Hello everyone, I have been photographing rare wildlife for almost 6 years now and I am trying to figure out how to make a reasonable profit off of what I would like to make my living one day. Does anyone know what sites are good for selling photos? Also, I use a Canon 40D and a Canon 100-400L series lens...is this equipment good enough for potential buyers? Anyway, feel free to check out some of my shots here on the site and let me know what you think. Thanks- Brandon
Posted by Nat Coalson on November 25, 2009 at 5:14 PM
Brandon,
Thanks for posting your question here; its one that most all of us have asked either to ourselves or others at one time, if not obsessively. For what it's worth here are my two cents:
- Treat it as a business. Unfortunately this takes some of the fun out of it but even if you're just dabbling, if you want to sell, you need to take it seriously and make decisions accordingly.
- Know your customer. Create buyer personas that clearly describe who it is that might be interested in purchasing your images, in any format.
- Do everything from the point of view of your customer. It's not about you; it's about how your photos might fill a need for someone else.
- Nearly everyone who is passionate about photography would like to make at least a partial living from it. Expect to have stiff competition for buyer dollars.
- Your choice of web channels is not nearly as important as the quality of product you're putting out. Don't get hung up on whose service to use.
- Re: the quality of product - market only the work of the quality expected by your customer. Edit tightly. If you only have a small collection to offer, don't try to pad it with substandard images.
- Learn everything you can about file formats, resolution, color profiles etc. The technical standards for high quality images are becoming narrower.
- Load your files with metadata - copyright notice, contact info, keywords, captions, titles. The images that get found are the ones that sell. If your images don't have enough metadata they will be invisible online.
- Register your images with the US copyright office at least once per year, especially any that you have published or promoted publicly.
- Consider all the ways you could sell your images: licensing (stock), prints, products like calendars, notecards etc.
- Learn, learn learn. None of this comes easy. Check out the Photographers Market book that is updated each year. Expand your horizons and be willing to go beyond your initial expectations.
Your equipment is fine for your described venture. Don't worry about it. The most important equipment is between your ears ;-)
Good luck!
Posted by Kent Staubus on November 25, 2009 at 5:18 PM
My personal experience is wildlife photos are very difficult to sell because it's a highly competitive field. There are thousands of pretty good amatuers out there with huge travel budgets that can fly anywhere and bring home great shots. Your camera and lens doesn't matter nearly as much as your marketing skills. You might consider seeing if you can make an arrangement with your local zoo and sell notecards of photos of their animals etc. This is a very, very tough field and I highly doubt you'll ever make a profit from it, considering cost of travel, camera gear, and your time. Someone else can comment on websites and just how viable selling that way is. I used to sell photos (non-wildlife) to local and regional stock houses, but haven't done so in the past couple of years. Prices have really gone into the toilet.
Kent in SD
Posted by Colin Smale on November 26, 2009 at 4:23 AM
One of the lessons I learned (eventually) was, give editors what they want, not what you think they should want.
Make yourself known locally with talks and pics in local press, once you are known here you will get known in the wider world.
I am retired now but I am quite sure I could have done so very much better if I had had use of the internet.
As for 'rare species' one short trip overseas netted me shots that were at the very least 'unusual'. While I was there, over the xmas period, I was invited to a grand xmas meal with about 100 others. The meals were not the usual xmas meals, swordfish etc, I took simple pics, almost 'snaps'. When I got back home and sent all pics to my agent at the time including the meal snaps, several of them sold within 24 hours, none of those initial sales included my scarce bird pics.
We maybe sit in a hide/blind for hours/days for what we consider are special shots but in the world of picture sales, if we want to earn a living with a camera I sometimes wonder why we bother with wildlife when a picture taken as it suddenly appeared before us such as the xmas meals or street scenes etc compares with one pic, taken after hours of waiting, maybe weeks of planning and possibly including a flight to the area and when it sells, it almost always receives same £/$ as the 'snap'.
All the editor sees is a photograph that fits with what he wants to print.
Of course, giving an editor the full package of an article with pics is much better, he doesn't have to source words to go with your pics and you should get more than one pic published and paid for story too.
I'd be pro-active with editors, based on the successes of a friend who shoots for gardening pubs.
You don't define "rare", but if limited photos are in circulation, it becomes a matter of letting editors know you have them.
Following my friend's example, make up a series of post cards, one photo each, with your contact info and a list of species in the text. Send one a month to every editor you can think of. If they're quality photos, they'll end up on the editors' desktops or bulletin boards, and as needs for photos of those particular species or any other arise, they'll be getting in touch with you.
That puts you about three laps ahead of photographers lost in the morgues of stock agencies.
To my certain knowledge she's had several covers of Better Homes and Gardens and other major mags, plus a fair number of product shots. She's also in quite a number of gardening books. Over time she's developed first-name relationships with several editors. I've met a couple who visit her each year. As in most businesses, knowing people cuts corners. It's not an overnight phenomenon, rather it takes years to develop. And she's done it. Last time we talked about it, she was laughing that a couple of editors emailed because her post cards hadn't arrived on time!
Discussion
7 repliesThanks for posting your question here; its one that most all of us have asked either to ourselves or others at one time, if not obsessively. For what it's worth here are my two cents:
- Treat it as a business. Unfortunately this takes some of the fun out of it but even if you're just dabbling, if you want to sell, you need to take it seriously and make decisions accordingly.
- Know your customer. Create buyer personas that clearly describe who it is that might be interested in purchasing your images, in any format.
- Do everything from the point of view of your customer. It's not about you; it's about how your photos might fill a need for someone else.
- Nearly everyone who is passionate about photography would like to make at least a partial living from it. Expect to have stiff competition for buyer dollars.
- Your choice of web channels is not nearly as important as the quality of product you're putting out. Don't get hung up on whose service to use.
- Re: the quality of product - market only the work of the quality expected by your customer. Edit tightly. If you only have a small collection to offer, don't try to pad it with substandard images.
- Learn everything you can about file formats, resolution, color profiles etc. The technical standards for high quality images are becoming narrower.
- Load your files with metadata - copyright notice, contact info, keywords, captions, titles. The images that get found are the ones that sell. If your images don't have enough metadata they will be invisible online.
- Register your images with the US copyright office at least once per year, especially any that you have published or promoted publicly.
- Consider all the ways you could sell your images: licensing (stock), prints, products like calendars, notecards etc.
- Learn, learn learn. None of this comes easy. Check out the Photographers Market book that is updated each year. Expand your horizons and be willing to go beyond your initial expectations.
Your equipment is fine for your described venture. Don't worry about it. The most important equipment is between your ears ;-)
Good luck!
Kent in SD
Make yourself known locally with talks and pics in local press, once you are known here you will get known in the wider world.
I am retired now but I am quite sure I could have done so very much better if I had had use of the internet.
As for 'rare species' one short trip overseas netted me shots that were at the very least 'unusual'. While I was there, over the xmas period, I was invited to a grand xmas meal with about 100 others. The meals were not the usual xmas meals, swordfish etc, I took simple pics, almost 'snaps'. When I got back home and sent all pics to my agent at the time including the meal snaps, several of them sold within 24 hours, none of those initial sales included my scarce bird pics.
We maybe sit in a hide/blind for hours/days for what we consider are special shots but in the world of picture sales, if we want to earn a living with a camera I sometimes wonder why we bother with wildlife when a picture taken as it suddenly appeared before us such as the xmas meals or street scenes etc compares with one pic, taken after hours of waiting, maybe weeks of planning and possibly including a flight to the area and when it sells, it almost always receives same £/$ as the 'snap'.
All the editor sees is a photograph that fits with what he wants to print.
Of course, giving an editor the full package of an article with pics is much better, he doesn't have to source words to go with your pics and you should get more than one pic published and paid for story too.
You don't define "rare", but if limited photos are in circulation, it becomes a matter of letting editors know you have them.
Following my friend's example, make up a series of post cards, one photo each, with your contact info and a list of species in the text. Send one a month to every editor you can think of. If they're quality photos, they'll end up on the editors' desktops or bulletin boards, and as needs for photos of those particular species or any other arise, they'll be getting in touch with you.
That puts you about three laps ahead of photographers lost in the morgues of stock agencies.
thanks
Have a good one