Photography: Zach Cordner

Zach Cordner decided that he needed to look like a wooly mammoth. A large beard wasn’t a requirement of the job but flying up to Wasilla to photograph Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin’s grandchild, was going to mean spending a couple of days trekking through cold Alaskan woods shooting the outdoorsman doing what he loved best — if not killing animals then at least looking the part. Cordner’s image of Bristol Palin’s former fiancé wearing a camouflage jacket and peering out from behind pine trees was later used on the cover of Johnston’s book Deer in the Headlights: My Life in Sarah Palin’s Crosshairs. It was the fifteenth book cover that Cordner had been commissioned to shoot.

Although book covers are little different to any other photography commission, the special use to which the images are put does give them an extra appeal. A book cover won’t just sell a product in the way that the result of an advertising shoot will do. It will appear in stores across the country, on bookshelves around the world and it will help to summarize a cultural product. We might be told not to judge books by their covers but we do anyway, and we certainly buy them and recognize them by their covers. A photographer whose image appears on the cover of a bestselling book can know that his image has been printed thousands, if not millions, of times, has helped to create success — and will act as a calling card for future work.

The Cover Comes Before the Copy

Not of all that success is down to the photographer. Art directors at publishing houses are as much a part of the process as the photographers they hire. They’ll usually produce general ideas and use them to guide the photographer towards an image that the publishing company can use.

“Usually the art director will tell me a few concepts and I have to narrow it down to the right setup,” explains Cordner.

Nonetheless, Cordner will try to learn as much about the book and the author as he prepares for the shoot. That might not mean reading the book itself. The cover may be shot anywhere from three to eight months before the book’s release, and before the copy is available. When that happens, Cordner has to make do with the chapter outlines. Once he can understand what the book is about, he says, it’s easier to come up with the right concept for the cover.

And the concept he’ll be looking for is something simple, a hard-hitting image with little background noise and which can blend well with the design and the layout.

“The image has to be balanced with the book title so they complement each other and deliver a one-two punch that makes it stand out on bookstands,” he says.

It’s something that Cordner has managed to do with some success. His portfolio now includes the cover of Big Boy’s An XLife: Staying Big at Half the Size, which shows the formerly overweight disc jockey standing in front of his now unused 9XL sized t-shirt. The image that Cordner shot of Chelsea Handler’s Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea ended up on the cover of a book that went on to reach the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.

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Winning Book Covers

1.     Build a portrait portfolio.

Covers of memoirs and much other non-fiction depend on portraiture. A record of expressive images will help persuade buyers.

2.     Know what a good book cover should do.

An effective book cover should be simple, communicative, free of distracting backgrounds and well-matched to design elements.

3.     Create connections.

Not easy to do but if you can get to know art directors — or people who know them — you’ll be on your way to building a client base.

4.     Don’t depend on them.

Even for established professionals like Zach Cordner, book cover jobs are occasional treats complemented by magazine jobs and other commercial shoots.

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Connections Help

That cover was designed by Michael Nagin, an art director at Simon and Schuster, with whom Cordner also collaborated on Kendra Wilkinson’s memoir Sliding into Home,” and it’s those connections that are vital for a regular flow of book cover commissions. Cordner won his first book cover shoot after being recommended to Simon and Schuster by another photographer. Other art directors who saw his work then began contacting him to shoot covers for their projects, giving him a network of art directors at several publishing houses.

Not all photographers rely on those connections or even on commissions to produce book covers though. Spanish photographer Edward Olive has received commissions to shoot book covers but his stock images, sold through Getty, have also been used by publishing companies.

It does help though that Olive is also known as a destination wedding and art photographer. While a book cover is a form of photography with its own demands, art directors will be looking at a photographer’s other work as a guide to his or her capabilities and especially their ability to portray personality.

“If you want to shoot covers it comes down to a strong portrait portfolio,” says Cordner. “Publishers are looking for photographers that have solid skills in lighting and posing. Also being able to put up with celebrity egos is always a big plus.”

Work in other fields will also make sure that there’s income between shooting book covers, a consideration that’s becoming increasingly important as the publishing world feels the pressure from ebooks and pirated downloads. In addition to working with publishers, Zach Cordner also shoots regularly for magazines and for companies.

Shooting book covers then requires connections and experience with portraiture. It helps to know the right people as well as the right way to put across the message and feel of the book. But it helps most of all to shoot the cover of a successful book — even if that means looking like a mammoth to do it.

It’s not the camera, it’s the photographer that makes the picture. That’s what photographers are always told — and what the successful ones always say — and it’s particularly true for anyone trying to take pictures on an iPhone. Although the latest model, with its new optics and 8 megapixel lens is a big improvement on older versions, it’s still far from a professional tool capable of shooting the sorts of images that buyers need. And yet, iPhone photos are selling. While there are no figures that reveal the number of iPhone images that have been bought and sold, some iPhone-wielding photography enthusiasts have earned several thousand dollars from their pictures and the total value is now likely to have exceeded seven figures. Here are five ways that iPhone pictures have sold for real money:

News Images

The iPhone camera’s biggest advantage for photographer is its mobility. When something happens, you’re more likely be carrying your mobile phone than your Nikon DSLR. It’s no surprise then that one of the hottest-selling types of iPhone images are news shots.

Finnish company Scoopshot specializes in images taken on mobile phones and even has an app that lets photographers send their shots directly from their iPhones to the Scoopshot marketplace. The site says that it has made almost €135,000 selling images to 42 different publications.

The shots aren’t as dramatic as the snaps taken recently (on a Blackberry) of the bombing near the Israeli embassy in Delhi and sold worldwide through the Associated Press. Images that Scoopshot has sold include shots of someone driving the wrong way up a street and a traffic jam caused by broken traffic lights. More exciting was the series of images that appeared recently in the Danish press that showed a fire engulfing a building in Denmark.

If you’re near the news, the event can compensate for the quality of the camera.

Assignment Photography

It’s one thing to whip out your iPhone when a fire breaks out on your street. It’s another thing altogether when a professional photographer is hired to complete a shoot for a magazine and finds that one of the images the publication buys is a quick shot taken on his mobile device. That’s what happened when photographer Craig Mitchelldyer was sent by Oregon Business magazine to shoot a story about a snowy summer camp. After carrying his equipment onto the ski lift and up the slopes, one of the images that appeared in the publication showed the teenagers preparing to snowboard down the mountain with the clouds below them.

That shot, says Mitchdyer, was taken on his iPhone as soon he got off the lift.

“It’s my favorite image from the shoot,” he wrote on his site. “Also the first time I’ve had an iPhone photo published.”

Interior Design

It might not be Mitchelldyer’s last iPhone photo he sells though. Photographer Dave Kozlowski has been selling iPhone photos for two years. This year, he says he sold more images taken on his mobile phone than photos shot with his Nikon, including a series of seventeen images that went for $6,000 and were used during the renovation of a Dallas hotel.

“My clients love this stuff (Hipstamatic)!” he told the readers of photographer and technologist Aaron Hockley’s blog. “I think I’m probably the first photographer to shoot a project for a major national brand using only my iPhone.”

It’s notable though that while Kozlowski is willing to sell his iPhone images to happy clients, he’s not willing to tell them he shot them on an iPhone. And if the camera really doesn’t matter, he shouldn’t have to.

Prints

The hardest market for any photographer to break is the print market. The competition is so intense, there’s such a huge choice of beautiful images and so little demand for items to decorate wall space that it’s no wonder prices can be so low and sites can be so saturated. And yet, even in this market, it’s still possible to make the odd sale. Aaron Hockley was writing about iPhones because he’d sold a print of a shot he’d taken of a forest fire on his iPhone to a friend. He didn’t mention the price, although you’d have to hope that his friend at least received a discount.

While that was the only time that Hockley had sold an iPhone image, it wasn’t the first time that he’d used his iPhone professionally. Instagram on his mobile phone is go-to app for posting quick images, he reports, and he often uses his telephone to take pictures when scouting shots. That’s a more familiar professional use of the iPhone. The idea that he could actually print those pictures and sell them shows that the kind of opportunistic images that are more likely to find their way into publications can also find their way onto walls — if they’re taken beautifully enough.

Art

And it turns out the most beautiful iPhone images have a market all of their own. In December 2009, artist Knox Bronson suggested that Rae Douglass of the Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley hold the first ever gallery exhibit of iPhone photography. The exhibition was a huge success and has since grown into Pixels, a collection of “iPhonographic art.” All submissions have to be shot and edited entirely on an iOS device, including iPads, iPhone models and iPod Touches. The range of the work is phenomenal with delicate shots of leaves appearing alongside old-style country images and Hockney-style (no Apple slouch himself) poolside photos.

Although the images are shown on the site for free (and, oddly, are even printed in the site’s book without a royalty), that Magcloud book sells for $40 and any prints sold through the gallery generate 50 percent of the sales price for the artist.

It’s unlikely that Pixel’s “iphonographers” have made a great deal of income with their iOS-only art shots but they are making some. The question they’re asking isn’t whether it’s the camera that makes the picture but whether it’s photographer or their Hipstamatic app.

Photography: Renata Ramsini

Renata Ramsini’s website describes her in four different ways. She’s an “efficiency-lover,” a “photographer,” a “policy wonk” and a “law student.” That’s not the order in which her life has played out however. Like many photography enthusiasts, when it came time to pick a profession it never occurred to Ramsini to pick up her camera and push for a career in picture-taking. Although she says she’s always loved photography, she didn’t think it was something that could give her a living. For that she turned to a night class at law school and a full-time job in the Ohio Governor’s office. Today, with the administration over but still at school and still active in politics, Ramsini receives a regular stream of commissions from people keen to make use of her photographic talent — and provides an example of the difficulty of maintaining a passion for photography while also building a career outside the world of creative arts.

Photography became a serious hobby for Ramsini about seven years ago, and a “very serious passion” about two years ago. She specializes in street photography and says that she’s always looking to capture intimate moments on the street when no one is looking. Her portfolio shows a broad collection of travel shots and portraits, children and maternity pictures.

Photography: Renata Ramsini

For some time though, there was no photography at all, a situation Ramsini now regrets. Once she had made her decision to take a day job in politics and to study for her career in law at night, Ramsini found that she had no time to indulge in photography. While she was in the Governor’s office, she barely took a picture.

“Working full time and going to law school in the evenings resulted in my not picking up my camera for about two years,” she says. “Once I left the administration, I rediscovered my passion and won’t let that happen again. It brings me too much joy. Once you find something like that, you have to make time for it in your life, just like anything else.”

Politics and Photography Do Mix

If not creating time to shoot was a mistake, it was, at least, an understandable one. Many enthusiasts struggle to find the time to hone their photography skills even without the extra pressure of weekends spent poring over law school textbooks and cramming for exams. While professionals are able to practice, improve and sharpen their skills by shooting every day, enthusiasts have to make do with stolen moments, special trips and occasional shots of the kids doing interesting things.

The solution though, other than to add a few more hours to the day, is to look for places where profession and passion overlap. Automobile engineer Andreas Reinhold was able to do that by taking artistic pictures of cars at the shows he attended. After a magazine editor he’d met at one auto show saw some of his photos, he began receiving commissions to take shots for the publication. His engineering background even made him a useful representative for the magazine at car-related events where he didn’t just photograph the models but could also chat knowledgeably with the manufacturers.

Renata Ramsini didn’t shoot the work she was doing at the heart of her state’s politics, but she does believe that she might have missed a trick. Looking back, she now feels that her joint passions for photography and politics weren’t as incompatible as she once thought.

“At the beginning of the Obama Administration, I read an article in the Washington Post about a new staffer who was documenting her time in the White House by taking photographs of everything (and everyone) around her. I was super jealous!” she says.

“Photographs can tell powerful stories. They can share things with the public that no political speech or slogan ever could.  There isn’t any American who can’t think of a powerful photograph of a political figure (or a situation surrounding one) that evokes some sort of emotion within them,”

Clearly, not every work space is as photogenic as the White House or a Governor’s office and not all professions offer the same opportunities to mix with magazine editors (or shoot pretty objects) as the car industry. But even if you miss your workplace photography opportunities, there are still plenty of chances to combine a passion for photography with a career in a completely different field.

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Tips to Mix Work with Pleasure

1. Shoot Workplace Images

You might not work at the White House, but you can still take pictures of office scenes, shoppers in the mall, and the factory floor. Think of the scenes you see every day as stories and you’ll have something to document. You might need to ask permission but many companies will appreciate the PR.

2. Carry Your Camera

To take pictures all the time, you’ll need to have your camera with you all the time. That’s easier now than it used to be. British photographer David Bailey famously told the world that he used to carry an instamatic with him wherever he went. Today, even the camera on an iPhone takes good enough shots.

3. Tell the World

If you want to be asked to shoot more images, tell the world about the stories you’re documenting at work. Build a website, and promote it through social media and photo

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Winning Commissions

Renata Ramsini’s more recent development as a photographer has happened through channels that anyone can use — provided they’re willing to put in the time to build them. Over the last year, Ramsini has had a steady stream of clients seek her out to capture special moments in their lives or to take pictures of loved ones. They see her images on 500px then click through to her website.

They might not be buying her prints — a format that’s always a hard sale online — but by showing what she can do in a field for which there’s a demand, she’s able to get paid to continue to do photography even as she prepares for a career in the law and in politics.

Mixing work with an enthusiasm for photography isn’t straightforward. Time is tight but if you can find something photogenic to document at your workplace — and promote yourself as a photographer — you’ll be able to shoot without giving up the day job.

As top microstock figures complain about growing competition, rising saturation and declining returns per image, microstock companies are starting to push back. Warnings from figures as big as Yuri Arcurs, even as he rolls out a three-year study program, are leading sites to think about how they can best serve both their contributors, whom they need to continue supplying content, and their buyers who always want to pay less for that content and already have plenty of other places and pictures to choose from. Dreamstime, one of the biggest microstock firms, is both typical of the problem and an example of the measures that sites are taking to overcome it.

Dreamstime now has over 13 million images in its inventory and accepts around 300,000 new submissions each month from about 130,000 contributors. The company’s policy over the last few years has been to cover not just a wide range of categories but the entire range of prices. The site claims to have the largest collection of free royalty-free images (a growing inventory of 350,000 photos) but also offers a unique “SR-EL” license that grants full rights and exclusivity for $5,000. According to Serban Enache, the site’s CEO, though, the average price for an image still stands at “a few dollars.” That’s hardly the sort of rate that’s going to make it easy for photographers to justify the expenses involved in creating it, especially when the number of other photos available mean that each image will now sell fewer copies than it might have done in the past.

No More Photos from You

Dreamstime’s strategy is to improve the quality of the images it offers at the expense of the quantity. Since 2010, the site has been imposing strict submission limits which rise as a contributor’s approval rating improves. Photographers start with the ability to submit 20 images per week and have the potential to upload as many 210 photos per week.

“New contributors are more talented and/or more pros are joining the website. These facts along with technological improvements and the size of our database force us to constantly raise the quality bar,” Serban Enache told us. “We still accept the landscapes, nature shots, skylines, models on white, etc., but they need to be exquisite in order to be accepted and to sell.”

Rare images, such as pictures of remote places, can sell well and without competition, Enache continued, and shots of events taken at the right moment can be valuable additions to the editorial category.

“As competition grows, contributors need to constantly increase quality, provide diversity and fill as many niches as possible,” he advised. “Part of their duties is to research, not only to shoot. Learn to create, not to photograph.”

But Dreamstime isn’t just being more selective about the images it accepts now that it has enough images to cover all its categories; it’s also being more careful about the photographs it offers. That giant collection of free images is more than an attempt to attract designers looking for a bargain before hitting them up with better images for a fee. It’s also a place to store excess images that are puffing up the inventory. Images that haven’t sold in three years are either deleted or moved to the free section. Those free images are also curated, with some permanently deleted. Dated photographs, with wardrobes or props shot five years ago and which are no longer selling, are among those being pared away.

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Microstock’s New Demands

• Landscape shots of hard-to-reach locations.
• Niche images (if you can find an unsaturated niche).
• Editorial events and shots of conflict.
• Technical perfection.

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Dreamstime then is trying to its part to keep microstock viable by being more careful about what it offers to buyers. But Serban Enache also stresses that photographers have a role to play. Asked whether it’s still possible for photographers to make a living with microstock, he replied by asserting that full-time microstock photography is possible but only “if you are careful about your expenses and you work hard.”

He also noted though that not everyone who contributes to microstock is looking to make a profit. Amateurs just want to earn enough to upgrade their equipment while improving their skills. Hobbyists are just happy to see their image being used.

“This is in many cases more important than the revenue. Knowing your work is endorsed by people throughout the world gives you a great feeling and self-confidence,” he said.

Watch the Expenses

When stock first appeared, Enache argued, it was only meant as an additional revenue stream for photographers. Only later did it become a main source of income, and he warns photographers not to neglect other revenue opportunities.

If that sounds like a big qualification of his assertion that photographers can make a living out of microstock, it’s also sound advice. Enache warns that even when stock revenues do come in, they can do so slowly and over a long period (before the props and clothes make them unfashionable). And he points out that no photographer can expect to have a good ROI if he spends too much money creating the pictures.

None of this is particularly good news for photographers. Amateurs and hobbyists might get to enjoy the occasional fillip when one of the 20 images they’re allowed to upload each week is bought, but they’re still less likely to consider the expenses, forcing photographers who are looking to make money to reduce theirs. That makes it even harder to produce the higher quality images that microstock sites are now looking for.

Dreamstime’s emphasis on quality rather than quantity raises the entry bar and gives preferential treatment to better photographers. But those photographers include those who aren’t concerned about income and while greater selectivity and a more brutal approach to curation might slow the rate of saturation and improve the picture slightly for declining ROIs, there are no signs that sites are going to cut their inventories back to the kind of peak income levels last seen in 2009. For that to happen growth has to come from buyers. Serban Enache indicated that his firm had grown 50 percent year on year. If microstock sites and photographers are struggling then a cavalry of buyers might just save the day.

Correction: Serban Enache’s description of 50 percent growth referred to image price growth and contributor expectations. Since its inception in 2004, Dreamstime’s collection of images has grown more than 400 times.

Is it really possible to earn $1,000 an hour as a photographer? A regular photographer. Not the kind of high-end fashion photographer or Vogue cover-shooter that requires a lifetime of career achievement and first-name terms with media moguls. The kind of photography for which there’s constant demand, whose buyers are average Joes and which can still deliver the kinds of rates that even lawyers would be frightened to demand.

When we first asked this question back in 2007, the post became one of our most controversial. But what surprised us most about the dozens of comments we’ve received since publishing the article was the number of people who came out in support. “Yes,” they said. “It is possible to make $1,000 an hour as a photographer — and more. I’ve done it.”

The original claim had come from Chris Wunder, a photographer with more than 30 years’ experience who now sells workshops with the claim that it’s possible to make $8,000 a day doing school photography. The key, he says, is the number of portrait jobs available in schools and the speed with which photographers can get through them.

“Experienced photographers with an assistant can do a great job in only 30-40 seconds per student,” he explained to us then. “I normally budget about 90 students per camera per hour.”

Mall Photography on Steroids

That doesn’t leave any room for creativity; it’s mall photography on steroids. Students sit, smile, wait for the snap then make way for the next in line. According to Wunder though, the portraits sell for $24-$25 each with a typical take up rate by parents of between 70 and 80 percent. Ninety students an hour over eight hours is 720 portraits a day. If 70 percent of those portraits sell for $24 then total revenue for the day would be $12,096. Divided by eight hours that works out at revenues of $1,512 per hour — 50 percent higher than even the eyebrow-raising sums claimed in Chris Wunder’s marketing material.

And yet, some photographers greeted those figures not with a scoff but a shrug.

“Jon,” a glassblower who had worked as a school photographer for six years, reported that he had generated over $70,000 a week, shooting 30 weeks a year for a company called “Quality color GMBH.”

“Being 19 I had no idea what a cush job I had,” he said.

His description didn’t make the work sound very cushy. After spending a day shooting 700-900 “bratty kids” in a day (a rate in line with Chris Wunder’s estimate), he would then photograph their baby siblings after school for three times the amount. Shooting would finish at 9pm, after which he would drive to the next location, reaching the hotel around midnight. Often, the hotel would have given away his room by then and he would have to sleep in the van.

At the end of the week, he would head back to the lab so that the “Saturday lab woman” could print the images ready for shipping on Monday. The income from each enrolled child was $18.70 and the median package was $23.95.

“That means that if there were 1,500 kids enrolled in your school we could expect to bring in $28,000 in the 2 days I was at your school,” ‘Jon’ commented. “Plus there would be 50-60 babies out of that 1,500 kids and each of those were worth $50.”

Too Good to Be True

“Jon” wasn’t the only one endorsing Chris Wunder’s figures. Rick Poole of HyperFoto Photography in Seattle had been in the event and school photography business for eleven years. He commented that he was generating $3 million a year.

It all sounds wonderful… and too good to be true, as many other commenters were quick to point. The biggest problem was that the figures that Chris Wunder — and others — quoted were revenues, not profits. The costs would cut into those figures deeply. Processing the image can be done quickly, especially if the photographer is able to get the portrait right in camera, but would add some time to the 30-40 seconds needed to photograph the student. Printing costs money, as does travel to the school, and accommodation if the photographer is traveling a long way and doesn’t want to sleep in a van. Schools charge their own fees, a kickback that Chris Wunder himself notes starts at 10 percent of revenues in the Midwest, rising to as much as 40-50 percent in the southeast.

Add on the price of equipment and throw in the cost of staff — school photographers need to shoot in teams to keep the children organized and the shoot flowing smoothly; even Chris Wunder talks of having an assistant — and it’s no wonder that even “Jon” was seeing only $1,000-$2,000 a week of the $50,000-$70,000 he was generating for his company.

And if $8,000 a month sounds good, bear in mind that to earn that money “Jon” would have to spend long periods away from home, sleeping in a van and working twelve-hour shifts. Nor would he work the whole year. If he worked 30 weeks out of 52, he would still have made only $60,000. While that might be respectable and give him time to add to his income, few photographers with families would want to work those kinds of hours for long.

The answer to the question of whether it’s possible to make $1,000 an hour shooting something as simple as school photography is that it is possible. It is possible to generate that amount in revenues but if you’re shooting for a company, you’ll be paid a relatively low salary while the firm takes whatever is left of the profits after deducting other costs. And if you’re doing it for yourself, you’ll struggle hard to get your foot in the door and you’ll have to make do with whatever is left after you’ve fed the school and paid for your assistants.

Whenever you’re faced with giant revenue claims, it pays to be skeptical, especially if they’re coming from someone selling a course. But it doesn’t pay to dismiss them. There is (still) a lot of money in school photography and while your profits might not $1,000 an hour, the reason that school photography still exists is that photographers can make money out of it.

Image: Demotix

Demotix might just have created a new revenue model for editorial photographers and aspiring photojournalists. The crowd-sourced news agency, which has licensed images to publications and outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and the BBC, is to begin paying contributors a share of its advertising revenue.

The company has partnered with Guardian Select, MessageSpace and Google to place ads on all the site’s story pages and news hubs. Demotix will work with the advertising agencies to make sure that the ads are relevant and ethical, and the photographers will receive an 80 percent share of the revenue generated by the ads on their pages.

Demotix was launched in 2008 by CEO Turi Munthe, a journalist who had worked for The Economist, Slate and the Financial Times among others, and his fellow Oxford University alumnus Jonathan Tepper whose background was in finance. The aim was to promote citizen journalism around the world as a replacement for the decline in foreign news desks. The company received praise for its ability to distribute images during the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict, when accredited journalists were excluded from the region, and in July 2009 Demotix received the only image of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates as he was arrested for disorderly conduct. Prices for licenses are set at rights managed  rates rather than royalty free microstock fees. An exclusive can sell for over $6,000, of which Demotix takes half as its commission. In March 2011, the company signed a deal with Corbis which now helps distributes Demotix’s images to its clients.

The new plan is intended to supplement image sales and to provide a way to monetize non-buying users who visit the site in search of news content.

“Many of what we consider our very best stories are not picked up by mainstream media,” explains Tom Barfield, Demotix’s community manager. “As traffic to Demotix grew, we began to realise we were becoming a news outlet in our own right, and that we could monetise this through advertising. That, finally, gives us the possibility of rewarding those extraordinary stories that nobody has bought but that make Demotix as varied and wonderful as it is.”

Top Photographers Only

The ad revenue won’t be paid to all contributors however. Demotix currently has 25,000 registered users of which 5,000 are active. Demotix will only share advertising revenue with the 100 photographers who have brought in the most unique visitors.

“We want to be paying out a usable amount of money,” says Tom Barfield “We have a very long tail which means that any other revenue-sharing model would result in thousands of payouts of fractions of pennies.”

The list of eligible contributors will be assessed on a monthly basis, so it’s likely that at least those at the bottom will change frequently. The number of eligible contributors may change too as the site grows, provided that the paid amounts are always meaningful. Demotix currently receives 400,000 unique visitors a month who generate some 1.3 million page views. That represents a growth rate of 120 percent over 2010.

Demotix wouldn’t reveal the number of page views currently received by the 100^th most popular contributor on its site nor would it state the costs paid per mille by advertisers for the kinds of subjects covered by its photographers. If all page views were spread equally among the 5,000 active contributors though then each would receive a paltry 260 views a month. On iStock however, just 1.6 percent of contributors are responsible for half the company’s sales. If that rate of activity were replicated on Demotix then the top 100 contributors – 2 percent of active users – would be sharing around 650,000 page views a month. If news content receives about $6 for every thousand impressions then those top 100 photographers would be earning an average of about $312 per month.

Those are back of the envelope figures, of course. The gap between the amounts earned by the most popular Demotix contributors and those who just squeaked onto the list is likely to be substantial. CPMs of $6 may be optimistic too and Demotix’s long tail may be longer than that of iStock. But the top photographers on the site may well find themselves pocketing sums that provide more than a useful secondary income.

Gaming the System

The danger though is how that will affect contributions. Most of Demotix’s traffic comes from search engines so the company will be advising photographers on the use of good text, titles, captions and keywords to increase page ranking and improve views. They’ll also encourage them to use social media to alert their networks about uploaded images. But contributors now have a reason to do more than just optimize their contributions and spread the word.

Replying to comments on the company’s press release, Tom Barfield noted that Demotix chose to rank contributors by unique visitors rather than page views because it understood that people might try to game the system by clicking multiple times on their own page. Once photographers realize that certain subjects are more popular than others, produce more visitors and generate higher CPMs, there’s a good chance that some will start targeting their photography towards those topics. The under-reported stories about distant events, ignored by the mainstream press – and which Demotix was created to report – may now receive less attention from its photographers than in the past, affecting Demotix’s balance as a news site.

More worrying though is the admission that Demotix has so many popular and interesting stories that aren’t selling. The site might have been created to replace the falling numbers of foreign news desks but it hasn’t been able to create a demand from mainstream outlsets willing to pay for all of the images that people want to see. For photojournalists, licensing usage through companies like Demotix might be one way to sell their photos and crowdsourcing sponsors may be another. But giving away a view of the photos and earning from the advertising looks like an important and unavoidable additional approach.

Photography: Joao Pina

Documentary photographers are struggling to pitch their stories. Newspapers and magazines are now rarely willing to cover the expenses that photographers run up when they travel to distant parts of the world, and few outlets want to provide space for a photo documentary on Southeast Asian villagers when a thirteen-page spread of a celebrity on the beach would sell so much better. Some dedicated photographers though have managed to find a solution. They’re not just selling the image; they’re selling the photojournalist experience. And they’re selling it directly to the public.

Emphas.is is like Kickstarter for photography. Photographers describe projects, submit a budget and appeal for funding. Supporters can then submit pledges, allowing the project to go ahead if it’s fully funded. In return, those supporters receive a set of rewards that depend on the size of their support. The largest sums, often around $2,000 to $3,000, allow a company to display its logo on the books and material the project produces. For amounts as low as $10 though, supporters receive access to the “making-of zone,” an area on the site on which the photographer posts updates and answers questions from supporters.

For the site’s founders, photo editor Tina Ahrens and photographer Karim Ben Khelifa, that access to the photographers as they work in the field creates a closer and more active involvement in the production process. For the photographers too, it provides an outside perspective, a chance to understand what the audience wants to learn about the stories and locations they’re documenting, and to produce the images they want to see. Tomas van Houtryve, a photographer whose trip to Laos was one of the first to be fully funded on Emphas.is, told the site’s blog that his interaction with his supporters led him to shoot more pictures of daily life that enabled them to understand the country better.

“When you only show the extreme points of a story, it’s a little intimidating; it doesn’t always give people a bridge into the topic,” he said. “I’ve been working on this topic for a long time, so it was good to be reminded what pieces of context they needed to understand the story.”

Submit Your Project, Collect the Funds

It’s an  approach that’s been remarkably successful. Emphas.is launched in March 2011. By the end of April, projects posted on the site had already raised more than $60,000 from more than 750 supporters. Tomas van Houtryve’s project on 21^st Century Communism in Laos raised $10,115 from 143 backers, more than the $8,800 he had asked for. He is now in North Korea shooting a second project, even as he’s collecting the funds.

Getting a project accepted to the site though isn’t easy. The submission guidelines demand short and long pitches, a profile and bio, a selection of images and a video pitch of up to two minutes. Three reviewers then assess each project, judging it on twelve criteria, including the applicant’s experience, knowledge and ability to build a crowd, as well as the significance of the story and the photographer’s body of work.

Photographers then have to collect the funds, an even tougher challenge that relies in part on social media marketing.

Joao Pina, whose two projects on the effects of Operation Condor in Latin America have both been fully funded, first used email to tell people about his idea. Some of those contacts then forwarded his message to their own friends. He also began posting project information on Facebook, asking people on the site to help spread the word. Many of the supporters of his first project also backed its continuation, often with larger pledges. Sergio Ramazzotti a veteran photojournalist who recently started using the site to fund a photo documentary about homosexuality in Afghanistan — a country he’s been visiting for the last eleven years — prefers to use a phone call than a Facebook message. But he too has been drawing on his personal contacts and social networks to bring in donations.

“I’m really not the salesperson kind, so I just tell plain and simple what I plan to do and why I think they should be supporting me, which is tantamount to supporting photojournalism,” he told us by email. “I ask them to imagine what a newsmagazine with 125 completely empty, white pages would look like.”

Photography: Sergio Ramazzotti

Supporters Want Rewards

The rewards offered are also important. Pledges on Emphas.is begin at $10 but most fall between $25 and $50, enough to receive an image. The average pledge is about $90. Although the rewards alone won’t determine whether someone will support a project, they can help to determine the amount someone will spend and the extent to which they’re willing to help it. Steven Duke, the editor of BBC World Service’s One World program, and a supporter of three Emphas.is projects, explains that he wants to be able to point at the photograph he’s using as a screensaver or a photobook on his shelf, and say “I helped fund that project.”

But it’s the project itself that’s key. For Steven Duke it was Tomas van Houtryve’s admission that some of his images of North Korea will be tainted with the “triumphalist propaganda” that pervades the country, a confession of the limits for any journalist, that impressed him. For Neil Osborne’s Return of the Black Turtle project, it was the positive spin on a story about an endangered animal that won his support. And for Nicolas Mingasson’s portrayal of the Arctic, it was the fact that he was taking ethnologists with him as well as his camera. The relationship between the environment and the people who live in it was vital.

“I like that Nicolas’ pictures are of people battling with the weather in harsh landscapes. I like that Thomas’ photos show us landscapes rarely glimpsed. And I like that Neil’s pictures come from the sea,” Duke explained. “That doesn’t mean they have to be exotic environments, but I want to see projects built on an environment and its people – rather than people in an environment.”

There’s no doubt that Emphas.is is fulfilling a need and enabling important stories to be told through photography. Joao Pina notes that he has been unable to win any support from publications or NGOs for his work on Operation Condor, and after six years of investing his own resources and time, his funds are now exhausted. He’s now spending the next couple of months in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, finishing the work that he started in those countries.

But perhaps the biggest benefit isn’t just that photographers are able to complete the projects they want but that photography lovers are able to see photostories and images that would otherwise have remained untold.

“There’s no point shouting at the demise of photojournalism from the sides,” says Steven Duke. “Crowdfunding allows us to get involved – for relatively small amounts – and support photo assignments we believe in. Plus we get to stick two fingers up at those editors who seem keen to swap photojournalism for Brangalina snaps.”

Photography: artbyheather

With photographers already battling against lower fees and increased competition, the last thing they need is another platform offering photography services at cutthroat prices. And yet, Fiverr, a service on which users pitch a range of different jobs for a flat five dollar fee, does now include a number of photographers selling their skills for little more than the price of a latte and a pastry at Starbucks.

The jobs aren’t pushed hard. Fiverr’s categories include gifts and graphics, programming, music and audio, as well as business and technology. Photography isn’t listed. But search for “photography” on the site and you’ll find around 537 people willing to do something image-related for just five bucks.

That might sound horrific, but the good news is that very few of those jobs involve image-creation. Of the first 30 gigs returned no more than six actually involved working with photos themselves. Most of those were quick Photoshop edits. One was an offer of an image and motivational quote, apparently for personal use, another was a shot of light-writing, which could be done quite quickly, and a third was a pitch from a seller in India of “5+1” images which, judging by the quality of the samples, were probably overpriced. The remainder of the photography gigs pitched on the site seemed to be made up largely of offers of advice, ebooks and even backlinks on photographers’ websites.

“Jen”, for example, is selling the answer to any question “related to editing or photography.” If she can’t answer it, the buyer can ask another one. But she should be able to answer it because she’s a professional photographer. She’s been shooting full-time for a year and specializes in families, babies and particularly newborns.

Jen learned about Fiverr from a friend when she was looking for some low-cost help with search engine optimization.

“It is a great, fast and easy way to make some extra money,” she told us. “It doesn’t take too long, and as for buying for yourself, it’s only $5!”

She considers the small sum she demands for answering a question “a very fair price,” even though she charges as much as $1,000 a day for photographers to watch her at work in her studio. Despite that “fair price” though, the job has been up for a couple of weeks and has yet to pick up a response.

That might be because Jen is pitching the wrong kind of service. Ben Evans is a British photographer, now based in Spain, who provides a range of different services on the site. He has been using Fiverr for two years, initially out of curiosity after buying low-cost SEO and web design services on the site. Like Jen, he is also offering to answer any photography-related question for five dollars. That job has been up for two months and like, Jen’s job offer, has had little by way of response.

Evans has, however, managed to sell some other photography-related jobs. An offer to process and optimize three images for Web viewing has picked up at least one sale. A photograph to “illustrate any concept you want” was sold at least twice over the last six months.

It’s hard to see how the image processing could possible pay for itself. Even if the total time spent on the optimization amounted to no more than a couple of minutes for each image, add in the time spent placing the ad and emailing the client and Evans would be hard-pressed to hit the stopwatch at fifteen minutes — an hourly rate of just $20. And Evans is a professional photographer who has been shooting events since he was at university and now combines commercial work with people photography.

That makes his offer of “any concept you want” even harder to understand — until you realize that he’s looking to get more out of advertising on the site than a crisp five dollar bill.

“I’m actually writing a book about photography at the moment, so this is more market-research than it is a money-making venture,” he explains. “I teach photography professionally with www.BarcelonaPhotographyCourses.com so I do get a lot of opportunity to see what aspects of photography people struggle with, but Fiverr just extends this internationally. The picture on any topic is again a personal challenge to hone my skills.”

That might be a little smarter. Enthusiasts have been known to pay to receive photography challenges; Ben Evans has managed to find a place where others will pay him to set one.

That would still be a bad deal though if the person paying was an advertising agency looking for an image to use in a national campaign. But those aren’t the kinds of people looking to buy photographer services on Fiverr. In fact, even when you can sell an image on the site, it’s unlikely that you’ll then be able to upsell more expensive services to the same client.

“I’ve learned, mainly through an experience with Groupon, that you cannot move from cheap to premium,” says Evans. “If people are shopping on Fiverr, generally they’re not prepared to pay for my photography services outside of Fiverr…. Clients on the site are happy with what they get, but are usually buying on an ad-hoc basis.”

Even as a rival to microstock where sales of images cost less than five dollars, Fiverr is too limited, says Evans, because scaling up is too difficult. Most of the jobs he’s sold on the site have actually been English accented voiceovers of up to five minutes each. At just under a dollar minute, with time taken off for client contact, that comes closer to a reasonable amount of money. He’s sold more than 30 of them.

While Craigslist has become renowned as a place to pitch for budget event photography, it’s some relief to see that there is a limit to how far the market will drop. Photographers might be willing to hawk their knowledge on the site but few buyers see the value in trying to commission a photography for a fee that would barely pay for the coffee they’d drink on the shoot.

Update: One of the Fiverr members mentioned in this post has asked for her name to be redacted. We’ve done so.

As 2011 comes to an end, it’s time to start planning for the year ahead. For professionals, that means looking at the most successful marketing channels of the last twelve months, understanding which demographics were most likely to hire them and increasing efforts to bring in more work and at higher prices in the coming year. For enthusiasts, it means trying to figure out how they can increase  — or at least hold onto — their current rate of sales. In 2012, that’s likely to mean a more independent approach to marketing, a move towards relying on their own efforts to reach buyers instead of hoping for stock agencies to do it for them.

The problem is most clearly seen in microstock where saturation has spread revenues among contributors and lowered returns per image. It is still possible to make sales on microstock, and enthusiasts looking for a little extra boost to their incomes with some low-cost imagery can still send in their photos and hope for a small second revenue stream from commercial photography’s biggest open gate. But even though less than two percent of market leader iStock’s photographers are said to be responsible for half the site’s sales, the trend on returns is clearly downwards. More photographers are earning, but they’re taking home smaller amounts each, making the costs of shoots harder to justify economically.

The easiest alternative isn’t great either. Getty’s deal with Flickr, which lets the stock giant negotiate and administer sales of images on behalf of Flickr members who opt into its program, moved thousands of images within months of its launch. But with royalties as low as 20 percent for the photographer, it’s little wonder that 500px chose not to follow the Yahoo-owned photo site into Getty’s arms.

Do It Yourself

The reason that Getty’s deal is so questionable for Flickr’s photographers also suggests what may be the most powerful solution in general for enthusiasts looking to make a little extra cash: why give 80 percent of your revenues to Getty when it’s possible to negotiate your own deals?

That’s not entirely straightforward, of course. Flickr photographers who want to sell their own images need to make a note in the description that their photos are available for licensing. They need to respond quickly and professionally (flaky sellers are a major reason that buyers prefer to deal with reliable middlemen like Getty) and they need to indicate that they have model releases available when appropriate. Most difficult of all, they need to know how much to charge. But Getty’s own price quotes can provide a good source of comparison, and when you’re taking home 100 percent of the sales price, you can also undercut them, making up for the lack of Getty’s reputation.

It’s that direct approach to winning clients and customers that can work for any kind of photographer.

All photographers, both amateurs looking for occasional sales and professionals who need those sales, should have their own website. There’s no shortage of easy and low-cost options, from Photoshelter’s templates (which are used by some of the world’s leading independent photographers) through services like FolioLink, which has ecommerce built in, to simple Flash-based modular sites like those offered at MoonFruit. The building and hosting is now easy, giving all photographers their own unique space on the Web to show off their style, their approach and their very best work.

No less importantly, it also gives prospects, having viewed their work, a way to contact them and enquire about pricing, commissions and sales.

Facebook for Events, Etsy for Art

But while the building is simple, bringing in the traffic won’t be. Search engine optimization is time-consuming, unreliable and difficult. Online advertising is competitive and the days when you could buy clicks for five cents each are long gone. Advertise for “wedding photographer New York” on Google’s AdSense program and you’ll be paying around 50 cents per click.

Having built their sites then, enthusiasts will need to rely on more guerilla methods of generating sales and building a client base. Social media will clearly be one of them. Although Facebook advertising has proven to be notoriously ineffective for most kinds of business, with high prices and low clickthrough rates, photographers have been able to enjoy the viral effect of face-tagging as well as the ability to target advertising to specific demographics. It’s a method that works for some kinds of photography: wedding photographers are doing well on the site; stock photographers not so much. Those photographers would be better off licensing directly from their own sites and using blog posts and forum contributions about their particular niche to build their reputation and establish a unique place in the market.

For fine art photographers, sales have never been easy, and art always struggles most when economies are in the doldrums. But there are independent options for them too. Etsy is pretty full of photographers, and buyers usually want a bit of image manipulation on photos that match the seasons or which show famous locations. But it is possible to make sales on the site — and having made sales, it’s always possible to convert those customers into a fan base by collecting email addresses, sending a newsletter, keeping them informed on Twitter and thinking of the site as a place not to deliver the odd image but to find regular buyers who love your style.

And while online selling can be frustrating, technical and time-consuming, selling at art fairs can be a lot of fun. You’ll only be able to do it occasionally. Winning a spot at the fair might not be easy (competition for photography places can be as high as ten or even twenty to one). And the expenses involved in obtaining a booth and display materials can be eye-watering. But photographers who do sell at art fairs report healthy profits, and in judged fairs awards can lead to new interest from gallery owners.

That would take you back to a middle man — one who will usually take 50 percent of your sales price — but it would make the marketing efforts a lot easier.

Image: Duncan Harris, from Tera

Photographers attempt to freeze a moment. They capture the beauty of a scene, the character in a portrait, the drama in an event. But would it still be photography if the images were made without a camera, only a monitor, if the landscapes were virtual and the portraits were of people who really are two-dimensional? The technical process might be completely different, demanding coding and hacking skills rather than a knowledge of f-stops and lenses, but the artistic skills are the same: the “photographer” still has to think about framing and focus, lighting and effect. And the results can be no less dramatic, moving and eye-catching. ­

Duncan Harris likes to think of himself as a “videogame tourist” but compares the work he does in finding and capturing photogenic moments in computer gameworlds to that of a Unit Stills Photographer creating shots for a movie’s publicity material. Like the photographer, his goal too, he argues, is to reflect the flavor of a scene and its movement in a single frame. Harris has created thousands of landscape images, portraits and dramatic shots captured while exploring the giant worlds created by computer game designers and populated with animated characters.

First, Free the Camera

A journalist specializing in video games, screen captures used to be a part of Harris’s review process. Although those early gameworlds were lacking in architecture and furnishing, they presented the same challenges that Harris faces now: removing the head-up display that gamers need to play, and unlocking the camera so that he could explore the world beyond the game’s narrative to search for unusual views and attractive scenes. As games became richer and more complex so the opportunities for capturing beautiful images increased.

“It’s several things that all come together to make it worthwhile,” he says of his work. “Freeing the art of games from the technology, hardware and rituals of gaming is the obvious one; exploring and celebrating overlooked games with great art is another; then there’s the idea of broadening the hobby of gaming beyond the obvious gameplay, taking it to a place where everyone can appreciate it…. Games can create enjoyable standalone art in realtime now. It’s not all about concept art anymore.”

The process is technical and complex, and varies from game to game. Each title will require a few hours of investigation as Harris examines the options available and how much of the world he can open up with a few modifications. Specialist tools include Dolphin, a Nintendo emulator, which has a “free camera” and lets Harris remove the head-up displays and pause screens. Unreal Engine, used to power many gameworlds, includes generic developer functions that can give a knowledgeable user control beyond the gameplay itself. Other games have software development kits and consoles hidden away but accessible to people who know how to dig them out and use them. And then there are the tricks involved in capturing the images in 1080p and bringing them from an Xbox 360 to a computer for rendering in 2160p. (This apparently involves a process that requires hacking “a few EDID values in the monitor driver” and tweaking registry settings for the videocard drivers.) The amount of freedom Harris can give himself to explore a gameworld can range from “absolute” to “harsh austerity” so he looks first for a clear screen, a free camera and — every photographer’s dream — the ability to stop time.

Suggesting Movement in a Shot

Image: Duncan Harris, from Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl

But while the process of image capture is unique to gaming, the aesthetics involved in choosing and creating that image would be recognizable to any photographer. Harris has no formal background in photography and says that he has no idea how to properly use a camera. He thinks of photography as a “higher art form” that can strike your heart immediately and “haunt you forever” while games have “to insinuate their way there” through exploration and the life or the world around the viewer. Photography, he believes, has much to teach the gaming world about landscapes and objects, and he made a point of looking at car photography before working on racing game Gran Turismo 5.

And yet there’s no questioning Harris’s photographic eye.

“I know shapes and symbols, and the emotions they convey,” he says. “I know the value of framing, and how adjusting field of vision can ‘compress’ a scene to push out any dead space. I know when something should and shouldn’t violate the edge of the frame to suggest scale. The right frame of an idle animation, a flicker in a character’s eye that stops them looking like a zombie for a second, the right balance and placement of light and shadow: you just pick these things up after a while. And motion, of course; there are countless ways to suggest motion in something that doesn’t move.”

Making money from these images though might just pose a bigger challenge than the difficulties involved in actually creating them. Game development firms occasionally pay Harris to capture shots of their games, and magazines will sometimes ask him for images to illustrate their stories. But while landscapes belong to everyone and the freedom to use a portrait can be signed away with a model release form, ownership of the artwork that Harris captures while exploring The Exiled World of Arborea (Tera) or The Need For Speed Hot Pursuit belongs to the publisher and developer of the game not to the “photographer” who captures them.

That just leaves Harris with the pleasure of doing something that he loves: overcoming the technical challenges involved in creating an image; exploring the scenery to find the right shot; enjoying the thrill of spotting a moment that’s perfect for capturing — then going back and doing it all over again.

“A lot of these games I do several times over because new things are discovered,” he says. So when people ask if this is ‘art’, that’s where I’m comfortable saying yes.”

Success on Flickr can bring rich rewards. Buyers use the site to source photographers with rare images and strong talent for commercial projects, magazines and even commissions. But that success isn’t easy to achieve. It’s not enough to upload great pictures and hope that someone notices. Contributors have to upload their very best images, then network to build views, comments and attention. Even the Explore page, a daily selection of the site’s best images, uses an algorithm that identifies photos that are already popular then gives them even greater attention. 500px was created to make it easier for photographers to win exposure for their images by taking on much of that promotional work for them.

The site was launched in 2004, the same year that Flickr went live, but has only a fraction of the more than 50 million members registered at the Yahoo-owned subsidiary. According to Evgeny Tchebotarev, one of 500px’s founders, it has “hundreds of thousands” of photographers and far fewer photos than Flickr. In fact, he notes, the total number of images submitted to 500px over the last two years equals the number of photos that are uploaded to Facebook in just a few hours.

Hundreds More Views Than Flickr

That doesn’t make for a weaker selection though; a quick browse through the site turns up one high quality image after another. Photographers, most of them enthusiasts rather than professionals, are encouraged to upload only their very best images — the first step in the upload instructions is “Choose only your very best photos”  — leaving the more general images for either social media sites or to Flickr’s large sets and collections.

“We are here to show and exhibit the best photos, so majority of Flickr’s market will actually never become our users,” says Tchebotarev. “I think of 500px as a funnel — we are standing between viewers’ eyeballs and photographers, helping photographers get noticed, be faved and loved, and helping viewers get inspired and discover amazing photos.”

The smaller selection might give viewers less to look at but it may deliver more results to photographers. An image on 500px can expect to receive a hundred times the number of views a similar image might receive on Flickr, says Tchebotarev. (That may not be true for all images though. This editors’ choice image, which won Digital Camera World’s Portrait of the Year 2011, picked up just under 5,000 views on 500px; on Flickr, the same image, shown smaller, has won over 13,000 views.)

Nonetheless, a site that has only a fraction of the members of other photography services does manage to give photographers a great deal of coverage. That’s helped by the site’s more human approach to image promotion. While Flickr counts views, comments and faves to decide which images make the Explore page, 500px relies on a handful of editors around the world and with different tastes to identify the pictures that they believe are worth more attention.

“Their goal is to try to choose the photos that might push photography beyond, move it forward and show something that is very unique or very hard to achieve,” says Tchebotarev. “That helps other photographers become better artists.”

The site also has more featured options. In addition to the editors’ choice, viewers can look at “popular” images, “upcoming” images, “favorites” and “fresh” images. A Stumble option throws up random photos that are surprising both in content and quality.

Free Blogging Included

500px also provides photographers with a great deal of dynamism — if they want to use it. In addition to creating a profile, describing images and adding comments to other photographers’ work, members can also write blog posts and place status updates on a Facebook-style wall. For an annual fee of $50, members can buy unlimited uploads and bandwidth, portfolio designs that are iPad and iPhone-friendly, access to Google Analytics and the ability to connect their 500px portfolio to their own domain.

The portfolios, says Tchebotarev, help photographers “by taking away pain from updating or managing their personal site. It is a set of tools to create beautiful custom websites, and we take care of everything. It is something me and Oleg (co-founder) were missing in the space, so we made it the way we ourselves would use.”

500px then has managed to attract photographers with beautiful works to offer, and it excels at highlighting the best of that work and bringing it to the attention of people who might enjoy it. Financially though, the site currently offers less to those talented photographers than Flickr provides. While it’s possible to add creative commons licenses to images, there’s no link that leads directly to all of the photos that publishers might want to use for free — one way to show those same publishers better images that they might want to buy. In fact, a search for creative commons images turned up just 114 photos. Flickr offers more than 200 million images with one creative commons license or another.

Some photographers are explicitly making their images available for licensing and sale, but 500px doesn’t have the same kind of agreement that Flickr has with the stock industry — a decision that appears to have come from the site which didn’t think it would have been in the interest of its members.

“We actually talked to Getty,” Tchebotarev said, “and while I cannot share the details, very few Flickr users benefit from that.”

That combination of broad exposure of great images but limited opportunity to sell them may change soon though. The site is working on a new sales platform which Tchebotarev promises will be an “absolutely different experience.”

And as Flickr struggles to compete against Facebook as a place for people to share images, 500px’s more selective approach appears to be a winning formula. The site is expected to achieve a remarkable twenty-fold growth rate this year, says Tchebotarev.

For photographers,  500px does have plenty to offer. Its portfolios are attractive and its ability to push the best pictures forward — and from a smaller crowd — make it an easier place than Flickr to win attention for great images. How easy it is to sell those images on the site will depend on what 500px rolls out next.

Start thinking about selling your photos and your first thoughts are likely to be of prints and licenses. A myriad of options from Buy Now buttons on websites and photo-sharing platforms to garage sales and galleries let photographers offer framed versions of their art. Microstock’s open policy means that anyone can now upload and hope for a royalty. But offering prints means selling in a hugely competitive market while microstock is both saturated and low-paying. Fortunately, there are plenty of very creative ways to get paid for your art.

1. Publish a Photography Magazine

Blurb and Lulu, among others, have long made it possible for photographers to create their own photo books — an option often generally taken up by event photographers looking for an easy way to create a photo album — but it’s also possible to publish a regular photo magazine.

MagCloud, a service provided by HP, allows publishers to create print-on-demand subscription-based publications. It currently offers around 5,350 self-published magazines related to photography. Some, like Maree Slaven’s magazine, function as portfolios. Others, like DCist Exposed, are annual catalogs containing shots taken by competition winners. A few though, such as Visions, act as real magazines with articles and contributors.

How many of those magazines make money is questionable. The print version of Visions costs $17. That price includes access to the digital version which usually costs $3.25 but is unlikely to ensure high numbers of sales. Delivering a profit of $4.80 over the cost of printing alone, it’s also unlikely to deliver high revenues.

But producing the magazine could be fun. You’d get to put your images in print, work with other photographers in your field, and explore photography issues that you find interesting. The selling would be hard and the profits small, but MagCloud makes the publishing easy and enjoyable.

2. Art Cards

Selling art is never easy but one genre that’s recently been enjoying some sudden popularity is ACEO — Art Cards, Editions and Originals. The movement started in Switzerland and requires artists to create works that can fit onto a card measuring just 2.5 by 3.5 inches. The size is the only rule; artists can use any materials they want to create their works, including photography.

Although ACEO are traditionally exchanged, like collectors’ cards, some are also sold, often on eBay or Etsy. A typical price is usually around $5 for a card, an amount small enough for quick buys and a good price for bargain purchases at art fairs and garage sales.

The big advantage of ACEO, other than the opportunity for impulse buying and the absence of a need for an empty wall to display the print, is the creativity. ACEO are meant to be collectible. The more artistic and creative you can make your ACEO, the more desirable you can make it too. Niver Daduryan combines photography with colored pencil, watercolor, ink, marker and even sparkle to produce his cards. Felicia Kramer adds a poem to her montage. With art cards, you can really let your artistic juices flow.

3. Wall Decals

Photography can go on walls, but they don’t have to go in frames. The estimated $8 billion spent on wall décor in the US every year includes money spent on decals — giant peelable stickers.

Usually, wall decals are produced by designers who use graphics of trees or animals to decorate children’s rooms and offices. A few decals though make use of photography rather than drawing. Designer Dan Witz has a series of decals called “What the %$#@…” that show a photo of a goat, a person and a Tasmanian devil poking through a ventilation grate. The decals are sold through Blik for $30.

Dan Witz’s decals are fairly small. Photographers who want to make the decals of their own images can go further by using Shutterfly which lets anyone turn photos into stickable wall art. It’s not cheap though, with prices starting at $59.99 for a sticker of 36 inches by 27 inches. That doesn’t leave much room for profit while still being affordable but photographers of college sports teams or even nature scenes might be able to win some sales — or land a better offer from a local printer.

4. Duvet Covers

Art cards and decals might go on a wall but that’s not the only location you can place a picture. You can also take it to bed. Like decals, duvet covers are usually made up of graphic images but a few smart designers have been playing around with printing photographs on the bed covers.

Target sells a simple cover made up of a photo of a marigold, with matching pillows. The range also includes gardenias and orchids and sell for between $69 and $89. Lazybone, a UK gift shop, sells “cheeky nude” duvet covers for £33.99, while BagsofLove, another British store will print your image on bedding for £99.

You don’t have to be as cheeky as Lazybone or as expensive as BagsofLove to put your photos on people’s beds though. Find a designer who’s willing to work with you (Etsy forums could be one place to look) suggest a joint venture and split the revenues. While you’re unlikely to hit giant sums unless you manage to find distributors as big as Target, you should be able to land a few helpful sales.

5. Web Comics

Decorating bed covers might be fun but not as much fun as turning your images into comic strips. Photonovels are a small genre within the small, nichey world of comics but it does have a market. Some, like Alien Loves Predator, use models to create compositions while others, like A Softer World, transpose haiku-like prose over meaningful imagery. The creators of that strip, Canadians Joey Comeau and  Emily Horne have been able to make a living from their comic.

Few other comic creators are that lucky but with a large enough audience and a good line in accessories and merchandise, you can still have some fun telling stories, using images and earning a few dollars.

Browse the images on the website of photographer Patrick Pfister and you might be in for a bit of a shock. Past the commercial photos of executives and tower blocks, and beyond the aerial shots of Louisville and Kentucky, you reach a black and white picture of a surgeon holding a heart. Next to it is a color shot of a hand attached to an arm by little more than a strip of bone. For more than twenty years, Pfister’s list of professional services has included medical photography, the shooting of images of doctors, hospitals and medical scenes.

Some of those scenes have been pretty momentous. Pfister was in the operating room to photograph Kentucky’s first heart transplant. He was standing next to the anesthesiologist during the world’s third installment of an artificial heart, and he was present throughout America’s first hand transplant, performed at Louisville’s Jewish Hospital. It’s a difficult job that combines photographic skill with medical knowledge and, to some extent, a high threshold for squeamishness.

The limited field of view can be helpful in tackling the sight of blood. The only part of the operating table that’s undraped and visible is the field on which the surgeon is operating. Pfister can’t tell the patient’s age, gender or identity as he shoots, and he knows that he’s not photographing an operation that’s being performed on anyone he knows. That helps to deliver the necessary distance for most jobs, although not all.

“That is not me or a family member on the table, so I really don’t get very emotional about it at all,” says Pfister. “The only time I was taken aback was when I was covering a neurosurgeon and came into the OR. Seeing the human skull open and a brain was somewhat arresting.”

Stay Out the Way

An operating room isn’t a studio and doing a photographic job in a place where medical professionals are trying to do their job does pose challenges — beyond the difficulties of staying upright while looking at the contents of someone’s skull. Pfister tries to limit the amount of equipment he carries with him and cleans everything down with alcohol wipes to reduce the risk of infecting the patient. He also tries to stay out of everyone’s way unless invited to get closer for a shot. The anesthesiologist usually has the best view for open heart surgery, and Pfister tries to stay next to him.

The images are generally used for external communication, to illustrate the work of the hospital or to include in brochures. But some medical photography can have even more important uses. Mike Samuels was the Head of Photography at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in London whose library of medical conditions and pioneering use of art and photography have led some to call it the home of medical photography. He was later Head of Medical Illustration at the UK’s merged UCL and Royal Free Medical Schools, and now runs a business that trains doctors, dentists and healthcare professionals to take medical photographs.

Working in a country whose hospitals are publicly funded, Samuels’ photographs may be used to support the hospital’s publicity goals but they’re more frequently used for medical purposes. Samuels specializes in mole mapping, recording the presence and growth of moles to identify malignant melanomas in people whose family history may suggest a predisposition to skin cancer.

“Some of the first changes that occur to a  mole are visual. Photographic record is therefore ideally suited to assisting this monitoring process and patients find it useful to have a record of their skin condition so they can self examine for change,” says Samuels. “By using a structured protocol of views, medical photographers assist dermatologists in ensuring patients are seen at the earliest possible time when any change occurs.”

Other uses of the images are no less practical. The photos can provide a document of a patient’s progress, especially for plastic and reconstructive surgery. They may also help to train and educate staff, while other images can be used in medical litigation and even forensics, particularly in the case of abuse.

Know When the Patient Will be Sewn Up

In addition to technical skills, medical photographers need to be aware of the special issues surrounding patient consent and the confidentiality concerning the storage and use of the photos. An understanding of physiology helps too. Samuels did have aspirations of becoming a doctor but was able to learn about the body as a trainee medical photographer at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, first in the pathology department and later in the clinical department.

Experience can help as well. Patrick Pfister’s presence in the operating room has given him a good idea of what to expect when someone is about to have their heart removed.

“Having shot heart transplants a number of times, I know how the body will be transferred from the defective heart to a heart lung machine that takes over the pulmonary function of the heart and lungs,” he explains. “I know when the donor organ will be sewn into the patient and the process of rewarming the blood causes the new heart to beat on its own, hopefully. You sort of learn as you go in the OR environment.”

Picking up that experience though isn’t easy. Pfister’s reputation as a medical photographer began when he was freelancing in the late 1980s. His clients included both the local newspaper, the Courier-Journal and Louisville’s Jewish Hospital. When the hospital announced that it would perform the state’s first heart transplant, Pfister asked the hospital’s director of communications if he could shoot the stills. The images — the result of fourteen hours of shooting in the operating room — ran above the fold in two newspapers for a week and put him in demand from other hospitals in the area for five years. Today, he says, hospitals tend to have photographers on staff who shoot everything from hospital activities to portraits and medical work. Meeting one of those photographers to supply non-medical images might provide a connection that could lead to an opportunity to shoot in an operating room.

It’s also possible to pick up some professional training. The Rochester Institute Technology has a program in Biomedical Photographic Communications, and in the UK, the Institute of Medical Illustrators runs a part-time, distance course conducted while working in a hospital. The University of Wales also has a postgraduate degree in Medical Photography.

However you decide to break into medical photography though, just make sure you’re prepared for the contents of the operating room.

Photography: Nancy Falso

If you’re wondering what to do with the artistic shots of landmarks you shot on your last foreign vacation, then you might want to think about selling them on Etsy. The craft site might be best known for its handmade items and vintage products but buyers on the site are also willing to snap up shots of cities, landmarks and famous sites — provided they’re artistic enough.

“Photos of places like Paris, London and NYC… tend to sell well,” says Nancy Falso, who has been shopping on Etsy for a year and opened her own store on the site three months ago. “But since there are so many they need really to have something special about them in order to stand out among the rest.”

Saturation is certainly a problem. The site offers more than 305,000 items in the photography section of its art category in forms that range from abstract to TTV, a format in which pictures are taken with one camera shooting through the viewfinder of another. Shoppers on the site are said to buy according to the seasons, with winter-themed photos selling as the temperatures drop and beach photos moving best in the summer. In October, for example, Falso sold this autumnal image of a squirrel in a pine tree. The self-taught photographer has also found that her desk calendars are currently selling well as customers start to look for extensions to their 2011 calendars.

Whimsy is What Sells

It’s the travel images though that are among the most surprising year-round choices. Georgia Fowler has been shooting seriously since 2007 and travels extensively. She’s lived in five countries and is currently based in France. Fowler was able to sell this image of a French menu board within hours of listing it on the site.

But that was unusual and Fowler has only sold a few images on the site since she started selling photography there in May 2011. Most of her store offers landscape images of France, she points out, shots that are attractive and artistic but which have little connection to a particular place let alone one as well known as the French capital.

“[P]hotos of Paris, blurry, layered, textured and heavily photoshopped is what sells best,” she says. “You could describe them as dreamy and whimsical styles. It has been mentioned in discussions on the Etsy forums that this could be because being a handmade site, a good photo isn’t enough. You have to show that you have done more than just take a stunning photo!”

The challenges of selling on Etsy don’t end with the need to convert your pictures of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Empire State Building into vintage shots that look like they were captured in the 1930s. They also have to be priced properly.

Nancy Falso begins by checking the cost of printing in various sizes and adds the profit margin she wants to make (and says she needs to earn in order to make selling them worthwhile). She then looks at shipping prices and, finally, compares her rates with those of other sellers. (Lowballing might be tempting to win some initial sales but rarely works, she warns. “Buyers will only value your work if you value it yourself.”)

The result is usually a price of $25 for an unframed 8 x 10 inch print and around $15 for unframed 5 x 7 inch print. With the cost of printing included in that price, but not Etsy’s 3.5 percent transaction fee, that doesn’t leave a huge profit margin to cover either the expenses involved in creating the image or time spent selling it.

Don’t Charge for the Time

And that selling time will be an important factor. The biggest surprise Falso found when she began selling on Etsy was the amount of effort she needed to set up lists, organize her shop, update her treasuries, and stay involved in “teams,” Etsy’s version of Flickr’s groups.

“[I]t’s all quite time consuming, but all quite necessary if you want to sell,” she says.
“You definitely can’t just open a shop, upload your photos and sit back waiting for sales to happen.”

That’s particularly true when it comes to search engine optimization. Etsy allows sellers to include tags to make sure that their images turn up in searches but it’s also important to include keywords in titles, even if that does make those descriptions clumsy to read. Falso’s squirrel image, which was sold to a woman in Australia, had the less-than-catchy moniker “Stealthy the Squirrel photo print – 8×10 nougat brown forest green fall colors pine tree furry autumn fall whimsical camouflage.”

Even with the right images at the right prices, tagged and keyworded carefully, and promoted through teams and social media, sales might still be relatively rare. Nancy Falso says that she sells, on average, one picture “every few weeks,” a rate that’s she’s been told is rather good for a new seller. Many people, she remarks, wait weeks or even months before they make their first sale.

There are alternatives, of course. Georgia Fowler also sells through her own site and through Fine Art America. Ebay, she says, can bring a large audience to marketable images, but the prices are too low and everyone is looking for a “super bargain.” Nancy Falso has made sales on Society6 but says that she prefers Etsy because it’s more personal and she can check the quality of the images before she sends them out.

Etsy, then, is capable of delivering some sales for photographers. If the image is seasonal or travel-related and whimsical, well-tagged and promoted, it might generate the occasional order. But it’s unlikely that your presence on the site will do more than deliver the odd welcome check. Think of it as a fun place to mingle online with other creative types and to offer images that you had a good time creating. And think of the money it can bring in as a bonus that shows you someone likes your image so much they were actually willing to pay for it.

Photography: WarmSleepy

David Hobby spent twenty years as a newspaper photographer. He studied photojournalism at the University of Florida, shot for the Leesburg Commercial, the Orlando Sentinel, UPI, and freelanced for many others. He was a staff photographer at Patuxent Publishing for eleven years and spent another nine years at The Baltimore Sun. When he left the Sun in 2008, he was one of 100 staffers who had agreed to accept a buyout as part of a staff reduction program. He’s now best known not for the images he shot over that twenty-year period but for the education he’s given to thousands of other photographers through his Strobist blog.

Hobby’s career could be seen as encapsulating the decline of editorial photography. A job that should have been rewarding, enjoyable and challenging is now under so much pressure from declining news readership that the best way to make money out of it is to teach its skills online rather than use them.

Stock Snaps Up Editorial Agencies

Recently though there have been a few signs of new interest in editorial photography. At the beginning of 2011, Getty announced that iStockPhoto would begin accepting and selling images specifically for editorial use.

“Publications and bloggers are often looking for images of products, architecture and landmarks,” the company told us then. “There is also a constant need for photos that tell stories about travel and lifestyles or those that provide social commentary. These are the types of images iStock will now be able to offer.”

Sales of editorial images on iStock began towards the end of the first quarter, and the site now offers a little over 140,000 images that can only be used editorially (in addition to the 8 million-plus commercial images that can also be used editorially).

Getty isn’t alone. Over the last year, rival Corbis has announced a series of moves that included an agreement with Zuma Press, the world’s largest independent press agency, a partnership with Associated Press, the purchase of celebrity news agency Splash News, and in August, an investment in Demotix, a two-year-old crowd-sourced editorial photography site. The two companies had made a global distribution agreement in March. The amount of the investment wasn’t disclosed but according to a press release, the support did indicate Corbis’s confidence in editorial photography.

“Our investment in Demotix illustrates not only the quality of Demotix’s local photographers, but Corbis’ commitment to providing global Media outlets with an even deeper selection of exceptional breaking news imagery from sources that reach places where mainstream suppliers cannot offer coverage,” said Gary Shenk, CEO of Corbis. “Combined with our recent cross-distribution partnership with the Associated Press and acquisition of Splash News, Corbis’ comprehensive Media offering now covers each subject and industry vertical to provide the most compelling end-to-end offering in the market today.”

So the situation for editorial photography isn’t as gloomy as it might appear. Newspapers might have laid off photographers but stock companies are stepping up to fill the gap, giving photographers another outlet for their images.

But it’s not that simple. Even the rise of tablet computers hasn’t solved the problems faced by print firms struggling to compete against free news sites. Owners of iPads and other devices may be more willing to buy subscriptions but only 11 percent of American adults own one. Without a dedicated app, publishers are stuck with giving away their content for free online or placing it behind a paywall where they risk losing advertising revenue. And if they do create an app, 30 percent of their revenues will go to Apple.

iPhone Pictures for Sale

Even the interest in editorial images among stock companies may be less reassuring than it appears. The bulk of the editorial images available on iStockPhoto, for example, seem to consist not of carefully-captured news images that encapsulate a story, reflect a zeitgeist or provide “social commentary” but brand images that can’t be used commercially. The top-selling editorial image on iStock shows an iPhone with a blank screen. Uploaded towards the end of June, it’s sold over 400 licenses. Of the next 50 top-selling editorial images, all but two show technology — usually an Apple product.

Addressing the status of editorial photography on his blog A Photo Editor in February 2011, Rob Haggart, the former Director of Photography for Men’s Journal and Outside Magazine, presented a mixed picture.

“Editorial photography is alive and kicking, growing even, what’s dead is the idea that editorial anything only lives under the aegis of benevolent newspaper and magazine owners.”

Rather than finding a home on the pages of newspapers like the Baltimore Sun, he argued, photographers are creating their own photographic niches. Cycling clothing manufacturer Rapha, for example, has used documentaries and editorial content to promote its products, creating a commercial space for photojournalists supplied by a firm.

But that’s also a space that enthusiasts can fill — even if they can’t fill it easily. Street photographer Yanidel Delafoge is currently on an 80-week trip around the world during which he’ll be publishing his images on his website and writing about technique, equipment and street photography in general. It’s a commitment that has already won him attention from the Leica Camera blog, among other places. Photographer Bryan Formhals has used his love of street photography to create LPV Magazine, a print and Web publication that relies on editorial images. The magazine is issued three times a year and is published through MagCloud, a print-on-demand magazine service operated by HP.

Despite its troubles then, and despite the troubles of the traditional media, editorial photography isn’t dead. And despite the interest of stock companies in offering editorial images to publications now short of staff photographers, it’s unlikely that licensing is going to support the kinds of storytelling images that photojournalists love to shoot. While there will always be a market for those images somewhere, the best strategy for editorial photographers might be to look for ways to publish them themselves. Making it pay won’t be easy… but the alternative is always to set up a blog and teach.

Yuri Arcurs, probably the world’s most successful microstock photographer, is preparing to launch a training program in stock photography. Arcurs is looking for between ten and fifteen “interns” who want to learn how to shoot professional stock images. The interns, or “students,” will receive free accommodation, food, and access to equipment, including Canons, Nikons, Hasselblad SLR cameras and RED epic video cameras. Students will spend six months at Arcur’s studios in Cape Town, three months in Denmark and three months shooting in other parts of the world with all travel expenses covered by Yuri Arcurs Productions. The course will last three years, focus on stock photography but cover other photography areas too.

According to Kelly Pollock, a junior recruiter for the program, Yuri Arcurs Productions is working on an agreement to film the course for a reality television series but any agreement would only be a bonus to the program. The real incentive is to help talented photographers acquire the knowledge they need to break into stock photography.

“Yuri wants to sow back into the industry,” said Ms Pollock. “He recognises that there are many talented people who are passionate about photography and could be fantastic photographers if just given a chance. He has the capital to fund this and give those people the opportunity to break into the industry.”

Photography Students Will Receive Pocket Money

No photography experience is required but applicants, who will be tested at a bootcamp in Cape Town in January, will need their own digital SLR camera capable of shooting at least 10 mega pixels, a 50mm/85mm lens  with an aperture of no less than 2.0, a 16 GB memory card and
a clean criminal record.

Students will have no expenses during the course but they also won’t have much in the way of income. They will receive “pocket money” which will be drawn from the funds earned by the images they shoot. Any additional revenues will be used to help fund the course’s expenses. While that might suggest that the interns are effectively paying for their education by handing over the images they create for the next 36 months, it’s unlikely that a new microstock photographer with little or no experience would earn enough to cover all the costs of the training and equipment they’ll use during the course.

Three years is still a long time to be without a source of income though. It’s little different to the time spent on a degree course but college does at least provide a qualification and a broad look at professional photography.

More tellingly, one of the draws of microstock is that anyone can submit their images and begin to make sales. Does Yuri Arcurs really believe it takes three years of training to become a successful microstock photographer?

“At least!” said Ms Pollock. “It is an illusion of some that stock photography is an easier form of photography than many other sectors. The final products may look simple and easy, but much work and sweat goes into getting the perfect photographs…. In fact, with all the training and input, the photographers should just be good enough for Yuri Arcurs Productions standards at the end of the three year period!”

A more important consideration though — and one much harder to answer — is whether the knowledge they’ll pick up during the course will still have value in three years’ time. Arcurs himself has talked of his return per image peaking at $9.10 in 2009 and falling to an expected $5.60 in 2011, a decline created in part by the increasing numbers of enthusiasts taking market share from full time professionals.

The Future of Microstock is Professional

The launch of the course does seem to imply that for Arcurs, the solution to the pressures on microstock don’t lie in more enthusiasts competing on microstock sites but in properly trained and dedicated photographers producing better and more commercial images.

“Stock photography has become a very competitive industry and yes, without excellent training, a dedicated mentor and the correct environment, new photographers will most probably not be able to make it,” said Ms Pollock. “The industry today is very different from when Yuri first entered it, and someone hoping to enter into it needs to have all the elements in place to stand a chance. Even Yuri himself would not have been able to do today what he did only several years back.”

It’s easy to be cynical about Yuri Arcurs’s training program. But it’s not certain that he is wrong about the importance of professional training before starting a microstock career. Currently, half of iStock’s sales come from just 1.6 percent of its contributors, including Yuri Arcurs. Those figures may be declining as more enthusiasts make occasional sales, but the best way to compete is to shoot better and market more, not shoot less and shoot worse.

Three years is a long commitment especially to a young, volatile part of an industry that has an uncertain future. But there’s no doubt that Yuri Arcurs himself has been phenomenally successful in a field in which most photographers can claim at best a moderate income. Even if microstock turns out to have little room in three years’ time for professionals who need to count their expenses, the kind of professionalism and business acumen that his company has shown will always have value. And while stock photography in general is under pressure, the photographers who are most likely to make a living in the industry are those who are both the most talented and the most knowledgeable.

Photography enthusiasts who wish to apply need to send an application to jobs@arcurs.com before December 1, 2011. The email should be marked “photography student” and include: a motivational letter explaining why you are interested in taking the course; a resumé, reference letter from previous employers; a bio; a photograph of yourself; and a statement showing a clean criminal record.

Photography: Scott Leggo

Some photography jobs are better than others. Few photography jobs though are better than those won by Scott Leggo. A former officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, Leggo’s work is now divided between aviation photography and landscape photography — and sometimes a combination of the two. His prints are bought by both businesses and individuals, and his commercial assignments take him to some of the most beautiful places on earth often for clients patient enough to understand that it might take a few sunsets to capture the right image. Usually, he can be found in the wilderness, with his camera, waiting for the weather to give him a perfect shot. It’s the ideal photographic life, and it took Leggo just five years to build with no formal training and a background in aviation, not artistry.

That background though may have contributed in at least one important way to Leggo’s success. His military experience, Leggo says, gave him a strong belief in preparation and planning, a discipline that he extends to his photography.

“Getting started in this business was no different and I spent (and still do) plenty of time on the business planning,” he told us. “This was just as important to building success as learning photography and getting out taking photos.”

The preparation begins with shoots. To capture “Snow Solitude” (shown above), for example, Leggo first visited the region around Mt. Hotham, an alpine resort in Victoria, in the summer when it was easier to hike around and identify scenes and subjects that would look good after a snowfall. On his first return visit, he found that the tree was indeed buried but the weather wasn’t right. He returned over several days, tramping across the snow, through strong winds and heavy clouds, in snowshoes — and then had to wait several hours for the fog to lift before he could capture an image that he had first envisioned the previous summer.

Even the spontaneous shots, the images captured when he happened to be in the right place in the right weather, require Leggo to be ready enough to shoot them.

What Isn’t Seen Isn’t Sold

But the preparation isn’t just about knowing what to shoot and when, but knowing how to show those shots to a public that might want to buy them or hire a photographer to shoot them.

“A big lesson I have learnt is that if no one has seen your photos, they won’t even know you exist and so can’t buy your photos,” he says.

When Leggo first began building his photography business he was sure to let as many people as possible know what he was planning to do. More importantly though, he also leveraged local businesses in the areas where he had taken pictures. Those businesses then became advocates of his photography, Leggo explains. Because his images were helping to promote their area and make their businesses look good, it was a win-win situation for both sides. As more individuals and companies learnt about his photography and engaged him to shoot their own images, word spread further.

That work for the first small businesses who hired him led to more work with companies and bodies in the tourism industry, allowing Leggo’s commercial work to evolve.

The website helps to spread the word too but it’s not a complete solution to the problem of marketing a photography business, Leggo warns. Although no client has ever hired him without first looking at his site, few find him by googling for a “landscape photographer.” If they don’t reach the site directly, they might have searched for his name, having already seen his prints or heard about his work.

“In my experience SEO is overrated in this respect because the sales I generate are from those who already knew about me or have heard about me,” he says.

The site then takes leads “over the line,” either by persuading them to purchase prints through his online store or by engaging Leggo to undertake some commercial work, but it’s not the first point of contact for a new client.

The Art Supports the Commerce

Those two sides of Leggo’s business — the commercial shoots for government departments and large businesses who want promotional images of their winery or their new development, and the artistic shots that Leggo sells as prints — work together surprisingly well. Leggo often wins commercial assignments from companies that have already seen his calendars or limited edition prints and want images with a similar look.

“That gives them confidence to engage me as they already understand the style of work and how this could support their promotion, advertising or marketing efforts.”

In turn, the commercial work provides more opportunities to create images for another line of limited edition prints. It’s a relationship in which the two arms of the business support each other. (The same is true of Leggo’s aviation photography which can draw on his landscape photography. Next month, for example, Leggo will travel to Tasmania to shoot for a new air charter company that uses a floatplane to fly tourists into wilderness areas.)

The predictability that Leggo’s artistic shots promise to commercial buyers then is a vital aspect of his success. Leggo describes himself as a specialist. His goal was always to travel and spend time in nature, and he doesn’t shoot portraits or weddings. His dedication to the natural subjects he photographs even extends as far as his ‘Plant-a-Tree’ Partnership with Trees for the Future. Leggo has committed to plant a tree for every limited edition print or other product he sells as well as for every new fan of his Facebook page and follower of his Twitter stream.

When Leggo began telling his colleagues that he was thinking of leaving his job to set up as a photographer, he was greeted, he says, with “gasps of horror.” Few could understand why someone want to give up a successful government career with plenty of security to chase a dream with no guarantees. Although it hasn’t always been easy and not all of his marketing efforts have worked out successfully (some he says, were “financial disasters”), Leggo has no regrets. He’s now more relaxed and happier than he’s ever been, he says — which probably makes his job the best of all.

Photo copyright: James R Salomon for Sabrina Inc. Interior design: Andie Day, LLC.

Wouldn’t it be great if you never had to look for photography work yourself? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had someone looking out for your interests, someone with contacts in the industry, knowledge of the business and an understanding of your photography and what it takes to negotiate the best possible rates both for stock and for interesting commissions? For years, that’s always been the role of photographic agencies, companies that clients can turn to when they need a photographer and who then parcel out the work to the appropriate talent. Agencies though tend to represent top-end photographers, the kind of people who are sent to shoot magazine covers or photograph oil rigs for annual reports. A few agencies though are relatively small. Focusing on a particular niche, they represent a handful of photographers and are able serve clients smaller than BP by being flexible, fast and specialized.

Sabrina Inc. was set up in 2008 by Sabrina Velandry, a former studio manager for a Boston-based interiors photographer. After her first child was born, Velandry chose to take the photography business knowledge that she’d picked up working for one photographer and apply it to a group of photographers whose stock images and assignment photography her firm would represent.

Choosing to specialize in the market for interiors, Velandry was able to build a client base made up primarily of home and garden magazines who turned to her firm for both stock images and commissions.

The idea might have been sound but the timing wasn’t. The economy sank in the same year she founded the firm, a recession that, combined with the growth of the Internet, hit publishing particularly hard.

“We would literally be working on a stock search for a particular magazine, or shooting for another, and by the time I went to deliver the work, the magazine would have folded,” Velandry recalls. “It was frightening times.”

Velandry responded by expanding into new areas. Noticing that the decline of traditional publishing was taking place as the app market took off, she expanded into app development, becoming one of the first publishers in Apple’s App Store and helping to bring her clients’ magazines onto mobile platforms before many of the big publishing houses had spotted the importance of the new technology.

Small is Beautiful

That move into brand management and mobile publishing — into helping clients with needs that stretch beyond photography — has helped the firm through the decline in traditional publishing but, Velandry says, it was only possible because of Sabrina Inc’s small size. Being small meant that the firm was able to move quickly and to provide a closer, more personal level of support.

It also allows the company to accept photography jobs which are unusual, for which it might not have a template but which its photographers would be able to complete. Velandry has found that sometimes just being on location and talking to someone who needs photography can lead to a new client and a service that requires new negotiations with the photographer.

“If a unique situation presents itself we work out an agreement before the job starts. This works 99.9 percent of the time,” Velandry says. “We have a common goal; we all want work, and we all want to get paid fairly for our services.”

Surprisingly, Sabrina Inc’s specialization has also managed to protect it from some of the fluctuations in the photography industry — but not all of them. When it comes to unique stock images of home, garden, food and lifestyle photography, for example, the company’s prices are high end and haven’t dropped at all. When the market for shots of home furnishings fell with the real estate market, the demand for food photography grew and has held up even as the market for luxury home images has started to bounce back. Supported by the brand management side of the business, the company also now photographs musicians.

$3,000 is Better Than Nothing

The fees for assignment photography though have either remained flat or, more usually, dropped significantly. A client who ordered a shoot for a regional advertising campaign in 2006 and paid $5,000 (including expenses) recently paid just $3,000 for the same deliverables.

“In the end, it’s still $3,000 more than you had yesterday,” Velandry muses.

At the moment, the company represents just four photographers: Dan Cutrona, James R. Salomon, Ted Axelrod and Rob Karosis. While Velandry is keen to sign up more talent, assessing new photographers takes time. Portfolios have to be reviewed and the photographers have to be consulted about their goals, needs and aspirations. A gallery of their images is also added to the firm’s website. No less importantly, Velandry takes care to make sure that members of her stable aren’t competing against each other. While there may be some overlap in services, each photographer has his or her own strength and photographers aren’t usually vying for the same job.

As a photography agency then, Sabrina Inc. stands out mostly by not standing out. Representing the stock and assigned photography of just a handful of photographers, and specializing in a niche consisting of home and lifestyle images, it’s been able to generate work for a small group of select photographers. Could it be a solution for other photographers looking to outsource the marketing of their services to someone who understands the business and can bring in the clients?

The small size suggests the model’s limitations. The more photographers Sabrina Inc. takes on and the larger it grows, the more likely it is to lose the dynamism, flexibility and personal connections with both clients and photographers that have enabled it to succeed so far. To help lots of photographers then would require lots of experts in individual photography niches being willing to act as agents on behalf of photographers — and people with the knowledge and contacts of Sabrina Velandry are no less rare than seriously talented photographers.

On the other hand, successful photographers do build up that knowledge themselves. While few photographers want to see their studio manager break away, form their own company and leave them to find a replacement, some might be willing to turn their successful businesses into management agencies too. It wouldn’t be the first time that photographers have come together to manage their work.

When Yuri Arcurs, probably the world’s most successful microstock photographer, told macrostock photographer John Lund at the beginning of the year that his return per image had fallen from a peak of $9.10 in 2009 to $7.10 in 2010, and that he expected it to reach $5.60 in 2011, it seemed like a seminal moment for microstock photographers. It was a situation, Arcurs pointed out, that wasn’t sustainable and he hinted that without some movement from the agencies he might one day choose to sell directly from his own site, skipping the middle men and their predetermined prices altogether. If even Yuri Arcurs is worrying about the sustainability of microstock photography, has the industry had its day?

In fact, the situation may be more complex than that: more hopeful for part-time photographers and less rosy for professionals. The problem is the size and growth of the supply. As more photographers have signed up and submitted their images, they’ve forced a larger number of photographs to compete for the same search terms. Sales overall may be growing but they’re being spread among more images, and it’s not just Yuri Arcurs’s pictures that are feeling the pinch.

 “There is a pretty consistent drop in RPI for everyone,” says Bob Davies of PicNiche and a close follower of microstock statistics. “The saturated market is causing downward price-pressures (not accounting for premium collections).”

Davies’s own tool, which tracks the gap between the demand for particular terms and the supply of images that suit them, may help photographers to spot opportunities but even those doors are closing. Eventually all current in-demand terms will become saturated, he warns, although some will fill faster than others, depending mostly on the ease with which a photographer can shoot them.

“It’s a natural progression for any ‘crowd-sourced’ market,” says Davies. “The same thing is always found in mature markets, online and offline when scaled.”

Davies recommends a number of solutions both for agencies and for photographers. The microstock sites, he argues, have to be more selective and reject images for which they already have sufficient supply. Photographers, too, need to be more pro-active in their marketing. If the initial focus for microstock photographers was on producing larger numbers of images, then on producing better images, the focus now should be on selling those images to buyers.

Dreamstime Rejects Similar Images

Some sites are already taking action. Search algorithms are tweaked so that images that don’t sell immediately are pushed down the results, ensuring that only a fraction of the available photos are actually seen by buyers. Sites, too, are rejecting photos that are similar to those already on offer.

According to Serban Enache, CEO of Dreamstime, similarity is the most common reason for rejection on his site, especially for new contributors who submit without checking the existing database. Refusing pictures that are too similar in angle variation or format helps to protect sales and royalties, he told us.

But despite offering more than 12 million images, receiving around 350,000 monthly submissions and accepting more than 2,000 new contributors each month, Enache denies that microstock is already full. Even though similar images are rejected, older pictures, he argues, fall away to be replaced by newer and better versions.

“There is no saturation if you look at the fact that some of the content submitted five years ago is already exceeded by images submitted today,” he says. “While the biggest quality of stock is to be generic, content gets refreshed and replaced, with newer images having better aesthetic and technical values.”

If Arcurs and other established photographers are seeing their returns shrink then, it’s not just the number of images that are pushing down prices but the numbers of new photographers submitting better images.

Just 1.6 Percent of Photographers Produce 50 Percent of iStock’s Sales

What may be happening then is a broadening of what Bob Davies has called the long tail of microstock photography. In a recent presentation at the StockinRussia conference, Davies noted that 80 percent of iStock’s images come from just 6,609 photographers, 18 percent of its total contributors. Half of iStock’s total supply came from its most prolific 5 percent. For sales, the figures are even more skewed. Eighty percent of sales came from 2,756 photographers, 7 percent of the site’s total. Just 1.6 percent of iStock’s photographers, 606 contributors, were responsible for half of all the site’s sales. Agencies, says Davies, favor those photographers in their search results, protecting their position in the market, improving the chances that buyers will find a professional quality image quickly — and making life a little harder for newer photographers to gain a foothold.

But not hard enough if Arcurs’s falling RPI is anything to go by. Those initial high returns may have reflected a time when photographers had relatively few competitors but now that the industry has matured — and more photographers have joined an open industry — the true size of the opportunity for people who want to make money from their images may be becoming apparent. And it may not be large enough for professionals. Arcurs has said that he struggles to produce a picture for less than $20, a consideration that not every contributor bears in mind when he takes out his camera or produces an image for sale. If he’s enjoying the photography that he creates in his spare time and sells for pennies, then the cost of creating the image isn’t a business expense.

Just as professional macrostock photographers bemoaned the rise of low-cost microstock photographers so professional microstock photographers may now be looking with similar concern at the growth of part-timers able to eat up their revenues by producing apparently expense-free images.

The question though is what will happen to images that aren’t expense-free and aren’t fun for part-timers to shoot. Shots with lots of models, for example, cost lots of money to produce. As they become rarer, their prices should rise. It’s possible then that we’ll see even more fragmentation in the stock industry as microstock supplies low-cost generic images and top microstock photographers focus on higher-priced, harder and more professional imagery. The rise of “premium” microstock may continue, leaving part-timers and enthusiasts with the small earnings of “traditional” microstock photography but still providing a niche for more dedicated photographers willing to invest in their work.

Facebook isn’t the best place for photographers to show off their images. Flickr is better known for serendipitous sales (and its tie-in with Getty) and searching Facebook for pictures, let alone shooters, isn’t straightforward. But the site’s size and its constant growth have made it a popular destination for photographers. Some use it just to share their work. Others use it to exchange ideas and a significant number have found that the site can be an extremely effective way of generating extra income.

Here are five of inspiring photographers we found on Facebook and the inspiration you can draw from them. Be sure though to add your own favorite photographers on the site at the bottom of the list.

Kate Holt

Kate Holt is a Zimbabwe-born photojournalist who was inspired to take up journalism at the age of 19 while volunteering at a neglected Romanian orphanage for disabled children.

“Realizing that aid work touched the tip of much bigger issues, I turned to journalism as a way to expose these [issues] to a wider audience, and those with power to make a difference,” she writes on her website.

She joined the BBC, studied photography and has since worked in Bosnia, DR Congo, Kenya, Moldova, Somalia and Afghanistan. Her work exposing the involvement of UN personnel in sex trafficking led to the resignation of Ruud Lubbers, head of the UNHCR, and she has been nominated three times for the Amnesty Award for Humanitarian reporting, as well as the Prix Pictet Photographic Award.

Her Facebook page is now showing images from her Brothers in Arms exhibition being held in Nairobi, and contains shots of the African Union mission battling the Shabaab in Somalia. It’s work that should inspire other photographers to aim to make a difference too.

Chris Meyer

Chris Meyer’s images are much happier than those usually taken by Kate Holt. He’s a wedding photographer who had done much to pioneer the use of Facebook as a marketing platform for professional event photographers. Back in 2010, Chris told us that spending $1,000 on Facebook ads between December and March was enough to generate more than $100,000 in new bookings.

And that was just his paid ads. He also discovered that tagging the faces of wedding guests, and inviting them to add more tags, enabled him to spread his photos naturally to friends and relatives of his clients. It was a double-exposure of Facebook’s potential for at least one kind of photography, and an inspiration for other photographers looking for creative and cost-effective ways to promote their businesses.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz

Scott Wyden Kivowitz describes himself as a “portrait, travel and life photographer.” He used to own Photowalklist.com, the largest source of photowalks on the Web, which he sold in 2010, and he still operates HDRPhotog.com, a collaborative HDR blog. He’s an editor on HDR Spotting and writes guest articles for a number of photography publications including Outdoor Photo Gear, Current Photographer and Mack Camera Blog. When he’s not shooting images used by newspapers, magazines and ad agencies in the American northeast, he takes free portraits for low-income families.

His Facebook page though is an inspiring example of just how much the site offers when all you want to do is show off your work. He answers questions on an active wall and on a dedicated question wall, discusses his images and links in a separate section to his blog. The impression is of someone who loves photography, and loves talking about it with other photographers. That’s inspiring enough.

Andrew Farrington

Andrew Farrington is a British photographer whose Facebook profile is worth checking out for his Jack Nicholson-style portrait alone. His other images of models in various poses, outfits and styles though are no less inspiring and they flow through his wall with regular updates that appear more often than new images on his blog, which is mostly empty.

That might seem strange because Farrington has a professional website that shows off his portfolio as well as his personal work, and which is notable for placing a link to his Facebook page alongside his image categories.

The overall effect is to position his website as a professional space for clients and his Facebook page as place where he can connect to photographers and talk about art. His Facebook bio, for example, is aimed specifically at other photographers and models, and pitches workshops in Manchester and London. For any top photographer who wants to discuss his work with other photographers — and perhaps teach them some of his or her tricks — Andrew Farrington’s profile contains both inspiring ideas and some impressive images.

Carl K. Thorburn

All of the photographers listed so far have been professionals. Carl Thorburn is a 20-year-old amateur who shoots urban photography like a seasoned old pro. He has a portfolio site to back up his social media presence and a Flickr page that’s active even if it has few contacts, but it’s his Facebook page that seems to be showing the most life — including plenty of praise from admiring fans.

There are few creative marketing extras here. The bio says little about the photographer, let alone pitch for work. There’s no coherent message that a potential client could latch on to so that he could pigeonhole the photographer for a future job. But there is plenty of great photography shot by someone who likes to shoot for fun and does it well.

And that’s really what photography should always inspire people to do.

Flickr is still a better option for photographers who want to show off their work to other photographers and talk about it. It’s a place where buyers go to look for extraordinary images and where enthusiasts go to learn new techniques from people with similar interests. But they need to network, join groups and take part in conversations. Facebook has the advantage of hosting people who already know you and who are ready to say nice things about your images. There are plenty of talented photographers on the site and lots of great images. Now show us whose pictures you look at on Facebook.

Even with its (weak) rear lens and dozens of image editing apps, the iPad isn’t the best work tool for a photographer. The device itself makes poor photos, even the biggest version will quickly fill up with high res images and a workflow that doesn’t include a decent filing system is always going to be a bit poor. But the device, with its big screen and bold colors, is great for looking at photos. It’s great for looking at your own select images and its great, too, for looking at the images of some of the best photographers in the world. It’s no wonder then that the App Store’s Photo and Video category contains apps that allow users to browse the archives of Life Magazine or gawp at the images created by National Geographic photographers.  There’s no reason though that you can’t join those top image-makers and put your photos on other people’s iPads.

That wouldn’t just be very cool. It could also bring real benefits. Put your work in front of photography lovers who might include buyers, and you could find that you’re picking up some new commissions and additional photo sales. There are a number of ways you can spread your photos across Apple’s tablets.

Create a Photo Book with Book Creator

Book Creator from Red Jumper isn’t a specific photography app but it might just prove to be an extremely helpful tool for photographers who want others to see their photo collections — and who might even be willing to pay for them.

The app is a simple book creator that turns files into ePub-formatted documents ready to be submitted to the iBookstore. It’s remarkably simple to use: paste images from the iPad onto a page and add text. There’s some design flexibility but it’s mostly restricted to sizing, positioning, font and text colors, although it’s also possible to spread a single image over two pages, while still placing text in a corner.

In short, it’s a very quick and easy way to turn a collection of pre-curated photos into a photography book that can be sold or distributed for free through the iBookstore.

Place Your Travel Images in Fotopedia Heritage

The challenge with a photography book created by Book Creator will be to tell people it’s around, and persuade them to buy it. The advantage of submitting your images to Fotopedia Heritage is that you can be confident it will be downloaded anyway. The app was created by Jean-Marie Huillot, the former CTO at tech firm NeXT and a close associate of Steve Jobs. He calls it the biggest coffee table book in the world.

The app is a growing collection of 25,000 crowdsourced and crowd-curated images of World Heritage sites. Information about each site is drawn from both UNESCO and Wikipedia, while links to TripAdvisor and Maps make it a valuable travel planning tool.

For travel photographers though, the app can also function as a powerful marketing tool. Credit is provided at the bottom of the image which can link to a Flickr page or a profile page that shows more images.

Submitting your images is straightforward and open to anyone but there’s no guarantee that your image will be accepted. Eligibility for placement in the app depends on several stages of curation that include winning votes from the community.

It’s also worth noting that members can submit images that don’t belong to them, provided they carry creative commons licenses. Place a high quality image in your Flickr stream with a creative commons license and there’s a chance that it will reach Fotopedia Heritage, where it will be automatically tagged and placed alongside explanatory text. (Although only about one image in 50 submitted in this way is accepted.) You might not make any money from the app directly — it’s free — but it might help to spread your work to people who appreciate images and might want to see more of your work from far flung places.

Create Your Own Photo App

Fotopedia Heritage has already become a hugely popular place to look at images from around the world but it’s not a reliable way to spread your photos. The most reliable method is to create your own photo app. A number of photographers have done that, offering collections of their photos both as free apps and as products that carry a price tag. Andre Francois’s Caring, for example, is a photo-documentary about medical care in Brazil that includes interviews with the creator and behind-the-scenes shots. The motivation for giving away the app is likely to be the desire to tell people about the good work done by local doctors but there’s little doubt that the photographer comes across as a serious documentary maker with an important piece of work in his portfolio.

Other photographers use the app as a marketing tool in a way that’s a little more obvious. Photographer Simon Stock’s app is also free and intended both to share his images and to show off his work.

Creating apps like these usually requires some form of investment, and the chances of a real return is likely to be pretty small. If you are thinking of making your own photo app though, you could try using the services of MagBooks. They’ll do all the hard work for you, turning up to 200 pages of text and/or photographs, delivered in PDF format, into an iOS app. The photographer gets to set the download price and MagBooks take a 20 percent cut of any sales. With Apple taking another 30 percent, that leaves 50 percent for the photographer.

It’s an easy form of publishing that might work for books with popular themes such as Grischa Shmitz’s Westbank, a travelogue of her journey from Jerusalem to the flashpoint West Bank village of Bilin, but again it will require some marketing for any of those sales to come in.

Alternatively, you can always code your own iPad photo book from scratch yourself. Blurb offers an explanation of how to do that which isn’t too difficult to follow. Or you could always put your pictures on your flash-free website and let leads use their browsers.

Photographers need two websites. They need a portfolio site that shows off their images, offers tear sheets, introduces their portfolio and reveals their taste through their personal projects. Those sites win jobs — and they need to do it fast. Buyers consistently report that when it comes to looking at photographers’ online portfolios, they prefer sites that are simple, fast and Flash-free. But photographers also need blogs. The content might not appear as important as the portfolio itself but a photographer’s blog is still a vital part of a marketing effort. It has a different purpose to the main part of the site, needs to work in a different way, contain a different type of content  — and despite its apparent simplicity, often fails to achieve its goals.

The first problem is usually the goal itself. When you’re creating a website to win work, it’s pretty clear who the site is aimed at. Wedding photographers will wonder how a bride will feel when she reaches the site. Editorial photographers will be familiar enough with art editors to predict how they’ll react as they browse their portfolios. Pet photographers will know what impresses their clients as they look at the pictures of dogs, cats and prized birds. But a blog may be read by a fellow photographer, a bride looking for ideas, friends interested in what you’re up to now, as well as casual visitors who stumbled upon your pages through a search engine.

Blogs, Like Portfolios, are for Leads

None of those people matter. Like the main site, the blog’s only goal should be to sell work. It should be aimed at clients and produced with the aim of showing your potential to people who might be willing to hire you. Other visitors are welcome (and may bring referrals) but the main target of any commercial blog should always be leads who will move from the blog to the portfolio to the contact page.

That suggests that the best strategy is to follow the same principle used on the site: add big pictures and just enough text to describe the images. It’s an approach taken by many photographers whose blogs seem to consist of little more than a Photo of the Day. But that kind of content is already available on the portfolio, and it ignores one of the biggest reasons for adding a blog to a photography website: the preference of search engines for sites with dynamic content.

Google is pretty weak at indexing images and relies instead on the surrounding text to interpret meaning and serve the page in search results. That means the images you post on your blog to show off your talent should be accompanied by a reasonable amount of text — usually about 350 words — to make the most of Google’s indexing. If your blog is failing to show up in search results, one reason may be that it has too many pictures and not enough writing.

Producing those words might look like a chore for photographers. After all, if a picture does speak a thousand words, then a blog page with a couple of images on it should already have said enough. But the right words can add a great deal to a photography blog, and they’re less welcome on the portfolio site itself. Writing in LPV Magazine, a new contemporary documentary and fine art photography publication, Bryan Formhals argues that photographers should write (and not just blog) more:

“Words can provide clarity and context. Whether it’s a simple caption, a funny anecdote or backstory,” he says. “When we see a photograph on the web, we generally look quick and then move on. When words are included, we stay with the photograph just a bit longer. It may be subtle, but I think it makes a difference. The words keep us with the photograph.”

Formhals says that he’d like see photographers creating more ideas and stories. Photographers are interesting people, he points out. They travel to odd places, hang out with other interesting types, move around on a whim, and indulge influences and interests from science to sociology. If the stories picked up on a wedding shoot can make for interesting blog posts just think how much more interesting the blog of an editorial or travel photographer might be.

But not all photographers produce those kinds of stories. While a blog should say something about the photographer behind it, one common mistake is to say too much about the person behind it. Leads and even most random visitors are likely to care little about the photographer’s personal life when it says little about them as a photographer. Reading about a spouse is interesting when he or she is part of a photography road trip across the United States and features in the images. It’s less interesting when a photographer just wants to express his or her love publicly. It’s sweet but not particularly effective as a marketing device and more likely to drive away leads than pull them in.

Support Your Blog

A professional blog that gets too personal may be one cause of failure but a more common one is the failure to support the blog by building a community. Just as a portfolio site needs the support of a dynamic blog to bring in viewers to its static images, so the blog needs the support of even more dynamic social media activity to target leads and inform them that the blog contains posts worth reading.

For photographers then, what should be an essential but simple way of showing off work becomes much more complex and far more demanding. But it should also be much more enjoyable than creating the basic platform of a portfolio site and a collection of images. When you’re enjoying your photography, you’ll also feel more inclined to write about the shoot and what happened on it. When you like the people that the blog attracts, you’ll enjoy chatting with them on Twitter and Facebook. And when all three of those elements are working together, you should find that you enjoy the extra work they generate.

Photography: Shannon Karczewski

For moms with an interest in photography, charging for their talent looks like a natural next step. They’re shooting anyway. The hours are flexible. The portraits they make of their own children — and those of their friends — make for an easy portfolio. It’s an opportunity to build a rewarding career without making too many of the sacrifices that come from working 9-to-5 plus in an office that doesn’t get pre-school hours or give time off for children’s colds. And it seems to work.

There are no figures that show the number of stay-at-home moms who are also dabbling in semi-professional photography, but Flickr has several groups for “mommy photographers” some with hundreds of members. Mom*tog, a blog “for moms who love photography,” has been running since February 2009 and already claims more than 40,000 unique hits each month. Run by a new mom and professional photographer, the site’s Facebook page has over 3,000 likes.

Portrait of photographer Shannon Karczewski

For Shannon Karczewski the popularity of photography for stay-at-home moms is understandable. A mother of three children, aged  12, 4 and 3, she’s been shooting professionally for about a year and now has a steady flow of paying clients.

“Prior to that I was just a shutter happy mom with a camera always in hand,” she says.

Shannon learned her photography from books, tutorials and blogs but she’s also taken a couple of classes and like many other new professionals was dedicated enough to ask other photographers if she could “tag along” on their shoots so that she could learn from them. One of those photographers became a mentor and she still turns to him whenever she needs advice or has questions about her business.

Open Four Afternoons a Week

Photography: Shannon Karczewski

Her photography focuses on weddings, which she restricts to a “limited number” each year to ensure each couple receives the attention they deserve, and portraits of families and high school seniors. It’s the family portraiture, in particular, that forms the core of her work.

“As for families… I love them,” she says. “I relate to the moms, and I have a knack for capturing their kiddos in a way that makes them say ‘that’s exactly him/her!’”

Balancing the needs of family life and the demands of clients isn’t entirely straightforward but it is manageable. Shannon takes care to book her family sessions in late afternoons or early evenings on Tuesdays through Fridays and on Saturday mornings if she’s not shooting a wedding. Ninety percent of her work fits into those time slots. Sunday, she says, is entirely for the family and Monday allows her time to “catch up on loose ends.”

It’s that flexibility that’s the biggest benefit of combining motherhood with professional photography. All jobs, Shannon points out, take people away from their families but photography allows moms to do it on their own terms.

“ I suppose it’s not unlike any other job. There are times when you need to be away from family in order to work your business. That comes with the territory for any job that takes you out of the home,” she says. “[But] as a self-employed photographer, YOU decide what hours you are willing to work, how much business you are willing to take on, and when you want to allot time for vacation. As a mother… that’s huge.”

The downsides, too, are familiar to anyone taking on their first freelance jobs or starting a new business. Shannon described her biggest hurdle as not the difficulty of juggling the needs of motherhood against the needs of clients but the challenge of overcoming her fear: the fear of failure, the fear of rejection and the fear that she might not be able to produce the images that her clients are paying her to create.

So far though, those fears seem to be unfounded. Shannon has a website, a blog and a Facebook page, all of which help to keep her name out there, but most of her work comes from personal recommendations. Clients refer people they know, and the people they know are often young families like her own, allowing her to continue the rapport she feels with the people who hire her. Her business continues to grow.

Photography then sounds like an ideal profession for any mother of small children with a love of photography and a dedication deep enough to learn the business and develop her talent. But that might be an exaggeration. Although Shannon also has to spend time editing images, she’s still only shooting professionally a few hours each week — the times when her husband is available to look after the children. Her portrait fees of $250 for up to an hour-and-a-half of photography and ten retouched images are reasonable but wedding fees of $2,200 shared between two photographers and including an engagement shoot aren’t particularly high. Shooting while raising a young family might be convenient but alone, it’s unlikely to be enough to support that family.

Photographers Have to be Dedicated

That’s part of the choice that photography offers moms who want to build their careers as well as be available to their children. Earning more would mean spending less time with the family but the photographers are free to set their own balance at a level that suits them. But it’s also part of the criticism leveled by professionals against semi-professionals who need outside support in order to maintain their businesses and, in the process, keep the fees low for everyone while producing sub-standard images.

Shannon concedes that some photographers have harmed the industry’s image by selling their services before they were ready. Moms thinking of adding to the family’s income with their cameras need to be dedicated before they state charging, she argues.

“I think there is a somewhat negative stigma out there of moms getting good cameras and going ‘pro,’” says Shannon. “Anyone can do it, but it has to come from some place real. I believe, with my whole heart, that photography, good photography, comes from somewhere deep inside. Not from the desire to make a few dollars. If you have the passion for it, are willing to put in hard work, invest in workshops and mentorships and practice, then it will fall into place.”

Linda Johannessen, CEO of microstock site YAY Micro, believes that microstock photographers are getting a rough deal — and should do something about it. As long as photographers are willing to accept low commissions, she argues, the large players in the microstock market will be free to increase their earnings at the expense of their contributors. The solution, she told us, is for photographers around the world to club together and fight for a fairer share of the profits.

“The marketing channel in microstock leaves the photographers powerless, except for the largest contributors. It’s an unfortunate situation, and I think the only way to combat this is for microstock photographers to join together in a global union.”

It’s a call that might sound self-defeating coming from the chief executive and part-owner of a microstock site, but YAY Micro has gone some way towards creating a fairer system for both sellers and buyers.

The site was formed in 2008 by three former employees of Scandinavian image agency Scanpix. The company had tasked Johannessen, together with colleagues Jan Ole Kjellesvig and Roger Bystrøm, to investigate the potential for expanding into microstock. Scanpix, which specializes in editorial imagery, eventually decided not to open its own microstock site, but the team members were so convinced of the sector’s potential that they decided to leave their jobs and create their own service — even before they had any funding in place.

Since then, Oddbjørn Sjøgren has replaced Bystrøm as CTO and partner, and the site has built a collection of 1.6 million images contributed by some 4,795 photographers. Yuri Arcurs is there as are professional contributors MonkeyBusiness and ImageSource.

A Flat 50 Percent Royalty to Everyone

Asked what makes YAY Micro unique in a market filled with dozens of similar services, and Johannessen compares her site’s contribution to Apple’s move into music players.

“I like to point out that most companies don’t have anything unique. What matters is to do everything better than your competitors, and to create a greater value for your users,” she says. “Apple makes PCs and mp3-players but the brand, the product experience and the design makes them stand out.”

That all sounds a little vague and YAY Micro is still far from sharing Apple’s brand awareness but a couple of standout features do suggest that the site is bringing something new to microstock: a sense of fair play. For sellers that means an equal share of the sales price. Instead of sliding scales dependent on sales volume that, on iStockPhoto, top out at 20 percent for non-exclusive images and 45 percent for exclusive contributors, Yay Micro pays out a flat 50 percent to everyone.

That may change if YAY Micro introduces exclusivity incentives (in which case the company may alter the commission, take a price premium on exclusive images or do both) but for now all sales are split evenly with contributors regardless of how many images they’ve sold or the number of sites they contribute to.

“At YAY we feel it’s only fair to share 50/50 with our photographers,” explains Johannessen. “We aim to treat our photographers fairly, with openness and respect, and we would welcome any stakeholder groups representing photographers. In the long run, photographers will be best off by supporting the agencies with fair commissions.”

Nor is it just the sellers who are getting a fair deal. Although bulk discounts are available (the most popular package appears to be 100 high-res images for $349) buyers who need just a single photo for a Web page aren’t required to buy a minimum number of credits, most of which they don’t need. A 3 megapixel photo might be relatively expensive at $7, but for buyers it’s cheaper than paying $9.75 for six iStockPhoto credits, half of which will eventually expire.

Even the Software is Community-Based

The site’s emphasis on the community even extends as far as the technology that runs it. YAY Micro was built entirely using open source software. The operating system is the Linux-based CentOS. For the database management system, the site chose PostgresSQL rather than MySQL now owned by Oracle, and search is powered by Apache Solr.

Cost was one factor in the choice to use open source systems but the site’s founders were also drawn to the thinking behind the software.

“YAY is built on a community philosophy when it comes to both structure and content,” says Johannessen. “Our experience is that the open source communities attend to problems and provide excellent support.”

Yay Micro isn’t the first company to attempt to bring a fairer balance to a stock industry dominated by major players with the power to dictate terms. PhotographersDirect takes only a 20 percent cut and allows the photographers themselves to set prices. It also refuses entry to people who contribute to microstock sites on the grounds that they’re helping to damage the earning potential of other photographers.

And the photography world isn’t short of organizations that aim to represent contributors. The Stock Artists Alliance exists “to support and protect the business interests of professional stock photographers worldwide… and advocates the use of equitable business models, fair contracts and ethical practices at all levels of the stock industry.” That hasn’t stopped the rise of microstock sites owned by big stock companies with tiny payouts, tight exclusivity contracts and low prices.

But even if an international union of microstock photographers is unlikely to put fear into the heart of Getty, Johannessen’s market-based approach might just have an effect. The microstock world is both new and fluid. A site that’s willing to split revenues equally with contributors  could well attract more photographers and more images, and in turn, more buyers. It could put upward pressure on a market that’s long failed to live up to the promise to buyers of usable images for 99 cents. Microstock photographers of the world don’t have to unite so much as choose to upload their images where the returns are highest — and wait for the rest of the industry to join Yay Micro.

Old school photographers might have experience, contacts and a bag full of equipment built up over the years, but young photographers now have an important advantage. While shooters who picked up their first camera more than a decade ago may be a dab hand in a darkroom that’s now been turned back into a closet, younger types tend to be more familiar with Photoshop and digital manipulation. When it comes to digitally preparing images for sale, they’re faster, more creative and less sensitive to the pain. Older photographers have had to learn to adapt. The need for Photoshop skills though are now well-known. Less familiar is a host of new techniques that photographers will have to master if they’re to stay on top of their industry and continue to make money out of their images in the future.

1.     On-Screen Imaging

Photoshop allows photographers to make corrections to their images and to prepare them for sale. Although the image editing software also allows for complete image manipulation, that sort of work is usually left to the designers. The photographer might clean up the image but the creation is still done in-camera. The degree of image-making photographers will be expected to do on-screen, though, may be about to expand in entirely new directions.

Lytro is a new camera company planning to release the first commercial “light field” camera later this year. The camera contains an array of hundreds of thousands of microlenses placed between a wide-aperture lens and the digital image sensor. Algorithms on the computer’s software then identify the path taken by each ray as it strikes a microlens, determine its direction  and calculate how the light would have appeared if the sensor were nearer to or further from the lens. The result is a live image that can be refocused after it’s been taken, changing the depth of field.

For photographers, that won’t change everything, and it won’t change anything at all just yet. At the moment, Lytro’s images are only a grainy 525 x 525 pixels, which makes them useful for the Web but unusable in print. And the power of a great picture will still lie in the composition. But the technology will develop, so that as they line up their shots photographers will no longer have to worry about where to place the focus. That will make for faster shooting and more options after the shutter has been released.

“Light field cameras unleash the power of the light, so you don’t have to go through the pain of taking 50 pictures to get that really great one,” the company says.

When it comes to selling, the question is whether buyers will prefer live images that allow them to choose their own focal point or an image whose center of focus has been set by the photographer. The preference might not be as obvious as it sounds. Some microstock photographers have already found that they can increase sales simply by reversing an image they’re already offering. Editorial photographers might be happy to shoot fast and let the editors decide how to finish the product, but stock photographers might well find themselves shooting once then creating multiple images on the screen from a single, fast shot. They’re going to be spending even more time in front of the monitor and less time behind the lens.

2.     Online Networking

Facebook and Twitter have already brought benefits to professional photography. Businesses hoping to advertise can use Facebook’s ads to reach demographics as targeted as engaged women, aged 25-35 within 50 miles of their business. Picture-tagging, too, has helped event photographers push their images to clients’ friends and relatives, a form of automated referrals. Twitter’s improved photo messaging may now make it a more important tool for photographers but its most important use is as a channel that creates professional connections rather than developing leads. Wedding photographers using the site have described how tweeting local designers has helped them to forge agreements for mutual recommendations.

The big change though may come from the rise of Google Plus. It’s still not entirely clear that the site will survive: Facebook’s half a billion members make for tough competition. But it’s already making its influence felt. Mark Zuckerberg’s site has updated its privacy policy since the release of Google Plus, and that’s likely to be just the beginning. Google Plus’s ability to send different messages to different groups — what the site calls “circles” — will bring a new kind of communication for both businesses and individuals. Photographers can now create circles for clients — and for people they’d like to make clients — and begin networking with them without harming their other contacts. For stock photographers, it’s an opportunity to talk directly to editors; for art photographers, a chance to build the kind of platform that interests galleries. This new targeted networking is something that both social media sites and businesses, including photographers, will have to get used to.

3.     Classroom Teaching

One thing that’s unlikely to happen in the future is that the photography business is going to get easier. Cameras like Lytro’s will only make it simpler for non-professionals to shoot great images, which means even more inventory chasing the same demand. To make a living out of photography then will require doing more than taking pictures. A number of professional photographers have already found that teaching workshops can provide a regular stream of additional income and can be an enjoyable way of earning from their photography skills. The need for supplementary income sources is only going to grow, and as more enthusiasts pick up cameras and realize that they can produce great pictures, so the demand for those classes will grow too.

Photographers will always need to take excellent pictures to earn money from their photos, but just as they’ve also needed skills that stretched into the darkroom and beyond, so in the future, photographers are going to need abilities that make use of all the new technologies likely to affect the photography industry.

Photography: Philip Gostelow

There are two ways to enjoy a high standard of living as a photographer. The first is to create great pictures, sell them for large amounts of money and rent out your services for giant commissions. The second is to charge regular amounts of money for your work but move to a place where the cost of living is lower but where there’s still enough growth and vibrancy to support a photography business and deliver an interesting time.

Shanghai, for example, is China’s most dynamic city. It contains more than 20 million people, has a per capita income of almost $1,000 a month and an annual growth rate of around ten percent. When it comes to the cost of living, residents can take their pick of Western-style two-bedroom apartments for a little over $1,000 or local digs that are equally comfortable for much less. That flexibility, growth and the thrill of living in a city as lively as Shanghai has brought in more than 100,000 foreigners who now call the city home. Some are highly-paid expats living luxury lifestyles but many are independent workers trying their luck in a growing market and a place they can afford whatever their income level. Many of those workers are photographers but even Shanghai, they’re finding, is not immune to the pressures affecting the photography market.

Clients Move on, Photographers Move in

Philip Gostelow is an Australian-born photographer who has spent much of his working life on the road. After starting his career as an architect in Canada, he moved first to Japan then in 2006 to Shanghai. Specializing in portraiture and corporate photography, Gostelow’s clients have included Vogue China, HSBC, Cathay Pacific, Time, Conde Nast Traveler and many others.  His still series on Australia’s 2001 Black Christmas Bush Fires is held by the country’s National Gallery.

Although he was looking for a segue into videomaking when he reached the city, Gostelow initially found that photography work in Shanghai was both easy to come by and reasonably paid. A friend in an architecture firm was able to arrange a long-stay visa for him. Work came in through connections and through local advertising on creative listing services such as SmartShanghai. Corporate jobs, often portraits of local executives and images for annual reports, became a lifeline even though the market appeared to offer two different pay scales. International companies would pay standard international day rates of between $1,500 and $2,000. Local companies who were more concerned with cost than quality would pay much less, often as little as $1,000. Even at those rates though Gostelow found that it was possible to cover half a year’s income with just six weeks of work.

Image courtesy Philip Gostelow

No longer. After a year in San Francisco, Gostelow returned to the city to find that the market had changed. The recession had forced corporate clients to look for cheaper ways of sourcing images than commissioning a professional photographer. Many of his old clients had moved on and many new photographers had moved in. A listing for a professional photographer on SmartShanghai that would once have attracted half a dozen responses would now bring in about 70 replies, many from people with little or no experience who were hoping to build their portfolios as much as make a living out of photography.

“They’re able to undercut prices,” says Gostelow. “It’s not a level playing field any more; it’s more like a rugby field.”

Stock has brought little respite. Although Gostelow has images with Getty, they deliver little more than an occasional check for $150 to $200, a nice unexpected bonus but not something that a photographer can live on.

Young Photographers Know Photoshop

The causes for the market’s change are multiple and aren’t unique to Shanghai. Companies everywhere are looking at expenses and trying to find places to make cuts without harming quality too much. That’s true even in China’s coastal cities that are still enjoying phenomenal growth rates. Low cost equipment has granted easier access to professional markets, a process that Gostelow notes started in the 1950s, when manufacturers produced the first portable SLRs. Gostelow himself started his career with print photography but hasn’t touched his Hasselblad for more than a decade. Many of those new photographers, too, have now grown up in a digital world and are more comfortable with Photoshop and digital editing than photographers who first honed their skills with print. The result is that even in Shanghai there are now more images available from more photographers and at lower prices, and those images can be delivered directly to the client.

“The uniqueness of the image has been downgraded,” says Gostelow. “The client has more choice and direct access to images so he doesn’t have to commission.”

The response of professional photographers has varied too. Some of his colleagues in Australia have turned to workshops as a way of supplementing their income, Gostelow says. Other have added movie-making skills to their repertoire and some have created niches for themselves with images shot in unique styles such as nightlit photography. For Gostelow, whose visa now requires him to leave the country every 60 days, the response will probably be to give Shanghai one more year then head back to Australia while trying to expand into movie-making.

Gostelow’s story, of course, represents the experience of just one photographer trying to build a photography business in a foreign market. Other photographers may be having an easier time. Philippe Roy, for example, another Shanghai-based photographer, is doing well enough to employ a full-time art director. But the pressures that Gostelow feels even in Shanghai are typical of the challenges photographers are facing around the world: the rise of competition, the drop in prices and the squeeze on clients’ budgets. Even being in a city like Shanghai, is no longer enough to escape photography’s problems, says Gostelow, and give a photographer an edge. That requires something much simpler.

“Luck is the edge,” he says. “Meeting someone in a bar who knows someone who needs a photographer.”

That may be no more likely to happen in a bar on Shanghai’s Bund than in a drinking hole in your home town, but at least the beer is likely to be cheaper.

Does the world really need another microstock site? With dozens already on the Web, including the Getty-owned giant iStockPhoto, it’s hard to see why anyone would want to enter a marketplace in which competition is so tight. Photographers are hardly crying out for another platform on which to receive a few cents for a sale and buyers don’t need more sites offering the same images they can find everywhere else. And yet at the beginning of August, Envato, a creative network, launched PhotoDune, giving the Web another place where photographers can upload images in the hope of making a sale and users can download pictures at prices that start at a dollar. It’s possible though that despite the platform’s familiarity, PhotoDune has one advantage that might just help it to deliver buyers that arrive fast and stick around: it has a market.

PhotoDune looks like every other microstock site on the Web. Royalties are a flat 25 percent for non-exclusive contributors and range from 50-70 percent of the sales price for exclusive sellers. Photographers though need to have produced more than $75,000 in sales to earn that top rate, and more than $3,750 to move from 50 percent to 51 percent. With prices that range from a buck for an image of 0.2 megapixels and rise to $7 for an image of 14.3 megapixels (or $15 for an extended license that allows the image to be used on products), that might take some time. Currently the most successful image on PhotoDune has just 35 sales. That compares poorly with iStockPhoto where many of the most popular images over the last three months have sales approaching 1,500 downloads but the site is growing at a reasonable rate. Two weeks after the launch of its public beta, PhotoDune was offering 230,000 images from over a hundred contributors, including Yuri Arcurs.

Photographers Won’t be Exclusive

Even Envato founder Collis Ta’eed though doesn’t expect those contributors to be exclusive. Photographers, he expects, will think of PhotoDune as one more place on which they can sell their products rather than the only place on which they’ll offer their photos.

“To be honest, although we have an excellent exclusivity program which I highly recommend, I think the majority of our contributors to PhotoDune are going to be non-exclusive,” he told us. “[S]o in that respect it’s more about why sell through PhotoDune in addition to usual outlets.”

And the answer to that question is that while PhotoDune is new, the company behind it has been around since 2006 and owns a network of nine creative sites that includes Themeforest, a marketplace for WordPress themes, Creattica, a design site, Rockable Press, a publishing firm, and FreelanceSwitch, a blog for freelancers. Together, its sites have more than a million members, many of whom are buyers as well as sellers. A WordPress designer, for example, may buy images on PhotoDune to use on designs sold on Themeforest, a trend that Ta’eed says is already happening with positive results all round.

“We have a lot of active buyers and it’s good for us and them if they never need to leave our network to fill their creative needs,” he says.

So PhotoDune differs from other new microstock sites by not running after a market already spoiled for choice but by offering a market its already to created to photographers looking for a more efficient way to find buyers.

Build a Microstock Brand

That’s a big advantage, and it’s helped by the way in which Envato tends to promote both its services and the individual contributors to those services. PhotoDune’s account system, earnings and balance work cross the network, the forums are integrated and all of the marketplaces are promoted across a series of blogs. These include the Tuts+ network which reaches some three million unique visitors a month, and AppStorm which reaches another million.

Those blogs sell the services as a whole but the sites also allow individual creators to promote themselves directly. Photographers, for example, can build a profile page which shows off their portfolio and — no less importantly — allows buyers to follow the authors they like, receiving a feed of new items on their home page every time they log in.

“That sort of thing encourages buyers to support their favorite photographers and item authors,” says Ta’eed.

It’s more important than it sounds. Yuri Arcurs has talked of the valuable role that returning customers play in his business, bringing a level of stability to his business from people looking for an image with guaranteed quality. PhotoDune’s ability to allow contributors to build a relationship with buyers then, even if some of those buyers are also sellers, could be another strong reason that photographers will place their images on the site.

When Collis Ta’eed began adding PhotoDune to his company’s network of sites for creative workers, he talked about the industry with his father-in-law, a photojournalist and stock photographer who photographed the Six-Day-Way and conducted photo shoots with Billy Joel and Isaac Asimov among others. It’s an industry that has seen a lot of opportunities, he told us, as well as” a few cases of big corporations not always doing right by the photographic community.” The Internet, too, he recognizes, has brought change to the industry.

Microstock is certainly one of the changes that the Internet has brought to the photography industry. Some of those changes, such as the opening to enthusiasts, has been positive, while others, such as the lowering of prices, have been less happy. Whether PhotoDune’s contribution is good for photographers remains to be seen but if it weakens the power of some of those larger corporation also involved in microstock and helps photographers make a few more sales then that can’t be bad. And if it also enables photographers to build relationships directly with buyers, and generate more stable income, then that has to be even better.

The Internet doesn’t need another microstock site. But if Envato’s million members need images, then photographers will need to join another microstock site to deliver them.

Every community has rules and everyone who wants to join that community needs to know those rules. That doesn’t mean that you can never break them but you should know what those rules are — and the consequences that come from ignoring them. That’s true whether you’re trying to join the country club or the community of people who make money from their photography

1.     Know the value of your work.

This is the hardest rule to follow, which is one of the reasons that it’s broken so often. It’s also the rule that raises the most complaints from established photographers when they see less experienced shooters ignore it.

Assessing the value of your work isn’t easy. If you’re hoping to shoot events, you can look at the amounts that local competitors are charging for their shoots and pitch your own prices in the same range. Be sure though that you’re comparing like for like. There’s a difference between the kinds of budget packages (and often, low-quality imagery) you can find advertised on Craigslist and the unique work of top photographers like Christian Keenan.

If you’re selling individual usage licenses, use software like fotoQuote to make sure you’re negotiating in the right ball park for the buyer. Above all, don’t sell your work for a credit.

2.     Know the value of your equipment.

One of the differences between professional photographers and enthusiasts who make the odd sale is that professionals get to write down the cost of their equipment. That means though that they also have to work the cost of buying new gear and renting additional tools into their quotes, increasing their prices. For enthusiasts, a new lens is a birthday treat that has nothing to do with the cost of business and everything to do with the price of entertainment. By not adding expenses to their bills, they’re able to undercut professionals.

Changing that attitude is difficult: the camera, the lens and the lighting gear have already been paid for. One way to compete fairly is to think of that extra cost as the price of your growth as a photographer. As you expand your skills and gain experience, you’ll want to buy new equipment and broaden your talents. You’ll only be able to do that if you charge for that equipment in your quotes.

3.     Learn… and keep learning.

If the cost of equipment is one difference between a professional and an enthusiast, another is consistency. Enthusiasts shoot lots of duff pictures but occasionally produce a great image that’s worth something to a buyer. Professionals do the same thing, but they know they can produce enough images of a sellable quality on each shoot to win the confidence of buyers.

The only way to achieve that consistency, and maintain the right level of quality for buyers of paid photography, is to learn from professionals and keep learning from them. Be prepared to assist an event photographer, take workshops and participate in forums as well as reading books and buying magazines. If you’re going to charge like a professional, you’ll need to know as much as one.

4.     Act like a professional.

You’ll also need to act like one. That goes beyond shooting professional-quality images consistently and charging professional prices for them. It includes communication, which should be fast and responsive, and delivery which should be in the format and size the buyer wants. You’ll need to be sure you have all the permission forms the buyer needs and that your images don’t breach anyone’s copyrights.

Professional communication begins with the image description itself. Tell buyers what they’re looking at, indicate the sizes that are available and tell them how to order it. The fewer questions the buyer has to ask you before the purchase, the greater your chances of making a sale and contributing a valuable service to paid photography.

5.     Find your own style.

While you should be learning from professionals, you shouldn’t be copying them. Mimicry is particular rampant on microstock sites where a successful composition quickly generates a flock of similar images hoping to cash in on the demand. Professionals win jobs not by copying other professionals but showing buyers what they get when they hire them. They have a clear line that, even if it doesn’t suit every job and every buyer, is popular and useful enough to give them a niche in the market.

Look towards developing your own style and your own brand of photography, and you’ll be able to develop your own photography business without treading on anyone else’s toes.

6.     Shoot the boring stuff well.

For enthusiasts, photography is fun. Even failing to produce a great image can still make for an interesting day and an enjoyable experience. For a paid photographer though, some shoots are more interesting than others and work often means squeezing the creativity out of a portrait of a CEO or a shot of a new office building. If you’re looking to build a business out of photography, you have to be prepared to take on subjects that are less inspiring than a watery sunset, and produce high quality images in bad light, with time constraints and without breaking the budget. That’s not always fun but even the dull jobs have to be completed as professionally as the inspiring ones.

7.     Don’t give up the day job.

This may be the most important rule of all. It’s getting harder and harder to make a living out of photography, even for established professionals. Part of that is down to the influx of enthusiasts but shrinking demand, the power of the big stock agencies and the decline of print media all play a role too. It’s become easier to make some money out of photography today, but it’s always been difficult to make a living out of photography and it’s even harder than ever now.

Follow the rules and you can expect to make some sales. But don’t give up your regular source of income until your photography sales at least match your salary.

Which rules do you think new photographers should know?

Photography: Yuri Arcurs/iStockPhoto

Amateurs have invaded the photography world. They have limited skills, little talent and wouldn’t know a great photo if it were pasted on a billboard next to a headline saying “Great photo!” They’re responsible for bringing down the price of photography for everyone and it’s their fault that the same dull images of grinning models and headset-wearing women appear on page after page and ad after ad. And that’s just the buyers.

There are no figures that indicate the percentage of stock photography bought by part-time business builders rather than professional image editors but the corollary of the decline of editorial photography has been the rise of online image use. It’s that demand that underlies the rise of microstock: low-cost images for businesses, particularly websites, with little income, no budget and often one person who does everything from planning the website to answering the phones, including buying the pictures. Professional photographers might complain about the growth of enthusiasts with folders full of cheap images of variable quality but the same complaint applies to the people who buy those images. Stock buyers are now as likely to be part-time enthusiasts rather than full-time professionals as the contributors themselves.

The effects of part-time buyers buying from part-time sellers though are clear too. When a microstock image sells several thousand times, it becomes both ubiquitous and copied. When producing images is always a gamble, being able to see that an image is popular provides useful insight into the thinking of customers and the kinds of images they consider worth purchasing. Stock sites’ own willingness to reveal the number of downloads an image has generated — an important consideration for those buyers who don’t want overused photos — helps contributors to understand market preferences. When sites reveal trends, they’re going out of their way to push contributors towards producing images that are commercial but not original.

Some Customers Do Care

Sometimes though buyers will push back. Corey O’Laughlin, a content marketing specialist at MarketingProfs, a membership site that teaches marketing techniques to small business owners — exactly the type who are most likely to buy microstock images — recently offered her readers a warning list of the top twelve overused stock images. The list included a generic handshake, happy, leaping business people, a United Nations of multicultural office workers, and, of course, an attractive young woman wearing a headset and thrilled to take your call. As one commenter wrote in response:

 “Any editor that would even think of using these has displayed a total lack of imagination.”

But if that commenter is right there do seem to be lots of editors with a total lack of imagination. The image of the customer service rep in O’Laughlin’s list is a Yuri Arcurs photo called “Cute business customer service woman smiling,” a title guaranteed to hit the right buttons in stock site search engine results. If it’s clichéd, it’s because — according to iStockPhoto alone — it’s been downloaded more than 4,300 times in the sixteen months since it was uploaded.

Don’t Blame the Photographers

Photographers then can hardly be blamed for offering the same dull images again and again. If an accusation of producing a clichéd image comes with a four- or five-figure check, there are few photographers who would turn it down — especially not a professional photographer. As long as buyers keep buying clichéd images, photographers who care about the bottom line will keep producing them.

And the buyers will keep buying them in part as long as they lack the budget to buy something better. Writing on BloggerTone, a business blog, Web developer Beatrice Whelan, described what happened when she chose some stock food images for a restaurant with a specialist menu. The client, she said, was appalled at her choice of generic images that failed to reflect the uniqueness of her food.

“This restaurant hand-made their pasta from scratch every day and apparently people who know their pasta can tell the difference from fresh and processed pasta in a photo,” Whelan said. “There were similar problems with other photos I had chosen of pizzas and even the salads….The stock photos were not genuine and since the restaurant was genuine about the food that they served, these stock photos could not be used on the site.”

But the restaurant had a small marketing budget that didn’t stretch to commissioning a photographer, the best solution for a company with a unique product. Whelan’s own recommendation that buyers should use images of themselves and their own employees instead of turning to generic images of models is fine for companies with employees and an income that can pay for a photographer, but it’s not an option for many tiny businesses.

It might not be fair to blame a buyer for not being wealthy enough to commission a photographer, but perhaps it’s still possible to blame them for not being discerning enough when they make their purchases. Although the popularity of some stock images will prompt copycats to produce alternative versions, the sheer number of images available means that there should be plenty of options for buyers looking for something original.

Those kinds of images though aren’t easy to find. Microstock sites tweak their search engine results to show not just images that that contain the right keywords in their titles and tag lists but to show first those images that are new and selling. The more popular — and clichéd — an image becomes, the more likely it is to be offered and to become even more popular. Stock sites allow users to sort results by filters that include Downloads, Best Match, File Age, and Contributor. They don’t offer filters for originality or creativity.

Perhaps blame for clichéd stock images need to be shared equally then. Stock sites play their role by promoting popular images rather than creative ones. Photographers play a part by (understandably) chasing buyers’ tastes rather than original imagery. And buyers lack the time, the taste and the resources to choose images that are different and unique as well as well-made. That’s not just true of amateur buyers though. Corey O’Laughlin’s list included two images of someone writing on a clear board. Her own professional company used one of those images on a Web page.

Photography: ckaroli

Photographers hoping to sell usage licenses are always shooting in the dark. They have to produce images first, investing in time, effort, model hire and equipment, then hope that they’ve generated pictures for which there is a demand. Their compositions may be based in part on experience, on a browse of a site’s most popular images, or on a review of their own sales statistics, but there are also a number of other factors that a photographer can consider as he or she starts thinking about images that are more likely to attract a buyer’s eye.

The easiest option is to produce pictures which include ethnic minorities. This is a demand that comes up again and again from buyers, especially those whose clients are selling outside the United States. Customers want to see people in ads that look like them, so if your portfolio is dominated by shots of one particular ethnic group, one easy way to raise sales might be to expand your model base and create some pictures that can sell further afield.

More challenging is to create images that are effective rather than decorative. Buyers prefer images that don’t just draw attention to the page but also communicate a message. That’s always what commercial photographers are trying to do. They won’t just take a picture that shows what an object looks like; they’ll attempt to communicate the product’s main sales point visually. This shot on the home page of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, for example, is accompanied by a tagline that contains a clear dig at the product’s main rival.

The message that the Galaxy Tab can do things that the iPad can’t do is underlined in the image which shows the tablet displaying active widgets, a feature that Apple doesn’t offer. The image used on Apple’s own website prefers to focus on its tablet’s slim size. The first picture shows the device held between finger and thumb.

Commercial photographers are hired for their ability to bring out a message from a picture of an object and art directors are assigned to tell them which brand characteristics to focus on. For stock photographers, that’s a little harder. Brands can’t be shown in stock images and the images have to be more generic. Sports cars though should look fast; athletes should communicate athleticism; telescopes should suggest that they reveal things that can’t be seen otherwise. The message might be general but it should also be clear.

The Eyes Tell Viewers to Read the Copy

That might sound obvious but it’s something that many buyers ignore and smart designers pay attention to when they choose their pictures. Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, used eye-tracking technology to reveal what happened when the Yale School of Management placed on its application page a generic image of students. The image added no new information to the page and did nothing more than fill space. The eye-tracking data showed that the picture was entirely ignored. Photo buyers want the images they buy to have a greater effect. A stock image might not be able to do that by communicating a product’s main sales point, but it can point to the text around the image, especially when it includes the smart use of a face.

James Breeze, an Australian usability specialist, found that even children as young as eleven months are more likely to look at a face on a page than at any other element, and will spend more time looking at that face than the rest of the page. That might suggest that photographers should be producing plenty of images with clear, attractive and happy faces. But buyers don’t just want people to look at the pictures; they also want them to read the copy and absorb the advertising message, especially when the nature of a stock image limits the message the picture itself can contain to generalities.

When Breeze compared eye-tracking data drawn from a picture showing a baby looking at the camera to one of a baby shown in profile, he found that while eyes landed on both baby pictures, the profile shot was more likely to guide viewers from the face to the advertising copy. From the point of  view of the photographer, the direct headshot was more effective. For the advertiser — and the buyer — the profile was better. It’s a finding that’s been repeated in other usability studies of the effectiveness of images. Even a slight adjustment in the position of the eye can be enough to have a real effect on where viewers look.

Photographers then should be trying to create images in which the eyes of the models direct the viewer to the ad copy. There’s no shortage of pictures like that on stock sites. This Yuri Arcurs picture, for example, is even titled “Group of University Students Looking at Copy Space.” Including tags like “copy space” and “looking” will help to make clear that the image will leave room for text and help the buyer to push his message. Yuri Arcurs’s photo is picking up a sale every seven views or so.

Not all buyers though may be aware of the advantage of an image that shows a model looking towards an empty space. Yuri Arcurs’s title indicated the value of his composition but stock sites leave little room for photographers to pitch the benefits of their products. That can happen on the photographer’s own website. A blog post, for example, can explain why you’ve chosen to arrange the models so that they’re not looking directly at the viewer. Help buyers to understand why the picture they’re looking at is a great buy and there’s a greater chance that they’ll hit the Buy button. At the very least, it will show your own professionalism and the thought that went into creating your images.

Creating images that fill a known need, such as the demand for more pictures of ethnic groups, or which are clearly effective rather than decorative, should increase your chances of making sales but for stock sellers the dynamic will always remain the same: you’re still left taking the risk first, and hoping that the buyer recognizes the benefits of your image.

Photography: Doug Beasley

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.

“When an offer of a new location came, I became good at saying ‘Yes!’” he recalls.

After a career that stretched to include shooting annual reports around the world, Beasley now puts on between twelve and fifteen workshops a year through his website VQPhoto.com, teaching classes that range from five or six students to as many as sixteen. Any larger than that, he remarks, and it becomes difficult to give each student the one-on-one time necessary to get to know them, to understand their creative blockages and to help them grow. Students’ backgrounds range from beginner to professional but Beasley does prefer that students know how to operate their cameras so that he can skip the technical lessons and focus on the creative process.

Photography: Barb Prindle

Read Poetry to Improve Your Photography

The workshops are made up of photo assignments and visual exercises but also include short writing exercises and analyses of why certain photographs work and how to improve images that failed. Participants will even read poetry as a way of releasing their own creativity. The emphasis is on developing the eye and deepening vision rather than on teaching aperture settings and exposure times. What really makes Doug Beasley’s workshops stand out though is the range of locations in which they’re held.

Between January of this year and March of next year, Beasley will have held workshops in New York; Oregon; Yunnan in southwest China; Big Island, Hawaii; South Dakota; Big Sur, California; Santa Fe; Wisconsin; Maine, Cortes Island, Canada; and Guatemala. He’ll visit some of those places several times.

The travel to exotic and picturesque locations isn’t necessary but it is important. While it’s possible to teach photography in a studio,

“it’s a lot more fun to be in an exotic location together with a great group of people! Also people tend to open up in new and beautiful ways when they are in unfamiliar territory,” says Beasley.

Fun it might may be and being in an inspiring location with a group of inspiring people who have a passion for photography is always likely to foster new ideas but it also makes the workshops harder to organize. Producing a syllabus, finding models, arranging insurance and marketing a class is difficult enough when you’re holding the event in your own space; it’s a great deal harder when you’re trying to bring people to southwest China or central America.

For Beasley, the logistical work is conducted entirely by his studio for some of his workshops, such as those in the Badlands of South Dakota and in Hawaii. For other workshops though, he can usually partner with art organizations that operate locally but have a national base, such as Santa Fe Workshops or Maine Media Workshops.

“They can organize the logistics and deal with the money, freeing me up to concentrate on helping students expand their photographic skills and vision,” he says.

The benefits of the workshops spread in both directions. By the time the course has finished, students should be able to respond more visually, with greater confidence and with a clearer unique voice. They learn to go deeper within themselves to find the answers, says Beasley, and they discover that the puzzle of representation can have more than one solution.

You Choose What You Learn

If all that sounds almost as spiritual as it does creative, that’s another of the advantages of putting on a workshop: the photographer gets to set the subject and can explore topics that they find interesting. Beasley’s own photography focuses on the expression of the sacred; his workshop titles include “Zen and the Art of Photography,” “The Sacred Landscape” and “Spirit of Place.” As he leads his students’ exploration of the subjects that inspire his own photography, Beasley’s ideas are refreshed by their reactions and their interactions.

  “I get to participate deeply in the creative process. That is always so exciting and such a privilege,” he says. “I get to feed off of their energy as they react and feed off of mine. I get to be part of that group bonding process. I learn new ways of seeing, doing and being every time.”

Putting on a workshop then can be as attractive as it looks. Fill up the places and the income can be lucrative. (The price of Beasley’s workshops range from a few hundred dollars to almost $5,000 for those with the biggest expenses.) But they can also be inspiring for the photographer as well as an education for the participant. They aren’t easy to put together, however, or even to run once they’ve started. Beasley recommends that teachers develop a strong outline but be prepared to ad lib when they reach the field. They should know how to read the energy and needs of the group, lead strongly but sensitively, understand what they have to teach, and never underestimate the intelligence of their students. And students too should be choosy. They need to make sure that the teacher is reputable, has the experience necessary to lead a group, and has work of a high enough standard to inspire others.

And that’s the big disadvantage of putting on a workshop. Not only is the organization a lot of work but as more and more photographers see teaching as an enjoyable way to create an additional revenue stream, the competition is only going to get tighter.

Photography: lubright

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:

“Realize your photographic vision to pursue a livelihood that satisfies your imagination!” the school’s website declares. “With constant digital advancements in photography, the demand for well-educated artists is growing!”

The school’s course lasts two terms for full-time students or four terms for those taking the evening classes. Both approaches lead to a “professional photography certificate.” Classes emphasize practical aspects of photography, with several modules on camera and workflow, Photoshop techniques, studio and location work,  wedding and model photography, as well as story building and portfolio development. Faculty include National Geographic photographer Cary Wolinsky, and fashion photographer Rob Van Petten. According to Allie Dennis, the school’s marketing manager, 60 percent of the photography students study full-time. Part-time students include retirees and seasoned photographers as well as lawyers and high school graduates. Students can benefit from unlimited career assistance and are welcome to continue using the school’s facilities and attend workshops even after graduation. The course costs $26,400.

“Every area of photography is growing.”

That’s not a small sum, and it’s only worth paying if you believe it’s going to lead to a lifetime of higher earnings in a career you love. General skill improvement for enthusiasts can be picked up for much less in dedicated workshops, books and even for free online. But the professional opportunities the center’s fee opens will only be available if the school is right to claim that the demand for skilled photographers is growing. Asked which areas of the industry are hungry for new images, Dennis was expansive:

“Every area. Because the technology has become so great, everyone can purchase a digital camera, but not everyone has the experience to go along with it.

“One of the big engines of growth, driving demand, is the web,” he continued. “Today, over half of work goes onto the Web. The Web is starved for content, particularly rich media.”

But measuring the gap between the number of photography graduates entering the market and the number of jobs available to them isn’t easy. In 2007, the Art Institute, a chain of private art colleges, reported that almost 84 percent of its photography associate degree graduates were working in a related field within six months of graduation. The number rose to more than 90 percent for bachelor’s degree graduates. The Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts didn’t provide figures but did point out that students have gone on to land jobs at National Geographic. One worked as a second shooter at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding; another had booked 22 weddings before graduation. Many work as photographers while studying and even those who do go on to take “traditional” jobs in photography, also do freelance work, says Dennis.

Freelance Work Is Not a Steady Job

Occasional freelance work though isn’t the same as a steady job, and even the demand from the Web might not be as insatiable as it looks. A two-dollar price-point for Web-ready microstock images is more likely to indicate a supply glut than a scarcity of good photographs for digital platforms. Online publishing might be growing and need images but the price sites are paying for them suggests there’s already more than enough to go around.

And it’s not just Web publishers who are enjoying the benefits of oversupply. According to the US Department of Labor, the median annual wages of salaried photographers as a whole in 2008 was $29,440. Two years later that median had dropped slightly to $29,130. That decline doesn’t suggest an industry enjoying booming demand, let alone offering high incomes.

It might be best then to redefine the nature of photography “jobs” and the kinds of opportunities that photography schools can offer. There will always be demand for full-time photographers but as schools like the Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts train enthusiasts to use properly their new low-cost DSLRs, so there will also be increased competition and larger numbers of images chasing buyers. For many photographers then, especially enthusiasts, working in photography may well come to mean accepting freelancing jobs rather than building a long-term career and watching their income decline as more photographers join the market.

The Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts is right to advise photography-lovers to “act now” and “follow your passion” because

“[t]his is a great time for creative people. With the growth of new media, it is a great time to be a creative professional.”

It is indeed easier than ever to make money out of photography. It’s easier than ever to buy professional equipment, learn how to use it, discover the images that the market wants to buy, and make them available to editors and buyers — something that is more likely to happen with the sort of knowledge that a school’s course supplies than without it. But it’s harder than ever to make photography pay, to turn photography knowledge into a career and to make a living out of photography however enjoyable it might be — and however much the Web might be demanding new imagery.

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.

But you will need to be selective about the images you offer for sale. Buyers don’t want to wade through a dozen mediocre shots to find the one excellent image that they might want to buy. They only want to look at the very best photographs you’ve managed to create. Professional sports photographer Philip Brown says that he’ll take “thousands of images” over the course of a five-day cricket match, many of which he won’t even look at and only a handful of which he’ll sell. You too have to assume that you’ll only be able to offer a tiny fraction of the images you create.

2. Join Flickr

Choosing that small fraction of your best images though won’t be easy – and you’re not the best judge. Your choice of favorite images might be influenced by the experience involved in winning the shot or some other personal factor that’s not visible in the composition alone. You need an objective opinion.

Start then by choosing your best images, upload them to a Flickr account then network to win views, favorites and comments. Remove the images that are ignored or which receive criticism and look for the features that characterize your most popular shots. The result might be a collection that’s smaller than you’d like and which contains images you might not have expected but trust the objective opinion of other photographers.

Once you’ve built a very select portfolio on Twitter, add a sentence to each image description pointing out that your images are available for licensing and inviting buyers to contact you.

3. Upload Images to Microstock Sites

Although some microstock photographers have managed to turn the low-cost, high-volume platform into a high-paying, full-time job, most contributors haven’t been so successful. In part, that’s often because they’re not prepared to put in the same kind of effort that top photographers like Yuri Arcurs and Andres Rodriguez are prepared to commit.

But when you’re starting out. microstock doesn’t have to be a serious revenue stream. It doesn’t even have to be a mediocre revenue stream and it might not be the best place to offer particularly rare images that could fetch more from a conventional rights managed license. But it does provide open access to commercial photography. It can show enthusiasts what stock buyers are looking for (which is not the kind of pretty images that enthusiasts most like to shoot) and, most importantly of all, it can give them their first sale. The money might be tiny and. once the cost of shooting the picture is taken into consideration, it might not even be profitable but it should be encouraging — and that’s invaluable.

4. Build Your Own Site

While you’re sorting your images, putting together your Flickr portfolio and uploading microstock images, you should also be building your own website. There’s no shortage now of portfolio sites that make it easy to show off your work, provide contact information and even manage your own stock sales, allowing you to charge commercial prices without giving up commissions. Bringing traffic into that site might require a lot more work but you only need a few regular buyers checking into your latest additions to keep the revenue flowing.

And the best way to generate those regular sales is to give your site its own niche. When buyers know that they can come to you not just for great images but for a particular kind of image – whether it’s shots of your city or photographs of bands – you’ll be able to conquer one small part of the market.

5. Browse Galleries, Apply to Art Fairs, Pitch for Commissions and Make Submissions

The process of careful selection, online portfolios and winning your first license sales are just the very first steps towards selling your photography. They’re the foundations that underlie the main structure of your career as a semi-pro photography. Once you’ve understood that buyers only want the best images and you’ve created a way to deliver them, you can start branching out into the fields of photography you most want to conquer.

If you want to sell art, that means making appointments at local galleries with a portfolio of images that match the gallery’s buyers. If you want to win commissions it means showing your work to editors and buyers – and getting to know who they are and what they want. If you’re want to sell to magazines, it means reading submission requirements and drawing up pitches. None of those things will be simple and all will involve handling rejection. Some, such as showing at art fairs might even involve some some initial expenses, the kind of thing you can expect to happen in any growing business. But the more you do it, the more sales you’ll make, the more confident you’ll feel about your photography, the more you’ll understand the market, the easier it will become and the further you’ll be able to push your photography.

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.

Choose Your Best Files

The ability to compare sales across multiple sites at one source is clearly one important benefit for non-exclusive contributors. Another is the ability to track trends. Microstock Analytics allows users to group together collections of images into sets in order to identify the subjects or models that are bringing in the greatest number of sales. They can then focus their efforts on the most valuable shoots and make sure that they’re only uploading the images most likely to sell, a particularly important decision when you’re producing more images than the upload limit allows you to offer.

“If you produce a lot of content every month and you’re not iStock-exclusive, you want to choose best files to upload there,” says Popov. “But that’s not easy to do because you need to analyze sales on several other sites.”

Being able to track over time as well as across platforms can also be surprisingly valuable. Popov had found that Shutterstock’s preference for new content generated more sales in the first week than the files produced later on a monthly basis. Because some of his old shoots that had sold well initially appeared to be generating little return after a year, Popov assumed that microstock images have a short shelf life and little value over the long term.

“I was afraid to invest any significant amount of money in photoshoots,” he recalls. “But when I actually got to see monthly graphs for those photoshoots I saw that they sell equally well even after one year. It would be really hard to see without software or would require enormous amount of time to calculate using spreadsheets.”

Using Microstock Analytics, he says, he was able to double his income every month for three consecutive months across each of the four sites.

That’s really the key benefit of Microstock Analytics: instead of guessing what buyers want to purchase, estimating how long a set of images will take to sell and which factors will influence sales, photographers can test different subjects and compositions, and track the results. The figures that come back, such as the longevity of a set of images, may be surprising.

Realizing that microstock images can be valuable even over the long term however, makes calculating the cost of producing them even more important. When you’re shooting like a professional and choosing shoots based on the revenues those images will produce (rather than on the kinds of images you’d enjoy creating) you need to be able to calculate the return on investment. Popov provides a simple example of choosing between two models, one of whom charges $100 and the other $200. The more expensive model is likely to generate higher sales but a professional would calculate whether the extra $100 really would be a profitable outlay.

Microstock Analytics’ most important statistics then may be its ROI number, the returns delivered for the investment in the images. The program provides two figures: the actual ROI, which is based on the total earnings earned by the files (or set of files) so far; and the estimated ROI, which is projected from Shutterstock’s first week of sales.

Estimating Costs Isn’t Easy

The problem though is that both those figures rely on the photographer’s own estimate of costs, and those expenses can be difficult to calculate. The model fee is only one aspect of the cost that goes into producing an image. Other costs are likely to include props, clothes for the models, gas, equipment and, of course, the time spent shooting the pictures as well as the additional time spent on location scouting, keywording and editing the files, and uploading them to the sites.

Producing an accurate estimate of those costs is going to be difficult. Time, in particular, is difficult to value especially for semi-professionals who are shooting at the weekend and in the evenings. But the fact that the software forces contributors to think about those figures and enter even an estimated amount to see how much their images are really worth can only be a good thing. It might not turn enthusiasts into professionals and it might not make them shoot like professional but it does make them think like professionals and that can only be a good thing for the contributor and for the industry as a whole.

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.

Image Editing

Adobe Photoshop Express

Image editors of one sort or another are among the most popular iOS apps but for serious photographers, they’re also among the least useful. Image editing is the kind of work that requires attention to detail, a large screen and software with a wide range of options running on hardware powerful enough to offer them.

Adobe Photoshop Express isn’t that software; Photoshop is. But the company’s free companion to Photoshop.com does allow for some simple procedures such as exposure, color saturation, soft focus and borders. It’s not going to save you all that time in front of your computer but it can let you make some simple changes before you get back to the studio and get on with the real work.

Library Management

Photo Manager Pro

The iPad’s in-built Photos app is fine for simple photo-showing but it doesn’t allow for organization and there’s no place to add information such as captions and metadata. A number of apps do offer better image management. Most are based on folders, allow for easy importing and exporting, and protect access with a passcode.

Photo Manager Pro provides all of those functions, as well metadata, drag-and-drop folder management, geo-tagging and custom sorting. It’s also worth looking at Photo-Sort, Photo Shack and, for Flickr users, Portfolio to Go. Most of the apps are similar enough to make choice based largely on personal preference rather than unique features, but Photo Manager Pro has a particularly long feature list.

Payment

Square

Photographers shooting on commission are unlikely to take payments on location, and pros with their own studios will probably have their own payments systems set up as part of their business. But portrait photographers who like shooting outside or art photographers selling at fairs can certainly make use of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s billion-dollar company to accept credit card payments on their mobile devices. It might not be an app that’s on the need list of every photographer but for those who do sell when they’re outside the studio, Square is both unique and invaluable.

Paperwork

Easy Release

You could just carry a stack of model releases with you when you’re shooting models or photographing stock but it’s not very convenient and you’d still have to file and organize them afterwards. Easy Release from ApplicationGap was designed by Robert Giroux, an editorial and commercial photographer who has shot for Newsweek, Time and Getty Images. The app has been approved by both Getty and Alamy.

The app comes with industry-standard releases, but allows photographer to add their own text if they want, as well as brand the release with their own logo and details. On the iPad 2, you can even shoot an ID picture of the model to include with the release, and the organization is pretty simple too, allowing photographers to find the releases they need easily. Signatures can be made on-screen with a finger or written using an iPad-compatible stylus.

It’s not the only app offering this service; rivals include mRelease and Photographer’s Contract Maker, both of which are cheaper. But Easy Release has more functions and fields.

Light

Daylight

While Sunlight, a rival app, will give you the time of sunrises and sunsets around the world, Daylight provides localized information that’s both more focused and more functional. Set your location and the app will tell you times for civil, nautical and astronomical twilight, but more importantly, according the blurb it’s also “Perfect for photographers who want to prepare for the ‘Golden Hour.’”

As well as providing a single moment of time to mark the sunset and sunrise, the app also visually marks a period allowing photographers to know when they need to be ready to capture the best light at the best time of day.

For anyone who likes shooting outside and wants to know the best time to do it, Daylight is a great reminder — and it’s even free.

Accessories

DSLR Camera Remote

So with the right apps, the iPad can do a bit of light editing, manage some of your images, take payments, provide and store model releases, and even tell you when to shoot. It can also take the pictures for you. DSLR Camera Remote lets photographers control a long list of compatible cameras from a distance.

You can remotely adjust the white balance, shutter speed, aperture and exposure. You can look at images sitting on the camera’s memory card. And you can even look through the viewfinder to see what the camera sees when you’re on the other side of the studio.

Again, that’s not going to be something that every photographer is going to find useful. But it’s easy to see how it can save commercial photographers from running back to their viewfinder after every small adjustment, how sports photographers can leave a camera behind the goal while they shoot from the stands or how art photographers can create self-portraits without having to stop posing.

Of course it’s possible to shoot efficiently and well without an iPad, and Apple’s tablet is never going to replace the laptop. But a few well-chosen apps can make life easier for photographers.

But maybe there are better apps out there. Let us know which iPad apps you’ve found the most useful in your photography.

Photography: Todd Arena

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.

Keep Your Page Active

Todd created a Facebook page almost five years ago, when he first started dabbling in stock sales, and has now picked up more than 4,000 followers. Not all of them are active. Todd knows about 400 of his readers, and only a small fraction of them contribute to his page, placing comments after his posts and complimenting his images.

His wall contains a combination of RSS-fed blog posts, comments and interaction. The info section allows him to introduce his photography and place his links, and the photos area contains a selection of carefully chosen and watermarked images. Regular activity is important to both build and maintain an audience, says Todd, and participating on other Facebook pages can also help to attract new readers.

“It’s important that you structure your online activity into a plan of action, so that your page doesn’t lay dormant,” says Todd. “Joining different groups, participating in discussions in other public areas of Facebook also helped me to get a lot of new fans.”

By one measure then, Todd Arena’s Facebook is successful. It has a large following, a steady stream of content and even if only a fraction of his 4,000-plus followers do more than lurk, the page is lively enough to show that it has interest. The commercial benefits that the page has generated though are a little less clear.

The page does generate traffic to Todd’s website. Facebook pages, he says, are ranked higher in Google search results than most personal portfolio sites. Even face tagging, a practice that might appear less useful for stock photographers than for event photographers, can generate some viral marketing and some extra visits.

“Posting a few low-resolution, usually watermarked selects from a recent photo shoot and then tagging the models in them, definitely helps drive new people over to your page,” explains Todd. “If they like what they see, they just might inquire about their own photoshoot, or at least click the like button.  That activity shows on their wall and their friends’ news feed.”

The branding is important too, and the Facebook page shows potential buyers what Todd shoots and what they can expect from his own site.

Lots of Hits, No Sales

But despite that extra Google love, the viral effect of face tagging and the brand awareness that his Facebook page has helped to build, Todd has yet to see any significant effect on his bottom line. He can count on one hand, he says, the number of times he has managed to produce license sales from the extra traffic his social network efforts have generated.

“I’ve been able to accomplish building the traffic of my website by leaps and bounds, and I’m sure that having a solid participation in social networking have contributed to that. Has the added traffic caused me to license many stock photo sales?  Very few,” he says. “As a stock photographer, I’ve pretty much concluded that the majority of my social networking efforts have been mostly in vain.”

Even advertising on Facebook hasn’t worked for him. Todd recently used a $50 credit to test a banner campaign. He found that he generated lots of views and plenty of website hits. He might have pushed his brand and logo a little deeper into the minds of buyers, he thought, but none of those hits produced so much as a single sale.

Facebook then can generate traffic to a stock site but if Todd Arena’s experience is typical then it’s unlikely to generate much in the way of revenue. Most of his sales are the results of the promotional efforts taken by the stock companies rather than his own work on Facebook.

So perhaps it’s better to look for a different kind of benefit that stock photographers can pick up through social networking. Todd created his page as a “fun, social thing,” seeing it as a kind of forum that contained some additional cool features. It allowed him to communicate with models and photographers, and bring an interactive element to an otherwise lonely profession which tends to involve shooting objects, editing them on the computer then uploading them to a stock site. As a platform that provides social interaction for self-employed photographers then, Facebook might well have something to offer.

“I work from home. My two dogs don’t say much,” he says. “I find social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and my own blogging efforts to be a nice break from the everyday monotony of my daily workflow.”

Overall then, Todd Arena still recommends that photographers — even stock photographers — create a business page on Facebook. Just don’t spend any of your own money on advertising and don’t expect your posts, comments and pictures to actually produce any sales.

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.

The Giants

Two stock companies dominate the industry. They’re big enough to set the prices, determine styles and lock in buyers with subscription fees. Many of the sites listed here are now subsidiaries of one of these firms.

Corbis

Getty

General

Both Corbis and Getty accept images of every topic imaginable. Lots of other sites offer general images too.

Acclaim Images

AGE Foto Stock

AGPix

Alamy

Big Shot Stock

First Light

if images

imagestate

Jupiter Images

Masterfile

Plain Picture

SuperStock

YouWorkForThem

Unique Payment Models

Stock companies generally license images on a royalty-free basis or a rights-managed basis, taking a (large) commission for themselves. Some stock companies though are pushing back against that model with payment plans of their own.

fotoLibra

Photographer’s Direct

PhotoShelter

News

News and editorial images generally need to be delivered quickly to reach markets and generate sells.

AP Images

Atlas Press Photo

Black Star

Citizenside

Contact Press

Magnum Photos

NewsCom

Polaris Images

Redux Pictures

Retna

Reuters

Rex

The Image Works

World Picture News

Zuma Press

Regional News

Local news services, even national rather than international ones, may offer targeted sources for buyers and contributors.

Agence VU

All Canada Photos

Invisu

Kyodo News

Laif

Landov

Oculi

Oeil Public

SIPA

Tass Photo

The Canadian Press

Top Foto

Celebrity

Some of the highest paying editorial images are shots of celebrities. Paparazzi images in particular have to be sent in very quickly.

August Image

Contour Photos

Headpress

JBG Photo

Lickerish

Lime Foto

MrPaparazzi

Vistalux

Microstock

Microstock companies accept images from everyone but charge and pay small amounts on a royalty-free basis.

123rf

Big Stock Photo

Can Stock Photo

Citizen Image

Crestock

Cutcaster

Deposit Photos

Dreamstime

FeaturePics

Fotolia

Gimmestock

ImageVortex

iStockphoto

MicrostockPhoto

MostPhotos

Photaki

Photocase

Pixmac

ShutterFarm

Shutterstock

StockFresh

Stockphoto

StockPhotoMedia

Vivozoom

Webshots

YayMicro

Zoonar

Artistic
Art rarely makes the best stock, which needs to functional rather than artistic. Some stock companies though do specialize in art images.

Aperture

Arcangel Images

Art and Commerce

Bransch

F-Stop Images

Gallery Stock

Glass House Images

Independent Photography Network

Lens Modern

Panos Pictures

Redux Pictures

Stock That Doesn’t Suck

Trunk Archive

Environmental

Images of the environment have become more important as interest in climate change has grown.

Aurora Photos

Eco Photo Explorers

Ecopics

Global Warming Images

Green Stock Media

Science

Science images, including astronomy, can have strong demand but they often require access to laboratories and specialist tools.

Custom Medical Stock Photo

Oxford Scientific

Photo Researchers

Science Photo

Visuals Unlimited

Nature
With the right agency, it’s even possible license your shots of landscape, nature and animals.

Animals Animals

DRK Photo

EarthWater

Mangelsen: Images of Nature

Minden Pictures

Nature Picture Library

NHPA

Picture-Nature

Seapics

Tidal Stock

Terra Galleria

Sports

Sports photography can be as topical as news or as general as portraiture. Some sites cover every sport; others focus on just one activity.

A-Frame Photo

Blue Green Pictures

Extreme Sports Photo

Icon Sports Media

International Sports

Kos Sailing

Sports Chrome

Surfing Stock

Travel

Making money out of your vacation photos isn’t easy. Create travel images of exotic locations though and you can license them on specialist stock sites.

Africa Imagery

BeachFeature

FotoTeca

Hedgehog House

Lonely Planet

Odyssey Productions

Photo-Africa-Stock.com

Picturesque

Scandinavian Stock Photo

Tropical Pix

Travel Library

US Regions

The United States is big and varied enough for images of different regions to have their own outlets.

Accent Alaska

Alaska Stock

Idaho Stock Images

Pacific Stock Photography

Photo Resource Hawaii

Photohouston

Salmon River

International

Photographers in countries around the world can try to sell their images through sites that use the country or region as a brand.

4 Corners

All Canada Photos

Anzenberger Webgate

OnAsia

Axiom Photo

Euro Stock

Europe Stock Images

Greek Stock Photos

Imagine China

Cubo Images

Mauritius Images

Photo New Zealand

Folio

Switzerland Photos

Terra Brasil Imagens

Music

Images of musicians, instruments and performance can make a particularly valuable niche.

Lebrecht

Music Pictures

RedFerns

Industry

Images of industry and transport can be both valuable and difficult to produce. If you can arrange access, some specialist sites will be happy to take your targeted, quality images.

Alvey and Towers

Construction Photography

Energy Images

Mining Photo

Traffic Stock Photos

Transtock

Food

Food pictures might need the help of a professional food stylist but they can make for a useful niche.

Fabfoodpix

Food-image

Stock Food

Aerial Photography

Aerial photography requires some special equipment and is usually commissioned. Some stock companies though do sell images shot from a height.

Airphotona

Aerolist Photographers

Aeronautic Pictures

AirView Online

Ireland Aerial Photography

Add Yours here, in the comments.  Include the category.

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.”

Other publishers who wish to use content posted on Twitpic “for any commercial purpose or for distribution… whether online, in print publication, television, or any other format,” are informed that they must obtain permission from and provide credit to… Twitpic. It’s as though the photographer — the same person that Twitpic has said owns the copyright — just doesn’t exist.

What’s Yours is Yours

Twitter, at least, was a little smarter. When the microblogging company announced that it would allow the incorporation of images into tweets using Photobucket’s servers, it made clear that Twitter’s users owned those photos. As company representative Sean Garrett put it in response to someone who had wondered whether Twitter would claim the right to sell their photos:

“You own your tweets and photos will be part of your tweets.”

When it was pointed out that Photobucket’s terms aren’t quite so clear and, like Facebook and Twitpic, allow the site a broad freedom to republish users’ images, Garrett repeated that as far as Twitter is concerned, users’ property remains users’ property.

“I work for Twitter and am telling you how we will apply rights for photos (that happen to be hosted by Photobucket).”

None of this is to say that Facebook, Twitpic and Photobucket have a secret plan to steal and resell their members’ photos. Facebook might have the legal right to set up a stock library but in the three years since we noticed that clause in its terms and conditions, it hasn’t done so and doesn’t appear to be planning to. Passing on user images might not be restricted by law but it is likely to result in a mass removal of content from the site, a more powerful penalty than anything a court would impose. The aim of the rights that social media sites claim over user images then is more likely to be the freedom to advertise their services and promote themselves. It’s their heavy-fisted approach, which gives them more rights than they need, that’s the problem.

Or rather, it’s one problem because although photo-sharing sites might be greedy with rights they don’t plan to use, at least they’re consistent in their approach to user content. That can’t be said of publishers.

When event planner Stefanie Gordon snapped a shot of the space shuttle Endeavour taking off during a flight over Florida recently, her image and video went viral. According to Mashable, some news organizations contacted her and asked if they could use her footage. She agreed, provided they gave her credit. CNN and NBC both did. The Washington Post and The St. Petersburg Times went further, paying Gordon $100 for each image they used. The Associated Press paid $500 plus royalties. But ABC News and CBS both used her video without any credit at all.

It’s possible that a court decision will now put an end to the worst of those abuses: the treatment of user images as a free resource. Photographer Daniel Morel had sued a number of news organizations that reprinted images he had taken of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. The pictures had been copied by Lisandro Suerto of the Dominican Republic who had sold them as his own to Agence France-Presse, Newsweek and other news agencies. The court dismissed Agence France-Presse’s argument that Morel had lost copyright exclusivity by sharing the images through Twitter, informing publishers that tweeted images are not fair game.

Twitter Should Copy Flickr’s Licensing Program

So there are two problems: on the one hand photo-sharing sites are claiming more rights than they need or want in poorly-written terms that spook contributors; on the other hand, publishers want to publish user images but are unclear about the rules that govern usage of images placed on the Web by members of the public who may or may not be willing to see them published. The best solution may be to adapt the way that Flickr sells stock licenses to social media’s editorial photos.

Flickr’s partnership with Getty allows publishers to license users’ images through the stock company. Once users have opted in, they don’t need to do any more than collect the royalties, while publishers are clear about Getty’s usage rules and payment terms. It’s not a great deal for photographers, who only receive 20 percent of the sales price and are probably better off selling their images themselves, but it is simple and clear for both sides.

Twitter (and Twitpic) could do something similar. Users could opt in to a licensing program, perhaps managed by a news agency, that allows publishers to reprint their images for a fee. News organizations that need to move fast would be able to get crowdsourced images quickly and from a source they know. Contributors could be sure that they’re getting the credit and payments they deserve. It’s not difficult to implement and the model already exists. All it would take is the will of Facebook, Twitter and their friends to put the program together and give photographers what they deserve.

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.

And yet Escobar has not just been in business for the best part of a decade, he’s currently enjoying some impressive exposure generated by a creative approach to a wedding client that made use of his videography skills.

“The Greatest Marriage Proposal Ever!”

His seven-minute footage shows a young woman settling into a cinema seat. The trailer starts but instead of running a preview of a forthcoming attraction, it shows an unidentified man asking another man for permission to marry his daughter. The young woman, whose reaction is seen embedded in the bottom of the video, wonders aloud whether that’s her boyfriend talking to her father. Having received the father’s blessing, the young man is then shown racing to his car and driving to the cinema where we see him — after stopping to buy some popcorn — proposing to the young man and receiving a round of applause from the audience.

Modestly titled “The Greatest Marriage Proposal Ever!” the engagement film has been discussed in outlets from the Washington Post to Time Magazine and has now picked up over 15 million views on YouTube.

The idea for the video came from the client, Matt Still, a former high school classmate of Michael Escobar’s wife.

“He had this elaborate idea to propose and I just brought it to life on the big screen,” explains Escobar.

Still approached the cinema, which loved the idea, agreed to show the footage and allowed Escobar to mount a small camera to the seat in front of Matt’s soon-to-be fiancée, Ginny.

The film itself is moving and funny, and hugely successful — and not just for Still. Ginny, not surprisingly perhaps, said yes and Escobar has been hired to shoot the wedding.  But for photographers looking to make a living photographing wedding clients it also raises interesting questions about the limits they place on their work.

While every wedding job is unique, most tend to be fairly routine, a combination of formals, family shots and candid moments that combine to make the client happy and pay the bills. Photographers who think outside the box and try to make their work a little different though don’t just have the opportunity to enjoy their work more, they can also enjoy more opportunities. For Christian Keenan, for example, a former Asia-based photojournalist who once won a World Press Photo Award (and is one of the photographers featured in our book The Successful Wedding Photographer) that means a career based on telling documentary shots that have made him one of the UK’s most sought after event photographers.

Keenan’s work, which is witty, evocative and unusual, is one example of a photographer standing out with a creative approach that remains within his field. Michael Escobar’s film is similarly unusual and takes him across creative boundaries. But what should photographers consider before they put down their still camera and reach for a video camera in the hope of finding an additional creative outlet?

Should You Shoot Video Too?

The cost will certainly be one factor. Still photography equipment is expensive enough and while much of your gear can serve a double-use, you can expect to be laying out more money on video equipment instead of adding to your studio tools. Escobar notes how surprised he was after buying his first camera when he discovered how much time and money he would have to invest to offer photography as a service. Move into videography and you’ll have a load of new expenses covering everything from hardware to software.

And there’s a new learning curve to overcome as well. Although some of the approaches used by still photographers can help them to become excellent videographers, there are some important differences between freezing a moment at an event and documenting it.

“Photography requires certain equipment and skill sets and video requires a completely different set of equipment and skill sets,” says Escobar. “However someone in photography would have great advantage over someone who isn’t because there are principles that apply to both.”

Michael Escobar though is unusual. Most photographers find that they prefer to specialize in one field rather than spread their skill sets, their training, their equipment budgets and their marketing across multiple fields. And not all have the desire, let alone the talent, to be filmmakers as well as photographers. But for those who are interested in stepping beyond the traditional distinctions between creators of still images and producers of video imagery, there are plenty of opportunities to be had — both in terms of the jobs themselves and the new creative outlets those jobs deliver.

“It is really up to the individual and what they want to do and if they want to take the time to make both their business,” says Escobar. “Understand what you are getting into… but if it is something you love and want to do, it is possible.”

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.

“The era of the static portfolio is over,” says Rapp. “While creatives can (and do) create their own isolated websites, having a static website like this is not effective – it will be just be one of millions of webpages, with very little opportunity of being ‘stumbled upon.’ By using a connected platform like Behance, there are dozens of ways your work and portfolio can be discovered. In the digital age, it’s essential to use these tools to market yourself with little effort, but much effectiveness.”

Want to Shoot for Apple?

It might just be working, at least for some contributors. Success stories quoted on the site include an illustrator who uploaded a personal project of cartoon supervillains. He soon found himself selling prints and talking to the creative director of a small design studio, which later hired him. Visitors to the network are said to include R/GA, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Apple, and JWT, clients large enough to make any advertising photographer happy. Portfolios placed on Behance are also shared across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, further increasing exposure — and improving the chance of finding work. And the site even operates a job board, allowing design companies to advertise positions. (Although most vacancies appear to be for designers and developers rather than photographers.)

Clearly, for art directors the ability to browse multiple portfolios in one place in a set format is always going to be preferable to searching the Web for appropriate talent. But a site whose goal is to make things simple for the creative industry has also managed to add a few layers of complexity.

In addition to its portfolio services, Behance also runs The 99%, which offers advice, tips, videos and even an annual conference on making ideas happen, which also happens to be the name of the company’s book. The Action Method is the company’s own productivity system, a kind of Getting Things Done for creative types, complete with Action Journal, Action Circa Notebook and Action Circa Refills (available for $17.50, $34 and $16 respectively.) When it comes to executing revenue-generating ideas, the portfolio company for creatives isn’t short of creativity.

Most intriguingly though, Behance also recommends that its members make use of its recently launched ProSite, a kind of drag-and-drop, template-based website service. Linked with Behance, users can draw their projects down from the platform and place them easily on their ProSite pages.

“The Behance Network is a platform for Creative Professionals to upload their work and host a portfolio,” explains Rapp. “With ProSite, you can create a fully customized online portfolio site, designed however you’d like, synced with your projects on Behance.”

The Static Portfolio is (Not) Over

It’s hard to see the difference between the two beyond ProSite’s unique domain and the Behance platform’s community. Both are methods of displaying work publicly to people who might want to hire you. More importantly, it’s hard to see too why a photographer would want to join ProSite if, as Rapp says, the “era of the static portfolio is over.”

Using ProSite to create a branded site however, Rapp argues, will take a “professional portfolio to a new level.” She recommends printing the custom URL on business cards and using it to refer people interested in your work.

None of that is new, of course, and even Behance’s gallery of creatives has long been superceded, at least for photographers, by PhotoShelter. And like building a website, creating a portfolio on Behance is still only the first step. Asked what members can do to stand out on a platform filled with plenty of other professionals competing for the same jobs, Sarah Rapp offered a long list of recommendations that included categorizing your work by creative field; using tags liberally; joining different networks such as the LinkedIn Network; connecting with other Behance members; and, for the greatest exposure, being featured on the main gallery, something that requires length, a strong concept and a clean presentation.

That sounds like a lot of work. A similar amount of work, in fact, as the kind of effort that photographers need to invest in making sure their website is seen. (And that website isn’t going to be linked to a platform packed with competitors.)

Behance’s platform does provide a useful service. Adding your projects to a platform viewed by the creative industry can only help to win jobs and land new commissions. But like any aspect of the photography business, don’t expect that work to come in without plenty of effort and large investments of time.

Image courtesy: Photowrap

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.

“I felt there was a niche gap where I could teach photography to [people] who cannot afford to travel to exotic places to attend expensive four-day workshops in Cuba or India, and that I could teach photography to anyone even if they would need to carry on with their daily life,” he told us. “I realised that I could increase my income and have fun by running an online photography workshop, with dedication and love and still allow myself and the students to keep our daily routine untouched.”

The first workshop ran for three weeks in March with twelve students who represented a mixture of experience, ability, age and nationality. The course, which costs £500, is made up of three steps. For the first five days, students discuss the assignment together on Flickr and through Skype with Mimi, a rare opportunity for them to interact personally with a professional photographer as they come to understand the sorts of images they should be looking to shoot.

The next nine days or so are dedicated to taking pictures, using a members-only Flickr group as a workspace and individual Skype-based coaching as guidance. Three industry experts are also on-hand to offer their opinions and answer questions. (For the next workshop, due to run in June with the theme “Edges of the City,” Mimi is hoping to recruit  architectural photographer, Helene Binet, Kate Edwards, picture editor of The Guardian Weekend Magazine, and Johanna Neurath, commissioning editor of publishers Thames & Hudson.)

Finally, participants work on selecting their best images and improve their editing and presentation skills. The finished images are displayed on the workshop’s website, Photowrap.org, where the results of the last workshop are already visible.

Lots of Cameras, Few Photographers

The aims of the workshop include learning “how to observe,” “how to ‘read’ a photograph,” “how to work ethically and be faithful to your vision,” and “how to edit your work and present it to agencies and possible clients,” as well as the importance of basic concepts like light, exposure and composition. It also solves a couple of other problems though and makes use of a growing opportunity.

While camera technology has become both cheaper and smarter, putting an 8 megapixel lens on an Android smartphone or the latest consumer DSLR within financial reach, the same isn’t true of the public’s photographic eye. Camera owners often have little idea how to operate their state-of-the-art equipment or how to shoot impressive pictures. There’s a growing gap between ability and accessibility. The average level of the students who took Mimi’s workshop was, he said, “reasonably low” — at least when they started.

“Everyone has a camera now, but not a lot of people know what photography is about,” says Mimi. “Nowadays there are millions of self-defined photographers, but few of them realise the true potential of the medium.”

That leaves benefits available to knowledgeable photographers willing to help camera  owners realize that potential. The benefits aren’t new. Former Baltimore Sun photographer David Hobby has managed to create a second career out of teaching enthusiasts about lighting on his Strobist blog, even as the newspaper industry cuts staff positions. And professionals have long met hobbyists in exotic locations to teach them how to photograph mountains, lions and volcanoes.

But those real-life, location-based workshops are themselves problematic, argues Mimi, who has turned down several offers to teach in person. They allow photographers to enjoy a vacation but do little to improve photographic skills or help a photographer find their place in the environment and shoot images that are meaningful to them, he says. What he calls “zoo-safari workshops” in which photographers meet in one place and are expected to take pictures of real life

“are useless and damaging for the local reality that they are photographing in that there would be an implicit exploitation of a given surrounding, whether that’s an African village, or a London street market.”

Photowrap gives students the freedom to roam sites where they feel comfortable and removes the sense of competition that comes from having multiple photographers in one location, he says.

Online Workshops Are Good for Students and Teachers

An online workshop then might have real advantages over the usual lessons in which students arrive en masse to see who can shoot the best picture of the same scene. It allows students with day jobs, children and inflexible hours the freedom to improve their photographic eye without changing their schedule. It lets them learn from professional photographers wherever those photographers might be and wherever they might be.

But the biggest advantage is what an online workshop can do for a knowledgeable photographer. Mimi might have an ideological opposition to location-based workshops — even though the participants may well enjoy them, if mostly as vacations — but while they can be enjoyable for the photographer too, a long trip can also be an inconvenience. Giving tuition through a website, Skype and Flickr can be a lot easier, bring in a broader mixture of students and still generating a useful additional revenue stream to supplement sales and commissions.

Photography: Elmada

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.

The Five Jobs of a Second Shooter

For the professional too, having help close to hand can be invaluable. Dani Leigh has been shooting professionally for three years. She worked as a second shooter while she was building her portfolio and still deciding whether photography was a career she wanted to follow. After a year shooting alone, she invited a college friend to come with her on a job and has used assistants ever since, even inviting students to join her on packages that don’t include additional staff.

“Now, I could not imagine not having a second shooter,” she says.

Dani’s demands of her second shooters tend to take five different forms. The first few times an assistant comes out with her, she expects them to shadow her closely. They can take as many pictures as they want, but she wants them to stay at her side. Once she’s comfortable with them, and once they’re comfortable working with her, she’ll send them to photograph the groom and the groomsmen while she focuses on the bride. During the ceremony itself, the second shooter should be at a location opposite the spots that Dani has chosen in order to maximize the angles. And the second shooter also needs to help during the formals, organizing the guests so that they’re ready for the photo and allowing Dani to move quickly on to the bride and groom.

Finally, during the reception, the second shooter can relax and create the images he or she wants.

“Their job is to shoot to their heart’s content,” says Dani, “and get me Cokes.”

Dani uses two second shooters on a regular basis. Lauren Cunningham is a college friend and a marine biologist with a keen interest in photography. After working with Dani for two years, she’s now setting up her own photography company. Steve Bloom is an old school friend who had majored in photography and was looking to break into the wedding business.

Not all enthusiasts and photography graduates though are lucky enough to have studied with someone who went on to set up their own studio, and finding second shooter positions might not be simple. Flickr has a group on which professional photographers advertise positions and keen learners describe their availability. But the group isn’t location-centered and isn’t always a good place to look. Other options can include job sites, but Dani recommends steering clear of wanted ads placed on Craigslist. Reputable photographers, she says, do not post positions on the classified site.

Get Your Own Site

A better option, she argues, is to research a photographer you’re interested in learning from, and send them a personalized email explaining why you’d like to work with them. You should also meet with them in person — and perhaps offer a bribe.

“While a lot can be explained through email, a face to face email is very important. As busy professionals, if we are taking time out of our day, be willing to give us something in return, like free coffee.”

More importantly, you should have a professional website and not just a Flickr stream or a Facebook page. When it costs as little as $15 a month to set up and maintain a photography site, being willing to make that investment says much about a photographer’s commitment to the profession.

Getting the most out of the experience though, requires not just a commitment but an open mind, a willingness to learn, and the kind of likable personality that helps the couple, the guests and the boss all feel relaxed around you. An ability to read the photographer’s mind and bring them the extra equipment they need before they even knew they needed it would be useful too, as are  patience and perseverance.

“Don’t give up after the first time,” recommends Dani. “Do keep in mind that things go wrong [and] if your lead photographer is having a bad day or is unhappy with the images she is getting from the shoot, it could affect the second shooters. Don’t let a single experience form your judgment – try again.”

That might be the best advice of all. Becoming a professional photographer isn’t an overnight switch. It’s a process that runs through skill acquisition, curiosity, doubt and a host of questions about how the work is done and whether it should be done by you. None of those questions can be answered without actually picking up a camera, meeting paying clients and photographing them in action. Doing that alongside an established photographer is a great way to pick up the knowledge before you start looking for clients willing to let you pick up their cash.

Photography: Entrer dans le rêves

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.”

The probability of reaching the explore page, referred to as “PEP” by Flickr’s engineers, is based on the numbers of views, comments, and favorites an image has generated. Of those three, favorites are the most important, followed by comments, with views carrying the least weight. The relationship between the three elements though is changed several times each year to adjust to the “current climate of the Flickrverse.”

Photos also need to meet a number of conditions: they have to be public, safe and contain EXIF data. And they need to have passed a threshold, such as picking up at least two favorites, in order to be eligible for assessment by an algorithm which can be so important for any photographer looking to market their images on the Web’s most important photo-sharing site.

Crowdsourcing Isn’t Fair

The premise of the algorithm then is inherently unfair. Flickr doesn’t employ reviewers to assess each uploaded image, judge its quality and decide whether it deserves an airing on the site’s most important platform. Instead, it uses crowdsourcing, working on the assumption that images that the community has deemed popular are those that must be the most interesting.

Crowdsourcing though ignores the different ability of individuals to move crowds. When an image depends on the actions of others to push it through the Explore page’s algorithm, contributors who are as good at networking as they are at photographing are going to have a distinct advantage. Great photographers who prefer to shoot, then sit quietly while admirers tell their friends about their fantastic imagery will struggle to achieve results.

That might not be fair but it’s also the way the world works. Despite the importance of online portfolios and marketing, it’s still word-of-mouth and personal connections that bring in the jobs for most professional photographers. The same is true of attention on Flickr, a site that’s been known to bring in licensing sales, print purchases and even commissions.

Other apparently unfair conditions are worked into the algorithm too. The aim of the Explore page isn’t to show the best images submitted over a particular period but to show the most “interesting” images. If the algorithm were left entirely to itself, some photographers, particularly those who both shoot well and are well-connected, would inevitably dominate. Their images would be shown again and again at the expense of other photographers with equally good images but with perhaps less developed online social skills. A photographer like Rebekka Gudsleifdottir, who has been on the site since 2005 and whose images pick up thousands of views and hundreds of favorites within days, would be on the Explore page with every upload.

The algorithm then uses a number of calculations intended to reduce the benefits of either deliberate marketing or the massive popularity of some photographers. Submitting images to more than 15-20 groups reduces the PEP score, as does entering them in groups set up specifically to bring in comments and awards. Groups that have a high number of unsafe submissions are also treated with suspicion.

Photographers Are Excluded at Random

To maintain variety and ensure that newer photographers have a chance of being profiled, the algorithm introduces a random element each time the PEP is calculated. It might exclude a particular picture that would otherwise qualify, or it can even choose to ignore all of the photos of a particular user.

Most importantly, Flickr also limits the appearance of photos shot by the same photographer so that they’re are only shown at intervals of several days.

“The problem we try to avoid is typical for our Last 7 Days page,” Serguei told us, “where sometimes you can see the same photos after page reload.”

There is then an element of unfairness built into Flickr’s Explore algorithm. Using a system that looks only at the numbers generated by an image rather than the image itself gives an unfair advantage to photographers who are good with people rather than — or as well as — skillful with their cameras. Good images can also be ignored because the photographer has been successful in the recent past — or for no reason that has anything to do with the image at all.

But those quirks in the system are there for a reason. Excluding photographers at random allows other photographers with lower PEP scores but equally interesting images an increased chance of hitting the Explore page. Reducing the scores of photographers who submit to lots of groups means that popularity has to be gained over time and with a portfolio of images rather than with a big push on one photo. Most importantly, both those conditions help to ensure that the Explore page is genuinely interesting and varied.

For photographers looking to pick up the benefits of the massive exposure that a hit on the Explore page can bring, the strategies are clear enough:

1. Make friends. Comment on people’s photos, take part in group discussions and use the site for networking as well as photo-sharing. Those friends will look at your pictures in return, boosting your PEP score.
2. Upload at intervals. You should only be uploading your best pictures to Flickr but if you can’t hit the Explore two days in a row, it might be worth waiting before you share your next Explore-worthy image if you’ve just been successful.
3. Shoot great pictures. It doesn’t matter how good your networking skills, the currency on Flickr is good photography. Without good images, you’re not going to win the favorites and comments you need to boost your PEP score.
4. Don’t take it personally. Hitting the Explore page is not a judgment on your abilities as a photographer. It’s the result of an algorithmic calculation based on the reactions to your image.

“Explore pages are for viewers and not a photography popularity contest,” says Serguei. “Many great photos of excellent photographers never made Explore because of various reasons. And it does not mean they are bad.”

Learn more about Flickr and its ability to generate sales for photographer in our book The Successful Flickr Photographer, available from Amazon.

Photography: Andrew Cullen

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

“and find some stories that would strengthen my photography portfolio while maybe doing a little bit of good for the world at the same time,” he told us.

The Peace Corps sent him to Bangladesh then, after evacuating the program for security reasons, flew him on to Mongolia, a place where Cullen had spent some time as a student. From 2006 to 2009, he worked in community development, primarily in English language education. When his stint with the Peace Corps ended, he stayed on as a freelance photographer, only returning to the US in the late fall of last year.

Documenting the Dzud

Most of the stories Cullen shot during his time in Mongolia focused on development, health and the environment. He photographed rural hospitals, air pollution in the residential districts of
Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, and cultural festivals, as well as a few travel pieces. His biggest story was on the dzud, a long, bitter winter so cold that livestock are unable to graze. In the winter of 2009-2010, one of the worst dzuds in many years killed about 9 million of Mongolia’s 44 million livestock animals.

“It hit the poorest herders hardest,” Cullen recalled. “If you had 500 animals and 200 died, you still had a good base to build back from, and you would still have enough to eat, and could make some money come spring by selling cashmere wool from the goats. If you had a herd of 30 animals and you lost 25, you might as well have had nothing.”

Most of Cullen’s story ideas came from his familiarity with the country. He had already been in Mongolia for several years before shooting full time, had read about the country and knew which stories most interested the foreign media.  Most of his ideas though — as well as many of his subjects — came from conversations he had had with Mongolian friends and acquaintances.

If coming up with stories to shoot in a country as interesting and photogenic as Mongolia was relatively simple, selling those stories was always going to be a lot harder.

“Finding buyers was a huge challenge,” says Cullen, “[especially as] a young, un-established photographer working from a country that tends to fly under the radar as far as international news goes.”

Most of his stories Cullen pitched before beginning the shoot, but some were shot first then sold afterwards. UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) commissioned some work from him, and EurasiaNet, a site focused on Central Asia, provided Cullen with enough work to keep him in the country.

Networking played an important role as well. Cullen sent emails to all of the international development agencies working in Mongolia to let them know that he was available to document their projects or social issues. When he was in the capital, he arranged meetings with their communications officers to discuss ways they could use his photography.

A New Photojournalist

Turning a long trip abroad into the start of a photojournalistic career then depends on two factors. Knowledge of the country is vital but has to be gained in the field and not just from books, media reports and travel guides.

“Give yourself time to explore the culture before you start blazing away with the camera, or you’ll end up with images that say a lot more about yourself and your norms than about the people you came to photograph,” warns Cullen.

And cultivating connections is vital too, both as a source of story ideas and to find outlets that publish and pay for those photographic stories.

Now back in the United States, Cullen is shooting and writing for a newspaper, finishing a travel guide to Mongolia, which will be produced by Other Places Publishing later this year, and running a photo blog on the New England music scene. He’s also looking for funding that will allow him to move back to Asia within the next year or two and is hoping to complete a portrait project and a social/landscape series back in Mongolia.

In other words, five years after graduating with a degree in an endangered profession, he’s doing all of the things that a professional photojournalist can do to develop their career. Much of that opportunity came from an early decision to pack a camera and head to a place that most photographers tend to ignore.

“Mongolia gave me a chance to follow stories that I was passionate about, and that weren’t being covered by many — or any — other photographers,” says Cullen. “It gave me a sort of calling card to set me apart from other young photographers. And it gave me a lot of practice finding stories where the stories weren’t always obvious.”

Andrew Cullen might have had a host of different reasons for joining the Peace Corps — a combination of curiosity, philanthropy and photography — but a long trip abroad has helped him to build the foundation of a long career as a photographer.

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.

Facebook for Wedding Photographers

The advantages haven’t been lost on wedding photographers. They advertise on Facebook using demographic data to target engaged women in their market area. And they upload tagged images to their business pages to push their photos in front of potential new customers on the guest list. Inviting viewers to add their own tags helps them to reach people they couldn’t identify themselves.

But while Facebook is now an enormous image depository and has the kind of social connections that Flickr lacks, its benefits seem to stop with event photographers — the people who can get the most from  those social connections. Landscape photographers can’t tag the mountains in their images, and stock photographers can do little on Facebook with the pictures in their portfolios. Getty Images’ page is a public relations channel rather than a commercial site that makes sales. Fotolia’s page tries to draw in potential buyers with free images, and iStockphoto doesn’t appear to be on Facebook at all.

Top microstock photographer Yuri Arcurs is one of the few non-event photographers to make good use of the social media site. His page has more than 26,000 “likes” and offers updates about his business and his latest shoots.  Even Arcurs though doesn’t attempt to sell through Facebook — at least not photos. His photo gallery contains fewer than 30 images, mostly shot behind the scenes. The only items he promotes on his Facebook page are branded tools, such as his SteadyPod, which are aimed at other photographers. For Arcurs then, Facebook can be a branding tool but not a photography-selling service.

That isn’t true of Flickr. Getty, which now sells “thousands” of images on the Yahoo property, has brought a level of professionalism to a service which photo buyers had already been using to source original imagery. You don’t have to look to hard to find examples of photographers who have sold images they placed on Flickr, even for sums large enough to buy themselves new cameras.

And while Flickr can’t automatically push tagged images to potential new clients it can push photos onto the pages of other photographers. The contacts you make on Flickr get to see your latest uploads when they log in; upload frequently enough and you can ensure that a steady stream of your images are passing across screens around the world. The number of those screens will depend on the number of contacts you’re able to generate on the site, and the proportion of image buyers they include may be no different to the proportion of potential clients among the group of guests who see a wedding photographer’s images on Facebook.

No less importantly, those Flickr viewers who aren’t buyers — and they’ll always be the bulk of the people seeing your images — can still deliver valuable rewards. They’ll add comments, ask questions, point you in the direction of similar images and offer critiques that will help to improve your photography.

Facebook is the Old Flickr

When Flickr started, it was often portrayed as a site for vacation snappers and a place where people shared images of lolcats. That it could also be a place where photography enthusiasts swapped ideas and experiences, critiqued each other’s work and laid down challenges tended to be hidden beneath the piles of casual users. That it was a place where usage licenses were bought and sold was one of photography’s best-kept secrets until Getty made everything official, first with a collection and then with a complete licensing plan.

The rise of Facebook as a photography platform hasn’t changed those benefits. If anything it’s made them easier to acquire. As casual users upload their photos of friends, family and felines to Facebook, the social media site may grow in size but it leaves Flickr to grow in quality. Wedding photographers can still win new sales and clients by using a service that’s relies on personal connections rather than images themselves, but other kinds of photographers — especially stock and art photographers — would do better by sticking with Flickr, a site more often used by image buyers.

After all, while size was important to Getty when it teamed  up with Flickr, it was mostly the quality of the original, creative and unusual images on the site that the stock company really wanted — and which it now sells.

You can learn how to use Flickr to make photography sales in our book The Successful Flickr Photographer.

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.

“Facebook is the number one photo sharing site in the world,” explains PicsCliq founder Reuven Moskowitz. “That’s what people do on Facebook: they like, tag share and comment on photos. What PicsCliq has done and is continuing to do is add the same components that exist on Facebook to each photo on PicsCliq.com, and then ‘push’ those interactions back to Facebook.”

From Photo Pushing to Photo Selling

The idea of using Facebook as a channel to distribute images to potential leads isn’t entirely new. Facebook cites Chris Meyer as an example of the value of targeted demographic advertising on the site. (Last year, the wedding photographer told us that his $1,000 spend on the site had generated over $100,000 in bookings). But his ads only run from December to March. The remainder of Meyer’s Facebook enquiries come through tagging and distributing images on the site.

PicsCliq takes the idea a step further by allowing photographers to use Facebook as a way of selling images as well as promoting their services. The site, which is free for photographers, depends on merchandise sales for its own revenue. As users browse and tag the images, they’re offered the opportunity to buy a print, as well as a decorated mug, teddy bear, keychain, canvas print and mouse pad. The site is geared towards generating sales rather than enquiries, the opposite of a traditional wedding photography website.

“Without the right environment, promoting, products and approach, even if an event guest does come to view the pictures he or she will not be compelled to purchase photos in a way that is optimized for them,” warns Moskowitz.

So far, most of those sales have come in the form of prints but Moskowitz expects that as the site develops, products that reflect the entire event — collages, mosaic prints and memory books — will become more popular.

The site launched in February 2011 and remains in private Beta as it gathers feedback that will influence its operations. Six hundred photographers have requested an invitation and more than 100 are currently active. Most importantly, the idea that a set of wedding pictures can appeal to more than the couple that hired the photographer appears to be well grounded. PicsCliq is seeing over 150 unique viewers for each wedding added to the site.

Guests can find those images through Facebook but also by browsing the categories on the site; photographs need to be arranged by family, portraits, dance, guests and children. PicsCliq is also working on a function that will allow guests to view all of the pictures in which they’ve been tagged.

The service isn’t intended to replace traditional wedding sites, says Moskowitz. It doesn’t allow the wedding couple to create their wedding album or provide a way for photographers to take direct bookings so photographers should retain their current online proofing solutions. But it should allow photographers to generate some extra sales from a wedding they’ve already been hired to document — products like memory albums for grandparents that include pictures of all the grandchildren.

Changing Wedding Photography

It’s possible that PicsCliq will do more than that though. When wedding photographers plan their shoots, they tend to have a collection of images in mind that they know they’ll need to capture. Mostly, those images will be of the wedding couple itself, the formals that include the entire family, perhaps a few candid, photojournalistic shots, and a number of images of friends and guests that reflect the atmosphere of the event.

If PicsCliq can turn those guests into a market in their own right, then photographers may need to enlarge their list of planned images to include plenty of guest portraits, shots of children and smaller family clusters. In addition to shooting the bride and groom — and shooting for the bride and groom — photographers working at a time when social media allows easy sharing, universal access and the ability to sell directly to anyone may now need to consider the entire wedding party as their market. The couple paying the bill will always be the priority, but the ability to generate a few hundred more dollars in sales by shooting some extra pictures could change the way wedding photographers work.

Even without those changes though, photographers should find that a social media-connected sales page like PicsCliq’s can still generate some useful additional revenue.

“The more purchase-worthy images uploaded the greater the sales possibilities,” says Reuven Moskowitz. “However, we believe that even without changing the way photographers currently shoot, there are many images that are never sold that PicsCliq can help sell.”

To the two kinds of wedding sites now used by photographers then, it may now be possible to add a third: one that uses social media to generate not just potential new referrals but real additional sales.

Photography: maxyphoto.com.au

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.

Following the Stock Market

Some of that comes down to a general market knowledge. Agencies consistently report that buyers struggle to find images that contain broad ethnic diversity, that reflect older customers or which are realistically shot instead of posed with models. Knowing that buyers are looking for images that contain those features should help to improve the chances that a photo series will produce sales. Glancing through magazines regularly, too, should give photographers a good idea of the styles that photo editors are currently looking for. Top microstock contributor Andres Rodriguez has described how he keeps records of published images that he uses to inspire his own compositions.

More helpfully, microstock sites in particular also list the images that are now selling well. Fotolia, for example, lets photographers view the most popular images today, in the last week, over the last month, and ever. Just about all the sites indicate roughly the number of licenses an image has sold, giving buyers an idea of how likely the image will  have been used by a competitor and providing photographers with an impression of the kinds of pictures that buyers prefer to see when they search for a particular keyword.

While keeping an eye on that data will help to determine what to do with a search term, it won’t necessarily reveal which subjects are currently in demand. PicNiche can do that. Created by software engineer and photography enthusiast Bob Davies, the site offers toolbars used by both buyers and contributors to compare supply and demand for search terms. Crunching the data the toolbars produce allows Davies to assign a score that correlates with the level of a competition a picture on a particular topic may face. On a scale on which anything below 10 is “bad” and a score over 100 is rated a “niche,” the keyword “office” comes in at 0.33. “Beer gut” is currently 1,522, a good excuse as any to head back to the fridge.

Photographers can use the site both to check the levels of competition for a keyword they’re thinking of shooting and to see lists of current opportunities. Neither can guarantee sales, but both should give a clue to the likelihood of selling a stock license and an indication of whether the picture is worth shooting.

For photographers hoping to win event commissions, the research is a little harder. There are no tools that can tell them the right kinds of images to produce let alone the best demographics to target or the most effective marketing channels. Market research is going to be largely intuitive rather than based on the solid sales figures that stock companies produce even if they don’t share directly. On the other hand, the level of competition is going to be smaller too and largely restricted to other photographers in the same geographical area.

The research then will be mostly based on understanding what those other photographers are offering. For the images themselves that will be an assessment of whether they’re pitching traditional wedding photography images, edgier wedding photojournalism or edgiest Trash the Dress Photography. In practice, you’re likely to find that many will be offering a combination of at least the first two. The real challenge will lay not in assessing the nature of the product itself, which should be fairly straightforward, but in understanding how to deliver the images, how many images to deliver and how much to charge for them.

The Photography Pricing Process

In fact, for photographers, pricing is likelier to be a harder market research topic than subject. Even stock photographers need to be aware of how much their pictures are worth to buyers; with agencies taking as much as 80 percent of the sales price and websites allowing them to cut out the middle man, there’s a strong incentive to know how much to charge yourself.

But stock photographers have an advantage: fotoQuote has done the work for them. The software uses sales data contributed by professional photographers to produce an accurate snapshot of current market rates. Although it costs about $150, it does take the legwork out of the research and provide a justification for charging a set price based on usage.

Event photographers are going to have be a little less scientific and look at the contents of the packages their competitors are offering and the amounts they’re charging for them. Photographers looking for other kinds of commissions, whether commercial or editorial, can do worse than follow the suggestions outlined by Susan Carr, former President of the American Society of Media Photographers and author of The Art and Business of Photography. She breaks down the pricing process into four elements: creative fee, expenses, license, and market. Each of those elements is complex and each poses a whole new set of market research questions.

But those are questions that any photographer hoping to generate revenue from their images needs to answer — and they’re answers that should be collected before the photography session begins, not once you’ve shot the images and are wondering how much to charge for them and why they’re not selling.

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.

There are no figures that track the number of direct sales made between Flickr members and photo editors but the exchanges have been frequent enough for Getty to team up with the Yahoo property to handle the sales. Within months of launching its partnership, the stock company had made “thousands” of sales on behalf of Flickr members.

For buyers, Getty’s Flickr Collection provides a useful source of original photography and a familiar, trusted sales method. It ensures a fast response from a company that understands copyright restrictions and model releases. For sellers though, it’s an expensive way of delivering their images. Getty takes a 70 percent cut of rights managed images and 80 percent of royalty free photos. Sell the pictures yourself directly, and you could grab 100 percent of the sales price.

To make those sales though, you’ll need to make sure that your Flickr account only hosts your best images, carefully chosen and tagged, and arranged in collections that are easy to browse. Flickr might have a free option but it shouldn’t be used as a dumping ground. You’ll need to indicate in the description that your photos are available for sale, declare whether you have a model release for any recognizable people that appear in the picture, and promise to respond promptly. (One frequent complaint among buyers is that purchasing from enthusiasts can be slow, difficult and unreliable; you want to look like a professional.)

You’ll also need to generate traffic. That comes from networking on Flickr, linking from a blog, joining groups and leaving useful comments on other people’s images. Not only will that give you return views and — if your pictures are good enough — create a buzz about your photography, it will also give you something much more valuable: feedback that will make you a better photographer.

Sell Microstock

Microstock isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The low prices and high volumes have led to accusations that sites like iStock are lowering the value of photography (although not everyone agrees). But it does offer a couple of benefits to enthusiasts hoping to earn a little cash: it’s open to anyone who wants to submit; and it can deliver sales instantly.

The second of those advantages is particularly important. Even if a sale only brings in a few bucks for an image that’s going to be used as the background for a website, the feeling that someone is willing to pay for one of your photos can deliver a huge boost in confidence. It tells you that you’re on the right track and that with more practice, better market awareness and more creative photography, you can continue to sell images and for higher prices.

Microstock is unlikely to make you rich. The highest-earning microstock photographers like Andres Rodriguez and Yuri Arcurs treat their shoots as a full-time job. They look for images that sell, analyze the markets and keep their portfolios fresh with hundreds of weekly uploads. Shoot occasionally, and you’ll struggle to build the critical mass needed to produce regular, high-volume sales.

There are alternatives though. FotoLibra is also open source but charges for storage. It also hands over 50–60 percent of the sales fee to the photographer, and allows anyone to sell rights managed images. PhotographersDirect gives as much as 80 percent but doesn’t accept microstock sellers.

You can regard microstock as a useful confidence boost and an easy way to earn occasional income — or at least have the opportunity to earn occasional income. You can treat it as a full-time job if you have the time and the dedication. Or you can just skip it altogether and focus on one of the stock alternatives.

Win Commissions

Selling usage rights for images is a good place to start because the buyer knows exactly what he’s getting. It doesn’t matter how little experience you might have or how many mistakes you’ve made in the past as long as that one picture turned out right; image buyers are less interested in consistency than composition. That isn’t true when it comes to commissioning photographers. It’s rare, although not impossible, for a magazine to commission to  a non-professional photographer so editorial photography shouldn’t be a prime focus. It’s a field that was always competitive and now even more so. Instead, you can look at winning commission for events and portraits.

Portraits should be the easier of the two. You can build a portfolio with the help of friends, family and even actors and models looking for free headshots. Have them sign model releases and you could even use the shoot to build your stock portfolio. More importantly, you’ll have a collection of photos that show hesitant leads how their images will turn out.

The usual route for professional event photographers begins with an assistantship, something that may be harder to win for an enthusiast with a full-time job. Alternatives that photographers have used include shooting friends’ weddings as a gift, and even pitching for low-budget gigs on Craigslist.

Although some event photographers are willing to outsource their work talented part-timers, they’re relatively rare. And because event photography means shooting when the client needs the pictures taken rather than when you have the time and inclination to pull out your camera, it may not be the best move for many non-professionals.

Photography: Lizzy Oppenheimer

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.

Creators describe their project, upload a video pitch and set a financial goal and deadline. That’s where things start to get tricky. Kickstarter only collects the pledges if the entire goal is met. While that ensures that companies and artists aren’t left struggling to satisfy contributors with funds that are too small to allow them to succeed, it also means that if they set a goal that’s too high, they’ll end up with no funding at all. The site does, however, allow projects to be overfunded, encouraging project creators to ask only for the bare minimum they’ll need while still hoping to raise more.

Setting the Rewards

Calculating that budget is one of the first challenges that photographers will have to overcome to be successful with Kickstarter. A bigger challenge though is figuring out rewards that are tempting, affordable and valuable enough to contribute towards the goal.

“This might have been the hardest part of the process and the part that went through the most revisions,” says Lex Machina, whose Graphoscope project, a kind of steampunk portrait book, has exceeded its $2,000 goal with two weeks to spare. “I tried to imagine as a backer what would sound like a good deal for my dollar and still be within the limits of what I as a creator could realistically deliver.”

Lex’s project received backing from 64 people, two of whom donated at least $200 and one gave at least $275. Half of those backers though were people that Lex already knew or had worked with professionally. Only between 10 and 25 percent were unfamiliar with her work, suggesting that marketing through established networks is one important way of raising pledges. All of Lex Machina’s marketing was done online through a “sizable” network of well-connected friends and colleagues.

Photography: Lex Machina

Lizzy Oppenheimer, who has so far raised just over half of the $10,000 she needs to produce a photobook documenting America’s disappearing roadside stops, also began by emailing her friends and family, and linking to Facebook, a step that she believes necessary to give a project an initial funding boost.

Much of her marketing though has came from the interested generated in the media. Her project has been highlighted on National Public Radio, in the Santa Fe Pulse, and in a number of other magazines and blogs. In contrast to Lex Machins, she knows very few of her backers, many of whom are encountering her work for the first time, have contacted her to support her work and have shared their memories of roadside stops during their own childhood trips.

“The most wonderful thing about creating this Kickstarter Campaign for me has not been the pledges but rather the votes of confidence in my work,” she says. “It seems that I am not crazy for believing that rest stops are a vital part of our cultural history, a vital aspect of Americana. Knowing that so many people believe this work is valid and important is the greatest gift.”

Kickstarter Tests Photography Ideas

That’s one of the biggest benefits of Kickstarter. The service, which takes 5 percent of a project’s funds as a fee, doesn’t just raise money. It also tests the viability of a creative idea. Gerd Ludwig’s project has won pledges because the subject of the shoot struck a chord with people concerned about nuclear power and the environmental damage it can cause. Lex Machina’s work is popular with people interested in steampunk, a small niche with a big following. Lizzy Oppenheimer’s love of a disappearing American cultural experience is shared by enough other people who took road trips with their families to push her project towards meeting its goal.

Kickstarter then can work for projects that already have potential audiences who empathize with the idea. Photographers looking to raise funds for ideas that are meaningful to them but to few others though are more likely to struggle, and the site’s all-or-nothing policy means that project creators can find themselves with no funds at all for their work.

Lex Machina indicated that if Kickstarter hadn’t come through she would have been “pretty discouraged,” probably wouldn’t have produced a book but would definitely have tried again later with a refined campaign. Lizzy Oppenheimer too mentioned that even if she doesn’t receive the funds she needs, she’ll look for another way to continue the project — as long as the rest stops are still there for her to photograph.

And Gerd Ludwig, despite not quite meeting his complete budget, is already in Chernobyl, taking pictures, commemorating the accident and documenting the disaster on behalf of a public that cares enough about it to send him there.

Photography: Neal Dench

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.

The first is citizen journalism. The new distribution agreement between Corbis and Demotix, a crowdsourced photojournalism service, suggests that even one of the world’s biggest photography companies understands the value that photographers who happen to be on the scene at the right time can bring to publishers. As news companies cut back on the staff they’re willing to base or send overseas, photographers who can quickly reach the site of an accident, a demonstration or a crime can cash in on their proximity to a news event.

Selling those images isn’t going to be easy. Although a number of Demotix’s citizen contributors have managed to put their images into national newspapers most submissions aren’t used, and if they aren’t used immediately, they’re probably not going to be sold at all.

Creating Your Own Local News Site

One alternative to relying on a chance need by a big Corbis or Demotix customer is to look to local news sites. The rise of hyperlocal news services such as WestportNow.com, a site created by CBS veteran and photography enthusiast Gordon F. Joseloff, has been the story of the past decade. By focusing on tiny areas usually overlooked by media companies, the sites have come to take advantage of the Web’s long tail and provide an outlet for local citizen reporters and photographers. Joseloff no longer edits WestportNow but he does still contribute images.

According to a 2006 report into citizen journalism sponsored by the Ford Foundation, however, 42 percent of local news sites said that their revenues were lower than their costs. A further 38 percent said that they didn’t know if the site was profitable, suggesting that money wasn’t the biggest incentive in establishing the service. Of those that do look for funds, 48 percent relied on advertising, 25 percent looked to community and corporate sponsors, and 16 percent relied on donors. Only 5 percent were able to depend on subscription income.

Perhaps the most telling statistic though is that 43 percent of local news sites were funded by their founders. While making it profitable might be difficult, creating a news site that services your area, is supported by advertising and to which you contribute with the help of other local photographers and reporters, is something that depends only on your willingness to invest in a domain name, a hosting fee and traffic generation.

Shooting Local Beauty

A news service will be dependent on events, and those events can be relatively uninteresting. Another way to cash in on your local knowledge is to document local beauty. It’s an approach that’s more artistic, more creative and which can even translate into a completely new business.

As a local, location scouting will be simple and convenient. You’ll already know the best places to shoot, the best times to shoot, and the hidden aspects of your area that outsiders won’t be aware of. You won’t have to pay large sums or spend a great deal of time trying to reach the destinations you want to photograph and even if the shot doesn’t work out, you’ll be able to go back and try again. Doing so would even be a pleasure.

Best of all, if you find locations near you beautiful and photogenic, there’s a good chance that others will too. That means you’ll also have a solid market in other locals looking for a new perspective on sites with which they’re familiar and of which they’re fond.

In 1981 John Fielder self-published a  calendar featuring images of Colorado. The images were successful enough for him to create his own publishing company which he later sold to Big Earth Publishing. Over 28 years, he published 39 titles, including photography books, calendars and guide books, some of which were shot by other photographers, and all but half a dozen of which were about Colorado.

“I planned my projects with the intent to publish a book and most were two-year projects,” he told us. “Most of my books sold very well.”

While book publishing and even calendar publishing can be a difficult industry, it has worked for Fielder who cashed in on his passion for and knowledge of his local surroundings.

And finally, an awareness of local tastes as well as local terrain can be an asset too. When it comes to buying art, metropolitan types may have cosmopolitan tastes but smaller communities may well want subjects and styles that are familiar and even conservative.

When you’re trying to sell at an art fair matching your inventory to the public tastes will be critical, and the same will be true when you’re approaching galleries who need to be able to win sales from local buyers.

According to Susan Kirchman of the Kirchman Gallery in Johnson City, Texas, her buyers

“are looking for things they can live with. They aren’t interested in [the art] being overly edgy.”

The events that take place in a photographer’s location then can provide subjects to shoot and outlets in the form of local news sites. It can even provide revenue in the form of local advertisers willing to pay to appear on those sites. The beauty of the region can offer enough photography subjects for a lifetime of happy image-making, and the people who live in the area alongside you can be your buyers and sponsors provided you have an understanding of the kind of photography they want to see.