of the three large prints I had made contained significant problems. I don't have time to deal with that sort of thing on a regular basis, so I don't believe I'll be using them again. Also, the two prints of the same image that she produced on her photo printer and her large format printer had dramatically different color (the large format was much darker), so obtaining perfect color on a print may be a crap shoot.</p>

<p>The other problem I mentioned was that the 48x24" loose canvas I got (different photo) came back as 48x23.75". The image was exactly 2:1, and the print appeared to include the entire image, so something was apparently miscalibrated between her computer and printer. I had to cut down my stretcher bars to match the shorter height before I could mount the canvas.</p>

<p>Phil, woodworking skills aren't a problem for me. I'm already making a custom floater frame for the piece, which is why I want the exposed edges to look nice. I just don't want them white because I want them to blend into the recess between the canvas and frame. Covering the edges directly with wood or another frame would defeat the purpose of the floater frame.</p>

<p>D.B., curious that they don't say how much tape is on that $24 roll...</p>

<p>I've got an image printed on a canvas that I'm about to stretch tonight. The image will exist only on the front of the canvas; the sides will be covered by the wide border canvas around the actual image. When I had the image printed, I wasn't sure how I wanted to finish it. Now that I've decided to put it in a floater frame, I would really like to have the sides of the canvas be darker than the stark white of the bare canvas. What's the best way to accomplish this?</p>

<p>The canvas has a spray coating on it, so I imagine painting the canvas my desired color is out of the question. I've seen some large paintings that have a black, tape-like substance wrapped around the edges. I think this would look fine, but what kind of tape is best to use? Nothing I've got in my utility cabinet at home, I'm sure. This image will be sold (hopefully) in a gallery, so whatever I do needs to look great and last a very long time. No black duct tape.</p>

<p>I should add that the perimeter of the canvas is about 10 feet. I'd like to find something less expensive than black gaffers tape, if possible.</p>

<p>Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Next time, I'll put a border of my desired color around the digital image before I get it printed.</p>

 

<p>Thanks, Michael. I know that it was done on inkjet photo paper, not "true" Fuji (etc) paper, but to my eye, it's indistinguishable. The paper comes on a 60" wide roll and is fed into a similarly-sized printer, but I don't know the brand of printer.</p>

<p>Looking at FreestylePhoto's web site, is a "SpotPen" what I'm looking for? There's not much of a description. My city is about 250K people, and we do have one dedicated camera store, plus any number of art supply stores. I'll call around tomorrow & see what I can turn up. The printer is closed on weekends, so I've got a couple days to explore my options.</p>

<p>What sort of pen? I need something that won't discolor over time, and I'd prefer that it not reflect light differently than the rest of the matte surface finish.</p>

<p>I just got back from the printer some large prints that I'm about to have framed for a gallery show in three weeks. These are matte prints on heavy weight inkjet paper from a professional (small, local) printer who specializes in exactly this sort of thing. This is the first time I've used this printer.</p>

<p>On one of them, a 36x18" color print that has a bit of noise due to looking directly into the sun at a wooded area, I discovered a small, white spot that is not in the image file. I wouldn't have noticed it except it's in a relatively solid, dark area (a tree trunk). The spot itself is roughly 1mm wide and considerably less tall. There is no profile when viewed on edge (zero thickness), and when you look at the reflection of a light on the matte laminate, you can tell that the spot is beneath the laminate. My wife wouldn't have noticed it before I pointed it out to her, but now she sees it clearly.</p>

<p>This print is destined to be matted and framed under glass next week.</p>

<p>Is there anything that can be done to make a tiny white spot on a dark background a little less noticeable, without making the situation worse? It seems like such a minor flaw to have the whole image reprinted, but it's something that I noticed (perfectionist that I am), and if I paid $400 to hang this in my living room, I'd be mildly annoyed. I suppose if I were hanging it behind my receptionist at the office, it wouldn't bother me at all. If I can't touch it up, is something this small worth reprinting? I have a tendency to be pedantic about such things, and I don't want to be unnecessarily picky. I do want to make a good impression in my first gallery show, though.</p>

<p>I'll try to attach a small version of the image. The spot is in the dark tree trunks toward the right of the image.<br>

<div></div>