PUBLICATION CENTER

How Tracy Lovett crafted a business
that is growing along with her family

 

Once you envision a worthwhile endeavor, the next step is to figure out how to make it happen. That’s how Tracy Lovett approaches both her business and the products she creates and sells. 

Like many young mothers, she wanted to build a profitable business that would satisfy her craving for creative stimulation while giving her the flexibility she needed to stay at home with her four children. Photography has proven to be the perfect business choice—especially now that Lovett digitally outputs her images and hand crafts them into distinctive art pieces.

Working from a studio in her family’s home in rural Sidney, Iowa (pop. 1200), Lovett is steadily building a regional clientele for her growing line of portrait-centered products, including tiled mosaic frames, customized lamps, and beaded pillows.

Although she hasn’t been formally trained in photography, Lovett does have a background in clothing design, teaching art at local schools, and experience in oil painting. So with her eye for composition and color, she started shooting images of her children, then weddings and photos for friends. Since adopting photography as a career in 2000, she has branched out into senior portraits, family portraits, and pet portraits—whatever images area residents asked her to shoot.

Like other artists, Lovett freely admits to having a low threshold for boredom and routine: “I always have to be doing something new.”

But she’s also savvy enough to know that earning a living in photography requires catering to a well-defined market. In small-town, Middle America, it’s easier to connect with buyers of portraits than buyers of fine-art prints. So Lovett decided to see what would happen if she blended art techniques with portrait photography. She has experimented with a variety of techniques, including hand-coloring black-and-white prints, adding brushstrokes in Photoshop and with clear acrylics, and outputting onto a variety of substrates. 

One happy discovery is that the women who buy most of the portraits also welcome the chance to buy artistically enhanced photo products they can display in their homes. Today’s tech-savvy, high-school seniors also want portraits that stand out from the ordinary.

Until recently, most of Lovett’s business has come from word-of-mouth referrals. But once her children started attending school and she had more time to work, she started advertising and exhibiting at area trade shows. She has also attracted new customers simply by posting 24 X 36 in. prints done on LexJet’s Water-Resistant Polypropylene w/ PreLume on the fence outside of her house.

The business that started as a sideline to Lovett’s family-raising duties is very much a family affair. Tracy’s husband Michael wires the lamps and luminaries and handles the woodworking for some of the custom frames used with Tracy’s photos.

During backyard bug-hunting expeditions with her children, Lovett started dabbling in macro-photography. She used some of her bug images in a children’s book she wrote entitled Bug Summer. She also output some of the bug images as 24 x 36 in. prints and embellished them with mosaic tile frames. These prints are so eye-catching, that Lovett has been invited to display them at a photography show in Omaha, NE later this year.

Lovett credits LexJet with helping her succeed in her continuing quest to create products that are new and different. Her LexJet rep helps Lovett determine what types of materials and techniques can be used to fabricate some of the portrait products she dreams up. For example, she’s using LexJet’s Water-Resistant Polypropylene w/ PreLume to create outdoor luminaries and 3P’s Country Cotton and Universal Heavy polyester for the indoor lampshades.
           
Lovett has been a loyal LexJet customer since 2003, when she converted from film camera to digital. At first, she only used an Epson Stylus Photo 2200, and sent out files to labs when she needed larger prints.

She took full creative control over her photography business when she bought an Epson Stylus Pro 7600 and then a 4000 and 4800. To avoid the need to switch out inks, she uses the 7600 for printing on matte papers and canvas, and the 4800 for prints on luster photo papers. She doesn’t use a RIP software and creates her own profiles only when certain projects on different materials require a high level of color accuracy. 

Outputting her own images has helped her become a better photographer, says Lovett because she has learned what adjustments are needed at different points of the input-to-output process to achieve the type of results she envisions: “I learned more in six months of shooting digital than I did in three years of shooting film,” she says.

Now, if everything isn’t exactly right during the production process, she can fix it herself. This level of control ensures that Lovett is genuinely proud to put her name on every piece of work she creates.

Once you learn which setting to use on your printer, it’s not brain surgery to get decent, repeatable output, says Lovett. And after you reach this level of comfort, you can start having fun by experimenting with new materials.

“Printing is as much an art as it is a technical skill,” says Lovett. “You can read the books, manage the color, but you still have to have an eye for it. You know to know how your printer behaves and how to get what kind of output you’re looking for.”

As Lovett continues to grow her business, she plans to continue to use other LexJet materials, including signage materials that can promote her exhibit at the upcoming show.

Living in a small town in southeast Iowa, Lovett doesn’t have the luxury of getting feedback and support from local artists’ groups or digital-imaging workshops. So, she likes having friends she can call at LexJet, “It’s wonderful to be able to call someone up and share my ideas for new projects,” says Lovett.  If my rep can’t suggest something right away, she’ll find the answer I need.

To see more examples of her work, visit www.imagesbytracylovett.com. You can reach Tracy at imagesbytracy@iowatelecom.net. To learn more about some of the fabrics used to create these products, contact your LexJet representative or visit www.lexjet.com

Tracy designs and creates custom, completely ready to hang, framed portraits, decorated with mosaic photo tiles that complement the main photograph.

She outputs images onto LexJet’s fine art papers or LexJet’s Instant Dry Satin Canvas, glues them to a framing mat, and works with her client to arrive at the frame details, including the selection of smaller pictures and mosaic that boarder the main portrait. Similar to a commissioned art piece, Lovett and her client consider how the finishing complements not only the portrait but also the location it will be placed in the home.

 Luminaries created with images on LexJet’s Water-Resistant Polypropylene w/ PreLume could be used for birthday parties, weddings, and corporate events.  The top and bottom is made of 10 X 10 in. cedar boards with a 14 or 24 in. spindle core down the center. The outdoor luminaries are internally illuminated with Christmas lights.

After printing images onto 3P’s Country Cotton from LexJet using her Epson Stylus Pro 7600 printer, Tracy Lovett converts the printed images into pillows, some of which she embellishes with beads. Her creativity and craftsmanship have helped attract a lot of business from word-of-mouth referrals.

Lovett’s macro photographs of insects, framed with her photo-mosaic tiles, will be exhibited next year at the Hillmer Art Gallery in Omaha, NE.