NinjaPrints- Welcome to Etsy

Name
Henry Clayton

Location
London, UK

Business Name
Ninjaprints

Describe what you sell.
I generally focus on photographic prints and canvas works, preffering animal and landscape pictures over anything else.

What is your real life like?
Real life eh? Well currently living a relaxed and totally skint life looking for a new job having recently been laid off. I live with my girlfriend of 3 and a half years in London along with a few friends and my miniature zoo.. Pets, well theres the two black cats, two Yemen chameleons with the attitude of a disgruntled pensioner, two smaller Pygmy chameleons, two leopard geckos who are rather friendly, three little tree frogs and a giant millipede.Hobbies are mostly based around the animals and photography to be honest, though we do often go to festivals. At some point I would like to drop last Christmas' belly and get back into Taekwon-do which I have practiced for the last 17 years! Other than that I did spend a year as a volunteer working at London Zoo in the invertibrate conservation unit, which was a total blast.

What is your process?
Main tool is an Olympus E-500 digital SLR and some cheap macro filters from E-bay, though some co-operative pets does help a little as well.

Business Goals and Vision...
My business has literally just started up and is proving to be very hard for me to make any progress with, though now certain works have started selling which has been a real confidence boost (not on Etsy though so far) In the long term I would ideally like the business to pay me a full time wage and allow me to purchase new kit for my camera, decent printers and perhaps even a trip out to Madagascar.

How do you market your business?
So far I have simply run off a few hundred post cards with some nice pictures on and some business cards and dropped them through peoples letter boxes, the can then use the post cards if they want. Further than that a few forum signatures is as far as I have got. Perhaps if funds ever come rolling in I will be able to push the marketing out a little.

I will hopefully have some works up for display shortly in Brixton, there are four places asking me to display work there at the present, now its just a matter of covering the cost of prints and frames etc..

What inspires you?
My biggest inspiration is quite simply the bizzare wonders that nature can put together, lizards, frogs, insects and wonderful landscapes. It has always been that way for me for some reason, but I have no complaints.

What are two of your favorite things from your shop?
My current favorite works are a collection of three pictures taken through a rather dusty sunset a few weeks ago in Portugal at Boom festival, the sunset was so hazy and the rays of light really caught themselves in the dust, the hippys wondering in a dazed state gave the overall picture a very zombie holocaust feel. This picture collection I am selling as a limited edition of only 10 prints in each colour (black and white or sepia). So far I have had a few orders placed for these and only have a few remaining, hopefully I will see some of the cash soon (hint hint). But overall I love the shot myself and hope to have 1 left over for myself! (top picture)

My next favourite is the Portrait of a Dragon, I was very pleased at how this picture caught the contrast and showed up the detail of my Chameleon, not so sure she liked the camera though! I am going to be editing the sale of this one soon as I found it looks great on a big canvas, hopefully people will want one for themselves. (second picture)

Who is your favorite musical artist?
I have been listening to a lot of different music recently, though usually I end up listening to the "Empire of Cat" or "Sublime". I am not really tied to any specific genre though I usually hate most pop music and R & B.. old stuff is good ;)

Am a fan of these places...
In regards to Etsy I love my friend Heidi's work: www.heidiburton.etsy.com she has a real talent for very quirky cards and pictures, having received some at Christmas before I can vouch for them being brilliant! Most of the rest of my internet efforts are spent looking through www.deviantart.com my various reptile and praying mantis forums and caught in the evil webb of facebook.. Etsy does however have a superb collection of art and I enjoy looking through it when I have the time.

Find seller at...

www.ninjaprints.etsy.com

You can find my online shop and gallery at www.ninjaprints.com although regretably Paypal broke my shop recently and it is not currently working, so if you see anything you like just drop me an email! Otherwise if your a local Londener I will be displaying works in Brixton over the next few months, details of where on my website in the near future!