(This is Part II of a multi-part series. For a recap of what happened, please see Part I, which can be found here...)

With my mind made up to enter my photographs in the Champlain Valley Fair, and with a set of reachable yet challenging goals in hand (invoking distant memories of undergrad collegiate courses on motivation and employee behavior- go Blue Hens!), I was ready to actually pick and assemble my photographs. While I noticed that with a proper application of the special category rules, an aspiring photographer could flood the exhibit hall with many works, I decided to limit myself to entering only the maximum amount of photographs in the traditional photography exhibit, which was three. That way, I don't risk annoying anybody, first because I was new to this, and second, entering three photographs as opposed to one or two gave me more opportunities to break even, since each photograph I enter could theoretically either be bought, win a prize, or both.

I found picking the right photographs to be the hardest task. I had thousands of photographs to choose from over several years of heavy camera use, and while I'm on record believing I still have a long way to go before I consider myself competent at this, out of those thousands there has to be a handful worth exhibiting at this level, if for no other reason than a stopped clock being right twice a day. Which ones should I use? I had several favorites, of course, should I just enter those? Among the goals, however, was to make money, and there really only two ways to do that- either win a prize or sell the photograph. This means not necessarily entering into the Fair what I liked, but what I thought others might like. Who are the judges? What in a photograph motivates them to hand out a prize? Who is the audience? What in a photograph might motivate them to buy it?

In trying to answer these questions, I quickly realized that market research on the judges was a lost cause. I didn't know who the judges were, and they weren't listed anywhere. In years past as a spectator, I never paid much lasting attention on who won prizes and for what, and that was information that did not seem easily available in compiled form. Past winners were not listed in the Fair documentation, and while I bet you I could probably have gone to the local library, hit the microfiche, and pulled the names of twenty years' of Fair winners from the newspaper archives, I doubt I would ever recoup the opportunity costs in doing so. Plus, even if I put in that level of work, actual photographs of the winning photographs would not necessarily be available for me to figure out what makes a particular photograph merit a fancy blue, red, or white ribbon. It quickly became obvious that if any of my photographs won a prize, it would be due to factors I couldn't control for. Given that it's better to focus on what I could control versus what I couldn't, I decided not to worry too much about trying to win a prize.

Not worrying about the judges freed me up to worry about the crowd itself. "Crowd", while quite vague, is the best descriptor I had for my potential buying public, and that was my first clue that perhaps my dream of making money through fair exhibitions was somewhat farfetched. I didn't really know who my potential buying public was. I had no market research available. I hadn't conducted any surveys of crowd preferences nor did I look into purchasing this data from somebody who had it. I didn't know what sold in prior years at the same exhibition. I didn't know what kinds of photography was selling at local stores. I also didn't plan on having a research budget for this project, nor was I planning to lose sleep over this, so I made an educated guess.

The people who attend the Champlain Valley Fair are quite a diverse lot, coming from a large array of socioeconomic backgrounds and age groups. As a whole, the most accurate thing I could say about them is that the bulk of them would be local, hailing from Chittenden County or the surrounding counties. Unlike the more boutique fairs like Tunbridge, the Champlain Valley Fair doesn't generally attract people from far and wide merely for the experience of going to a county fair. If people are traveling in from more than 45 minutes away, it's probably to see Larry the Cable Guy. So, my best shot at selling a photograph would be to exhibit one that would appeal to someone from Chittenden County, Vermont.

While that was a start, it still left me with a large group of people to segment out. Not everybody from Chittenden County who is attending the fair is going to be in the market for a photograph, and it would serve my interests best if I could eliminate the groups less likely to buy. For instance, there would be a lot of kids and teens who go to the fair, and they most likely wouldn't be in my target segment. I figured that they are more likely to spend their hard-earned summer job money on items made from cheap plastic and allegedly ironically worded t-shirts. So, trying to appeal to the youth is probably not my best strategy.

Also, I figured it was probably a decent assumption to make that there were a lot of adults attending the fair who were not likely to buy photographs for a variety of reasons, but without any relevant research available, I wasn't going to gain much insight over why they weren't interested. Combined with the kids, I felt it was safe to say that at least 66% of my potential audience was not in the market for a photograph no matter what I did. Unfortunately, that revelation didn't shed any light on the remaining 33%.

Here's where my analysis really got thick with guesses. If I failed to make any money, and the reasons were in my control, it was going to be because I guessed wrong when I tried to model my potential market. I guessed that the people most likely to buy photographs at the Fair would be people with a space to fill, so they probably had a home, condo, or larger apartment. They probably weren't really into art or photography, because if they were, or if they had a ton of disposable income, then they would probably do their shopping at a gallery or be more interested in someone with an established name. Instead, I imagined the target buyers to be people redoing their living room or renovating their kitchen and needing something to hang on that wall they just painted. Probably, it would be something that matches the trim, but also vaguely matches their style and interests, too.

What sorts of photos would such people like? They might like living in Vermont, so they might lean towards photos of local things. Landscapes might work well, too, lots of people in this area are, as you would expect, into mountains, lakes, streams, farms, and the like. Especially around the kitchen, country-style decor seems popular here. Subject would be important, but even more so would be color- would it look good in the den? The entryway? Would it work with the new wallpaper?

Engaging in this thought process, I came up with a list of photographs that I guessed my target audience would buy. Many of them were photographs that I had planned on using all along. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use them. The problem was they didn't really fit into the any of the three exhibition categories. To review, those three categories were:

1. On the Farm
2. Up in the Sky
3. Nature in All Its Glory

One couldn't have picked a worse set of categories from the perspective of what I generally took photographs of. While most Vermont photographers do focus on the pleasantly bucolic, I'm an Urban Vermonter. Therefore, "On the Farm" was a tough category to fill, as I had a handful of farm pictures at best, and none of which I would consider exhibition-worthy. "Nature in All Its Glory" was another challenge for me. Sure, I had a ton of landscapes, but my best ones had buildings in the way of all the nature. While many Vermont photographers are partial to wildlife photos, I tend to avoid any life in my photos, at least of the human or animal variety. Plants seem to do well in my pictures. My personal style doesn't really care for floral themes, but my mercenary tendencies come into play, and flowers seem like popular things to put on mugs or shirts. However, outside of a few closeups of those flowers I had nothing like that on hand. Finally, I was totally stumped by "Up in the Sky". What's in the sky? Birds? Clouds? Airplanes? I had one cloud photograph (not worthy) and several blurry attempts to capture seaplanes over Lake Champlain, and that was about it. None of my "A-list" photographs seemed to apply.

Why was I worried about theme in the first place? Theme was more important to whether or not I won a prize, as one aspect of judging was how well it evoked the theme. I already concluded that winning a prize was outside my control, but the reason I worried about it was that this was my first exhibition, and I didn't know what would happen if my photographs didn't match theme. I was worried that they might not be accepted into the exhibition. Also, in case my photographs did turn out to be good enough for prizes, spreading them out across themes meant they didn't compete with each other.

If I wanted photographs that matched the themes, I had to think fast. Since I still had a few weeks before the deadline for entry, my first instinct was to grab my camera and start shooting category-specific photographs. It was getting to be mid-to-late summer, so it was a good time for berry picking, a favorite summertime activity of Amelia's. We had gone strawberry picking earlier in the summer, and I had brought my camera to that with some success (my famed aversion to strawberries may keep me from touching them, but not from taking pictures of them- remember, it's not always what I want), and now blueberries were in peak season, so that day I alternated between exercising my reputed overmeticulous berry picking techniques and my amateurish undermeticulous photography taking techniques. In the end, I managed to take a couple of nice closeups of fresh blueberries, with a half-full pint carton orientated in a diamond shape being the best of the bunch. Now, cows and fields it wasn't, but it felt like agriculture to me. It's "On the [Berry] Farm", if you will. I had one category taken care of, with two left.

"Nature in All It's Glory" turned out to be easier than I thought. To me, the category suggested "Nature in Action", which would make many of my more static landscapes less desirous choices. I had some great ones of a swollen Springtime Winooski River playing with the idea of hopping its banks, but the drab browns of the muddy water didn't seem like they would match the drapes on somebody's wall. However, I did stop by Niagara Falls that summer on the way home from a wonderful vacation in Toronto, and the American Falls was running nice and blue that day. Not a Vermont scene, but people might have fond memories of staying at the Falls and regret never buying a picture while they were there. Two down, one left.

Finally, it was time to tackle the hardest category, "Up in the Sky". I actually ended up emailing the person in charge of organizing the photo exhibition, and sheepishly asked if buildings or towers counted as "Up in the Sky". Fortunately for me, the answer was "Yes", and my Burlington Water Tower photograph, which I liked enough to turn into a T-Shirt, became my obvious choice. Besides being a local landmark (of sorts), the photo was predominately shades of blue, a nice neutral color that might work with someone's home decor.

(Continued in Part III)...