Photography: Matthew Field

At this moment, thousands of people in Brooklyn and beyond are curating a photography exhibition. They’re not pulling on white gloves and checking prints for blemishes. Nor are they placing photos at the foot of walls and trying to figure out where they should go. They’re logging in to the Brooklyn Museum’s website and judging entries submitted in response to an open call for photos that show “the changing faces of Brooklyn.”

The idea of the exhibition is to explore not just the way one part of New York has changed but whether the art choices made by groups are better than those made by art professionals. According to the website, the exhibition was inspired by James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds” which argues that a diverse crowd tends to make smarter choices than individuals, even when those individuals are experts.

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It’s an odd sort of paradox. The easier it is to show images online, the greater the demand to see them in print. It’s as though photographers have come to feel that while anyone can upload an image, only a real photographer gets to see his or her photos on paper. That’s true even if they printed the book themselves.

Today it’s possible to use Qoop to turn images placed on Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and Webshots into one neat volume. Or we can sign up to Blurb and create printed books that anyone can order for a profit from the company’s online store.

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Photography: Diego Lema

The moment that you sell your first picture is always special.

Above all, it’s a vindication of your talent, a passport into the world of valued photography.

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There’s been some sniggering going on lately. We’ve heard it. It came from some parts of the established photography industry, from the people who have traditional photography jobs, people who only deal with professionals and who only supply images for major publishers.

When they heard that Lucky Oliver, a microstock site, was shutting down, they couldn’t wait to announce the death of the low-cost photography model and breathe a sigh of relief that the old way of selling images was safe.

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Photography: Elena Elisseeva

One of the most impressive things about professional photography is the range of people who take it up. From teenagers skipping college and shooting bands between trips to exotic locations, to former surf fans who have found a way to turn a couple of hobbies into a one full-time job, the background of the people who choose to generate an income from images can sometimes be as interesting as the pictures they take. With a Ph.D. in physics from Moscow State University though, Elena Elisseeva might well have the most impressive pre-camera resume of all. After working in a number of research and corporate jobs in Canada, she eventually turned to a passion she had enjoyed since her teens. She took up stock photography full time.

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We’re always impressed when we hear about people who have sold images through Flickr. It happens so often that we really shouldn’t be, but because the site wasn’t designed for commercial use it’s always remarkable to find that buyers and sellers have come together without either side taking any great efforts to make it happen. That’s especially true when the buyers are big and the companies are willing to take a risk by commissioning amateurs.

But while sales are taking place on Flickr, the photo-sharing site isn’t good for every commercial venture. There are times when you’ll need to give it a miss if you want to land a job.

Here are some of the most important:

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Photography: Robert House

There’s a tension in professional photography. On the one hand, taking pictures is a creative profession. There’s no limit to the degree of artistry you can squeeze out of a camera, especially when you combine it with the power of Photoshop and a little imagination. There are few things more satisfying than looking at a perfectly-taken image, and thinking “I made that.”

On the other hand, photography is a job and like any job, the first thing you have to do is please the customer. Sometimes the best way to do that is forget about the creativity and shoot to a formula. If the traditional way of doing things — whether that’s the formals for a wedding, a portrait of a high schooler or a photo of a winning team — is exactly what the client wants, then however undemanding it might be for the photographer, that has to be the way to do it. Read the rest …

Photography: Jerry Lodriguss and John Martinez

There are a million and one reasons to try to generate income from photography. The amount of money you can earn is certainly one of them. With skill, talent and determination, the sums you can pick up depend only on you. But there’s a much better reason for attempting to turn your camera into a cash dispenser.

Photography is fun.

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Photography: amanky

In the photography industry, it’s natural to let the images do the talking. If you want to show a client what you can do and how you can do it, you needn’t do any more than hand over your portfolio or direct them to your website. When the product is right in front of them, words aren’t necessary.

But buyers, agents and commissioning editors aren’t only interested in a photographer’s pictures. They also want to know about the person who took them. They want to know whether the photographer is reliable and trustworthy. They want to feel that the selection they’re being shown isn’t the best of a bad lot but a representative sample of the work the photographer can do.

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Every great photograph starts the same way: as a flash of inspiration in a photographer’s mind. Whether it comes during a shoot, while flicking through a photography magazine or while you’re driving through the countryside, your most important tool for capturing an image is always your imagination.

But you can’t show people what you’re thinking, so you often then have to go through the effort of creating the shot, setting up the lights, preparing your equipment and doing the post-production work. And even if all you have to do is whip out your camera to take the picture, there’s no guarantee that the image on the screen will be as good as the vision in your head.

Or that it will win the admiration, compliments and sales that you thought it would.

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Photography: Marius Necula

Just about every photographer does it at some point. After taking pictures of the view, a flower, some clouds and the cat, eventually the lens of their first camera will be turned towards a face. And then begins a mission that can last a lifetime: to capture an entire personality in one image.

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Photography: Kris B

There are few photography jobs more attractive than travel photography. And there are few specialties harder to break into. The costs of sending a photographer flying around the world to take pictures are so enormous and so hard to justify for most publishers — especially when they can often find a local to do the job just as well — that unless you happen to have a contact at National Geographic, it’s always going to be a near-impossible commission to win.

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We like niches. With entry into paid photography now as simple as buying a decent DSLR (as well as a willingness to practice, an understanding of the market and, of course, a love of the art), selling images has never been more competitive.

Creating your own specialty — or specialties, because you can have more than one niche — lets you stand out from the crowd. It positions you as an expert and helps you to win the lion’s share of the demand for those types of photographs.

We’ve put together a list of 21 niches that you’ve probably never considered. We’re not saying that there’s a market for these items — you can look into that yourself. Nor are we saying that each or any of these niches would suit you.

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Photography by Ryan Gessner

It’s a scene found in every cop show. The detective takes a photo of the crime scene to the police department’s technician. The technician blows it up using a piece of super-slick software, spots a blurry anomaly in an area the size of a pixel, tells the cop where he can find the murder weapon and solves the crime — leaving the detective to take the credit, the girl and a starring role in the sequel.

In real life, it doesn’t seem to be all that different.

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Just how bad is online image theft?

If the results recorded by PicScout, a technology company tracking images across the Web for clients that include Jupiter Images, Getty and Corbis, are to be believed, the situation is very bad indeed. An incredible nine out of ten of the photos that its Image Tracker program finds on websites, and which belong to its customers, are being used without permission and without payment.

“Ninety percent of the images we find have been stolen,” Karen Shemesh, PicScout’s marketing communications manager confirmed in a phone call to the company’s Israel headquarters. “That’s true for photos on commercial sites as well as those on private sites.”

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One of the most important rules for shooting professional-quality images has always been to take a lot of pictures and do it often. Digital photography has made that easier. Memory cards are cheap, reusable and can squeeze in far more photos than a roll of film ever could. There’s no hanging around in the darkroom to see how the picture came out, and an obviously poor shot can be quickly deleted and the space filled by a better one.

But all of that convenience comes with a price. The additional, higher quality images filling hard drives now means that deciding how to organize a portfolio is tougher than ever.

At the same time, it’s also more important then ever though. With potential clients able to browse online portfolios at will without ever leaving their desks, the images you present and the way in which you present them have become vital marketing decisions.

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Once upon a time, creating a photography business was pretty straightforward. You loaded up on equipment, rented or built a studio, then marketed your services to ad firms, engaged couples and anyone else who might need a photographer. In your spare time, you dragged your camera to scenic spots, sports grounds or anywhere else you wanted to shoot and you took the sort of pictures that warmed your heart. And if you were lucky, talented and had a nose for self-promotion, you sold them too.

Eventually, if you were really fortunate, you might even be able to swap the wedding formals for the commissions of your choice.

That was the photography business model and while there were others for specialized photographers such as photojournalists, that was the route that most photographers took.

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Photography Courtesy of Blurb

Digital imaging has changed photography in all sorts of ways but perhaps one of the most surprising has been its effect on photography books. The fact that anyone can now upload their photos to the Internet and show them to everyone who wants to view them hasn’t harmed the appeal of seeing your own images on bound pages.

If anything, the accessibility of sites like Flickr has only increased the value of displaying your best photos in printed form.

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Photography: BostonBill

When you can sell an image license to someone you’ve never met who’s living in a country you’ve never heard of so that he can use it in a publication you’ll never see, it’s easy to forget that the traditional way of doing business has always been to sell to the people around you.

That hasn’t changed. Walk through your town center and you’ll still find businesses whose catchment area barely stretches more than fifty miles. Your own ability to sell much further afield makes you lucky.

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Log into Amazon at the moment, and on the front page, you won’t just find the usual list of recommended products that you probably don’t want. You’ll also see a homely-style photograph of a cake in the shape of a Kindle.

We don’t know if Amazon paid for that photograph (although we suspect it didn’t). We are sure though that the site that supplied it is now seeing its server costs fly through the roof as a portion of the gazillions of people who see Amazon’s home page every day click the link above Jeff Bezos’ signature.

In terms of exposure, getting your image and a link on Amazon’s home page is like being chosen as Book of the Month by Oprah. It’s a guaranteed winner.

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