The Online Photographer

[From Ctein:]

Starting on Friday, May 30, and running for one week, Mike and I will be having a massive dye transfer TOP sale. Every dye transfer print I have remaining in my inventory, regardless of size and rarity, will be on sale for $690. (Or less—see below!) That's only modestly higher than my "TOP dye transfer sale" price six years ago and it's a very small fraction of my current prices. [And it's very inexpensive for large dye transfers, even twenty years ago. —Mike the Ed.]

This is different and more complex than most TOP sales.

Does this mean I've started printing dye transfer again? No, absolutely not. Even if I changed my mind and acquired supplies, I've sold half of the matrix sets and work prints. I couldn't print those pictures again even if I did still have a darkroom.

Still, I have a substantial inventory from throughout my career as a fine-art photographer and master dye transfer printmaker. Dye transfer printing, one of the most difficult photographic printing methods in the history of the medium, was sufficiently time-consuming, especially nailing the first print right, that when I did make one that satisfied me I'd make several additional prints, because those duplicate prints were relatively quick to make (emphasis on "relatively"). Whenever a particular picture got close to selling out, I'd schedule a reprinting session and make a new set of inventory prints.

Consequently, at any given time I would average three prints of a particular photograph in inventory. Sometimes there's only one print remaining, sometimes several.

Altogether, though, there are a lot of prints—and all of them are going up for sale.

Okay, why? In part because I'm a huge fan of these sales and have been ever since Mike came up with the idea back when he was Editor of Photo Techniques magazine. The idea of being able to get these rare prints into your home for a fraction of what you would normally have to pay really appeals to me. I like the idea of people owning my work, and the more people the better. I'd rather sell a lot of prints for less money than fewer prints at higher prices.

But, why now? Because, as you may know, I am emigrating to Ireland. The more money I can bring in to pay for this expensive undertaking, the better off I'll be. Furthermore, it is almost certain that I will not be able to bring those inventory prints with me without paying a duty. The "market value" of this work is huge. My normal rate of sales is low. The economic math simply doesn't favor it.

(Apropos of which, I am looking for someone in the US to handle the shipping and handling of any sales I do make, post-departure. The work load would be low, the pay excellent, and you'd incur no liability if any prints got lost or damaged. 'Cuz, y'know, life happens. Please email me if you think you're interested and up to the task of storing many boxes of prints and exactly following my precise instructions for S&H.)

All right, enough preliminaries...

How it's going to go
To begin with, you can start thinking about what you'd like to buy right now. I've built a webpage ( https://ctein.com/dyesale.htm ) that shows everything in my inventory, organized by category, with size and number of remaining prints listed. I will try to keep this page updated over the course of the sale.

You can order as many prints as you like and I'm offering incentives for multiple-print purchases. It'll be $690 each for the first and second prints ordered, plus a flat $50 shipping and handling charge, regardless of the number of prints ordered or where they're being shipped to.

If you choose to buy more than two prints, each additional print will be half price—$345! There is no limit to the number of prints you can buy (subject to availability—I'm coming to that). "Gaming" the pricing system is fine by me—if you and some friends want to combine your orders to get the discount, I'm down with that. Just so long as everything comes to me in one order and is being shipped to one address.

On top of that, I will pay the sales tax for orders in California (it will simplify the ordering process).

Starting on Friday, you can email me your choices, with the title(s) of your print choices (and size, if it's available in more than one size). Do NOT send me any money until I confirm your order. I would prefer that US customers pay with a personal check drawn on US funds. Those without access to US funds can use PayPal. No, I'm not set up to take Venmo or any of the other alternative pay systems, sorry.

Fairness to all
What happens if more people want a particular photograph than I have prints of? Because that's going to happen. Some of my photos are way more popular than others. Here's where it gets interesting.

It'll be a quasi-first-come, first-served sale, the same as we used in my previous inventory sales, and it works like this:

Please give me up to three alternate, ranked choices that you would be happy with. You don't have to give me any alternates if there's only one photograph you really want (but it won't improve your chances of getting what you do want). What I'll do each day is optimize all those preferences across all that day's orders to maximize the number of people who will get one of their choices. This works better than you might think. In previous sales that were set up this way, 98% of our buyers got what they requested.

Don't try to game this by choosing only one photograph, if there is indeed more than one you’d be happy with. The demand for my work is very non-uniform, so the odds are that the one you want is more likely to be wanted by others. If you don't give me any alternatives, there's an increased chance that you won't get anything.

Each day I will optimize among the orders I got for that day, confirm the orders with the prospective buyers, and arrange with you for payment. I'll also try to update the webpage showing the offerings each day, so fewer people will be frustrated by ordering something that's already unavailable (inevitably that will happen, because it's not a real-time system).

I won't be giving any preference to the time of ordering within a single day, but I'll complete one day's optimization and allocate those prints before going on to the next day's orders. In other words, a daily first-come-first-served queue, so ordering on an earlier day will improve your chances of getting what you want.

Start making your list now (and checking it twice...but honestly I won't care if you're naughty or nice).

Life's work
Dye transfer is insanely difficult and mastering it was a large part of my life's work as a photographer. Mike and I have harped over the years about the wide gulf between seeing original prints and seeing only small online JPEGs. That's especially true of generously large dyes. My hope is that this sale will help these inimitable fine and rare prints to find exceptionally good homes, among people who love photography. I hope your original dye will become a prized possession, a conversation piece, and a source of enjoyment for you for years to come. And, come October, I'll be off to Ireland!

Ctein

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Stephen F Faust: "I've been kicking myself ever since I, for some unknown reason, decided not to participate in Ctein's last dye transfer print sale. I'm not missing this one—I'll be primed and ready Friday morning. Thanks Mike and Ctein for another opportunity!"

Mike replies: I know how you feel. My particular reaction to this is that I'm going to get mine framed. Mine is this one, which I used for a particularly attractive cover of Photo Techniques.