Photography: Chris Burkard

The Web might have made it easy to show your images to admirers but the appeal of the old methods of displaying pictures still hasn’t disappeared. Photographers continue to look enviously at gallery walls, and a name on the cover of a photography book still delivers the kind of warm fuzzies that no website can ever inspire, however flashy.

There’s no shortage of photographers hoping to see their images gathered together, surrounded by text and sitting on bookstore shelves or, even better, decorating coffee tables around the world.

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Photography: Yahta Natanzi

Is it really possible to make money as a citizen photojournalist? It’s a question that must have passed through the mind of every wannabe news photographer. Anyone can now earn money from stock photography. Persuasion, a portfolio and word-of-mouth can bring in occasional event commissions. But photojournalism? That means selling to news editors, and when it comes to buyers, they’re perhaps the pickiest bunch of all.

Events, though, provide a chance to find an answer. The demonstrations in Iran have created exactly the circumstances in which amateur photojournalism should thrive. Official journalists were restricted to their offices, the location was inaccessible enough for the mainstream press to have few resources on the ground, and the demonstrators’ strategy of uploading images and videos to the Web made crowdsourcing both expected by the media and accepted by the public.

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Photography: ©2009 Scott Hargis Photo

The recession might be bad news for banks and terrible news for Realtors but it’s been good news for at least one group of professionals. Real estate photographers have reported a rise in demand for their services – and at least some of those photographers are responding with higher rates.

Faced with a glut of properties on the market, brokers are discovering a need to market their properties harder and enable them to stand out from competitors. They’re turning to professional photography to give their listings greater appeal. Read the rest …

No, this isn’t a list post. We’ll spare you having to read a list that long on your monitor. And a list that consisted of little more than 99 headings and a line of explanation would always be of limited value. It’s not enough to know that you can make money selling textures, teaming up with hotels, or creating photo products. You want to know how to do it, what you need to shoot, how much you can earn… and where to begin.
We couldn’t fit all of that information in a single blog post, and to spread it across the blog would make the different methods too difficult to browse. So we’ve gone analog and put it all in a book. It ran to 340 pages.

99 Ways to Make Money from Your Photos took more than a year to produce. It draws on interviews with photographers, businesses and buyers. Its recommendations are based on case studies and success stories that reveal exactly how amateurs, enthusiasts and professionals are making money from their images.

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These aren’t the easiest times to be an entrepreneur. Banks aren’t lending. Customers aren’t buying. Funding for even the best ideas is about as easy to find as four-leaf clovers and winning lottery tickets. And yet never have entrepreneurs had to shoulder so much responsibility. As even America’s biggest companies drop into receivership, it’s becoming increasingly clear that small businesses and talented individuals – people with smart plans and the drive to succeed – will be the ones who will create the recession’s green shoots and encourage new growth.

That, at least, was how things looked to Allana Taranto, a professional photographer. After attending an entrepreneurial workshop in January of this year, Allana decided to use her skills to create what she discovered  many of the entrepreneurs at the workshop lacked: a professional portrait that was compelling to their target market and which provided a narrative to their brand.

At the same time, she realized, taking those pictures as she and her husband, Trent, drove 4,000 miles across the country during a relocation move, would give her a unique opportunity — a chance to capture the face of today’s ‘American Entrepreneur.’ Read the rest …

Wouldn’t it be great if selling your photographs was a great deal easier? Wouldn’t life be so much smoother if you didn’t have to deal with the printers, handle the packing and mailing or even collect your customers’ credit card details?

You could just shoot the pictures you want, put them on the Web and let some automated system sort out the headache of taking the orders, managing the prints, and processing the payments and shipping.

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Keywording probably has to be the least popular part of any photographer’s workflow. Creating the images is always fun. Even editing and enhancing your pictures requires almost as much creativity as technical skill. But listing the words that a searcher might use to find your photos is about as enjoyable as reading a thesaurus – which, of course, is often part of the process.

It is important though. While stock agencies do provide categories for their image libraries, buyers generally prefer to search rather than browse, typing in the terms that they consider the most important. Miss the words  a searcher might use, and you’ll cut yourself out of the running for a sale. The first problem then isn’t just deciding what your picture portrays but trying to second-guess how other viewers might see it — and then including all of the possible different terms that they might use for the same motif.

“Not only does an interpretation of an image vary from viewer to viewer (add to this cultural differences) but also we have the flexibility of natural language,” explains Liisa Kaakinen, a professional keyworder who also teaches photographers and libraries how to categorize their images. “‘Pool’ can refer to a body of water, billiards game, swimming pool etc., and Wellington boots can be called ‘Wellies’,’ Rubber boots,’ ‘Galoshes,’ ‘Gum boots’ etc. Even with rigid and solid keywording rules in place keywording is always changing – language changes as do the market demands.”

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Photography: burtonwood+holmes

It sounds about as modern and up-to-date as silver-gelatin prints and watching the birdy. In the age of social networking and pay-per-click advertising, the idea of sending marketing material via the post office feels like a trip back to the 1950s, the time when mailboxes first started filling up with unwanted bits of paper.

And yet, as any trip to your own mailbox will tell you, businesses still do it. In fact, Americans receive a total of about 4 million tons of junk mail every year. That’s an awful lot of overflowing recycle bins but if businesses are still filling envelopes, then there’s a good chance it still works. According to the Direct Marketing Association, an advocacy group, more than $173 billion was spent on direct marketing in the United States in 2007, generating over $2 trillion in incremental sales. Eighty percent of advertising material is at least scanned before being binned, the organization says.

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The two most inspiring people on Flickr are really Matt Smillie and Cherry Vega. During a trip to Japan in 2004, Matt shot this picture of a tattooed woman taking a picture of some dancers and uploaded it to Flickr. A friend of the woman in the photo, Cherry Vega, recognized the tattoo and told her about the photo. Cherry left a comment on the image, the photographer got in touch, traveled the length of Britain to meet and — as far as we know – they’ve been together ever since.

They’re unusual. Flickr doesn’t usually inspire people to go out and fall in love — although it would be nice if it did. It’s much better at inspiring us to go out and become better photographers.

Or rather, the people on Flickr inspire us to become better photographers because that’s what Flickr’s really all about: looking at great images, chatting to fantastic photographers and using their examples and their advice to get better and better every day.

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While sharing images on the Internet is as simple as creating a website or uploading to a Flickr stream, earning revenue from the people who look at your pictures has always proved difficult. Writers can embed AdSense ad units into their articles or keyword terms with Kontera but photographers have had to hope for the occasional print sale, usage license or commission to make money from their online galleries. Even Google struggles to match ad inventory with images, and the sight of a beautiful picture in the middle of a screen is always going to distract viewers from the ads on the side of the page.

That might be about to change though if a new idea pioneered by FlipGloss proves successful. Rather than surround a picture with advertisements, FlipGloss incorporates ads into the images  themselves. Placing the cursor over a picture element highlights that element and allows the viewer to bring up a floating layer with more information. So users interested in fashion can easily learn more about the handbag carried by the celebrity in the picture or the dress worn by the model. They can learn who the designer is, see thumbnails of similar designs and click through to stores where they can make a purchase, and all without taking their eyes off the picture.

By using large, high-quality images, the ads become content in the same manner as the full-page spreads in glossy magazines like Vogue and GQ.

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What do photographers want most? Do they want to sell their photos and enjoy the income that their talent can bring? Or is it enough simply show their pictures to as many people as possible and bask in the acclaim and praise of their peers? In practice, of course… photographers want both, and they want them as much as possible. Being told time and time again that your photos are wonderful, that you’ve done a great job and that you definitely have a photographer’s eye never gets old.

But there’s no more powerful proof that you’ve got it what it takes as a photographer than finding someone’s name at the bottom of a check. And spending the money is nice too.

The problem is that it’s much easier to persuade people to look at your pictures than it is to persuade someone to buy them. When it comes to sharing your photos, there’s a whole range of different channels to choose from. While galleries might be the most prestigious way of showing your pictures, you’re likely to pick up more image views on a website, on a popular blog and on a well-networked Flickr stream.

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There’s only one thing worse than creating images that no one buys: seeing other photographers creating images that people do buy. Now that it’s possible for anyone with a camera to put their photos in front of image users, talented photographers should expect to pick up sales. If that’s not happening to you, there’s probably a good reason.

Or rather, there could be one of several reasons.

The first – and least pleasant to admit – is that your images just aren’t good enough, at least not yet. With such a huge choice of photos now available, buyers are only going to pick the best, and those shots are going to be very good indeed. Your best image might be excellent in comparison those you’ve created before but it also needs to be excellent in comparison to everyone else’s to win a sale. The lighting has to be perfect, the composition exactly right, and the amount of noise at a level suitable for use. A photographer’s justifiable pride in a good image can get in the way of an objective assessment of the photo’s quality. Place similar compositions from other photographers side-by-side and ask someone else which photo they prefer. If they don’t point to yours, you’ll know why your picture isn’t selling – and what you need to do to improve.

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There’s often something a little demoralizing about browsing the calendars and cards in a bookstore. You spend hours in the studio wracking your brain to come up with new angles and new approaches to creating pictures. You try to think of creative ways to photograph daisies, daffodils, and other people’s dogs. And then you walk into Borders and see almost exactly the same posters, calendars and cards that they were selling last year.

The photos are still top-quality. They’re pretty and technically perfect. The colors on the petals are vibrant, the pets’ expressions are cute and the printing is second-to-none. And they express concepts that are about as original as the idea behind a fourth Hollywood sequel.

But if major publishers – the companies with the sort of distribution channels that can land them front-of-shop placements across the country – are consistently producing photo products that look the same year after year, there’s probably a good reason. They know they sell, and that can’t be said of products with more imaginative shots.

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Photography: Gil Plaquet

There are few moments more exciting, more thrilling and more satisfying than your first paid photo shoot. And if that first shoot is a wedding, there are also few moments more nerve-wracking. A couple have hired you to document the most important day of their lives. They’ve trusted you to produce the pictures that will spark their memories, record their celebrations and which they’ll show their children and grandchildren in the years to come.

Get a portrait shoot wrong and the client will go to another photographer. Get a wedding shoot wrong and there are no second chances. The couple will have nothing but poor shots to remember their day – and nothing but word-of-mouth criticism to offer other couples instead of positive recommendations.

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Photography: laffy4k

The ability to display images on the Web has made it very easy for photographers to put their work in front of buyers. Unfortunately, it’s had another effect too. It’s also made it very easy for buyers to pick up images for free. When a buyer sees a photo he likes, whether it’s in someone’s Flickr stream, on their blog or sliding across their website, the first step is often to praise the image… and ask if they can use it for nothing. Flattery — and the thrill of publication – are often enough to persuade the photographer to agree, winning the photo editor a great image without touching his budget, and no doubt giving him a smile from the boss too.

This Creative Commons-licensed nature shot, for example, was spotted on Flickr and featured in Maxim magazine, a publication that’s certainly used to paying for its photos. The photographer received nothing more valuable than bragging rights.

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For photographers looking to show their work to photo editors, life should now be easier than ever. If once they had to stuff a pile of prints into a envelope or make an appointment to show off their portfolio, today they can wow editors with the images on their website even while they’re out completing another job. But that easy option throws up a bunch of new difficulties. With websites so effortless to build — and with so many to choose from — how does a photo editor decide which photographer’s online portfolio to examine in detail, which photographers to hire and which to ignore? And what can a photographer do to make sure that his or her work receives the attention it deserves and wins a commission?

The first requirement is perhaps the most surprising. Despite the whiz-bang features and slick animation offered on so many sites, simple is usually best. Editors are short of time, and faced with a large number of images they want to gain an understanding quickly of what the photographer can do. They’re less interested in what the photographer’s Web developer can do.

“There is no secret that photo editors like clean, clear, unfussy websites,” says Whitney Lawson, photo editor at Travel + Leisure, a travel magazine. “I personally won’t last long if the photos are going by in Flash animations.”

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Photography: Sadik Demiroz/Shutterstock

It took Shutterstock two years to gather its first million images. It took the company just over three months to increase its library from five million to six million photos. That growth represents an acceptance rate of around 70,000 new photos every week — and yet, Shutterstock says, it continues to reject more than 60 percent of the submissions it receives.

Shutterstock’s landmark was reached at the end of February 2009 but more interesting even than the fact that photographers are submitting to the company at a rate of 112,000 photos a week was the photographer who created that six millionth photo. The image depicting flowers on the British coast was taken by Turkish photographer, Sadik Demiroz.

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You can find them all over the Web. Publishers want photos. They want them for a wide range of different subjects. They want them for a bunch of different uses. They want them now.

And in return, they’re prepared to offer… an impressive portfolio. Well, that’s more valuable than money, isn’t it?

Tell that to a professional photographer and he’s likely to demonstrate a novel use for his longest lens. Tell that to an enthusiast though, and there’s a good chance that he’ll be so thrilled at the idea of having an image published that he’s prepared to accept it.

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Photography: milky.way

Successful photography is as much about what’s in the mind as what’s in the camera. While taking great images will always be essential to making money from photography, there are plenty of talented, skilled photographers with hard drives full of fantastic photos who aren’t making a dime. And as a quick look at any microstock site will tell you there’s also no shortage of photographers with mediocre talent who are making sale after sale.

The difference lies in the way that photographers who make money out of their talent think about their images. They understand that photography is a business – even if it’s not the business that pays their mortgage. The production, sales and customer service all have to be conducted professionally. The images don’t have to be fantastic; they just have to serve a purpose. And the operations have to completed with the recognition that when someone is paying for something, they expect that something to do exactly what they’re paying for.

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There are lots of different ways to learn photography, from Flickr groups and meet-ups to evening classes and books.

But you can also go to college, study in a classroom and turn your hours with a textbook into credits towards a degree.

It’s a choice that usually requires a huge commitment – both of time and finances – so it pays to choose a photography school that will deliver the knowledge you want and the opportunities you need to turn your education into a career.

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