This is a touchy subject, I'm sure, but it's something I've wondered about for a long time now.
There are NPN members that I, and from feedback others, think do wonderful work that don't seem to market their images and other NPN members that from my point of view and also going by feedback they receive are not as good that do sell images. Is photo marketing just a matter of what any given photographer wants to do, as opposed to how good any given photographer is? Or maybe is any given photographer good if he or she thinks he or she is regardless of what anyone else thinks?
So my basic question is whether there is really a criteria of image quality that is very much involved in photo marketing and selling. Thanks for any insight.
The simple thing about that is, it's such a subjective thing that you can't ever tell what someon's taste is going to be. I believe that people sometimes buy something if they think it's in vogue to do so, however. That explains all the hideous so-called abstract paintings hanging in ritzy houses all over the country. Nobody could honestly call that kind of stuff pleasant to look at!
Image quality is hard to define. I believe that the most important quality is that an image communicates Something of what inspired the photographer to make the photo is sensed by the viewer and they respond emotionally to it. For the local art & craft fair I did just yesterday I printed a handful of images that I am personally fond of but had doubts would "play" to a broad audience. They are "quality images" in the sense that they are technically correct and printed to a high standard but they don't necessarily follow rules of composition or the subject matter that traditionally "sell". And to be fair they didn't sell yesterday (almost nothing did probably due the economic uncertainty right now) but they were the images that most consistently engaged the audience and drew the most comments. In terms of marketing, those are the images that people will remember and associate with you as an artist and/or photographer.
Marketing (in my experience) isn't about how "good" a photographer you are, that being a very subjective evaluation anyway. It is about the extent to which you are able to engage your particular audience. Jackson Pollock was dubbed by some wag as "Jack the Dribbler", a nickname with which I would heartily concur, but he (and/or his publicists) succeeded in marketing him as an artistic genius despite a large segment of the population believing that "good" does not describe his paintings.
OTOH if you are selling to magazines and other publishers where the buyers are editors you may be confronted by "quality" issues in terms of the minimal standards they set for considering an image. They usually spell those out in the submission requirements and that definition of quality has nothing to do with how "wonderful" the image is in terms of viewer impact which they want the image to have as well. Selling for publication is all about meeting the needs and expectations of an editor for a specific usage. An editor may have submissions that on a personal level he/she might see as "better" images but that do not match the specific requirements of the publishing project so they will not be chosen.
Finally there is the question of the photographer's marketing efforts. If you don't get the work out there before the intended audience, it won't sell no matter how wonderful it is. I confess to being rather lax in my marketing. I dislike marketing and don't need to make a living at photography so it doesn't get done to the extent that it should. I will leave it to you to decide whether my work is more or less wonderful than those who are selling more.
Posted by Basil Greber on July 17, 2011 at 2:53 PM
I think it's quite simple - if you want to sell your images, and someone wants to buy them, well, you can sell them, no matter whether somebody is doing better work (by whatever criterion) than you. There's no higher authority ruling judgement about what is "worthy" and what's not...
Jim Bullard's last paragraph pretty well took the words right out of my mouth. You can be the most stunning photographer in the world, and if you don't out in any marketing efforts, no one will buy your images--they simply won't know about them! A less good photographer who's a great marketer--and it takes persistence--will sell better. May I suggest Dane Sanders's book Fast Track Photographer.
You are as good as you can persuade someone to believe you are! If you can get someone with celebrity status to acknowledge your work as good, or buy it, then your chances are even better!!!!!!! Sorry, the sinic in me came out a little there. I'm just saying I see tons of images here every day from recreational photogs that are better than many of the successful published pros out there. It's a matter of marketing ability and other things too! You need to be able to have a repor with people as well. I don't really do anything to make myself successful as a photographer, and I'm not, as far as any kind of income goes. But, I get a lot of praises at the few shows I do each year. I also get very positive feedback from the visitors to the gallery show I have done the past two years. I recieved the people's choice award two years running so far. But the judges don't seem to find my work as compelling as the general public does. You just have to put some of your work out there, and see what the reaction is. Then you have to decide what you percieve as good for yourself.
Commercial success is more a function of good marketing than it is of photographic skill. But quality photography is easier to market than mediocre photography: at least to the markets that I consider worthwhile.
If you are satisfied with selling prints on weekends at local shows then you can probably do reasonable well if you tailor your content to emotional subjects: kittens, sunsets, dreamy flowers, happy children, etc. Just go to the local Hallmark store and see what sort of photography appeals to casual buyers.
If you want to sell images to good bird magazines (Audubon, Birders' World, Birding, etc.) then you need to have technically excellent work to start with plus you need to get it in front of the right people at the magazine.
As with any other product there are different measures of good, sale-able, and successful.
I have been selling my work since 2008 and have it in a Gallery. It is a Coop gallery so I work it and so does all the other artists. I listen to people when I work make commnets about my photo's and everyone elses art work. What appeals to some will not appeal to others. I can have a group of people come in and each photo speaks to them differently. Also, most people that buy photography are not professional photographers. I also Love everything Jim had to say and Shirley. I don't market myself other than the gallery and do it for the joy of it. I don't do shows and drag my work around to make a living. I have a full time job this is just something I love sharing with other people that love my work. I also do a few contests during the year. They are just fun to do. Good Luck with your journey in photography.
I have been selling my work since 2008 and have it in a Gallery. It is a Coop gallery so I work it and so does all the other artists. I listen to people when I work make commnets about my photo's and everyone elses art work. What appeals to some will not appeal to others. I can have a group of people come in and each photo speaks to them differently. Also, most people that buy photography are not professional photographers. I also Love everything Jim had to say and Shirley. I don't market myself other than the gallery and do it for the joy of it. I don't do shows and drag my work around to make a living. I have a full time job this is just something I love sharing with other people that love my work. I also do a few contests during the year. They are just fun to do. Good Luck with your journey in photography.
Richard sums it up best. I've been trying to hawk (pun intended) my work for some time now and while I consider my photography pretty good it is not on the level of the top guys around the country (and world) who are getting magazine covers and things like that. But, I've done well licensing my images to the local market because I put my name out there and try to drum up interest in my local work. I've seen a lot of crappy photos selling successfully at museums, art shows, aquariums etc. because the person is good at marketing their work. But on the other hand, you won't see crappy photos gracing magazines or being sold as limited edition $500 prints. Hope that makes sense
In our experience there can be two distinctly different types of photographs: Those that sell well and those that review well with other photographers.
Sure some photos that sell well also review well and visa versa. But poor reviews by photographers often have very little bearing on sales potential. Photographers get their underwear into tight little bunches over issues that are meaningless to general buyers.
Here's the perfect example, just "up" today. I accepted a contract to do aerial landscapes for a real estate project, the object being to show the land to greatest advantage using light, POV, framing and every other trick in the book. All from a moving airplane, of course.
In describing what he wants, the client used some interesting terms you'll never hear among nitpicking photographers. He wants HAPPY skies. He wants viewers to see FAMILY hiking routes. He wants viewers to FEEL the tug of a fish on the line in the ponds. He wants viewers to SMELL the wildflowers and TOUCH the sand with their toes.
I think this topic touches on a number of distinct issues that aren't easy to address. But you already hit on one of the main elements: whether a photography has the energy and interest in marketing his/her work in the first instance. As you've noticed, venturing into the commercial marketplace (and perhaps even achieving some success) is a matter of personal interest. Certainly, you have to have quality work to succeed commercially, but what I've gleaned from reading up on the subject is that the energy you invest in marketing is at least as important as the quality of your work.
My personal theory is that if you don't have much energy or time to invest in marketing your work (and yourself), you can't expect much if you venture into the commercial arena regardless of how much quality work you have in your arsenal. Maybe my theory is a bit off and some will disagree. But my belief is that work that sits on a website waiting to be discovered is incredibly unlikely to attract significant attention, as it's competing with a glut of other decent to excellent to work that is marketed quite heavily. I think marketing--not quality--makes all the difference. This is why Peter Lik (just to use an example you may be familiar with) can sell an excellent photo for $1 million dollars while others with work that is similarly high in quality struggle to find buyers for prints priced at levels normal people can afford.
The bottom line from my perspective is that quality matters, but marketing matters more. I think a lot of NPN members enjoy photography as a hobby and--no matter what the quality of their work--don't have the energy or time to invest in marketing and are thus content to stay out of that arena. It's not a bad place to be . . . you can worry about pleasing yourself rather than putting food on the table.
. . . you can worry about pleasing yourself rather than putting food on the table.
And that's the most cogent distinction. If you're in business you have to shoot what sells, and the heck with what reviews well on photo sites.
The most glaring example I know of is polarized skies. Clients love them, and the bluer the better. Photographers hate them. Whatcha gonna shoot when a mortgage is waiting to be fed?
Discussion
18 repliesThere are NPN members that I, and from feedback others, think do wonderful work that don't seem to market their images and other NPN members that from my point of view and also going by feedback they receive are not as good that do sell images. Is photo marketing just a matter of what any given photographer wants to do, as opposed to how good any given photographer is? Or maybe is any given photographer good if he or she thinks he or she is regardless of what anyone else thinks?
So my basic question is whether there is really a criteria of image quality that is very much involved in photo marketing and selling. Thanks for any insight.
Marketing (in my experience) isn't about how "good" a photographer you are, that being a very subjective evaluation anyway. It is about the extent to which you are able to engage your particular audience. Jackson Pollock was dubbed by some wag as "Jack the Dribbler", a nickname with which I would heartily concur, but he (and/or his publicists) succeeded in marketing him as an artistic genius despite a large segment of the population believing that "good" does not describe his paintings.
OTOH if you are selling to magazines and other publishers where the buyers are editors you may be confronted by "quality" issues in terms of the minimal standards they set for considering an image. They usually spell those out in the submission requirements and that definition of quality has nothing to do with how "wonderful" the image is in terms of viewer impact which they want the image to have as well. Selling for publication is all about meeting the needs and expectations of an editor for a specific usage. An editor may have submissions that on a personal level he/she might see as "better" images but that do not match the specific requirements of the publishing project so they will not be chosen.
Finally there is the question of the photographer's marketing efforts. If you don't get the work out there before the intended audience, it won't sell no matter how wonderful it is. I confess to being rather lax in my marketing. I dislike marketing and don't need to make a living at photography so it doesn't get done to the extent that it should. I will leave it to you to decide whether my work is more or less wonderful than those who are selling more.
Chris
If you are satisfied with selling prints on weekends at local shows then you can probably do reasonable well if you tailor your content to emotional subjects: kittens, sunsets, dreamy flowers, happy children, etc. Just go to the local Hallmark store and see what sort of photography appeals to casual buyers.
If you want to sell images to good bird magazines (Audubon, Birders' World, Birding, etc.) then you need to have technically excellent work to start with plus you need to get it in front of the right people at the magazine.
As with any other product there are different measures of good, sale-able, and successful.
I have been selling my work since 2008 and have it in a Gallery. It is a Coop gallery so I work it and so does all the other artists. I listen to people when I work make commnets about my photo's and everyone elses art work. What appeals to some will not appeal to others. I can have a group of people come in and each photo speaks to them differently. Also, most people that buy photography are not professional photographers. I also Love everything Jim had to say and Shirley. I don't market myself other than the gallery and do it for the joy of it. I don't do shows and drag my work around to make a living. I have a full time job this is just something I love sharing with other people that love my work. I also do a few contests during the year. They are just fun to do. Good Luck with your journey in photography.
I have been selling my work since 2008 and have it in a Gallery. It is a Coop gallery so I work it and so does all the other artists. I listen to people when I work make commnets about my photo's and everyone elses art work. What appeals to some will not appeal to others. I can have a group of people come in and each photo speaks to them differently. Also, most people that buy photography are not professional photographers. I also Love everything Jim had to say and Shirley. I don't market myself other than the gallery and do it for the joy of it. I don't do shows and drag my work around to make a living. I have a full time job this is just something I love sharing with other people that love my work. I also do a few contests during the year. They are just fun to do. Good Luck with your journey in photography.
Troup
Sure some photos that sell well also review well and visa versa. But poor reviews by photographers often have very little bearing on sales potential. Photographers get their underwear into tight little bunches over issues that are meaningless to general buyers.
In describing what he wants, the client used some interesting terms you'll never hear among nitpicking photographers. He wants HAPPY skies. He wants viewers to see FAMILY hiking routes. He wants viewers to FEEL the tug of a fish on the line in the ponds. He wants viewers to SMELL the wildflowers and TOUCH the sand with their toes.
Kinda twisted thinking, isn't it?
My personal theory is that if you don't have much energy or time to invest in marketing your work (and yourself), you can't expect much if you venture into the commercial arena regardless of how much quality work you have in your arsenal. Maybe my theory is a bit off and some will disagree. But my belief is that work that sits on a website waiting to be discovered is incredibly unlikely to attract significant attention, as it's competing with a glut of other decent to excellent to work that is marketed quite heavily. I think marketing--not quality--makes all the difference. This is why Peter Lik (just to use an example you may be familiar with) can sell an excellent photo for $1 million dollars while others with work that is similarly high in quality struggle to find buyers for prints priced at levels normal people can afford.
The bottom line from my perspective is that quality matters, but marketing matters more. I think a lot of NPN members enjoy photography as a hobby and--no matter what the quality of their work--don't have the energy or time to invest in marketing and are thus content to stay out of that arena. It's not a bad place to be . . . you can worry about pleasing yourself rather than putting food on the table.
And that's the most cogent distinction. If you're in business you have to shoot what sells, and the heck with what reviews well on photo sites.
The most glaring example I know of is polarized skies. Clients love them, and the bluer the better. Photographers hate them. Whatcha gonna shoot when a mortgage is waiting to be fed?