Everyone seems to be doing workshops these days, says Doug Beasley, a former fashion, advertising and commercial photographer who now specializes in fine art projects. With a living as a photographer increasingly hard to come by, teaching enthusiasts and professionals has come to look like both a lucrative way to supplement commissions and license sales, and an enjoyable way for photographers to benefit from their expertise.
Beasley’s workshops though started long before the digital revolution hit the world of photography. He’s been teaching for more than 20 years, initially running classes locally in the Twin Cities but soon stretching further afield as offers came in to teach people as far away as Guatemala and Peru. Read the rest …
There’s never been a worse time to be a photographer. Newspapers are cutting staff. Prices are dropping through the floor. Rights are being reduced and the only part of the industry that’s showing signs of growth are the competition. There’s also never been a better time to be a photographer. The price of equipment is falling even as the quality improves. The walls that kept out talented enthusiasts are collapsing, giving part-timers a chance to bring their talent to market. If print is feeling squeezed, it’s only because the Web has stolen its readers — and the Web has an insatiable demand for images.
For the Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts, it’s the second of those two scenarios that holds true. The cup isn’t just half-full, it’s overflowing with new opportunities for people willing to put in the time and effort to learn how to use their camera: Read the rest …
Selling images should be easy. Stock agencies now look at the photographs, not the photographers. Buyers have multiplied as millions of Web pages have spread across the Internet. The gap between collectors and creators has broken down as sellers can use their own marketing skills to create their brands, build a reputation and promote their art. But it isn’t easy. Moving from talented enthusiast with hard drive full of pictures to a semi-professional shooter with a portfolio of sales and a steady revenue stream can take time, hard work and plenty of frustration. This is what you need to do get started.
1. Sort Your Images
You might take thousands of images before you start thinking about making sales. Some of them you’ll delete but many you’ll just transfer to your hard drive, categorize and leave. When storage space costs so little, there’s no reason to be selective about the photographs you keep.
The biggest difference between amateur photographers and professional photographers isn’t necessarily the talent and it doesn’t even have to be skill. It’s the expenses. For enthusiasts, the amounts that they spend on new lenses, on driving to locations and on buying props is the price they pay for entertainment. For professionals, those are outlays, investments that have to be recouped if they’re to continue paying out of their pocket. It’s a difference that’s been at the heart of the criticism laid against microstock photographers. The format can only pay, some have argued, if you don’t factor in the cost of production. A new statistics tool for microstock sites reminds even part-time photographers that when they’re looking to make money, costs should drive decisions and define shoots.
Created by Andrey Popov, a software engineer and semi-professional photographer, Microstock Analytics logs onto microstock sites and collects data that includes sales figures, file information and thumbnail images. Once the numbers have been crunched, users can display the results as graphs, comparing their sales across different platforms. At the moment, the system works with iStockPhoto, Dreamstime, Fotolia and Shutterstock, with more sites planned based on user demand. The service was launched at the end of May and is now being used by more than a hundred photographers. Pricing is based on usage: tracking up to 500 files is free but the price rises to $299.99 for a one-time unlimited license. The program works even with giant portfolios; during testing Popov was able to track 40,000 files and 4 million sales.
The iPad wasn’t built for photographers. The in-built lenses are punier than those on most smartphones, memory space is limited, library functions are poor, bulk processing is impossible and upload a RAW image from the iPad to another device and you’re going to lose noticeable quality. When we asked one photographer what surprised him the most about using a borrowed iPad during a shoot, his reaction was a blunt “how useless it is.”
Maybe he wasn’t trying hard enough. The iPad isn’t a replacement for a Macbook or a desktop and it certainly can’t function as a camera, but with the right apps it can make a useful and mobile tool for photographers on the move. These are some of the most important apps that a photographer should pack into their iPad.
For photographers selling their services directly to the public, the benefits of maintaining a business Facebook page are clear enough. Face tagging pushes pictures of brides and wedding guests to clients and their friends, showing off their work to potential leads for free. Paid advertising lets them focus their deal on demographics as targeted as engaged women aged 25-40 within 50 miles of their studio. But what about stock photographers? Does Facebook offer anything for professionals and enthusiasts whose buyers are more likely to be businesses than individuals? According to the experience of at least one stock photographer, if the aim is only to sell licenses, then the answer may well be no.
Todd Arena started his career as a graphic designer, using stock images to create custom magazines, ads, websites and corporate identities for large corporations. Realizing that many of the contributors whose images he bought were selling the same work hundreds of times, he began producing his own pictures, beginning with graphics and art elements before working his way up to photography. He upgraded his gear, improved his photography skills and in mid-2008, after being laid off from his graphic design position, switched to full-time stock photography, shooting mostly lifestyle images, food and sports. In addition to promoting his images primarily through microstock companies, he also now runs his own stock site at Arena Creative.
The Internet now contains thousands of stock photography sites, giving editors a huge choice of image sources, and photographers a wide range of outlets for their images. We’ve checked sites and pored over lists to produce our own guide to stock photography.
We’ve broken the sites down into subject categories but it’s likely that many overlap. Certainly, the large sites will also include niche subjects. Not all of the sites accept contributions but many do.
Entries are arranged alphabetically and should not be considered as recommendations. Be sure to read the terms and conditions carefully, and let us know about your experiences with the sites on the list and any that you think we’ve missed.
Three years ago, we noticed a clause in Facebook’s terms and conditions that worried us. The clause appeared to grant Facebook the right to create derivative works out of members’ images, to license members’ photos and even to transfer the rights it claims over those pictures to others. We alerted Bert Krages, a legal expert who specializes in the laws relating to photography, and he confirmed our suspicions. Facebook’s terms did indeed allow the social media site to do pretty much anything it wanted with the pictures uploaded to the site. In fact, Krages told us, the clause was written in such a way that Facebook could even build a stock library out of its members’ contributions if it wanted. That was three years ago. Things have changed and Facebook has updated its terms. That clause though, and the rights it grants to Facebook, remain.
Facebook isn’t the only site to place its hand on the intellectual property owned by its users. TwitPic’s recent kerfuffle over copyright ended in a muddle with the photo-sharing service declaring clearly that users “retain all ownership rights to Content uploaded to Twitpic.” But echoing Facebook’s rights grab, the terms then go on to state that:
“by submitting Content to Twitpic, you hereby grant Twitpic a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and Twitpic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.”
Wedding photography provides plenty of scope for creativity. Although it’s not as free as photographic art — which itself is only as free as collectors and gallery owners allow — it does leave plenty of room for experimentation. So some photographers have long combined the formals with photojournalism while others have gone as far as Trash The Dress photography, a style that takes the bride’s glamour to extremes. But what happens when you add video to your repertoire? How creative can your results become when you think outside your usual boundaries and what effect can the creativity that allows have on your business?
One professional who’s now discovering just what removing a job label can do for his work is Michael Escobar. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Escobar rejects the title “photographer” and offers creative media work that covers photography, videography and even Web design. He’s self-taught in all of those fields so his business should really have failed. It’s hard enough to master one competitive discipline but to cover three and to do it without professional training should be a stretch of ambition too far.
Today’s photographers no longer need to learn darkroom skills or bone up on the different kinds of chemicals they’ll be pouring into trays, but they do need to pick up a wide variety of skills that have little to do with image-making. They need to understand the difference between RAW and Jpeg image formats. They have to learn how to edit in Photoshop. And, toughest of all, they have to figure out how to market a website. While a plethora of portfolio sites now make the website-building relatively simple, bringing visitors into that site when there are so many alternatives available on the Web is a challenge as tough as capturing a bride’s beauty in dim light when she’s sobbing into her bouquet. One solution might be to team up with other photographers and hope that the crowd attracts clients.
That, at least, is the hope of Behance, a company aiming to bring together creative professionals from fields ranging from animation and architecture to Web design and woodworking. While the firm isn’t giving out membership numbers, according to Community Manager Sarah Rapp, photography is one of its “top creative fields.” The company has even launched a stand-alone product at Photography Served to help art directors and image buyers to find the right talent for their campaigns. For Rapp, the mass appeal of a service like Behance’s is the only way for creative professionals to effectively market themselves. Read the rest …
When the Photographer’s Gallery in London closed its doors for refurbishment in September 2010, it opened a new kind of gallery online. Teaming up with Sophie Howarth and Stephen McLaren, authors of Street Photography Now, a collection of documentary images, the museum is now encouraging the book’s contributors to set enthusiasts weekly photographic challenges, and placing the results in a series of Flickr groups. It’s a year-long strategy that’s allowing for broad participation among the gallery’s supporters, extending the influence of the book and making good use of Flickr. One contributor though, has taken the approach a little further.
Documentary photographer Mimi Mollica followed up his challenge with some personal interaction, commenting on the images directly and guiding the photographers who took part in the exercise. Impressed by the enthusiasm shown by the project’s participants, he was inspired to create a new way of teaching photographic skills to people who want to improve their photography, wherever they may be. Read the rest …
It doesn’t matter how great your photography teacher or how respected your course, it’s only when you reach the church and spend time with the bride that you realize exactly what’s involved in completing a successful wedding shoot. It’s only then that you understand what to bring, who to photograph, how to manage the guests and what it means to make a living out of events. One way to pick up that essential experience is to follow around a professional photographer before you start trying to land clients of your own.
For a new photographer, the benefits of being a second shooter are clear enough. You get to attend weddings, become used to the way the shoots work, learn from an established professional, gain an understanding of professional photography and build a portfolio with real wedding shots. You can also get paid. The rates vary, and for shoots that involve shadowing rather than shooting (and especially the first few times with a new photographer), can be nothing. But for photographers coming to the end of what is in effect a kind of internship, it’s not unusual to earn as much as $500 for a day’s work taking pictures and learning the business without the responsibilities that come with being the main supplier.
If you’ve ever felt that Flickr’s Explore page has been ignoring you, that your images deserve the attention the page brings and that Yahoo’s site just isn’t fair… you’re right. Flickr’s Explore page is neither fair nor intended to be fair. As Serguei Mourachov, an engineer responsible for the page’s algorithm, explained to us in 2008:
“The algorithm that populates Explore pages is not fair by definition. It’s not created to judge, but to find something that could be interesting.”
In January 2009, more than 2,600 students were enrolled in a photography-related program at the campuses of the Art Institute, a chain of private art schools. Of those who were studying for a bachelor’s degree, nine out of ten would be expected to find a job in their field of study within six months of graduating. For associate degree students, the employment rate would be just over eighty percent. While those figures may be encouraging, stepping out of college into an industry squeezed by media cuts, falling stock prices and wedding couples concerned about their budgets is never going to be easy. The industry may be getting tighter but there’s no shortage of young photographers hoping to squeeze in. One way to build a name, stand out and develop the kind of unique brand that can lead to a successful career in photography may be to pack a bag, flee the crowds and head to the back of beyond.
Andrew Cullen graduated from Boston University in 2005 with a degree in photojournalism. Rather than pass his portfolio around media outlets more concerned about which staff photographer to let go next, he joined the Peace Corps looking to discover another culture, learn a foreign language Read the rest …
When stock photography company Getty Images announced its agreement with Flickr to broker photo sales on behalf of the site’s members, one of the attractions of the Yahoo property was its size. According to the press release issued at the time, Flickr was then attracting 54 million visitors every month and its 27 million members had uploaded more than two billion photos. That was in July 2008. By April the following year, the number of photos on the site had grown to 3.4 billion, and Flickr was continuing to grow at a rate of 90 million new photos and videos a month. Today, Flickr has about 5 billion images. That’s an impressive growth rate until you realize it only makes Flickr the fourth largest image store on the Web — and that according to Pixable, a photo management service, Facebook now receives 6 billion photos each month, more than Flickr’s entire inventory. The social media site is on track to hit 100 billion images by the summer of this year. So has Flickr had its day? Is Facebook now the Web’s most important photo-sharing site?
Judging by the features Facebook has been adding to its photo-sharing services, Marc Zuckerberg’s company certainly seems to think so. In February of this year, Facebook rolled out its new Photo Viewer, a slideshow that lets its 500 million active users “browse more photos faster without having to lose your place.” Its image tags already do more than help the site deliver search results, the only function Flickr’s tags offer. They identify faces automatically, allow multiple images to be tagged en masse and, most importantly, they push images into the timelines of the people who appear in the photos, giving them instant viral power.
Success on Flickr still relies on steady networking, and participation in groups and discussions. On Facebook, it’s enough to have lots of friends and the time to tag them in photos to get your images seen.
Websites for wedding photographers currently provide two kinds of services. They can act as portfolios, allowing photographers to show off the quality of their work to potential clients, take bookings and field enquiries. And they can ease the photographer’s workflow, providing a place for them to upload images and a store from which the couple can order prints and assemble albums. Both those types of sites though are aimed at the same market: the couple that hire the photographer and buys most of the images. With an average of 141 guests attending each wedding though, the sites miss a large opportunity for additional sales and marketing. It’s an opportunity that PicsCliq, a new wedding photography service, is now trying to exploit — and it’s aiming to do it with the help of social media.
Like traditional wedding sites, PicsCliq allows photographers to upload the images they’ve shot at a wedding but it also provides an easy way for them to promote those photographs through Facebook to an audience larger than the couple itself. By “liking” an image, the photograph is placed on the photographer’s Facebook page and by adding tags, the photographer can make sure that it’s seen by the people in the photo as well as their friends. Read the rest …
A photography shoot that ends with a check starts long before the photographer hits the shutter release button. It starts even before he packs his bag and selects the gear. It begins with research. Before any business, including a photography business, can produce a product, it has to know whether there’s a market for that product and how profitable it might be. Market research is an essential stage in any venture and while it’s not a straightforward effort for photographers, with a little thought and an investment of time, it’s not an impossible mission either.
The first focus of any market research is the product itself. Photographers need to know whether anyone is going to want to buy the photos they produce. Stock photographers have a range of tools that — although they can’t promise sales — can help to predict the chances of success, assuming that the image reaches the right levels of quality.
The road from first camera to first commission from National Geographic is long, difficult and unlikely to be travelled by any but the most talented and dedicated of photographers. But the path from photography passion to photography profit, even if it’s just a little extra income to help subsidize an expensive hobby, is much shorter and much easier to walk. You can complete it in just three steps:
Open a Flickr Account
Sharing your images for free might not sound like the most obvious way to start making money from photography but the site’s giant collection of creative images has made it a rich shopping ground for photo editors looking for the kinds of unusual pictures they just can’t find on stock sites.
Gerd Ludwig is now in the exclusion zone around the remains of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the accident that spread radiation across Europe, the National Geographic photographer and author of Broken Empire: After the Fall of the USSR is documenting the safety work that continues at the plant, the residents who have been trickling back into the zone, and the contaminated environment it contains. This time though, he’s not working on a commission from a mainstream publication. He’s backed directly by the public. Using Kickstarter to win funding pledges, the professional photojournalist has raised more than $23,000, double his goal for the site and just shy of the $25,000 he believes he’ll need for the two-week shoot. It’s an approach that many photographers, both professional and amateur, are now using to fund their personal projects.
Kickstarter allows businesses and artists to pitch an idea to the public. In return for pledges that can range from a few dollars to a few thousand, contributors are promised set rewards. For a business with a creative product idea, like a watch strap for an iPod Nano, those rewards usually take the form of discounted early orders or limited editions. For Gerd Ludwig, the benefits include a name on a donor list, signed images and books, and even an hour-long portfolio review at his Los Angeles studio or via Skype.
With so many photographers battling for a decreasing number of sales and commissions, success depends on a photographer’s ability to stand out and offer a unique product. Usually, that comes down to a particular vision and a trademark style that when combined with talent form a photographer’s prime asset. But a distinct look isn’t the only unique selling point that a photographer can offer. Every photographer also has at least one other benefit that few other photographers can provide and which can help them to win sales and build a photography career: their location.
There are three ways in which knowledge of your area — and easy access to it — can help you to put more images in front of more people, and even earn money from them.
