Archive for Making money off your photos

Why is wedding photography so expensive?

I'm often asked about how much people charge for photography, and then frequently in the context of wedding photography. Honest truth? I don't really know, but the persistent feeling out there is that wedding photography is really, really expensive. This is, in fact, true - it ain't cheap to get your wedding photographed - but have you ever thought about why that might be? I decided to find out, and spoke to Randolph Quan, a London-based wedding photograher.

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When the media steals your photos

The story of a photographer whose photos went astray – and got re-published by one of the UK’s biggest newspapers without permission There’s something really difficult about looking after your copyright on the internet. Every single word I’ve ever typed in this blog, for example, is duplicated at least a couple of times around the web. The problem is that words are easy to find. Pictures, on the other hand, are a different tumbler of guppies... As Maciej Dakowicz found out, when his photographs suddenly surfaced on the Telegraph’s online edition...

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From microstocks to megabucks

The Problem with Microstock' article a few weeks back. The curse of having a relatively high-profile blog, however, is that people tend to disagree with you. Well, that's not really the curse, that's a fact of life. The curse, specifically, is that you frequently get incredibly eloquent people disagreeing with you - people who disagree passionately enough to write their side of the story. Seeing as how I'm not a politician, I'm fully entitled to change my mind about things, including Microstock. And while I still feel that the premise of Microstock is wrong for all the reasons described in that other post, I wouldn't be much of an Economist subscriber if I didn't see that there was a flipside to the proverbial coin as well - in this case, expressed by Willie Thomas, a man who makes his living with stock photography. I caught up with him to find out how he does it...

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The problem with microstock

We do an experiment with microstock, and discover that while I sold three times more photos, I earned 40 times less money from the micro stock sales than from a full-on agency - with the exact same photos on sale... The lesson? If you're a decent photographer, stay the hell away from micro-stock: The bigger agencies treat you better, pay you more, and actually make an effort to sell your photos on a bigger scale.

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Red Bubble: selling stuff on-line

By now, there are a hundred ways of displaying and selling your art on-line. We've looked at a few solutions in the past (Including the rather impressive one-man-band FotoViva I wrote about a while back), but I recently found a new one, Red Bubble, which seems to really resound positively with me. Using a user interface that reminds me a little bit of JPG Magazine (i.e extremely Web 2.0: Simple but pretty and functional), Red Bubble doesn't pitch itself initially as a photo sales site. Instead, it's an online art gallery where you can upload - and sell - your artwork.

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Submitting photos to magazines

I get a lot of questions about how you should prepare your images for magazine submissions. Should you just whack all your images on a CD? Is it worth including the RAW files or should you only send JPEG files? Should you leave all the images in a folder, or should you organise them? Obviously, things differ from magazine to magazine, and many publishers have guidelines - if they do, try to get a copy of them, and follow them. If you're submitting unrequested material, however, there are a few things you can do to encourage the image editor / art editor to keep hold of your photos. The most important thing you need to remember is that magazine production is hectic stuff. That means that decisions are often made quickly, and if you do your submission wrong, you may not get another shot...

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Case study: Selling your photos on-line

A lot of people take photos. No, seriously. A lot of people. But the number of people who actually do something with their photographs are an absolute minority. I decided to catch up with a friend of mine - Jason - to see how he turned his hobby into a multi-million, global sales success. Okay, so I'm full of it: he barely even breaks even. But still - he's found a cool way of trying to do something with his photos. And that's worth taking a closer look at, methinks!

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Photographing for charities

If you're working as a photographer - and perhaps especially if you're just starting out, in the hope that you can build up a bit of a portfolio - you are often asked to take on the strangest assignments. Some of them can be a lot of fun, while others... in the immortal words of Borat: Not so much. I've done a fair bit of work which involves charities, and a few years back I noticed a new trend: They will want you to sign a contract as part of the photography work. You'll want to read it carefully, because 'charity' isn't automatically synonymous with 'good people': Some of their contracts will try and rob you of all your rights.

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How much should you charge for a photo?

The other day, I received a really interesting question from one of my regular Photocritic readers. Danielle lives in Ohio, is a Senior in high school, and wants to be a professional photographer. I've seen some of her photos, and while she still has quite a bit to learn (why not send in some photos for critique, Danielle? Who knows, perhaps I can help you along a bit), she certainly shows a lot of potential. Her question, in a nutshell, was 'I want to sell my photos. How much do I charge?'. It's a question most photographers occasionally come across, but it's important to everybody who wants to make a career in photography, so here are some of my thoughts on the matter...

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Be careful what you sign!

We've talked about how photo licencing works before, but it seems as if people are just not learning their lessons. So, as the newest instalment in our Photography Business article series, an important reminder... The newest horror story comes from a website called UK Expert. If you sign up to their website, and click 'ok' on the terms as conditions (Let's face it - when did you last read the terms and conditions to anything), they are trying to get you to sign over the copyright to your photos. Yikes! The lesson today? Read the terms and conditions before you upload any photos. Seriously.

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