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Sold two cyanotypes this month. Each one needed a full day of sun, and a day of sun in Porto in January is a small miracle. I waited eleven days between them just for the light to show up. Fourteen hours of actual exposure time across both, plus the coating, the washing in seawater, the drying, the flat files. €160 for the pair. I worked it out at the kitchen table and it came to about €11 an hour, and that's before the paper and the chemistry. The strange part is I'm not even angry. I set those prices. I've had the same number in my head for three years and not once questioned it. The print is a thing I love making more than anything, so I kept pricing it like a hobby that occasionally pays rent. I'm not raising it to €400 tomorrow. I think I'm going to test €85 per print and see who flinches. Even that feels like lying, which tells me exactly how far I am from a fair number.

I've been thinking about how my prints sell. It's not through aggressive social media campaigns or paid ads. It's mostly word-of-mouth, people seeing them in small galleries or cafes here in Porto, and then finding me online later. I sell maybe five pieces a month this way. The key is that the work itself has to resonate, to carry its own quiet story. I don't chase trends. I just make what feels true to the ocean, to the light. It’s a slow burn, not a sprint, and honestly, I’m fine with that. It feels more honest, somehow.

I'll go first because mine was a little accidental. I was in a small café in Porto hanging work for the owner, just a favour, and a woman came in and watched me for a while. She ran a small gallery two streets over. She asked to see more, and six months later I had my first real show. I never once knocked on a gallery door. It fell into my lap because I was somewhere else entirely. I've always wondered if I got lucky, or if that's just how it goes, the work finds the room instead of the other way around. So how did yours happen? Did you walk in with a portfolio and ask, or did someone come to you? Which worked?

For years I tagged every studio photo with the exact spot, Porto, Matosinhos, the beach name, the café where I dry the paper. Thought it helped people find me locally. And maybe it did. But a few months ago I just stopped. Posted a cyanotype of a cuttlebone I found at sunrise, no location, nothing. A woman I'd never seen walked into the studio three days later holding her phone with the post on it. She lives in the building next to mine. She said she'd walked past my door for two years and never knew what happened inside until she saw that bone and recognised the light. Made me think about how much we over-explain ourselves online trying to be findable, while the people right next to us have no idea we exist. Maybe the real local marketing is just being specific enough that someone local recognises their own morning in your work.

I brought prints into a small gallery here in Porto years ago, just walking in with a tube under my arm, nervous. The owner opened them slowly and actually looked. Sat with each one for a while. I'd braced for the usual polite glance and a card. She took two. That was it. How often do you walk into a space and feel like they actually see the work, not just the CV? Have you ever had that moment where you knew they were really looking? Tell me about the one who did.