Help Me Build a Catalog

I'm very close to fulfilling a challenge given to me by more than a few friends. I'm within a week or two of opening up an online storefront to offer prints of my photographs for sale. I've tested out all of the vendors involved and had test prints made of several images in sizes large and small. The printer makes fantastic prints and the fulfillment service works like a charm. When the store opens up, you'll be able to plunk down your credit card and a few days later, a box will show up with some magnificent prints.

In it's initial incarnation, the store will be selling prints made with high-end traditional photographic processes on Kodak paper in sizes up to 20" x 30". The prints are the best I've ever seen from a C-41 setup. Even better, the prints are shipped flat in appropriate packaging. I should note that these will be open editions and priced accordingly. I've got ideas on how to expand the product line going forward, but for now, this is where I want to enter the market.

For the launch, the only thing left to do is to pick out the dozen or so images to launch the store with. And—this is where you come in—I'd like to ask you to help me pick out the images that I should sell. After all, who knows better what they might want to put on their wall than you? Sure, I've got my favorite dozen or so, but I'd really like to get your take on it. After all, it's you the public that will be purchasing the images.

So here's the deal: From now until April 6th, hit up my Flickr photostream and leave a tag on images that catch your eye. There are almost 6000 photos in the stream, but you'll probably want to focus in on my National Parks and Travel collections. Being a Flickr stream, of course not everything is going to be appropriate for launching the store with. You can get a quick start into interesting and relevant parts of my Flickr stream by clicking through the images to the right.

When you find a photo that you'd seriously consider hanging on your wall as a print, tag it. The tag to use is printmeplease.

If somebody else has left a tag and you really want to second (or third) the vote, then by all means do so by leaving a printmeplease1 tag (or printmeplease2 tag ... you get the idea). These additional tags are very helpful to me to indicate interest. It is abusing Flickr's tagging system a bit, but it works well enough.

Through the week, I'll check out all of the tagged photos, make test prints to ensure that they will indeed make good quality prints that will look great on the wall, and select the dozen or so that I'll open the store up with from that pool. As well, I'll be keeping track of everyone that helps by tagging prints so that I can drop a little something-something in your email box as a token of appreciation.

I have to admit, it's not without a wee bit of nervousness that I'm preparing to light the fuse on this thing. But, I've been doing a lot of research to make sure that what ends up going live will provide great prints and do it 24/7/365. This means that I can be off in the desert somewhere making new photographs and prints can still ship without intervention. Of course, if anything does go wrong, and the lab can't solve the issue quickly, I'll make sure that it's made right.

I hope you'll consider helping me out. I very much appreciate it.

Update 4/6: The results have been astounding. 129 photos were tagged by a virtual army of people. Read the results in my post, Crowdsourcing a Catalog.