Resolution revolution

Resolution revolution

I’ve been reading. In the Guardian Weekly, a series of ideas for making life better by doing the opposite of what articles on how to make life better normally suggest. My wife is very uncertain about learning to love my clutter! I think one of the recommendations is to avoid New Year resolutions.

Around Christmas, magazines and websites are full of things to do, creative ideas to try, and books to read. A couple of these in one print magazine have really caught my eye: so I’m going to suggest them here – assuming that the moderators don’t take exception to them if, because there is a commercial angle to one of them.



The non-commercial one is called print swap, and takes a leaf from David Hurn’s book. All through his working life as a photographer Hurn swapped prints with the other photographers and built up a collection of photographs reflecting the great and good of the photographic world. How about trying that here at Ephotozine? Would you like a print of one of the pictures I’ve posted here over the last year or two? If so, send me a message and I’ll have a shufti at your portfolio. If you can’t print your own pictures at home, you could send me a digital file and I’ll print it: and of course I promise not to do additional prints.

I’ve got a couple of lovely prints around the house from other members of this website, and would be happy to add a few more. And if you’d like to minimise the costs all round, and can print at home, I can send you the file for my picture.



The more commercial idea comes from artist Matthew Burrows: supporting struggling artists during the pandemic, and as he envisaged it, the scheme works through Instagram. However, Instagram isn’t necessary when there’s already a showplace for the artwork in question. ‘Artist support pledge’ suggests that individual artists offer their works through Instagram for a maximum price of £200. Every time they reach £1,000 of sales participating artists pledge to buy £200-worth of art from others.

There will be some members of the site who really are struggling with their finances, for whom selling a print or two might well be an excellent way to help pay the bills. Of course I’d suggest a price rather lower than £200: I reckon that an A3 print should go for around £25 including post and packing, but I wouldn’t be dogmatic.



From my point of view, such a scheme would be more about something interesting to do and keeping the moths out of my printer than the earning, so I would pledge £15 for each print to my local food bank. But it would all depend on site and moderator approval. Ephotozine isn’t a place for commercial self-promotion. If any of the more social media savvy members fancy running this on Instagram, all you need is an appropriate hashtag – let me know when you set it up!

Print swap though… We can definitely do that, and if you’re interested please contact me.