Water Sprite

About Water Sprite

Water Sprite is my passion project. I take photos, write about my travels, and generally geek (privately!) about photography and web stuff. But no-one knows about me or what I do. My friends and (day job) work colleagues all tell me I'm a great photographer and that my writing is fun, but how do I get people to notice my work in the giant disorganised mess that is the Internet? I've had an internet presence for 3 years, and I've sold.... 1 product to a person I didn't already know. And while I'm glad they liked it enough to spend real money on it, it wasn't even some of my good work!

So, to justify my considerable expenses in travelling and buying camera gear, I have decided to get out of my shell and try selling actual real products, in person, to actual real people.

What I'm aiming to do

I am setting up a market stall. I'll start, I think, with the Hall Markets and see how it goes. I may expand to a few other markets in the future, at least on an occasional basis.

I will buy the marque and associated hardware. I have priced it, and a budget-but-reasonable marque with three walls, plus a transportable table and suitable stuff to keep a marque on the ground in windy weather will set me back about $500. Display hardware will be another $100 - $150 in initial expense (and more required as the range expands). 

What I am asking for is funding for the initial product range. $500 will get me a very basic set of picture cards in A4 and A5 sizes. I'm proposing 4 images in A5 format and 1 in A4 format. Stretch goals will mean more products.

All cards will be full colour, full coverage prints on at least 350gsm semi-gloss card made from fully recycled paper. The backs will feature information about the photo and Water Sprite, and on the A4 cards in particular may feature minatures of other images.

Update 

I have confirmed who I'm going to print with, and thanks to their innovative way of doing business, it works out almost the same price to print 8 card designs at 50 prints each as it does to print 4 card designs at 100 prints each. I have decided I will do 8 designs in the A5 and 2 designs in the A4 range and print less of each. There will be 8 designs in total - 2 produced in both A5 and A4 format, and 6 produced just as A5.

As for the rewards - I will double your reward too. If you requested 1 A5 card, you will get the card you request and one different random one selected by me. If you requested 2 A5 cards, you will get the two you requested, and two different cards selected at random by me. And so on. If you requested the full set, you will get the full set - all 8 A5 cards and both A4 cards (but bear in mind that with this new arrangement, the prints on the two A4 cards will be in your pack as A5 cards as well).

Rewards

All rewards from this fundraiser will be posted to the recipient at the address you provide once the printing is done - probably late September. Note that shipping costs are extra to the rewards costs - sorry, but shipping is too expensive for me to wear that cost. On the bright side, I can ship almost anywhere in the world for the listed price. Please select the correct price range though - I am subsidising the freight prices slightly, and I will NOT ship products where you have selected the wrong shipping rate.

Products

The initial set of products proposed are:

Initial A4 print - Boathouses by the mouth of Pambula River

A5 Image one: Evening sun on the pier (Stewarts Bay, Tasmania)

A5 Image two: Pink Tulip Drops (Floriade 2024)

A5 Image three: Sunset Tree (Mulligans Flat, Canberra)

A5 Image four: Picnic Train arriving Thirlemere Festival of Steam (2025)

If the stretch goals are looking likely, I'll add images for them and details here.

I do plan on keeping the three additional photos in my updated product line-up a secret. Or maybe I'll be tempted to wave them in front of the camera in a future video update?

Contact me

If you want to contact me, you are welcome to use the contact form on my business website (https://watersprite.com.au/). Look down the bottom of the main page and there is a form to fill in. Alternatively, follow me on my socials as listed on this site, and message me from there. I also have a linktree (https://linktr.ee/waterspriteshop) which contains a full set of web and social media details.

After the fundraiser finishes (if successfully funded), and after rewards have been sent to supporters, the products will also be available through my online shop. That site also has a range of other products available for worldwide delivery.  These products are produced through print-on-demand services, which means I do not have stock on hand of them. It also means that in many cases they are produced locally to you and you don't need to pay for freight from Australia. Please see https://watersprite.shop/

I will front up the $650 or so required for a basic market stall setup. None of the money raised from this fundraiser will go to that.

With the now confirmed printing arrangements, I can print more designs (but smaller print runs). For establishing a stall, I think it is preferable to have the larger range. These are high quality, full colour double-sided prints on 350gsm fully recycled card. I have received trial prints of the A5 cards, on the actual card, and they look and feel fantastic!

The $500 basic target is for 8 x A5 prints, and 2 x A4 print - 8 different images. Only 5 are shown above - the other three will be a surprise!

Stretch goals:

If the stretch goals start looking likely, I'll firm up pricing for the different options and share them here. I think the first stretch goal will be one or two A6 greeting-card style cards, blank in the middle for you to write in. I have a couple of photos in mind for greeting cards, different from those above. After that, I'll look at adding some A3 poster prints - on lighter paper so that they can more easiliy be rolled up for transportation. These would be intended for being framed or mounted.