C&T Publications Eye on Fine Art Photography - June 2014 | Page 7

An Introduction to Fine Art America Groups
Abstract
Joining or even running a Group on Fine Art America can be a great way to promote your work and get involved with similarminded artists. Richard Reeve provides his brief perspective on how these groups run and describes his “typical day” as a Group
Administrator.

What are FAA Groups?
My favorite place for displaying art is the online site fineartameria.com (and it’s sister sites such as pixels.com), for which I will use
the abbreviation FAA throughout this article. FAA is a particularly useful print on demand (POD) site as it has all the tools that we
naive marketeers can find useful for selling our art, with very little technical knowledge required. Having said that, there are several
ways that this site can be used to get more people to see your art, and one of them is to participate in FAA Groups, either as a
member or an administrator.
In my opinion FAA Groups exist for two main reasons: firstly, for like-minded people to get together and share images, discussions
and critiques around a common theme, and secondly, to promote the work of the group members to a wider audience.

What Sort of Groups are there?
FAA has thousands of different groups on the site, covering a huge variety of topics and themes. Some are very much into the
promotion purpose and have extremely broad subject matter for images that will be appropriate to submit, if any at all. Others
offer niche themes where one can receive critique and discussion on individual artwork. There are many that fit across this
spectrum of aims. At time of writing I administer a couple of Groups: Quintessentially British, an active group promoting images of
“Britishness”, and a much more niche group specifically devoted to the work of Analog Photographers - Recesky Holga and Diana
cameras. But there are many general groups, depending on your tastes, and any FAA member can join any of them with a simple
button click.

Who benefits and how?
You should already be able to see that there are potential benefits of such Groups to any FAA member. I consider Groups to be minicommunities that exist within FAA and help each other out one way or another, in addition to the main discussion boards. The most
significant benefit is that you get another place to display your work on the internet. And every time your image is displayed on the
internet it increases your chances of getting it in front of a potential buyer which can’t be a bad thing, can it?

What are the downsides?
To be honest, there are very few, if any, downsides to joining multiple groups on FAA. In fact, the only one I can really point to is that
you may receive a significant amount of email from your Group Administrator(s) telling you what is going on and asking for
member’s comments and input. Otherwise you have very little to lose other than a few seconds of time when you read the group
requirements and consider which of your images meet them before submitting your images for acceptance.

Why manage a FAA Group?

Now

Now to the $64,000 question; “what’s in it for the Group Administrators”? To be honest, I think this is a difficult question to answer.
Personally, aside from the additional exposure that my images also have as being a member of my groups, I feel a sense of
achievement at having brought together a group of like-minded artists, albeit virtually. In the end though, all group participants and,
to be honest, even non-participants gain some value as every time any group image, discussion, or contest is posted on the web the
whole FAA site gets another (small) boost on the internet searches.

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