>> $8,000 is more money than I have ever owned at any time in my entire
>> life. (I just changed the exchange rate. On 8 Nov 2007, that would have
>> been £3795.07 - and that's the lowest it's been in the last 10 years.)
>>
>> Would you seriously take out a 5-year loan just to afford some pictures
>> to put together a website that *might* get you a few more orders?
>
> If that's what it took to get my business off the ground and earn a
> living, probably.

Damn. I'd probably spend that money on something /guaranteed/ to get 
results. But then again, I wouldn't be running my own business in the 
first place...

>>> Because I've used some. There's lots of stuff on Flickr with Creative
>>> Commons licences, you just have to look for it.
>>
>> In my limited experience, the stuff on Flickr is no better than the
>> rubbish I could shoot myself.
>
> Ah. So based on a limited experience, you have dismissed an entire pool
> of possible pictures. Gotcha.

The majority of Flickr users are amateurs like me. Is it surprising that 
they produce pictures of similar quality?

I'm sure if you search hard enough, someone somewhere has done 
professional-quality work. But you won't find much of it in there.

>>> You don't own a digital camera?
>>
>> No, I just don't put the pictures in the My Little Pony folder. But
>> regardless, no photo I have ever taken is even remotely good enough to
>> be used in an art project.
>
> Says who? Some people have gotten very famous painting soup cans...

The site gallery I linked to shows pictures of dramatic landscapes, 
exotic animals, beautiful sculptures, and so forth. I don't have any 
photos of anything remotely like that.

>> Given that calligraphy is a rare skill, the idea that there's "bound to
>> be" someone "in their immediate surroundings" seems rather
>> questionable...
>
> Cousins? Neighors? Coworkers? Friends? People in your dance classes?
>
> Do you know for a fact that all of these people can only produce chicken
> scratches, or have you already decided that only Tibetan monks with a
> life to spare can achieve decent results, based on your limited experience?

In 30 years of being alive, I've never seen anybody do calligraphy and 
get good results. So it can't be that common. :-P

As a matter of fact, several people in the office where I work make 
greetings cards as a hobby. They're much better than anything I could 
make, but I still wouldn't say they're especially good.

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