Along with every new season comes change

I turned 50 last month.  Happy Birthday to me!  I figure -- if I'm lucky -- one half of my life is now over.  It's a milestone year...one of those pivotal moments where reflection on the past and pondering the future happen more strongly than they ever have before.  It's a time of deep thought.  For me, it's also a time of big decisions.  Decisions at age 50 are sort of like New Year's resolutions on steroids. :)

Upon reaching this milestone year, one of the decisions I've made is to enjoy life more.  And for me, enjoying life means being creative.  Which means spending time in nature and wildlife photographing the things I love.  Which means turning those photographs into splendid works of art for homes and offices around the world.  Which means interacting with people who love what I do and associating with other artists and photographers in this creative field.

It doesn't mean spending hours at the computer doing administrative work.   It doesn't mean Facebooking, pinning, tweeting, tumbling and stumbling every product with my art on it.  It doesn't mean spending hours in product design, placing every image on every product out there, and on every website.  All for very little reward.  Financially, yes, there are decent rewards.  But when my eyes are failing, my head hurts, and my back is filled with tension, those rewards seem very small.

All that being said, there's been some changes.  The first major change is we have decided to no longer offer a large variety of signed print sizes from the website.  It takes way too much time to set up, and keep it manageable and organized to justify the time spent, therefore we've opted to offer only one signed print size for each active image. Print size is dependent upon the size and orientation of the original image.  Pricing is the same for each image, and all pricing includes shipping.

Licensing options remain as is.  We offer both non-exclusive and exclusive.  And yes, they are on the expensive side, but considering the fact clients don't have to fool with reporting sales, paying numerous payments out every quarter for the time of the agreement, going back and forth on contracts, etc., we feel it's well worth it.  The licensing options offered save me and my staff time and save the client time.  And time is money.  Time is precious.  Time saved is worth a lot, especially these days when the world is churning by at a very fast pace.

The non-exclusive and exclusive licensing options are both the same with the exception that the exclusive is...well EXCLUSIVE.  This means the work is pulled from all sales outlets.  If a non-exclusive license is purchased first, the exclusive option is removed from that image and others can purchase non-exclusive rights to the same image.  Once an exclusive license for an image is purchased, the image is no longer available to anyone.  Licensees can do whatever they wish with the purchased images.  If they want to put the image on a line of greeting cards, no problem.  If they want to use the image for a book cover, they can.  If they want to produce and sell 10,000 prints in a mass retail market, that's fine.  If they want to put the image on every product imaginable and sell it everywhere, they can do that as well.  All for one low fee, no paperwork beyond the initial license purchase, no reporting requirements or check-writing.  

To make the licensing options more appealing to clients, we have decided to offer a 50% discount on our fees when (5) five or more images are selected for licensing.  After adding the chosen images to the cart and going through the first part of the checkout process, there is a coupon code box -- clients can enter the code LD50 in that box and the 50% discount will be applied.  Clients receive an email with download links.  Images can be downloaded individually, or if multiple images have been purchased, there is a link included to download all at once.

You can still purchase various print sizes and mediums (canvas, metal, acrylic, framed, etc) at the outlets listed under the BUY PRINTS button on the website menu at the top of this page.  If you want fun products and home decor with my art, check out our official licensee page on our corporate website - there's a whole list of choices there where my work is sold on various products which you may enjoy.

It's all about simplicity.  It's what I want at 50 and beyond.

InJoy,

Jai