You're cruising down the highway, the windows are open, the wind is whipping through your hair, and the skies are blue and filled with puffy white clouds. The scenes before you are new and beautiful as you pass mountains, hills, plains, swamps, and farm country. You've got the world in your hand as you crank the radio, singing your favorite traveling songs. Sounds great huh? It's an illusion that many people have of what its like to be part of the Art Festival circuit as they travel from town to town, state to state.

The reality is more like; its Sunday late afternoon. You just did 10 hours of standing on your feet. You now have to break down your tent and put away all your inventory and supplies. Then you need to hit the road. It'll be dark when you pull out of town, and you're hungry, and tired but you need to get at least three or four hours of driving in tonight to make some time. Just to complete the experience, the first drops of rain are beginning to splat across your windshield as soon as you hit the interstate. Sound like fun?

Karin Connolly makes her living traveling the Art Festival circuit. Each year the travel is different, even if some of the shows are the same. As much as she tries to keep her traveling to a minimum, there's no avoiding some brutal stretches. This year, one of those stretches saw Karin drive from a show in Virginia, out to Nebraska, then to Connecticut. It was a lot of driving but that's how the schedule can work out.

With all the time she spends on the road, I asked Karin if she had the opportunity to shoot in a lot of new places.

"You would think," Karin replied with a sarcastic laugh. "The truth is you have to do a lot of driving. When you knock out eight or ten hours on the road, you just want to sleep. Getting up at five in the morning has no appeal if you have a ten hour drive ahead of you. Besides, the more this becomes a business, the more business needs to be taken care of like framing pictures, updating inventory, going over budgets and planning ahead for the next show. All this happens in the hotel room, which of course just adds to the day."

I was curious then when did she have time to shoot?

"Mostly in the winter around my home in Florida. I do some shooting on the road, but it is such a small percentage of what makes it into my inventory."

To look at Karin's work is to witness some truly unique art. Karin specializes in flower photography. Flower photography in itself isn't necessarily unique, but her technique and presentation is what helps make it stand out from other flower photography that one finds at an art festival.

Karin works almost exclusively with shallow depths of field. She finds precise focal points and works with revealing as little detail as possible. The added uniqueness is that she prints her work on canvas, then stretches it over wood frames. This helps soften the presentation and gives her work a dreamy painterly quality to it.

"I started as a generalist but quickly learned there wasn't much money in it, and too many other photographers were doing that kind of work."

So you found a niche I asked? "Absolutely, finding a niche is everything" she replied. "Don't get me wrong, I love landscape and nature work, but it wasn't bringing in customers until I focused my work on one thing."

What I wanted to know was how she came to printing her work on canvas and wrapping them around wood frames? " To be honest," she said. "I was really looking for a way to lighten the load. Glass and frames can be so heavy to lug around. It was killing me. Plus, glass breaks so easily. If your tent falls for some reason or you drop a frame, you have a lot of broken glass. I wanted an easier way to do things."

It turned out to be the best move she made. Since working in this style, Karin's business has grown steadily. She's even getting more and more repeat customers. While I was talking to her, a woman who had bought some pieces the last time Karin was in Westport came into buy more pieces.

This of course led me to ask if she was shooting more for what she thought would sell or was she going purely on shooting for herself.

"I shoot for myself first but I'd be lying if I didn't look at certain compositions and think, will this sell?" Karin then pointed to a few images she had shot with a commercial mindset. They were good sellers. She also pointed out shots that she just liked that were also good sellers. "The bottom line is that you never know what's really going to sell until you get it in front of the public."

Karin is a film shooter. I asked her if she thought going digital would help the process of editing what she shot in the field by being able to see it right on the spot. "It would help, but I like film. I haven't found the need to switch to shooting digital. At the moment, I'm fine with scanning and working in my digital darkroom and making my own prints."

I then asked her how digital photography has affected the Art Festival circuit.

"Now everyone with a digital camera and a printer wants to do this. The photography end has become so much more competitive, even if the quality is not there. I've talked to numerous festival officials who have said that the number of applications for photography has doubled. A show that would get 500 photography applications is now getting a thousand, if not more"

All that added competition also costs more money.

"A show you get in one year is the same show that turns you down the next. It happens and you never know why. It's so competitive that I apply to three or more shows for each weekend and cross my fingers."

The application fees run between $25 and $35 dollars per show, times that by three for about 40 weekends a year and you are talking over a thousand dollars in applications alone. Then if you are accepted, it will cost you between two hundred and seven hundred dollars to set up a tent and sell your wares. This hasn't even included a single expense for getting to a location.

Karin added. "When I travel to the northeast, it costs me around fifteen hundred dollars. That is gas, food, hotels, tolls, and a half dozen incidentals that always pop up along the way. So I don't start making money until I ring in around two thousand dollars, just to round things off. It's not an easy business. Think about it. You travel eight hundred miles, you've put up close to two grand in expenses, and if you come back empty, it's a long eight hundred miles home. It's happened. Of course the flip-side is that you can have a big weekend and that two grand was money well spent."

"It's a gamble," I say.

"It's a big gamble," she replies. "But the payoffs can be great."

I wanted to get back to her budgeting for trips. I was curious if there were any little secrets for saving money when traveling.

"Priceline!" she said. "I don't stay in Motel 6's anymore. All those cheaper twenty-nine to forty-nine dollar a night hotels tend to have a smell or aren't in the best condition. When I took advantage of Priceline and similar sites, I was able to stay in better hotels for rates that aren't much higher than the cheaper hotels. It helps the mental approach to this business being able to stay in a better hotel. It helps even more when you get a good deal."

After eight years of being on the road I wondered how long she thought she would continue doing this work. She answered that she didn't know. Like with any person in business for themselves, there's a lot to love and a lot to loathe. Karin has thought about leaving the road but this is the work she knows. She loves photography and wants to continue to do it for a living. Her career is on an upswing and so until another viable avenue opens up in which she can continue to do photography without going on the road while maintaining a good income; Karin Connolly will be out there, on the road, possibly coming to an art festival near you.

To see more of Karin's unique work, check out her website: www.kcphotography.com

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