November News

Hi Everyone!

It's Daniel, welcoming you from Kyoto, Japan, where the Shohei Otani frenzy has reached its climax with the Los Angeles Dodgers World Series Championship! Congratulations!

It’s November now, but only in the past few days has the weather felt like autumn. Last night the temperature reached 50° F. (10° C.) for the first time this fall, so we might start to see some more changes in the maple leaves, which are just now starting to change color, as shown in the above photo I took yesterday.

There's a lot to talk about, so let's get down to it...

2025 Calendar

My new 2025 Calendar is here! Kyoto 2025 includes some of my favorite photographs of Kyoto during the past year. This calendar is the 18th one, maybe? Honestly, I've lost track! Thank you to everyone who has gotten them in the past. If you like Kyoto or Japan, I think you'll enjoy this one too.

Now in hand, ready to ship. More information and online ordering at this link...

Empty Kyoto Book Reminder

A reminder that my book Empty Kyoto is still on special pricing from the weak Japanese Yen. It makes a great holiday gift for someone who has recently visited Kyoto. Shipping prices have come down as well, and you can combine the book with the calendar and save on shipping. More about the book at this link...

Changes for 2025:

I have several changes to announce for next year.

Studio Prints

Until 2017, I offered fine art prints in many sizes of ANY of the photos on my website, printed to order at my home studio. When I moved to Japan and started going back and forth to California, I decided it would be easier to outsource the printing and fulfillment, so the online store could operate without my management. But there are downsides to this arrangement: the cost, continual updating of store imagery, etc. The current printshop has been successful, but I think its time to take back control of the photo printing. 

So next year I will go back to the process I used for 15 years and make all the prints myself in my studio. You'll be able to order any print on my website as soon as the photo is posted, without waiting for me to add the image to the external print shop.

I mounted a photo exhibition last spring where I printed and framed all but the largest prints in the exhibition. This proved to me that my current printers and my years of printing expertise are completely adequate for creating top quality fine art prints. 

For very large and specialized prints (canvas, metal, etc.) I will send these to outside photo labs as I always have, but I will print "normal" sizes myself: 5”x7” (2L), A4 (Letter), and 13” x 19” sizes (aka SuperB, A3+, A3ノビ). Prints matted and framed in metal frames (and possibly wood frames) will also be available. If you have any preferences, please let me know.

The number of options will go down (this is a good thing ;-), and I think the prices will also go down since I am cutting out people in the middle of the process. I am also going to promote individual photos. Stay tuned. 

The End of Friends

One of the recent trends among creative people are sponsorship programs, where you give money to an artist - photographer, writer, blogger, musician, etc. to support their creative endeavors, in exchange for discounts, special access to the artist’s creative process, or other kinds of things. I’ve seen other folks do this successfully, and I thought it was time to try this myself. After all I have been producing work for over 20 years that people love, maybe they would pay to support my work. 

That was the idea of the Hermosawave Friends program. If offers discounts and access to special features such as desktop and phone wallpapers, and a special email photo newsletter. I enrolled everyone that supported my Empty Kyoto Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign into the program for a year, with the hope that people would like it and more supporters would join over the year. 

After a year of running the Friends program, I realized that very few people were actually utilizing any of the special features; indeed it was costing me much more to provide these features than I was gaining in sponsorship. Also, I realized that maintaining the Friends program at the level I thought appropriate was a lot of work - work I didn’t really feel like doing. 

So the Friends program will shut down at the end of 2024. Discounts for prints and other work will remain alive through the end of the year, so if you had your eye on a print or coffee mug for a holiday present, you can still get a 1/3 discount at my printshop until the end of the year. If you forgot your Friends password, please check your emails or write me at photos@hermosawavephotography.com.

Picture of the Day Email

I’ve been experimenting with this feature for a while and now I’m ready to release it into the world! The Picture of the Day Email is a more-or-less daily email newsletter whose content is the latest photo posted on my website. The email is currently delivered early in the morning (USA time) each day that I post a new photo, so you can wake up with something more pleasant than election chaos in your inbox. :-)

The Picture of the Day Email is a free subscription, separate from the Behind the Shot newsletter you are currently reading. Subscribe to the Picture of the Day Email at this link...

I wish everyone a calm November, and a Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. Deep breaths, people! 😀

Daniel Sofer
Hermosawave Photography