And we're back live.....!

Well, it's been about a year and a half since my last post on this blog and a lot has happened. For starters, our biz has grown a lot, and we now work full time at J&M Photography. We have now trashed, um...dedicated yet another room in the house to the business.

In other news, my creative skills have grown - Mellissa's too - as we learn more and more about CS3, HDR, and other photo-enhancing software.

Lots more photos and changes coming! We have a new booth design, a new photo product involving printing onto laminate plaques, and interesting new clients.

Stay tuned.

Dublin St. Patrick's Day Festival

We survived the 24th Annual Dublin St. Patrick's Day Festival. Our set up still took us over three hours to complete, but we were more organized than we were in Monterey. It's a madhouse at 6am, at the crack of dawn, with 150 artists trying to set up their booths. Cars are parked in the space we are assigned and there is NOT enough room for the booths and cars and people, but somehow it all works.

Lisa handles the organization of everything and I have no idea how I would do it without her. I am strongly considering nominating her for "Employee o the Month" at J&M Photography. That would give her a half day off once a year and a ribbon.

The rules are that once you unload your gear, you are required to move your car to the designated vendor parking area. Good rule with one small problem: the parking area is just a little east of Nevada. It took me about two weeks to walk back to the booth after moving the car. I saw this as I passed the California state line.

Luckily, I made it close and found my way back to the fair. But, I had two serious questions upon my return: Where is the boy's room, and where the heck is my booth??!! Fortunately, the organizers thought of everything.

I found the booth, continued to help Lisa set it up and finally stepped back to see the results. Not bad, and even some modifications from our last attempt.

I wouldn't exactly say that this was a "fine arts" fair, and there were some interesting artists near us.

Some of the vendors did better than others.... Not sure how this guy did, but we sure envied his easy set-up and take-down.

Look at his inventory and then look at ours....

We actually sold more in Monterey, but had fun in Dublin and learned more about craft fair techniques. Some of the vendors said that they sold very little and blamed the class of people attending. They said that there were just a bunch of beer drinking locals attending who bought only beer. Not sure where they got that idea.

And then, surprisingly soon, the two days are over and we start the take-down process. Two and a half hours later, we were done, home, and exhausted.

And now a special word goes to Mona, Win, Glenn, Ellen, Hippo, Yanni, Lorraine, Lemoyne, Glen, John, Julie, Mrs. H., Mike, and Virginia: THANKS! We loved seeing you guys and it meant a lot to have you there.

Monterey Art Show

We survivied our first real art show/craft fair in Monterey! We worked for weeks to get ready, printing photos, matting, framing, printing greeting and note cards, creating photo journals, and trying to organize everything.

On the day of the show, we awoke at 4am for the drive and it then took us three hours to set up and stock the booth. We were unorganized and looked like the Three Stooges at the Art Show. Finally, we stepped back and saw our booth.

...and then we waited, and waited for customers to stop by. Lots of people did come thru eventually and said nice things about the images. At 10:30am, a guy bought a favorite picture for $60.00! Our first Monterey sale!

Three other photographer/artists were at the show as well, and this one had great photos! He had an outstanding booth with $3,000 "ProPanels." His display was very nice, but I do not know how much he sold. And that folks, is the name of the game. You could have a $10,000 booth, but it's what you sell that counts.

Here's a good example: The "soap girls" were selling the like there was no tomorrow. They made designer soaps in their kitchen. Their booth was directly across from ours and we had to smell 40 different scents for two days. Worse than that, we had to listen to their little rap about the soaps for two days, and watch them ring up about $40 million in sales. At the end of the show, I wanted to beat them senseless with their friggin' soaps. I actually bought a manly bar for five bucks and used it yesterday. It was great.

Here I am talking to a customer. Here's how the conversation went: "No sir, we don't have soaps here, just photos. Soaps are across the way." Thank God for the helpfulness of the artists near us. The "wood guy", the "hat lady", the "jewelery girls" and even the "soap chicks" gave us good insights on the craftfair scene, the show circuit, the dos and don'ts, and the tips and tricks of the trade.

At the end of the first day, we had sold about $300. Most people just left their booth closed up, but with all of the merchandise inside! I wanted to load everything up into our car, but other artists convinced me to just leave it as they do. We left it all and it turned out fine. Here is my J&M Photography partner giving me that "I can't believe you got me into this" look. I am very proud of my sweetie, who worked tirelessly for two 15-hour days and never complained once.

Here's my sales pose which basically says, "Buy something mofo or I will kill you and your family!" It didn't work as well as I had hoped, but it was all that I had. We met a lot of people, sold some pics and enjoyed the show. I got to talk to a lot of people who love photography and even inspired a few. Some photography students stayed a while to talk and even two professors who taught photography at a local college. Lots of fun.

At the end of the two days, on Sunday, we had to pack up and it took forever. I just didn't want to be last. We were. The show ended at 5pm, and we finally left at 7:30pm after getting kicked out by the show promoter and the security guard. We made another $450 the second day, for a total of $750.00. After our motel costs, an expensive dinner, fees, and gas, we pocketed less than half of that, but learned a lot. Our next show is the Dublin St. Patrick's Day Festival March 15/16. We are ready!

Special thanks to Yanni, Lorraine, Niko, Glen, Lemoyne, Tim, and Margie for coming down to see us. It was great to see a friendly face.

Looks like were off to the races...

J&M Photography

Welcome to Jeff and Mellissa's photography website. Launched on September 22, 2007, J&M Photography has the premier crafts fair photography booth in five western states . J&M is the leader in it's field of taking and selling photos. As yet, however, we have no booth, no licence, no tables, no mats, no frames, and frankly, no photos for sale. Mere details.

Meet the President and CEO of J&M, hugging his Executive VP in charge of Finance, Treasury, and Accounting. (It is rumored that these two are sleeping together.)

Although we have absolutely no experience in actually selling anything at a crafts fair, we have been to many street and crafts fairs. We have bought things like, beer and corn dogs at fairs, so we have some knowledge of the buying process.

At J&M Photography, we may lack any experience whatsoever in setting up a booth at a street fair, however we pride ourselves in that we use only the most modern photographic equipment.

We are also proud of our staff. Here's the head of our Nature Photography Department in a weekly staff meeting with the VP of our Children's Portraits Division.

At J&M, we like to say: "Hey! What time's lunch around here?" and "Honey, where's the camera? I wanna see if I can get a shot of my toenail!" Our corporate motto is: "Hey, you're not the boss of me!"

Big news on our second day of business. We have inventory! Check out how professional this is!

Today, our third day of business, we added another camera to our photographic arsenal: the hot new Canon 40D. Check out this baby below!

So remember J&M Photography for all your street and crafts fair needs!