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what's up you guys welcome back to the show it is a special day because last night a new print showed up and this is a print I haven't seen large so I'm excited to unbox that with you and we're also going to talk about signing that picture a certificate of authenticity and how I track my images over time so I know not only what number in the sequence I'm on but where all the prints have gone and how much those prints have earned me so I think that's a really valuable thing to know as a professional photographer how your print is doing so we'll go through all of that in today's episode and I'm gonna try and keep this to a reasonable length today so let's get started [Music] alright so the single most nerve-wracking thing about this entire process really aside from maybe sending off the print to the lab that you've never printed before and hoping the color comes out right it's actually doing the signature on the print now I use these pen touch markers they are gorgeous they're a medium tip and for these larger canvases they're just perfect they're metallic so I've either got a silver or a gold metallic so the caps delight really nicely but actually doing the signature is just I mean it's nerve-racking so in order to make sure that I do this right the first time cuz you only get one shot I actually have a junk piece of canvas that I sign on a couple of times to make sure that my hand feels good on the canvas that I that I'm feeling the flow of the pen because this has actually got a little bit of texture so if you push too hard you get a little bit of a jerky reaction if you don't push hard enough you end up with gaps in the ink so we're gonna practice a couple of times and then we're gonna come and sign this canvas all right so it make my pen choice I'm going with gold because on this picture I think that's gonna be the most complimentary I've got my jump canvas here and this is the one that I in fact you can see signatures all over this this is the one that we're gonna use for a couple of practices and I actually use a cookbook any book and butt it up against the canvas on the counter here so that I have an even working surface so my wrist is it too low so I can have a nice smooth nice smooth signature so let's go ahead and do a couple of practice runs here and then we'll jump over the main canvas and actually do the deep [Music] all right moment of truth let's go ahead and sign this thing [Music] oh I swear every time I have to sign one of those big canvases I just get like all sweaty and nervous about it it's you know you don't want to blow it it canvas that that's not you don't really want to blow any print but the canvas of that size definitely has consequences associated with it anyway let's go ahead and jump into the computer now and let me show you what sort of my file structure is and how I track the images that get sold and printed as fine art prints so if we look here in my finder what I have is then I keep this in Dropbox is a list of our fine art prints the file name first and then whatever we titled is the image after that so they're easy to search and find and then inside that folder I have a file that I keep all of the master certificates of authenticity so for every number so in this case I have file name underscore and then the number and the number of the certificate of authenticity and then below that I have my spreadsheet that keeps track of the image and what number in the series I am on and then also my certificate of authenticity so let's first jump into the certificate of authenticity and take a look at that so I'll switch over to photoshop here which is where I made it now inside my certificate I put a nice border on this I've been really careful to make sure I'm an eighth of an inch from the edges so I can have it printed at any print shop or on it most printers and then inside that I just have some basic information about the about the image the title the date that it was captured location date of printing size and what the medium is so whether it's canvas or acrylic or whatever the file name the official file name from the camera and then which edition of this and in this case this is three of two hundred and fifty then below that both kotti and I sign all of the certificates of authenticity we shoot under the wander born brand together as a couple that's our thing and so we even though it's just came that's signed on the image we both signed this certificate of authenticity and then you'll see off to the right where I have the logo here I've got a nice open space below that and that's because I had a custom embossing stamp made actually stamp the official stamp for waterborne for these certificates of authenticity below that just for one more I feel like it's an added value to the the end client because it does feel official it feels like an artist put some thought into this and that that it is you know an official proof of originality so to speak all right so let's just jump over and take a look at the spreadsheet because that's really where the meat of what I want to talk about is going on so in the spreadsheet I've gone ahead and just entered in some bogus numbers here so you can see how this works so the date that this was printed the date the image was sold which there's actually two days before I had it printed who the lab was what size that image was my cost and these are all bogus numbers so you know put in your own lab costs for whatever this size is tax shipping list price now list price and sales price can be different for instance if it's at the gallery or if I haven't listed on the website and somebody says hey you know whatever we work at a different price or I've issued a coupon or something like that the state the actual sales price will go in that second position and a commission paid so if there was a gallery involved here and they got a certain cut of this that would go in here if there was shipping going away from me so I have shipping on both ends shipping from the lab and shipping from me to the customer and then finally a paypal fee if they we did the transaction over PayPal I like to be able to keep track of that and what that does is it allows me to get a final number and you can see here when I highlight that that actually uses all of those figures to come up with my final take on that particular image and so what this allows me to do over time is keep track of you know if I've sold 25 or 30 of this image I can look up here at my little economics at-a-glance table that I've built and see how many I've sold what what this toll sold price is what my total earnings were on that and that gives me a gauge for every image of how valuable that image was for me and over time that sort of tells me what my audience is interested in what people are willing to spend for sort of where my is buying and so I think it's it's a useful document to have I also have a secondary ledger where I do keep track of every sale in a single spreadsheet so that at a glance at the end of the year or during the year I can see you know how my months have been for photography but I feel like this spreadsheet is probably the most telling for me and I keep track of client emails client addresses you know any of that information that I have where I can retarget remarket contact them and let them know that maybe I've got a new series from Burma if they like this monk maybe they want to check out the new stuff so in that way I think this is really valuable and I'll make this available to you guys in both numbers and an Excel spreadsheet although I think the Excel might be a bit of a mess because you can have multiple tables anyway Oh give it I'll get it too somehow I'll put a link down below for that and I'll also include a PSD file for my certificate of authenticity now I can't give away the whole background because that was an I stock image and I don't have I can't give it away but I'll flatten it all down so that it's fine for me to give it to you and you can use it as as you see fit hopefully it helps you all right so our image is printed sign we've made our certificate of authenticity which is here I've got my embosser handy so we can go ahead and sign emboss that I'll show you a few other things that I put in the package with that certificate of authenticity obviously business card that's a duh got these uh custom-made greeting cards that are blank on the inside so we can write a nice little personalized thank-you note comes with an envelope and then finally just a brochure with a bunch of our other stuff on it just to kind of you know what their taste buds for maybe uh maybe looking into something else they need another image so let's go sign this and get this thing on its way [Music] alright guys that's all I've got for this episode please leave me a comment if I missed anything or if you'd like any clarification if you enjoyed this please consider hitting that like button it helps a lot and subscribe if you want to do this again until next time mala I'll see ya [Music]