Photography: Bruce Myren

Full time professional photographers complain about the competition from enthusiasts who don’t count their overheads. They worry about finding their next client, spend more time than they’d like on paperwork and marketing, and if they’re being honest, they’ll admit that not all jobs are equally exciting. But they still have one big advantage over enthusiasts: they get to take a lot of pictures. They get to hone their skills, they’re paid to build their experience and even if they’re not taking photos, they’re working with photography. By the time they hang up their camera for the last time, they can be confident that they’ll have had every opportunity to become as good a photographer as they’re ever going to be.

That’s not true for enthusiasts. People who work full-time and cram their picture-taking into their weekends and evenings have to battle to find the hours they need to improve their skills. There never seems to be enough time for photography tours and road trips. And as for building the kind of long-term personal projects that interest galleries and build a name as an artist, they can drag on through years of occasional weekends — if they ever start. There are things though that anyone can do — both professionals and amateurs — to keep their skills developing and to move their photography in the direction they want it to go.

Create Time and Make It Solid

The number of hours in the day are limited and when you fill it with an eight or nine-hour workday, take away sleep and time with the family, you can start to wonder how you ever find time to eat, let alone practice photography. But it is possible to arrange your schedule and use your calendar to create gaps for picture taking.

Bruce Myren, for example, is an adjunct professor of photography at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, a job which should keep him in touch with imagery. Teaching as many as five classes each semester, though, makes finding time for personal projects no easier than for anyone working a full-time job.

“It is always a juggling act to find time to prep for teaching, doing freelance work, getting to the studio, and going out to make pictures,” he says.

Myren’s solution is to schedule one day each week as a studio day. He writes the day into his calendar so that it looks as real as any other appointment. While he doesn’t always make it there, he does try.

“The more I adhere to this the happier I am,” he says.

For people who don’t work in photography, scheduling an entire day in the studio is a little harder but it may be possible to schedule a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon or an hour as soon as you get back from work. Like Bruce, you might find that family commitments and sudden work crushes mean that you don’t always make it, but if you can work your photography into your routine — instead of picking up a camera whenever you feel like it — you should find that it’s a habit that’s hard to break.

Network Now So That Supporters Know What You’re Doing

Scheduling time to take pictures will help to sharpen your skills and build your project. But you also want people to see those photos once you’ve created and edited them. Putting them online is easy enough and will give you some form of audience but no website is as prestigious or as rewarding as a photography book that people buy and enjoy or an exhibition of your photos that people can browse and admire.

Photography: Bruce Myren

That requires building a platform before you publish your photos. You need to have people ready, waiting and keen to see your photos as soon as they come out.

Photography classes will give you access to a teacher’s network of gallery owners and editors. Visiting galleries can provide an opportunity to talk to staff, get to know them and their taste in photography — and make sure they know about you and your work. But even online networking can yield benefits too. Let family and friends know about your personal project. Build connections with other photographers and with people who have an interest in the subject of your images. Those connections will prove valuable when your pictures are ready to be seen.

Raise the Funds That Will Let You Shoot What You Want

And they’ll also prove valuable when you’re looking to fund your projects. When Bruce Myren turned to Kickstarter to fund a collection of images shot along the fortieth parallel, he was able to turn to friends and family on Facebook for the money and to ask them to share news of the project with their friends. He describes himself as “shameless” in his willingness to send direct tweets to companies he thought might be receptive and he had also built up a large email list over the last few years as he promoted his other work around Boston and the country. Having put together the promotional video and written up his campaign, he had all the sourcing funds he needed already in place to pay for his trip across the United States.

Altogether, Myren estimated he’d need around $15,000 to complete his project. He asked for $10,000, made that amount by the end of the first week and went on to collect $17,860.

“To be successful, you need to do your homework, plan everything out, account for contingencies, and remember that you did not think of everything,” says Myren. “It is a well-prepared person that can capitalize on an opportunity as it comes by.”

Bruce Myren describes himself as an artist and photographer. He’s had a long list of exhibitions and his work is noticed. But even he struggles to find the time and the money to shoot what he wants and to keep developing as a photographer. His solution, a mixture of scheduling and networking building, is one that can be used by all photographers, time-strapped enthusiasts and professionals alike.

Photography: Star Rush

For most photographers, the lens on a smartphone is a fun toy. It provides a way to capture a moment — a moment to which they hadn’t brought their DSLR — and it lets them share those snaps with friends and family. But it’s not a real camera. It’s not a device that they would use to shoot for a client or to create the kind of art that they’d expect to see in an exhibition or hang in a gallery. For other photographers though, an iPhone or Android is more than a telephone with some basic imaging capabilities; it’s their main tool, their go-to device for capturing landscapes, people and scenes… and the device they use to create the kinds of pictures that end up on gallery walls and win cash prizes in prestigious competitions.

Star Rush, a Seattle-based street and documentary photographer, has been shooting as a “serious hobbyist” for more than twenty years. She now focuses on mobile photography and last year founded Lys Foto, an online magazine that showcases images captured on mobile phones. Her own work has been displayed in solo exhibitions in Seattle and she’s contributed to group shows in London and Rome. Her 20-photo solo show is currently in preparation for the City of Edmonds Arts Commission in 2014. While the venues and publications that have shown her photos were not exclusive to mobile photography, all of the work was captured using an iPhone 3GS or an iPhone 5.

The Device Determines the Picture

Star’s shift towards mobile photography was inspired by her desire to see what a simple, utilitarian device would do for her photography, to discover what she could create and capture with a fixed lens, fixed aperture and limited exposure meter. The basic editing and sharing functions built into the device were also an attraction, allowing her to shoot, process and publish her imagery quickly and easily.

Asked about the advantages of mobile cameras over traditional cameras, Star listed nine benefits that included accessibility; integrated capture, edit and share functions; simplicity; access to the work of other photographers; reduced clutter; the focus on composition; and fun. All of them, she argues, change not just the way the picture is made but the picture that the photographer produces.

“In the end, it’s all photography, isn’t it?” she says. “The photo is a photo. But the medium and process by which one captures and makes that photo is going to differ and often the medium can impact the process — this is where mobile is different. So, for me, I use a smartphone because the best camera is the one you have with you, as Chase Jarvis has said.”

Star describes mobile photography as “connected photography,” emphasizing a mobile device’s ability not just to always be on the scene but to be connected to other photographers. She uses three photographic social media platforms and notes the difference between the communities found on each of them — and the cultures those communities have created.

Flickr, says Star, is still best used on the desktop and has the most effective tools for photo management. She uses the site to see and communicate with a wide variety of photographers, to access a broad range of different kinds of images and film, both mobile and traditional, and as an off-site back-up for all her photography. Unlike other social media sites, she notes, Flickr is entirely image-based with users sharing little text-based news or other information at all.

Google+ Star describes as a cross between Flickr and Twitter, despite its apparent attempt to compete with Facebook. She contributes to the site because of the diverse photographers in its community and sub-communities. The platform is also useful for building a personal brand.

“The site dynamics are such that an active stream with engaged followers does positively impact search rankings and other matrix, such as visitors to my own personal blog,” she says.

Star has also been active on EyeEm, a Berlin-based service that started when mobile photography was primarily part of the underground art scene. The community, she says, is image-centric rather than social media-centric. Its users are engaged and the quality of the images is high.

“Sometimes communities overlap among these three, but not that much really. So being involved in each permits me to extend my reach and engage followers from a wide spectrum of the photography world in a regular way. It’s rewarding as a photographer to see diverse images so regularly and to communicate with those who create them.”

No Instagram

Star’s following is large enough for her to receive frequent requests to test or join new apps, but one app she’ll no longer use is Instagram. She left during the debacle over their terms of service and hasn’t been back since. The platform, she argues, is not about photography but is an “image-centric social media tool” with too many false accounts and spam, and too little management. “Serious photographers,” she argues, don’t use Instagram’s filters. The service has developed into a network that competes with Twitter, rather than a photographic tool that can push photographers in new directions.

Star Rush does not describe herself as a professional photographer. (She teaches composition and rhetoric at Cornish College of the Arts.) Although she can see the benefits of mobile photography for photojournalists who can use a device that’s light, agile and connected, she concedes that commercial photographers will find the limitations more restrictive. A smartphone might be useful for test shots, for off-site client reviews and as a replacement for the old Polaroid but few commercial photographers will be swapping their Nikons for their iPhones.

“My thinking is this, if you were going to use a point-n-shoot in a commercial job, then sure, you’d use a mobile device. If you were never going to use a point-n-shoot, then you’re never going to use a fixed lens, fixed aperture, limited exposure meter mobile phone in a commercial job as the primary camera.”

Unless, of course, the photographer is switching to street shoots, documentary images and art photography. In that case, they might well find they’re able to conveniently shoot photographs that end up in solo exhibitions and winning awards.

When Bruce Livingstone launched iStockPhoto thirteen years ago, he split the stock industry. For the first time, enthusiasts — people with no connections to the photography industry, no professional training and no experience of creating for a market — could upload their photographs and make money from their talent. The result was a revolution. While established professionals were able to continue selling through Corbis and Getty (although against greater competition), engineers like Sean Locke, one of iStockPhoto’s first contributors, were able to quit their day jobs, buy a consumer DSLR and make livings, sometimes good livings, as microstock photographers. Other enthusiasts with careers they didn’t want to leave have been able to make a bit of extra cash shooting and uploading at the weekends.

That revolution has been grinding to a halt. Multiple platforms have followed iStockPhoto but the sale of the site to Getty in 2006 for $50 million allowed it to outgrow its copycats, become the biggest microstock site on the Web — and slash commissions until they were as low as 15 percent. Yuri Arcurs, arguably the world’s most successful microstock photographer, quit iStockPhoto last year to focus on direct sales, claiming that the prices and commissions were now too low to cover the costs of production. In March, iStockPhoto expelled Sean Locke after he pointed out on his blog that the company was giving away its photographers’ images to users of Google Docs.

Now though, a new revolution may be under way, and once again Bruce Livingstone is at the center.

Profit-Sharing for Photographers

Stocksy, Livingstone’s latest enterprise, is a new stock site that takes a completely different approach to delivering images from photographers to buyers. Like many sites, photographers will receive 50 percent of the sales price of their photos but they’ll also receive 100 percent of the price of extended licenses and a share of the profits the company generates.

That’s because Stocksy is a photographer’s co-operative, owned and operated by the people who create the photos the site sells. Instead of generating profits for a corporation, Stocksy will distribute its profits to its contributors.

The idea came from photographers themselves, disappointed at the structure the industry had developed.

“Photographers came to visit us at our house in Los Angeles. They all said the same thing. They wanted more. They were disillusioned and frustrated with the state of affairs in the industry — artists were not fairly paid for the work they were creating,” Livingstone explained to us in an email from British Columbia. “We started talking about what would make a better business model, what would give photographers ownership, a decent royalty and a voice in how the business was run. Cooperatives in rural Canada and co-op structures are well developed and quite advanced as they have been around for a long time supporting group farms. The co-op keeps enough cash to operate, but the collective owners get all the money.”

Stocksy currently has 250 members. Most are photographers but some are employees and directors who provide advice. Each year, the co-op will hold an Annual General Meeting at which shareholders will vote on the running of the business. Once the firm is profitable, 90 percent of profits will paid to photographers with 10 percent going to employees, directors and board members.

That revenue-sharing may be unique in the world of photography but it also marks another change in the development of the stock industry. While anyone can upload an image and make it available for sale, following a review of the photo, on a microstock site, Stocksy maintains much of the exclusivity familiar to photographers who have tried to sell through Corbis or Getty. Photographers can apply to sell through Stocksy but the co-op will only invite photographers to join if their images match the co-operative’s aesthetic criteria. Stocksy is looking for photographers who can demonstrate a style and workflow that is consistent and unique, and who produce images that go beyond “too-perfect models pretending to do things, floating in white space or anything that appears to be forced conceptually.”

If that means that the site will have a relatively small collection, that’s fine with Bruce Livingstone.

“Something that’s really important for us is not to compete with any other agency on numbers of images or numbers of photographers,” says Livingstone. “That game is old and already has a winner. The size of the collection creates too much competition for photographers, dilutes earnings and disappoints buyers when presented with tens of thousands of bad results. The bigger the collection the worse the experience for everyone. It becomes unmanageable and inexplicably overwhelming for the consumer…. Each picture found on Stocksy should be inherently useful and special.”

Prices for the images are generally higher than those found on microstock sites, with RF licenses for small images starting at $10 and rising to $100 for X-Large photos of 2829 x 4242 pixels. Licenses for unlimited print runs or resale products cost even more. Livingstone, though, is confident that buyers will be willing pay a premium not just for the higher quality of the site’s curated collection but because supporting a sustainable model for photographers is the right thing to do.

The Return of the Two-Tier Stock Industry

Despite deliberately avoiding direct competition with iStockPhoto’s giant collection, Stocksy is clearly intended as an alternative to the microstock site that Livingstone created. Asked how he felt regarding the way the site has developed since its sale to Getty, Livingstone responded with a mixture of admiration at the growth Getty was able to create and disappointment at what they did with that growth.

“Getty grew the revenues on iStock exponentially. I couldn’t have done that alone. It’s what happened to iStockphoto after I left that is really at issue. The focus on corporate profits, not on fair pay for photographers is what we believe is problematic.”

If Stocksy succeeds, it will go some way towards solving that problem. But the co-op’s exclusivity means that it can only solve the problem partially. Livingstone recommends that photographers who want to succeed in stock find a niche, specialize and commit to shooting it full-time. Enthusiasts who want to remain part-time will have to stick with sites like iStockPhoto, creating a two-tier stock industry made up of committed professionals working and selling together, and part-timers accepting the small fees delivered by microstock sites.

“If that’s how it plays out,” says Livingstone, “then I think that’s fine.”

When it comes to telling their own story in images, photographers often struggle. While their photos and galleries may be memorable and unique their websites and portfolios are too frequently dull, derivative and, to a buyer who sees one slideshow after another, instantly forgettable. Instead of showing who they are, the websites become a collection of what they’ve shot, a series of images with no connection to the person who took them or the photographer the buyer will be booking.

According to one expert, it’s only when photographers see their websites and their portfolios not as marketing devices intended to show their skills and range but as autobiographies — as an opportunity to tell their own stories and show who they are — that they stand out and win jobs.

“The best portfolios, to me, are materially self-portraits regardless of the subject matter,” says Allegra Wilde. “This is not about a romanticizing the suffering or narcissistic artist. The kind of imagery I am talking about is much less likely to be forgotten by the viewer, or in the case of the pros, the buyer.”

For Wilde, who started her career selling ad space at Workbook before becoming the company’s Director of Talent and Agent Branding, a portfolio (and now a photographer’s website) should flow. The presentation should have a rhythm, match the work and, most importantly, tell the story of the photographer.

It Takes a Hero to Be a Successful Photographer

That’s not something that all photographers want to do — or think of doing as they create a site to pitch for work. Building a website that doesn’t just show pictures but shows who you are means putting yourself as well as your images on display. The personal projects become more important as they reveal the questions you address in your images, the aesthetic that attracts you, the messages you want your photos to communicate and the way you want them to speak. Buyers are invited to judge the photographer and their interests as easily as they judge the quality of their work. It’s not a display that makes all photographers comfortable.

“The most successful photographers (or any other artists for that matter), always take some kind of leap into discomfort,” says Wilde. “Usually this level of discomfort is rooted in their own personal ‘exposure,’ or fear that no one will like their images or hire them. These heroes of photography, (yes, I call them ‘heroes,’ because it takes enormous courage to do this) make images from a very naïve place, usually self-reflective and quite emotionally ‘naked.’”

After operating a couple of private online forums — one for photography and illustration agents; the other for ad agency photo editors and buyers — Wilde now runs Eyeist, her own photography review service. The company employs a team of photographers, buyers and photography business experts to examine photographers’ websites and portfolios, and recommend improvements. Photographers can register and upload images for free then book a review when they’re ready. They’ll be asked for “tons of info” about their images, their aims for the review and their development as a photographer before they select (or ask for) a reviewer and choose the kind of review they want. The fees range from $100 for a basic review consisting of an audio commentary critiquing up to 30 images to $350 for help with editing and sequencing a series of images so that it showcases the scope and storyline of a project. So far the company has provided around 200 reviews for photographers who range from students, emergent photographers and enthusiasts to full-time professionals.

The reviewers look at whether the words the photographer is using to describe his or her images actually match the images they’re showing. Often, says Wilde, the two things differ so the reviewer will focus first on repairing that disconnect. They’ll then start thinking about suggesting ways in which the photographer can create images that help them achieve their goals, change those goals or address their presentations and marketing.

Reviewers Reignite a Photographer’s Passion

The result should be not just a plan that a photographer can follow to improve their appearance, but a renewed interest in creating images that have something to say.

“It wasn’t enough to give the photographer a road map for improvement. You have to ignite (or re-ignite) their passion about their own work,” says Wilde. “That way, they have a much better internal sense of how to make progress and become much more open to creative ideas that they might not have entertained before.”

None of these recommendations, says Wilde, compare to the sort of congratulatory comments that you’ll find placed by friends or family at the bottom of a Flickr set or a Facebook album. Those comments might make you feel good but they won’t point out the flaws that are preventing you from winning work.

Overall, Eyeist’s reviewers tend to find two mistakes in photographers’ presentations. The first is the tendency of photographers to aim at a particular market or follow a popular style in the hope that joining the crowd will bring success. In fact, says, Wilde, it just brings them more competition. And the second is not pushing their images hard enough or spreading them widely enough so that both the photographer and the photographs connect with the right buyers.

“I know this sounds crazy in this day and age of photo sharing, social and business networking with photographs, but many photographers either undersell their work by not marketing it enough, or, by overselling it — by first dumbing down the work (making it more generic to follow the marketplace), and/or by constantly promoting and posting their images and assignments without any personal context,” says Wilde. “This makes it hard for the viewer, and especially the buyer, to ‘invest’ in the work, and to engage with the photographer personally as a possible collaborator.”

At a time when social media has made branding personal, photographers are going to have to learn to step out from behind their cameras and put themselves on display. They don’t have to shoot self-portraits but the way they show their work has to be about them as much as about the subjects of their images.

It’s not just photographers and social media fans who like Instagram; lawyers love the photo-sharing site too. After Instagram announced a badly-written change to its terms of service that would apparently have allowed the Facebook property to sell contributors’ images without compensation, the lawyers brought out their briefcases. Even though Instagram quickly took down the new terms and reverted to the old ones, the lawyers filed a class action suit alleging breach of contract. Last month, Instagram applied to have the case thrown out.

That case may not lead anywhere, and if it did, it would benefit photographers at the expense of a big company. That doesn’t always happen. Photographers, amateur as well as professional, need to be wary of being sued just as much as they need keep an eye out for big firms trampling over their legal rights.

Wedding Photographer Sued for Missed Kiss

That happened earlier this year to Australian wedding photographer George Ferris of Studio Edge & Multimedia who found himself in court defending a lawsuit brought by two unhappy clients. Ferris, said the couple, Jarrad and Sheree Mitchell, had missed all of the most important moments of the wedding, including the ribbon cutting, the certificate signing and the pair’s first kiss as husband and wife. They withheld $400 of the $2,700 fee — and sued for $6,700.

Ferris countersued for $6,000, claiming the remainder of the fee, court costs and $63 for a meal that he bought at his own expense. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal showed a surprising amount of sympathy for the difficult work of wedding photography; it agreed with Ferris that capturing the kiss is a challenge. But ordered him to pay the Mitchells $750 for failing to supply the full value of the package he’d sold, and told the couple to compensate the photographer for the cost of his meal.

That’s the sort of case that haunts every wedding photographer. The photographer appears to have screwed up. If you’re blaming shadows and blur on flowers and flash bounce, and missing key moments of the event, you can expect clients to be unhappy — and you can be afraid that they’re going to overreact and demand a giant chunk of compensation.

User Uploads Images, Photographer Sues the Site’s Owner

But it’s not just clients who can reach too fast for their lawyers. Photographer Charlyn Zlotnik recently threatened to bring a suit against Les Irvin, owner of jonimitchell.com. According to a page that went up on the site, Zlotnick demanded between $25,000 and $600,000 in compensation after an anonymous user uploaded four of her images without her permission.

Irvin’s site includes a legal page that explains how copyright owners can claim infringement, and he removed the images from the site as soon as he was informed of a claim. That quick deletion and the fact that the images were uploaded by a user and not by himself should have been enough to clear him of any accusation of copyright infringement.

Despite some apparent initial obstinacy, Irvin’s plea for the site’s users to write to the lawyers and to the photographer pleading with them to drop the suit might have been successful. The site no longer mentions the suit and the plea has been removed. BoingBoing has noted that the photographer was recently caught up in a drugs bust, while the legal firm that sent the letter demanding compensation has been mentioned on watchdog sites Ripoff Report and Extortion Letters Info. There may have been a lot less law to this case than meets the eye.

Prepare the Evidence Before the Suit

Zlotnick’s attempt to catch some cash might have had little credit but a recent case about one iconic image has a lot more justice on its side and offers a number of lessons for photographers.

The photograph at the center of the case dates to 1991 and shows University of Michigan’s Desmond Howard striking the Heisman Pose after returning a 93 yard punt for a touchdown. The shot was taken by freelance photographer Brian Masck who initially licensed it to Sports Illustrated.

Last month Masck sued a long list of targets, including Sports Illustrated, Nissan, Getty Images, Champions Press, Photo File, Inc., Fathead, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, and even Desmond Howard himself for violating his copyright, either by reproducing the image without his permission or for selling unauthorized copies.

Law professor Eric Goldman has written about the suit and noted that it raises a couple of interesting issues.

The first is that because there were three photographers at the game, and all captured the image in slightly different ways, in 2011 Masck altered the image so that he would be able to track its use:

He added two tells to the photograph. First, he removed the branding from the glove on Desmond Howard’s right hand. Second, he extended the lettering on the football. These small alterations do not appear to the untrained eye, but assist Brian Masck in tracking infringing uses of his photograph.

That’s an interesting little trick that other photographers would do well to emulate especially when they’re shooting the same scenes alongside other photographers. Watermarks can be removed but these small “tells” are much harder to hide.

The second point concerns the importance of registering images with the Copyright  Office. Blaming bad legal advice, Masck didn’t register the image until 2011. That’s an error which would cost him the higher rate statutory damages.

Even without those damages though, Goldman believes that the actual damages and infringer’s profits should be both high enough and hard enough to prove for the parties to settle out of court.

That might suggest that turning to a lawyer when you think your copyright is being infringed is a good idea. Sometimes it will be. But street photographer Brandon Stanton come up with much more elegant response to an example of copyright infringement.

According to PetaPixel, Stanton was approached a few months ago by clothing firm DKNY who wanted to license 300 photos from his Humans of New York site to decorate its stores worldwide. The company offered a flat fee of $15,000. Believing that $50 per photograph was too low, Stanton rejected the offer.

That should have been the end of it. And it was until one of his fans sent Stanton a photograph of his images used to decorate a DKNY store in Bangkok.

Instead of demanding payment or calling his lawyers, Stanton told his Facebook page and asked his followers to share his demand that DKNY give a $100,000 donation to the YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The company responded within 24 hours. The images, it said, had been used in an internal mock-up which that store had used by mistake. It apologized and donated $25,000 to the YMCA in Stanton’s name.

That’s not a decision that the lawyers will like but it should make photographers and social media fans happy.

Image: Pongsatorn Sukhum

Pongsatorn Sukhum was on his way to becoming a professional photographer. A long-time camera enthusiast, he took a year off college while studying in the UK to work in a studio that shot advertising photography. He then moved into editorial photography, shooting for travel magazines and building up a collection of underwater stock images that combined his love of photography with his passion for Scuba diving. In the mid-nineties, his work was shown in a group exhibition in his native Thailand. Today, Pongsatorn runs an engineering business in Bangkok but his continued work in underwater photography, and in particular, his images of World War II wrecks off the coast of Thailand are an example of how talented enthusiasts can keep their professions while maintaining their passion for image-making and even contributing to the preservation of the subjects they love to shoot.

Pongsatorn now produces fine art prints of his photography which he sells through his website. But publications call him whenever they need images to complement their editorials on wrecks in the region and he is still commissioned occasionally for advertising work. If he’s not working on an engineering project, he’ll dive one or two weekends each month and when he’s not on the water, he’ll find time each week to process images and research ships.

Artistry Meets Expertise

That demand for professional imagery from a photographer who only works in the profession part-time continues for a couple of reasons. The quality of Pongsatorn’s photographs is certainly one factor. Pongsatorn may not be a full-time photographer but his images are professional quality. He shoots in black and white to convey the sense of being in an environment in which color has been stripped away by the water, and to convey the mood at the depths where the ships rest.

“I feel that the characteristics of high-speed b/w film faithfully capture the light and ambiance at these great depths,” he told us by email. “I also believe that entering the water loaded with b/w film is a mindset.”

The result is a collection of atmospheric shots in which the fragility and graceful lines of the diver are set against the solidity of a slowly decaying steel hulk placed in front of a backdrop of silty grays.

But the continued demand among buyers for Pongsatorn’s skills can also be put down to his expertise. Underwater photography is demanding. Photographers have to be skilled in diving as well as in image-making. They need to understand their equipment and the environment as well as the subject of the shoot.

“Underwater, we can’t change lenses, add filters, or replace batteries so advanced planning is required,” says Pongsatorn. “Familiarity with the layout of the wreck is crucial to avoid delays associated with orientation.”

Pongsatorn keeps a collection of construction blueprints related to the wreck he’s about to shoot, as well as sketches that he updates regularly. Before the dive, those plans are transferred to a waterproof slate for use underwater so that he’s not trying to communicate a new idea to a co-diver or assistant while they’re swimming. The choice of shots, too, poses a range of different problems. Wide angle images mean keeping other divers and their bubbles away from the scene long enough for Pongsatorn to get his shots. That’s not usually an issue when shooting wrecks that aren’t popular dive sites but for well-known locations, Pongsatorn usually pleads for a ten-minute head start. Before some shoots, he’s even asked the Thai Navy to cordon off a wreck for a day.

While underwater photographers don’t have the same daylight worries as landscape photographers, they do have to cope with other challenges. Weather conditions can restrict accessibility to remote sites to certain times of the year, and sediment raised by the actions of a swimming photographer can reduce visibility.

“This happens frequently as the wrecks are naturally on the sea bed (with the exception of the so-called vertical wreck) where there is a great deal of sediment just waiting to be disturbed,” says Pongsatorn. “Diver buoyancy control and proper finning techniques need to be practiced.”

Learn How to Fin

Often, the constraints of time and the limitations of depth mean that Pongsatorn can only make one or two dives to a low-lying wreck on any given day. Some dive profiles, he says, are so deep that he’ll only be able to stay at the site for as little as five minutes.

“As you can imagine, deep wreck photography is a very low-yield activity. However, these challenges make it exciting and create opportunities for some truly creative work.”

For other photographers looking to specialize in underwater photography, Pongsatorn notes that while no official training is required, there are numerous basic courses and workshops available that will explain how light behaves underwater and how to set up and look after equipment. Photographers who happen to live in tropical areas can start by photographing clown fish, he recommends, as they’re easy to find and tend to stay in one place. Once they’ve mastered finning and have control over their stability, photographers can pick a subject and study its behavior.

Most important though is to respect the environment in which you’re shooting. On his blog, Pongsatorn has highlighted campaigns for shark preservation and attacked dive operators who remove artifacts from the wrecks they visit.

“There are several operators who specifically set out to loot. It’s in their literature. They abuse the legal loopholes and lack of enforcement. It’s sad to see all these artifacts being hauled up day after day. These people need to be educated.”

Similarly, divers who venture into a wreck exhale bubbles which can get trapped below decks and under bulkheads. In time, these air pockets corrode the metal and exert an upward pressure on the metal plates, causing them to collapse, Pongsatorn warns.

It’s that kind of knowledge and that level of concern that combines with creativity and artistry to produce images that are attractive to buyers — both of art prints and for commercial use. Find a subject for which you feel passionate enough to want to study and understand completely, bring to it your photography skills, and you also won’t need to give up the day job to earn money from your photography.

Wedding photographers who aren’t using Pinterest are missing an important opportunity to both inspire current clients and to win new brides. That’s the opinion of a number of leading wedding photographers who have turned to the picture-heavy pinboard to show off their work and market their businesses. They’re shrugging off concerns about the uncontrolled spread of their photos and the site’s reliance on sharing copyrighted images, and are enjoying the benefits of building contacts with engaged women looking for photographers and with clients looking for wedding ideas.

That those benefits can flow on Pinterest to wedding photographers in particular isn’t surprising. The site’s demographics are about 70 percent female and the 25-34 age range is the most common, making up about 27 percent of the site’s users. With more than a quarter of those users in households with incomes of over $100,000 per year, those twenty-something and thirty-something women are a prime market for suppliers of wedding services, including photography. And they’re buying. According to one study, 70 percent of Pinterest’s users say they turn to the site to get inspiration on what to buy and 43 percent want “to associate with retailers or brands” with which they identify. The site reports 10 percent more purchases than any other social media platform, including Facebook.

That reach and those statistics are pulling in wedding photographers. A search on the site for “wedding photography” boards produces an apparently endless stream of images.

Create a Board Before the Shoot

Lisa Devlin signed up last year after noticing that a number of her clients and other people she know in the wedding industry were already using it. A UK-based, former music photographer who has worked with acts as big as Eric Clapton and Boyzone, Lisa switched to wedding photography after shooting her agent’s nuptials. Her quirky wedding shots have won her the title of British Journal of Photography and Wedding Magazine Wedding Photographer of the Year. She now also runs workshops at PhotographyFarm on the outskirts of London and develops Photoshop actions for photographers.

Lisa’s initial goal in joining Pinterest was to collate and share her ideas with stylists for PhotographyFarm. They start a board which evolves as the themes for the workshop come together. Those goals, though, have developed too. Creating a board is now the starting point for any shoot that Lisa is involved in. In 2012, for example, before a shoot in Nevada with leading bloggers Rock n Roll Bride, Gala Darling and Nubby Twiglet, Lisa started a board called Vegas Baby to share concepts between everyone involved.

“It’s a great tool for bringing visual ideas together so I also run some general inspiration boards for anything I see online that inspires me,” says Lisa. “It might be processing, concepts, fashion or quite obtuse things that appeal to me in some way.”

Inspire Current Clients, Win New Ones

Leeann Marie uses Pinterest in a similar way. Like Lisa Devlin, the Pittsburgh-based wedding photographer has also been on the site for about a year. In addition to seasonal fashion boards, she has a number of more professional boards that include montages of wedding details  and color-themed weddings.

The content that Leeann posts to Pinterest from her blog and website is primarily intended to get new brides talking, but she divides her audience on the site into two. For people who have already made a booking, the ideas that Leean shares become a precursor to the photography experience, an opportunity for brides to get excited about the prospect of being photographed looking their most beautiful. For engaged women wondering who to hire, Pinterest provides an outlet to meet photographers and understand their style.

“Think of how you can use Pinterest to appeal to current clients and future clients,” advises Leean. “Those are two different markets. Your current clients need ideas to inspire them and help them through a session. Your future clients need you to remain in their minds and be interactive.”

Photography: Leeann Marie

The approach is paying off. Not only has Leeann seen one of her detail collages repinned more than 100 times to different wedding inspiration boards; she is also aware that her efforts on the site have translated into new bookings. A bride whom she photographed in October 2012 was a keen Pinterest user and was very excited to see her own wedding images appear on the site.

Not all clients may be that generous about their photographs being spread across the Internet, however, and the same is true of many photographers. One of the biggest criticisms of Pinterest is that it encourages the unauthorized publication of images owned by their creators. The site has responded to the criticism by rolling out a “no pin” feature that websites can install on their pages to prevent their images from being placed on a board. Flickr is one company that has applied the function to all the pictures on its pages. The assumption that photographers approve of sharing unless they take action to prevent it, however, may be worrying to some.

As far as Leeann Marie and Lisa Devlin are concerned, though, there’s little point today in worrying about where images placed online end up. Lisa invested money in enabling Pinterest on her site and instructed her Web developer to produce the first Pinterest-compatible lightbox. A “pin it” button now appears whenever a user hovers over an image on her site.

“We are in a digital age of online sharing. If you are overly concerned with your images appearing anywhere on the internet then do not post them on there yourself,” she says. “My attitude is that we should embrace this brave new world and be flattered that anybody else takes an interest in our work.”

The result, she notes is that only Google is a better source of traffic to her website, outdoing Facebook, Twitter and even her paid advertising.

“Brides have embraced Pinterest probably more than anyone else so if you are a wedding photographer and not active on Pinterest then you are missing out on a great marketing tool.”

Contributors to iStockphoto are planning to pull their portfolios from the microstock site following the discovery of a new distribution agreement with Google. Users of Google Drive, the search company’s cloud-based productivity app, can now insert stock photos drawn from Getty’s inventories into their Google documents without paying a license fee.

The images aren’t promoted, nor are they obvious but they are available. Users of Google Drive must first press “Create” then choose one of the productivity apps, such as the text editor, Document, or the slideshow creator, Presentation. If they then choose Insert > Image from the menu, the last option allows them to “Search” the Web for pictures. They can look on Google, browse a collection supplied by Life, or choose “Stock Images” to bring up pageloads of commercial photographs. Selecting an image pastes it directly into the open document.

At no point are users asked for a fee, and the images arrive uncredited and stripped of EXIF data.

According to Sean Locke, a top microstock photographer and one of the first to discover the program, the 5,000 stock images available on Google Drive appear to  come largely from Getty’s Vetty and Agency collections which are drawn up from iStockphoto to Getty Images. Some photos though have been reported to come from Getty’s Flickr collection and others have from a range of collections owned by Getty. iStockPhoto has said that around 700 of the photos in the collection came from a group of 490 contributors to the microstock site.

$185 on Getty, Free on Google

Google is believed to have licensed the collection through Getty’s Premium Access program, paying between $60 and $100 for each photo. That rate would net the photographer a flat fee of around $12 for an image that can be used multiple times by Google Drive’s 10 million-plus users. That’s a much lower price than many of the photographers would have earned from a single sale. This image of baubles in the shape of a Christmas tree decoration, created by Martin Poole and drawn from Photodisc, for example, can be used on Google Drive for free. On Getty Images, a royalty-free license for the same picture at a similar size is offered for $185. Locke has found six of his photos on Google Drive so far.

The search results come with a note from Google that all of the images are “labeled for commercial reuse with modification.” A link takes users to a reminder that “usage rights come into play if you’re looking for content that you can take and use above and beyond fair use.” Nowhere, though, are the usage rights for the images spelled out. Users aren’t told how they can use the images, where they can display them or for how long they can make use of them, let alone who created them. As Sean Locke notes, there is nothing to prevent a Google Drive user from saving the images, free of watermarks, onto their hard drives and using them in any way they wished.

“With these image available for full commercial use for free, why pay for a license?” he asks.

Not surprisingly, the availability of the images on Google Drive has caused some consternation among iStockphoto’s contributors. Using the site’s forum, contributors questioned whether the images were being offered for free without permission and why Getty wasn’t protecting their property.

The initial response, posted by a “mr_erin” and later backed up by Claudia Micare who manages Contributor Relations at Getty Images, was to apologize for the lack of information but confirmed that Google did pay for the images. A clarification published on the iStockphoto forum said that the company had met with Google to “to refine the implementation which we believe will address some of the concerns raised over the past several days–including copyright ownership.” The site also explained that:

“Google has a bespoke EULA to allow these images to be used by Google users through the Google Drive platform. Users of this platform are granted rights to place this imagery in content created using Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Presentations and these end uses can be for commercial purposes; however, users are not granted rights to use this imagery outside of Google Drive created content and Google users have no rights to redistribute image files outside of the context in which they’re used.”

We have asked Getty to explain those limitations in more detail but hadn’t received a reply by time of publication. If the company does reply, we’ll add it to this post.

Planning D-Day

Photographers, however, remain angry at what they see as Getty’s appropriation of their copyrights and the devaluation of their images. A thread running on Microstock Group, a forum for microstock photographers, is calling for D-Day, or Deactivation Day, to take place on February 2, Groundhog Day. Photographers taking part in the initiative have promised to remove their images from the site on that day. Photographer Lisa F. Young, for example, has promised to deactivate 500 files and may remove as many as 1,000.

“It is really important to take a stand to let the agencies (in this case, Getty the biggest in the world) know they cannot bully us and violate our copyrights with impunity,” she told us. “This is an important issue to protect copyrights for all photographers, as well as other artists.”

While it’s not clear exactly how many images will be removed from the site in protest at the Google agreement, the latest projected total puts the figure at over 20,000.

Other photographers, though, are more skeptical. Yuri Hahhalev, doubted that deactivation would help unless it affected at least 10 percent of iStockphoto’s files,  and even Sean Locke told us that he plans to keep working with Getty “as long as we can discuss and resolve this issue.”

That may be unlikely. This isn’t the first time that iStockphoto images have been distributed through a tech company. In 2007, iStockphoto sold extended licenses to Microsoft that let Office.com users download and use stock images. Then too, usage rights prohibited distributing copies of the content outside of projects and documents created with the Web app. And yet, some of the images were tagged with a “public domain” copyright status.

A number of photographers may pull their images from iStockphoto on February 2 but whether the boycott will move Getty remains to be seen.

In an environment as competitive as the photo industry, photographers need all the advantages they can get — including specialized knowledge. Expertise in f-stops and exposure times is pretty common and while talent might be rarer, there’s no shortage of enthusiasts who can shoot great pictures time after time. Now that they can make those images available online, through stock sites, their own sites or even through Flickr, anyone looking to make money from their images should be wondering what else they can bring to the market that can help them win customers.

Fortunately, the photography world is filled with examples of people who matched a passion for a field outside photography with a love of picture-making to enable their images to reach a niche market.

Sometimes, that passion doesn’t have to be much more than membership in a particular community. CreationSwap, for example, is a stock site with a number of unusual features. Its inventory is a mixture of free images, stock images that usually sell for between $1 and $6 (although some images may cost as much $20), and a print-on-demand service that returns $10 to the artist for each print order. Royalties for contributors begin at 50 percent but rise by between 1 and 5 percent for each approved item submitted to the site’s free gallery to a maximum of 70 percent.

That incentive, as well as the print option, are unusual enough, but as the site’s name suggests, CreationSwap is appealing to a particular kind of market — and to a particular kind of photographer. The inventory is aimed at churches and religious groups, and the site looks for contributions from Christian artists worldwide.

Clearly, there’s no way for the site to be able to check the faith of its contributors but members of Christian communities and consumers of church media are more likely to understand the sorts of images — the Fourth of July, Easter, Christmas and Sermon Series shots — that churches need.

There may be millions of Christians who know how to use a camera but by combining knowledge of the community to which they belong with their understanding of photography, religious photographers have an advantage when it comes to supplying the media that serves that community.

Both Creation and Evolution are Good for Photographers

Science and religion are usually portrayed as antagonists but when it comes to photography, they have a lot in common. Just as religious photographers have an advantage in some areas of the photography marketplace, the same is true of those photographers with an understanding of science.

PhotoResearchers is a stock site that specializes in scientific imagery. Its clients are mainly publishers of science textbooks as well as marketing companies looking for images to promote science conferences and other events. From those with a good understanding of science though, the site requires two kinds of assets that are otherwise hard to find.

Knowledge is one. While a picture of a flower on a stock site might be described solely as “Purple flower in a field,” the same flower on PhotoResearchers is more likely to include the flower’s name, Latin name and any special features. This flower, for example, is described as:

Bladderwort, Utricularia dichotoma, flower. This aquatic plant has underwater “bladders” that trap and digest small aquatic organisms.

That picture used for a week in a quarter-page event ad to be seen by up to 5,000 people would cost $569 — far more than a small shot of a purple flower would fetch on a microstock site. For images like these, it’s the knowledge as much as the photography that gives the image its value.

The same is true of access. Many of the PhotoResearchers’ photos show either expensive scientific equipment or the results of using that expensive scientific equipment. Those kinds of photographs can only be taken by people who have access to laboratories and can obtain the permissions necessary to shoot in them.

Again, like Christian photographers, there’s no shortage of scientists who are keen on photography but when they combine their two areas of expertise they bring photo buyers a quality of imagery that gives it extra value.

An Eye for Fashion and Photography

Sometimes though, you don’t even have to try to combine a passion for a non-photography field with expertise with a camera. Scott Schuman was a director of men’s fashion when he took time off to care for his daughter in 2005. Taking his camera with him on walks around New York, it was only natural that he would find himself pointing his lens at the people on the streets with the most impressive dress sense. He’d put their pictures on his blog and add a few comments about their sense of fashion. The aim, he said, was to try to shoot style in the way that most designers hunted for inspiration.

His blog, The Sartorialist, soon became essential reading for fashionistas, and Schuman found himself in demand from a number of fashion companies hoping to use his style of photography. He’s produced advertising campaigns for The Gap, DKNY Jeans and Burberry, has worked with Vogue and style.com during Paris Fashion Week as well as with a number of businesses outside the world of fashion such as Verizon and Nespresso. An anthology of his favorite shots was published in 2009 in a book entitled The Sartorialist.

Schuman’s success may owe something to the zeitgeist for shooting anywhere and anytime but mostly it’s down to his eye for style and fashion and his ability to capture them in an image.

To make money from photography, you always need to know how to handle a camera — and you need to have right camera to handle. You’ll need talent and a photographic eye but all of those things are relatively common. If you can also add knowledge, access, experience or expertise that’s rarer and harder to find to your skills as a photographer, you should find that it’s a lot easier to turn your photography ability into cash.

Photography: Gavin Hookway

When it comes to getting their work noticed, professional photographers have all the breaks. They have the best equipment, the time to practice and perfect their skills, and the contacts that can put their portfolios in front of buyers and their photos on the walls of galleries. At least that’s what enthusiasts think as we stroll through another exhibition of works created by a professional photographer. And yet, sometimes, those shows aren’t organized by someone who gets paid to head to the wilderness and create beautiful landscape images. The pictures are shot by a camera enthusiast with a regular job, a passion for photography, the talent to produce photographs that people will want to see and the determination to push themselves to be better, build those connections and show their work.

Gavin Hookway, for example, has been practicing photography since 1981. His love of art won him a place at Portsmouth Art College in southern England but at the same time, he was also offered two engineering apprenticeships. In the end, he chose a career that he believed would provide good training, job security and a steady income. He didn’t choose photography. It was that job that enabled him to purchase his first camera. He now lives in Scotland where he works full-time in the health sector but manages to devote between eight and twelve hours a week to photography, time that has to include capturing images, processing them and printing them.

So far, though, Gavin has shown his works in two exhibitions and has two more planned for 2013.

Professional Photographers Provide Advice and Open Doors

Gavin’s first show took place shortly after he took up photography. He had asked a well-renowned portrait and wedding photographer in his area for a review of his work; the photographer had suggested that he mount an exhibition and gave Gavin the name of a contact at the nearby Mountbatten Gallery. After calling for an appointment, Gavin showed the gallery a small portfolio of the work he wanted to exhibit.

“They obviously liked what they saw as I got a space booked for around six months later,” he recalls.

The exhibition lasted for seven days and included a special evening viewing for friends, relatives and work colleagues which, says Gavin, “went very well.” So popular were Gavin’s photographs, in fact, that on the fourth day of the show, he received a call from the gallery informing him that someone had peeled eight of the images from the mount boards on which he had stuck them as a way of saving costs, and taken them away. None of the images were for sale so Gavin was able to feel flattered that someone liked his work so much that they were willing to steal it.

The second exhibition took place in September 2012 at Eden Court in Inverness, and was held jointly with Nicki MacRae, an artist and Gavin’s friend. Again, the exhibition was a result of a critical review. In February of last year, Gavin attended a weekend seminar hosted by professional photographers Joe Cornish and David Ward. Ward looked over Gavin’s images, helped him to plan his photos and suggested new directions in which he could take his photography:

“Having your work reviewed in this manner can seem very daunting at first, but the advice, support and confidence that David gave me allowed me to ‘see’ my work in a different light,” says Gavin. “For me, the advice allowed me to refocus on what it was I was trying to say in my images, and what I wanted the audience to ‘feel.’”

The result was that when Gavin came to shoot the pictures for his Ruin exhibition, instead of simply taking pictures of ruined crofts and standing stones in a standard landscape format, both he and Nicki looked at the subject more closely and with a stronger emphasis on the details.

For the show, Gavin produced twelve photographs. Six were conventional shots of ruined sites across the Highlands of Scotland, one showed a croft door and window, and five were abstract pieces that looked at rusting machinery, stone circles and croft buildings.

“Many times I have walked through a ruined building, or a stone circle and seen nothing else but that. However, if you start looking closer at the texture of the croft building, or the stones themselves – you start to see things that your senses have completely overlooked before.”

Keep Learning

Gavin’s ability to cross from the kind of activities that photography enthusiasts usually perform — driving out to the wilderness and shooting landscapes — to the sorts of shows more usually put on by professionals has come about largely through his willingness to continue learning. In addition to the weekend seminar that helped him to produce his Ruin exhibition, Gavin completed a Diploma of Photography at the Photography Institute in 2011, a course which enabled him to relearn some old skills and pick up some new ones. Most importantly, he says, it also showed him how to create a business plan that would enable to him to set up as a professional or semi-professional photographer. That is a move that so far his confidence, a lack of belief and an awareness of the large number of talented professionals out there has prevented him from making.

Even if Gavin doesn’t make the jump to being a professional photographer, he is able to come close by acting like one. Prints of his works are available from his website and asked what other photographers can do to increase their chances of putting on shows and selling pictures, he sounds every bit like a 9-to-5 photographer.

“If you are considering exhibiting your work, think about setting up your own website – keeping the image numbers to a reasonable size – quality not quantity,” he advises. “Set up a Facebook and/or Flickr dedicated site for your work. Have business cards made, and visit local galleries with your portfolio – having made an appointment rather than cold calling.”

It doesn’t matter whether you’re pointing the lens on your iPhone at a sunset or shooting in a studio with a Hasselblad H4X, you want the same result: a perfect picture. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a seasoned pro or a novice enthusiast with a vague knowledge of f-stops, you know you’re never going to get it.

We might get close. We might produce a really good picture, the kind that makes us feel we’re really talented and might even be able to impress photo editors and buyers, as well as our friends and family, but we’re always going to have that sneaky feeling that somewhere out there is a shot that’s even better.

But what would that picture look like? How close can we come to taking a perfect photograph — and what does it actually take to grab a shot that’s as close to perfection as we’ll ever get?

Composing the Perfect Image

It would probably have perfect timing. That’s certainly an essential ingredient in a perfect sports photograph. Press Association sports photographer Gareth Copley won the 2010 World Press Photo Award with this shot of a moment in a cricket match.

As a capture it’s impressive enough. But when you consider that the impact of the ball, the flight of the player and the expression on the player’s face represented a fraction of a second in a game that lasted for five days it’s an even more amazing feat of concentration, experience and patience. Throughout that period, Copley would have taken thousands of images many of which he says he never even looks at.

But timing itself isn’t enough. PerfectlyTimedPhotos.com has a stack of images whose only claim to quality is a bit of lucky timing that gives the image a second layer of meaning. For the most part, those photos are jokey rather than artistic. They’re a long way from perfection, and… let’s face it, we all have lucky shots on our hard drives that we know could never repeat. While pros like Gareth Copley are able to make a living because buyers can rely on them to capture those split seconds again and again, we treasure our best-timed images because we know we’ll never capture them a second time. Shouldn’t a perfect image be built on a basis of skill rather than a lucky snap?

So what about composition? National Geographic has a slideshow of what it calls “Simply Beautiful Photos” in its composition section, and yes, if I’d taken any one of those pictures I’d have turned it into my iPad wallpaper and be showing it off to anyone around me each time I took out my tablet in a café, on the bus or just walking around the neighborhood. Heck, I’d even buy one of these insane shirts to make sure no one missed it.

Some of those compositions really do seem to come close to perfection. I don’t have anything like Norbert Rosing’s shot of a Winter Landscape in Germany, and while I’d like to think that’s because I don’t have the opportunity to fly over a snowscape in a helicopter (which must be how he took this image, right?) I do wonder if I did have that opportunity whether I’d have the eye and the creativity and the skill to create such a beautiful picture. I’d probably miss it.

But some apparently perfect composition doesn’t seem that difficult. Sam Abell’s shot of a tree-lined driveway in Mississippi is pretty close to a lot of the shots I’ve got in my hard-drive. Sure, the trees aren’t so interesting and I don’t have anything with such beautiful purple flowers but a path heading to a central point on a horizon that obeys the Rule of Thirds? Yeah, I’ve got those — and having taken them I’ve always wondered whether I got the exposure right and if I couldn’t have done it better shooting at the Golden Hour on a clear day instead of the cloud-covered mid-afternoon when I just happened to find myself standing at the site with a camera and no one in the way of the shot.

So you can get the composition exactly right  — that’s not always difficult, although it can be — but even combined with the right timing, you still might not have a produced a picture that you feel is perfect, one that you couldn’t make any better.

Sunset is Best After Sun Has Set

Maybe color helps. National Geographic also has a slideshow of beautiful images under the label “Palette.” They’re surprising, mostly because of the limited choices of color in most of the images. A shot of a cormorant at sunset is painted in unnatural shades of black and red and yellow. A picture of a black dog is almost entirely black so that we notice the gray hairs on its snout and mostly its mournful eyes. The pastel shades of the skirts of ballet dancers in California turn a shooting opportunity that would normally be about movement into a celebration of soft tones. If I feel that any of those pictures are perfect — and they’re certainly candidates — it’s because they show an understanding of a scene, of camerawork and a photographic eye that I end up questioning in myself. A tip from National Geographic explains:

Most of us know that sunsets can provide dramatic colors in the sky. But many people don’t realize that if they keep shooting after the brightest color seems to fade to the naked eye, a richer hue of the color may appear on film or flash card.

Those “manypeople” include me — until now anyway. And that’s maybe what this hunt for a perfect picture has shown me most clearly. Whether a picture is perfect or not is always going to be subjective. Of course, the picture has to combine wonderful timing, a sense for composition and an awareness of color. But most of all it has to move me — and it has to make me wish that I could do that and practice until I get close.

What is a perfect photograph? For me, it’s a photograph that inspires me to be a better photographer.

Flickr couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas gift. Starved of affection, uninvited to the social media party and left behind by more fashionable rivals, Flickr has been in desperate need of a reason to celebrate for a long time. That its gift should have come from Instagram, the hippest of those rivals and owned by social media giant Facebook, will make the unwrapping even sweeter. And it couldn’t have come at a better moment.

Flickr, which was once the darling of photography enthusiasts looking to share images and win applause from other photographers, had done little but fall off the radar since its purchase by Yahoo in 2005. It’s been out-paced by Facebook which has become the repository of the party photos and social snaps that were once the mainstay of Flickr’s casual users. It’s been mismanaged by Yahoo, which saw Flickr’s store of images as an asset to be incorporated into the company’s content bank rather than a service that should foster innovation and build communities. (Gizmodo’s account of Yahoo’s gutting of Flickr makes for some pretty harrowing reading.) And worse, it was left completely flat-footed in the mobile revolution. Its featureless app failed to break into Apple’s top 50 free photography apps and was even ranked lower than a program that added laser eyes to photos of cats.

The lack of innovation on the website has left room for 500px to steal its members while the difficulties involved in shooting on the move, editing the image and uploading it to a Flickr account from a smartphone allowed Instagram to move in and gather 100 million users who should have been Flickr’s lifeblood and would have added $1 billion to Yahoo’s valuation. News that Marissa Meyer had taken control of Yahoo led one Flickr fan to call for the former Google executive to make Flickr awesome again.

Flickr’s Slow Return

And slowly it was beginning to happen. Stephen Shankland of CNet, described earlier this month how improvements in the site’s display of large images and in the way it serves screens of contacts’ photos had persuaded him to keep his collection of 11,543 images on the site. There was still a lot to do, he said (and handily offered a long list of improvements he’d liked to see) but it looked like Flickr was moving in the right direction at last.

Those display enhancements have been followed by a revamped iPhone app. On December 12^th, Flickr announced the release of a new iOS app that contains a bunch of useful features including instant updates, group management and, of course, the sort of colorful filters that can be applied across images and which make bad photography look like vaguely interesting photography. An Android app is in the works but with around 60,000 iPhone images uploaded to the site each day, Flickr focused first on the smartphone camera most popular with its users. Stephen Shankland gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up.

Flickr then has been making all the right moves but you can’t help but wonder whether it isn’t making those moves too late. Flickr, says Shankland, has a remarkable 85 million daily users, but that’s significantly fewer than the 100 million daily users of the much younger Instagram — and while Instagram has the backing of a super-strong Facebook, Flickr is dependent on an ailing Yahoo.

Instagram Only Says It Wants to Sell Your Pictures

And then Instagram stumbled. First, it ended its agreement with Twitter that enabled shots taken with the app to display properly on the microblog site. That might have been uncomfortable for users but it was at least understandable from the point of view of developing the service. It’s clearly in Instagram’s — and Facebook’s — interest for Instagram to develop its currently minimal Web presence, and that means not sending its users to a rival.

But this week, it dropped a giant of a clanger. The company published a new terms of service that suggested it wanted to sell its members’ photos to advertising firms. Users would receive no notification, no compensation and the only way to opt out was to leave the site by January 16^th, 2013.

The response from users was immediate, savage — and hugely beneficial to Flickr. Gareth Copley, a Getty sports photographer and avid Twitter and Instagram user, provided a response that was typical of professionals who didn’t want to see their images sold by a company that didn’t want to ask them or compensate them for their effort:

Goodbye Instagram, it was fun while it lasted then you had to spoil it. Hello flickr http://flic.kr/ps/2otFJu 

Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC’s technology correspondent, discovered Flickr’s new app and asked:

Now I can do pix with cheesy filters via Flickr perhaps I don’t need Instagram? http://flic.kr/p/dBZ1QH 

Within minutes of the story breaking, Flickr, which had said nothing, was a trending topic on Twitter.

It’s no surprise then, that Instagram has since back-pedaled. The next day, the company published a blog post in which it stated that was all a misunderstanding. Instagram has no intention of selling users’ images, co-founder Kevin Systrom argued. It only wanted to place ads on the site.

Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing.

A mistake does seem to be the likeliest explanation. The absence of model releases and the presence of logos in the images would have made Instagram’s pictures a tough sale for commercial use, and if Instagram did want to turn itself into a kind of filtered iStock there are much better business models to copy than an automatic opt-in and zero compensation for creators.

The question is just how much damage Instagram’s clunky legal writing has done to its growth. The company hasn’t revealed how many members deleted their images and signed off when the new terms were released. Flickr, too, hasn’t said how much extra traffic it received. But there’s no question that trust has been damaged. Even if Instagram didn’t intend to sell its users images, the service will, for some time at least, be associated with an attempt to make money from its users’ work. As if to show just how much trust has been damaged, National Geographic blacked out its Instagram feed and declared that it would no longer post pictures if the terms remain as presented — a move that came after Systrom published his blog post.

Flickr, which would have been struggling to rustle up interest in its new app, can enjoy its Christmas present and look forward to a very happy new year.

It’s never easy to swap a perfectly good salary for the much riskier life of a freelance photographer. It’s even harder when the job you’re ditching is as stable and in demand as a systems analyst — and the kind of photography you’re moving into is as challenging and unpredictable as freelance travel photography. And yet that’s exactly what UK-born tech worker and camera enthusiast Gavin Gough did. Now based in Bangkok, Gavin divides his time between assignment photography, stock photography and teaching. His work  has appeared in National Geographic, Geo, Vogue, The New York Times and The Guardian. His stock images have appeared on postage stamps, magazine covers and billboards, and he has been commissioned by clients as large as Sony, Vanity Fair and the Vietnamese Tourist Board. In short, he gets paid to travel around Asia, talk to locals and take beautiful pictures.

The desire to move from keen amateur to rising professional developed over a long period. Like many photographers, Gavin had first played around with photography as a child, took pictures in his spare time and attempted to study the work of professionals to understand both what made a photograph work and the sort of work that photography users were willing to buy. In the days before stock sites and online inventories, Gavin would call stock libraries and pretend to be a potential buyer so that he could look through their catalogues for ideas and examples.

“In those days stock library catalogues were big, beautifully produced books containing thousands of images,” Gavin recalls. “They were a wonderful source of inspiration and information. I studied them in order to learn what images would sell and to gain an appreciation for the style of travel photography the editors might be interested in.”

The switch itself came in 2003. Gavin took a year-long sabbatical from his job, bought a round-the-world ticket and headed off to South America. He crossed the South Pacific and passed through Southeast Asia to India and Nepal. His aim, apart from seeing the world, was to build a portfolio that would allow him to make stock sales. By the time he returned, Gavin had become so used to the traveling lifestyle that he could no longer see himself ending his sabbatical and going back to work in an office. At that point, he said, he had to make his new career work.

The first travel commissions, though, came in only with great difficulty.

“If I had known just how difficult it is to make a living as a freelance travel photographer I might never have considered it,” he recalls. “Let us just say that I had everything to learn.”

It Helps to Be Naïve… and Learn Fast

Naivete about the size of the challenge involved in winning jobs and making a living as a photographer helped, and a passion bordering on obsession was essential. It quickly became clear that without a complete commitment to photography as a way of life that affected everything he did so that talk of a work/life balance become irrelevant, Gavin’s new career wouldn’t take off.

But those years of looking through catalogues and thinking about photography from the buyer’s point of view played a big role too. Whether you’re pitching for a job for a magazine or an NGO, the role of the photographer isn’t to persuade an editor to take the pictures they want to shoot but to produce work that buyers want, says Gavin, and in a format that makes the editor’s job as easy as possible.

“The secret, if you can call it that, is to think about doing an editor’s job for them. Editors are busy people and if you can provide them with a complete package, with tightly edited images in a style that is suitable for their particular publication together with words, at least in the form of comprehensive captions, then you are presenting them with a much more attractive proposition.”

With work coming in and stock sales taking place through Getty, Alamy and Lonely Planet among others, Gavin began teaching photography. After moving to Thailand he set up the Bangkok Photo School which offers field trips and workshops for photography enthusiasts. Over the last four years, Gavin has taught more than 300 students, mastering new techniques in order to teach them to others.

It all sounds like a perfect transition, a successful shift from a nine-to-five job at a keyboard to a life doing a job you love. It even contains variety. If shooting stock images of Thai markets and Cambodian dancers gets dull, the next job might be a more fun-packed shoot for a water NGO. And when that shoot’s done, Gavin could be leading a tour through a little-known part of Bangkok while talking shutter speeds and f-stops with a group of other camera enthusiasts.

Back to the Day Job

It’s an opportunity that takes a willingness to accept a great deal of risk, and not a small investment, to seize. Gavin recommends that anyone thinking of following in his footsteps should make sure that they’re debt-free and have enough money in the bank to support themselves for at least twelve months. And even if it does all work, so that after a year your new photography business is up, running and bringing in sales and commissions, you’re likely to still find that you need to live cheaply and work hard.

You’re also likely to find yourself doing work that’s not so different to the tasks you were doing before you quit the day job. While Gavin’s photography work is divided into three enjoyable fields, photography only takes up between 10 and 20 percent of his time. The rest is spent processing, marketing, developing networks, writing, applying for grants, answering emails, updating accounts, chasing invoices and doing all of the administrative tasks that are a necessary part of running a business.

“I’m not just a photographer,” warns Gavin. “I have to be a marketing expert, an IT guru, an administrative assistant, and much more besides.”

But he is also a photographer and a successful travel photographer at that. And, despite the difficulties and the risks, that’s still something that a lot of photography enthusiasts would like to say.

Any successful business will have a steady stream of customers but the best businesses also shake things up by using promotions. Sales, contests and giveaways open new channels and attract customers who might otherwise have gone elsewhere. That’s as true for photography businesses as it is for high street retailers and supermarkets. Here are three kinds of promotions that work for people making money from photography.

1. Reward New Clients, Not Referrals

Referrals make up a big part of any photography business with some studios saying that all of their new customers arrive through word of mouth. Persuading those customers to pass on those words to their friends though can take a bit of effort.

The most common strategy is to offer happy clients a reward. Each referral, for example, might be worth a free print or a bonus retouching. Some studios go even further and create a kind of loyalty program in which rewards can be built as the referrals continue to go out. Customers can then trade those prizes in for something as valuable as a free photo session.

It looks canny. The offer of an incentive should appeal directly to clients and give them a reason to tell their friends. The ability to put rewards together should both bring in extra referrals while reducing the bribes paid out by the photographer as former clients keep waiting for an additional recommendation that will push them up to the next tier.

In fact though, what is probably the most common way of incentivizing referrals is mostly wrong.

Happy clients already have a far more powerful incentive to provide a referral than anything the photographer can offer: the chance to help a friend. When they refer a friend to a photographer, they’re not rewarding the photographer; they’re rewarding someone they love with the chance to work with someone who made them happy.

The role of the photographer then is first make the experience with each customer so happy that they want to tell their friends; and secondly, to increase the benefit that reaches the new customer.

Earlier this year, for example, we spoke to Leah Tremillet, a photographer who began by giving her clients cards that they could pass along to their friends. Even when those cards included a small discount, they still weren’t picking up large numbers of referrals. According to Tremillet, they just didn’t look valuable.

“While we want it to be a super big deal to them, all of our actions say, ‘dime a dozen,’ and ‘If you didn’t get this deal, you should have,’” she explained.

She chose to take a different approach. Instead of giving small prizes to everyone, she gives a few rewards with an apparent value as high as $200 that clients could give to select people.

“This says, ‘exclusive,’” said Tremillet. “It says, ‘You really are special!’  And people want to feel special!”

Her old clients get to reward her new ones and she then gives those old clients surprise gifts that show her gratitude without looking like a bribe.

2. Plan a Pop Up Studio

Photographers often expect customers to come to them. Some will shoot on location but others stay in their studios and hope that clients are willing to take the time and effort to come to where they have the lighting and other equipment. Pop-up studios allow some photographers to bring their skills directly to their customers. For a short time, clients who need a particular kind of shoot can find a photographer near them and get the images they need quickly.

For photographers, it’s an opportunity to get to know a large number of potential long-term clients in one day.

But it takes a lot of effort. We spoke to two photography businesses who used pop-up studios this year. Food photographer Grant Kessler organized a pop-up studio in a shared kitchen. He set aside nine 45-minute slots but only managed to fill five of them. None of those five came back although one enquiry did translate into a full job. When he tried to repeat the exercise, the number of bookings was so low, he chose to cancel the event.

When Emma Lambe and Natalie Sternberg launched their Rhapsody Road studio, however, they organized a six-day Wedding & Family Photography Pop Up Studio at an arts center that offered portrait sessions, bridal shots and children’s photos, as well as workshops, games and talks.  The shoot was as much an event surrounding wedding and family photography as a chance for some people to pick up some easy pictures. They teamed up with related businesses, including dance studios and wedding providers, and won sponsorship from companies with products to promote.

It took plenty of time and lot of networking. Planning started six months before the event but the work generated by returning clients and referrals took them through another six months.

It’s not something you want to do every month, but team up with other businesses in your area to organize an event related to your clientele and you can give yourself a good half-year of work.

3. Free Facebook Albums for Your Customers

The efficacy of Facebook as a form of marketing is now pretty well known for photographers. The ability to target potential clients by age, marital status and location make advertising for engaged women very effective for wedding photographers in particular. And the freedom to tag and share images might create copyright challenges but it does allow photographers to show their work and reduce their advertising costs.

But instead of uploading a small sample of the images taken on your last job to your Facebook page, make a Facebook photo album of all the main pictures and give it to your clients. Patrick Aiden Edmiston, for example, includes a Facebook “photo album” in four of his five packages. They aren’t just an extra benefit. They also give the client a chance to tag his or her images and share them with friends. In the process, the photographer doesn’t just get word of mouth; he gets his pictures and his name passed around.

Image courtesy: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

In February 2005, photographer Sandy Puc’ received a call from Cheryl and Mike Haggard. The couple wanted her to photograph their baby. Maddux  had been born with myotubular myopathy, a condition that prevented him from breathing, swallowing or moving on his own. Then six days old, the child was about to be removed from life support and the couple wanted a family portrait to remember the time they had been able to spend with their son. Sandy rearranged her schedule and photographed the family both while the child was on life support and afterwards, when he was free of the tubes and equipment to which he had been attached since birth.

Sandy gave the pictures to the family for free. Shortly afterwards she received another call from Cheryl who so valued the images that she wanted to start a nonprofit to help other families in the same situation. By April, they had formed Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, a charity dedicated to providing free remembrance photography to families suffering the loss of a baby. In the seven years since then, around 25,000 families across the United States and in 35 countries around the world have been served by the organization’s network of photographers. The organization has been supported by more than 10,000 photographers and some 2,700 volunteers are active in the network now. All are volunteers who either own their own photography studios or have full-time jobs and families.

“We Only Get One Chance to Take These Photos.”

The absence of staff photographers makes scheduling shoots a challenge. While some parents may have advanced notice if life support is about to be removed or a caesarian is scheduled, photographers can struggle to rearrange their day. In most cases, however, a photographer is able to reach the hospital between two and twelve hours after receiving the call, and for those times when a photographer is unavailable, the organization also trains nurses to take the photographs themselves.

“Most of these sessions are not counted,” says Mindy Tappan, the organization’s Outreach Manager. “Therefore, it is difficult to truly measure the number of families served through NILMDTS.”

Shoots usually take between fifteen and 45 minutes but can last longer. If the parents want the photographer to document the birth or wait until after the infant is removed from life support, a session may last several hours. Those shoots are usually prearranged. Photographers need to check in at the Labor and Delivery front desk where a contact person will brief them on the family’s situation and answer any questions before they meet the family.

Image courtesy: Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Not all photographers are accepted. Those wanting to volunteer can submit an application (for which there’s a $10 fee) and their portfolios will then be reviewed by three people on the organization’s team to make sure that their skills are up to scratch. The final photographs should be professionally retouched and converted to black and white or sepia to create an heirloom family portrait. The level of professionalism has to be high.

“We only get one chance to take these photos,” noted Ms Tappan.

Volunteer positions stretch from affiliated photographer through photographer’s assistant to parent co-ordinator, digital retouch artists and area co-ordinator. Volunteers who are accepted receive training. The organization currently has a dozen certified trainers who travel around the US and through Canada to ensure that photographers know what to expect and what to do when they reach the hospital. Online courses are also available and cover a range of relevant topics from paperwork and hospital procedures to equipment and lighting, posing the family and what to photograph other than the baby.

Grief Counseling for Photographers

Perhaps the most important topic though is the last: taking care of yourself emotionally. In addition to the training sessions, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep also has grief support videos available on its online forum and staff members are available for any photographer who needs to talk.

“We encourage photographers to take at least one session a year,” says Ms Tappan. “Many volunteers take more than that. It just depends on their location, and how many volunteers are in their area.”

The work may be unpaid but it’s certainly among the hardest of shoots that any photographer is likely to take on. It’s also one of the most important and a reminder of the power that a photograph can possess. Mindy Tappan notes that while parents don’t always think of getting images after the birth of a terminally sick child, they’re always glad they did. A number of parents who suffered losses before the organization was founded have told them how much they wished that they had the opportunity to photograph their lost child. The images act as more than a reminder of a baby they only knew for a short time; they help the family to grieve for their loss.

“Remembrance photography is a very important step in the healing process,” says Ms Tappan. “Photographs are one of the most precious and tangible mementos that a parent can have, showing the love and bond that was given and shared with their baby. These portraits will last for generations, and will honor and remember a tiny life that is forever loved and cherished.”

Despite the emotional difficulties involved in this kind of photography, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep does provide a rare opportunity for photographers to take pictures that change lives and will bring real meaning to their owners. But it does more than that. The organization wasn’t set up by people with a background in charity work or running non-profits. It was created quickly and grown over the years by a photographer and a client who were passionate about bringing a service to others.

Photographers can user their cameras to deliver valuable help. But when they add their organizational skills, their time and their energy, they can also create their own non-profits that bring a whole new level of meaning to their lives as photographers.

When Marissa Mayer took over as CEO of Yahoo, “the internet” responded with an appeal to “Please make Flickr awesome again.” The Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site was seen as having lost its way, leaving mobile to Instagram and photo showcasing to 500px. That might be about to change. Earlier this month Yahoo announced the promotion of Adam Cahan to Senior Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology, a big title that includes responsibility for mobile, enabled screens… and also Flickr. But Cahan isn’t just the tech-savvy founder of IntoNow, a start-up that Yahoo bought for between $20 million and $30 million. He’s also a former wildlife photographer for National Geographic who has contributed to Emmy award-winning nature shows. With a one-time professional photographer and full-time tech geek now in charge of what was once the Internet’s most important photo-sharing service, image-makers who want to make money from their shots should really be giving it another look.

They might well find what many professional photographer have long known: that Flickr can still deliver sales to photographers with the right images and the knowledge to reach buyers.

Chris Nuzzaco is one of those photographers. A former videographer and director of photography who shot occasionally, he switched disciplines in 2008 when the recession dried up orders and he realized that photographers had better working conditions, options and control.

“Video is also kind of a funky product to sell, you can’t get it out of the digital realm onto paper, it takes time to view, time to load… still images just seem to have a much wider market,” he says. “Ironically, potential clients are now increasingly looking for people who are highly skilled DP / Photographers — something not many people can claim. I’ve found myself in a much more competitive position these days.”

Now primarily a commercial photographer who takes commissions and sells stock, Chris’s clients find him after seeing his work online and through word of mouth from former customers. He also describes himself as a “very proactive entrepreneur as well, a real ‘go get’er’ type” who’s not afraid to cold call prospective clients and find his own leads.

Healthy Daily Traffic that Spill onto the Website

Since 2010, Chris has also maintained a presence on Flickr. His aim in creating his profile, he says, was the same as that of many photographers: to increase his exposure and perhaps to generate license sales.

“So far, I’m very happy with the results,” he says. “I have a healthy amount of daily traffic on my stream that spills over into my website that actually sticks around to see what I have.”

Measuring those results isn’t straightforward. Chris has licensed several images directly through Flickr and through Getty’s Flickr collection but not all buyers will make Chris an offer directly through the site, preferring to purchase through one of the stock agencies that take Chris’s work. His portfolio of 77 images seems to encourage sales. It’s organized mainly by popularity, with sets for images that have won a certain number of views. One set contains a photo that has received 10,000 views; others cover commercial photography and fashion. Each photo contains a description informing buyers that his work is available from all major and minor microstock agencies, and includes his username for easy searching.

“I have had many people contact me directly for licenses, other times, they simply go to an agency if it’s represented by one,” he says. “There are real photo buyers surfing Flickr; how many is hard to quantify.”

Commissions are rarer. Chris has yet to receive an assignment through Flickr, although his brother, who has an active portfolio of more than 4,700 images, has won projects on the site.

What really makes the difference though isn’t the number of direct sales that Chris picks up from buyers already browsing Flickr. It’s the traffic he picks up from buyers who find his images on search engines. Google, Yahoo and Bing are all sources of the visitors who have reached the images Chris has placed on Flickr. They conduct a regular Web search for an image, are offered one of Chris’s Flickr photos and make an offer directly, continue to his website or search their usual stock source for one of his photos.

Max out Your 75 Keywords

And what brings in that traffic is Chris’s careful keywording and tagging. Every photo has a meaningful title and beneath the description explaining how buyers can make their purchase is a long list of relevant keywords. Each time Chris uploads an image, he makes sure that he uses all the space that Flickr provides for keywording.

“It’s the only way to really generate sustained traffic on Flickr,” says Chris. “Flickr has an unbelievable number of images and I would estimate that 99 percent of them don’t have more than 5 tags, zero description, and far too often, a useless camera file name as the title. I always try to max out my 75 tags. The end result is that I’m simply found – all the time… and it’s because of the metadata I enter into every shot I upload.”

It’s not clear what the appointment of Adam Cahan is going to do for Flickr. That he’s in charge of both mobile and the photo-sharing site can only be a good thing for a service that should have been at the forefront of mobile but was too slow to move and left the path wide open for a newcomer. But even if nothing changes, even if a former National Geographic photographer and tech geek does nothing to push the site forward, photographers hoping to win traffic and make sales should still be on the site.

They should be uploading their images, telling buyers how to buy them and adding all the descriptions and keywords they can to ensure that their photos are seen and sold.

Your ability to make money as a photographer doesn’t just depend on the kit in your bag or the quality of your eye. It’s also connected to the choice of images you shoot. Some subjects will always pay more than others — sometimes a lot more.

Here are the most valuable subjects in photography, and how you can build a path to shooting them and selling them.

Art Images

The most expensive images in the world were shot to be admired. Andreas Gursky’s Rhein II  tops the list after selling at auction in New York for $4,338,500 in November 2011. The image shows grass, path, water and sky in horizontal strips of grey and green. All of the ten most expensive photographs sold for more than a million dollars and while some picked up their value because of their age, most were shot by living photographers.

When just a single photograph that draws entirely on your creativity and sense of aesthetic can land you a seven-figure sum, it’s clear that shooting art is a big draw.

How to Shoot and Sell High-Paying Art Photography

The path to giant numbers for your art in New York auction houses runs through galleries. A college photography course may work with gallery owners for end-of-year shows, giving students their first art world contacts. Other photographers can try juried art fairs where a prize will always provide a real advantage during meetings with gallery owners. But you can also just pick up the phone, call your local galleries and set up an appointment to pitch your images. Good gallery owners won’t just provide exhibition space. They’ll also help to manage your career… assuming your photos are strong enough to sell.

Paparazzi Shots

Even the most expensive paparazzi photos can’t compete with the multiple millions occasionally paid out for the best art. But they can do very well. The most expensive celebrity photo sold is said to be a shot of a bald Britney Spears which is believed to have netted the photographer half a million dollars. (The more recent snaps of a topless Kate Middleton are rumored to have been shot by a paparazzo on commission from a magazine. He is said to have only received a salary and could face prosecution under France’s privacy laws.)

Clearly, this isn’t a job that matches everyone’s taste but it is a job that anyone can do. You don’t need to be a great photographer, but you will need a long lens and, more importantly, great contacts to know where celebrities are likely to be found.

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How to Shoot and Sell High-Paying Paparazzi Images

The easiest way in is to sell your images to one of the agencies that accept photos from the public, such as MrPaparazzi. You’ll need to be quick once you have your shot because interest in celebrities cools off quickly. You’ll also have to know what you’re looking for. In general, paparazzi images tend to be candid rather than attractive. Buyers want to see a side of the celebrity that they don’t get in official media interviews or the headshots released by their agencies. Once you’ve sold a few pictures through open source agencies, you can try approaching one of the larger agencies or talk to the experienced photographers standing outside nightclubs or alongside red carpets about the agencies they use.

The biggest challenge though will be knowing where to find the celebrities who are currently in the news. If you can develop sources close to the star, such as stylists or bodyguards, you’ll have an advantage.

Commercial Bookings

Not all photographers want to spend their days hiding in bushes waiting for a C-list star to walk out of a store licking an ice cream. Commercial shoots are what professional photographers do. They might consist of something as simple as placing a product against a white background, something that could cost just a few hundred dollars. But they might also involve flying in a helicopter to some remote location to photograph a new resort for a hotel chain or a mining operation for a company’s prospectus.

These shoots can be hugely expensive. The usage licenses alone can cost as much as $20,000 with expenses more than doubling that figure.

How to Win High-Paying Commercial Bookings

When a company is shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to a photographer, it wants to be sure that it’s going to get the images it needs. That means these kinds of jobs tend to go to established and experienced professionals, people who have shot on location, managed teams, handled the logistics and still succeeded in creating fantastic images. It’s possible that an offer will come in from a design agency through your website. But it’s more likely that you’ll already know the commissioning art editor and he or she will know your work. And it’s even more likely that the call will come from photography agency that has already vetted your portfolio.

Targeted emails to either of those kinds of agencies can put you in the running but make sure that your portfolio is strong enough to stand the scrutiny, that your professional work shows a clear style and your personal work reveals how you think and how you see photography. It’s the style, professionalism and your reliability that sells.

Those are the highest-paying subjects that a photographer can earn money for shooting. Wedding photography can be relatively high-earning, at least compared to mall portraiture, and it’s easy enough to get started. Being able to charge five-figure sums for a wedding though will mean having a unique quality and ideally contacts with wedding planners who arrange high society weddings. Stock images, too, can bring in thousands of dollars over their lifetime but their prices have fallen over the last few years and saturation in microstock means top-paying subjects are increasingly rare and struggle to cover the costs of shooting the images.

Ultimately though, the best subject for an photographer to shoot isn’t a particular kind of art image or an open-cast mine in the middle of Australia. It’s always going to be the subject you love. That’s the one you’ll always excel at and the one that will keep bringing you fresh work.

Photography: Kevin Mullins

In the last few years, we’ve seen photographers push unique sales points by offering reportage wedding photography that drops the formals for shots taken on the run, and Trash the Dress photography that gives brides a chance to let their hair down and soak their gown. Kevin Mullins, a British photographer working in Wiltshire, UK, takes a relatively unusual approach: he offers reportage wedding photography shot entirely in black and white.

Mullins has only been a full-time professional photographer since 2009 shortly after a move from London forced him to look for a new job. He’d been dabbling with photography for a few years and after receiving compliments on his work decided to turn his art into a business.

“I had been told I had a good eye many times so decided to embark on a career that offered me flexibility, as well as a decent income,” he said.

The following year he shot 58 weddings, an average of more than one a week. He hasn’t looked back since.

Wedding Noir

While his first jobs contained more formals and portraits than he would have liked, all of Mullins’ weddings have been shot in a documentary style. His ideal wedding shoot would provide no time for formal photography at all, a goal he’s now able to achieve in most of his bookings. But the bulk of the images he produces are also free of color. After beginning with a mixture of 50 percent color photography and 50 percent monochrome, one of Mullins’ “standard” albums will now contain a proportion of black and white photography as high as 80 percent.

And some of his clients will opt for his “wedding noir,” an album shot entirely in black and white. There are no colorful bouquets, no lavender bridesmaid dresses and no red carnations pinned to the lapels of suits and jackets. Instead, couples are given an album filled entirely with shades of grey.

Selling the option can take a little effort. Brides, in particular, often balk at knowledge that the money spent on garlanding the venue with flowers won’t be reflected in the photography, and the time spent choosing the right pastel tone for the maid of honor’s gown may be forgotten. But Mullins’ website does include a special section for black and white weddings, and he usually makes the pitch when he knows the client appreciates the lack of color.

“I often ask my clients what it is that drew them to my work and when they mention the black and white coverage I ask them their opinion on a totally black and white wedding for themselves,” he says.

Editing is Easier, Composition is Harder

The benefit of shooting entirely in black and white, he argues, is that the image takes the viewer straight to the heart of the story. Without the “distractions” of tones that could influence the opinion of a scene, the shot is more direct, distinctive and exciting. A beautifully matted album with black and white images throughout can be more appealing than mixed process coverage, says Mullins.

Shooting entirely in black and white doesn’t just affect the album and influence the viewer; it also affects the way the photographer works, thinks and looks for shots. Editing the image after it has been taken is simpler but getting the composition right requires a sharper eye and a keen understanding of how the image will look and how the gray tones will impact the mood of the picture.

“The mindset does need to be different when you know you are only going to be delivering black and white images. You have to be conscious of the light direction, shape and contrast in the scene. There is more latitude when correcting color or white balance issues with black and white wedding photography but you have to be more on the game when it comes to the structure of the image in camera in the first instance.”

Mullins concedes that not all images work in black and white and there may be some aspects of a wedding that should only be shot in color. But for him, black and white photography creates albums and memories that are exceptionally beautiful — and which also help him to stand out from the crowd.

That is essential. Mullins notes that in the UK, it can feel that there are more wedding photographers than wedding couples. Having an offer that’s unique, distinctive and can give couples a reason to choose you instead of the next photographer on Google is a necessary part of business. Price is the easiest and the most common way for photographers to win work from competitors but that’s a route that can only lead to lower profits and a sinking income. A style that’s different to one being offered by other photographers won’t allow you to win every job but it will let you pick up work from people who want their wedding memories to have a particular mood.

“People talk about a USP (unique selling point) all the time and whilst I think a genuine USP is probably a bit of a tall order to reach, I do believe you need to do something to put your head above the local crowd at least,” says Mullins.

For clients, owning a monochrome wedding album means that they get well-composed images shot in a mood-filled, atmospheric black and white. For Mullins the marketing advantages of having an offering as unique as noir wedding photography means that he can steal an edge on other photographers pitching for the same jobs.

But the real reason that Mullins combines documentary wedding photography with black and white photography is much simpler: he enjoys it. Describing himself as “never having been very gregarious,” he dreaded the idea of having to corral guests against a wall to have their pictures taken. Although he appreciated color photography, his biggest influences were black and white street photographers and portraitists like Jane Bown and Elliott Erwitt. Asked for advice to help other photographers stand out, his suggestion was to follow your instincts not the crowd:

“Don’t go down the route of shooting weddings the way you ‘think’ they should be shot because the industry dictates it. Shoot weddings the way you want to shoot them. You will enjoy them more, attract the correct clients and hopefully make a good living too.”

Photography is an expensive hobby, and it’s not just the lenses and the lighting gear that will empty your bank account. Take a day to drive to the sea, to the woods, to an abandoned building or to a city to load up on images and you’ll have to pay for the gas, the time, the food and in some cases even access to the site. How much you’ll pay will depend on where you’re going, how far you’re traveling and what you plan to do when you get there. But with gas prices now well over $4 a gallon in some states, even a quick 50-mile drive and back will start you nearly $15 in the hole. Bring a model for several hours of shooting in a prime location, and you’re looking at costs per image that quickly run into hundreds of dollars. If you’re shooting for cash, you’ll need to factor those expenses into the price. If you’re photographing for fun rather than profit, those are big bills to absorb. Fortunately, there are a few things that you can do to bring some of that money back.

Pitch a Magazine… Like National Geographic

The ideal photo trip is made with a buyer already lined up. In the best case, you’ll have received a call from a client you’ve worked with before who needs some unique shots made from a particular location. That can happen. Scott Leggo, an Australian landscape photographer, combines trips to national parks to create images for stock and prints with industrial commissions to locations that are no less attractive. His photo trips have included summer visits to alpine regions to scout for places to shoot after the snow falls, and commissions for a new air charter company to shoot floatplanes ferrying tourists to Tasmania. For those commissioned jobs, Leggo is able to estimate the entire cost of journey and submit an expenses chit to the client.

Photographers without Leggo’s professional experience are less likely to be sent on a photography trip. They’re unlikely even to leave the house with a promise that a buyer will take what they produce.

What they can do though is leave with the possibility that a buyer will take what they produce. Magazines do accept submissions from freelancers. Few (National Geographic is a notable exception) will approve a pitch then send a photographer to a location and tell them to get on with it. Most prefer to work the other way around. Once you’re back, you’ll be able to submit the story and the images and hope they buy.  Outdoor Photographer is fairly typical in wanting to see the images themselves before they accept the submission so you’ll need to have been there, taken the pictures and paid for them before you can stand a chance of recouping the cash.

Small publications, such as local newspapers and specialist magazines, may accept phone submissions that will let you gauge interest. Check the masthead for the art or features editor and give them a call or shoot them a quick email to sound them out. Don’t expect a promise to buy but you might be able to pick up an idea of the sort of images they’re looking for and increase the chances that you’ll make a sale when you return.

Shoot Stock That Turns Sites into Sales

Winning a license sale from a magazine can be relatively lucrative (although it still may not cover all of the costs of the trip.) Shooting stock, especially microstock, is much less lucrative, certainly in the short term. Instead of picking up a few hundred dollars (or less, depending on the size of the publication and how it plans to use your photo), you might be picking up just a few cents per sale.

To make those revenues add up even to the price of gas, you’re going to have to create lots of images and wait a long time for the sales to come in. In general, stock photographers talk of images sitting in libraries for a couple of years before their sales cover the cost of the production. They might then have a couple more years of solid profit before the pictures become out of date. Today’s microstock photographers are increasingly finding that their photos fail to generate any profit before they fall out of use. Even leading microstock photographer Yuri Arcurs was reported earlier this year to have stopped uploading new images to sites other than his own.

Whether those pictures are first accepted and then sell will depend both on where they were shot and on what they contain. Make sure that you keyword everything in the image for which a buyer might search. Tag the location and the names of any plants, buildings or features in the image and you should be able to land sales from people looking for specific items as well buyers who can use your composition.

Turn an Image into an Etsy Sale

Craft store Etsy offers more than 350,000 photography items in its art section. Some of those might include frames or Photoshop actions but the most popular images sold on Etsy tend to be of places — and of well-known places too. The site sells nearly 7,000 shots of Paris, for example, and London and New York are also popular. Because Etsy is a craft site, though, buyers expect the images to have been altered and improved. Vintage shots are particularly popular, or at least shots with a vintage look.

Creating the art work from a shot taken on a trip to a city will be only part of the job though. Etsy is highly competitive. Stores have to be organized and supported by social media marketing, search engine optimization, networking and trend-following to keep the sales flowing in.

None of these three approaches alone are guaranteed to cover all of the expenses of a photo trip, let alone make a profit. But together, and with plenty of effort after you get back, you might find that they’re able to turn an expensive road trip into an affordable one, and perhaps even allow you to plan your next getaway more easily.

Photography: Lorenzo Rohani

It’s a cold frosty evening on the open mud flats of Boundary Bay, Canada, and bird photographer Lorenzo Rohani is quietly adjusting his camera to capture a Snowy Owl perched fifteen meters in front of him. The birds are rare this far south of the arctic and Lorenzo isn’t alone. A dozen professional wildlife photographers have also gathered nearby, their giant lenses topped by powerful flashes primed to chase away the late shadows. Lorenzo’s plan is simpler. He’ll wait, knee-deep in the wetlands, for the sun to sink below the horizon. Only then, he knows, will the dying natural light cast the owl in a beautiful orange glow. It’s the sort of knowledge that you might expect from a seasoned pro, and the photo his patience produces wins a photography contest run by Time Magazine. But the contest is organized by Time for Kids — and Lorenzo is still only twelve years old.

Lorenzo began his passion for photography three years ago, taking pictures of the birds that visited his yard in the Pacific Northwest. Within a short time, he had been able to document 42 different species, his desire to photograph them inspired as much by his concern for the local wildlife as the beauty of their images.

“There are some really beautiful birds that come to our garden. Pileated Woodpeckers, Cooper’s hawks, and many colorful warblers,” he says. “When people see the photos they are really amazed. The birds are all around us, but it is when people see the photographs that they start to care about them.”

Since that early beginning, Lorenzo’s love of birding and photography has taken him across the country. In his search for the birds he has yet to photograph and the habitats they visit, he has traveled to the Mojave desert, the sagebrush lands of the Columbia Basin, the Quinault rainforest, and even the Pacific Pelagic zone. Birds move quickly so Lorenzo rarely gets a chance to use a tripod. Most of his photos are shot using a hand-held and cumbersome 400mm lens. During a trip to the Alpine meadows of the Cascade Mountains, he had to carry his equipment for ten miles into the backcountry.

Making More than Pocket Money

That professional level of effort is paying off — and not just in the kudos of a stack of beautiful images and occasional competition wins. Despite not having reached his teens, Lorenzo is already a popular paid speaker who addresses members of local Audubon societies, schools and libraries. He leads guided bird walks during which he takes pictures and uses the camera’s viewer magnification to show the detailed features of the various species the group encounters. His book, “A Kid’s Guide to Birding,” is published by Nextfolio. The guides, bookings and sales don’t give him a professional income but they do help to subsidize an expensive hobby and enable him to upgrade his equipment.

“I didn’t start out thinking about making money, but I discovered that people would pay me to give presentations,” he says. “I want the money because I really want to get a 500mm lens and that costs a whole lot.”

Much of Lorenzo’s success comes down to his talent for spotting the right shot, his patience to wait for the right conditions and his determination to go wherever the shoot takes him. Those are elements in the success of every photographer and they’re hard to learn. Other lessons though are easier to take on board.

Lorenzo’s knowledge of photography, for example, isn’t the only thing about him that’s precocious. His talks and guided tours make as much use of his understanding of birds as his knowledge of lenses and composition. Although he’s been shooting since the age of nine, he’s been “birding” for much longer and uses his images, and in particular the ability to adjust the fill light in RAW images, to help identify different bird species at different times of year. A recent paid presentation and guided walk at the Puget Sound Bird Fest was particularly meaningful for Lorenzo; he’s been attending the annual bird enthusiast’s festival since he was five. Lorenzo isn’t just a photography enthusiast or even a photographer. He’s a specialist bird photographer with a passion for his subjects that makes acquiring an in-depth knowledge about them enjoyable.

Photography: Michael Rohani

“What I’ve learned is that it helps to do a lot of photography and to specialize,” says Lorenzo. “For me, that specialty is birds. I like birds. They are pretty amazing, so it’s fun. But I guess the same would work for someone who is into different stuff.”

When Dad is Your Manager

Networking helps too. Almost immediately after taking up bird photography Lorenzo created a Flickr account and joined a number of bird-related groups, including one that helps with bird identification. He now has over 400 Flickr contacts worldwide and they help him to train his eye, provide advice about equipment and technique and a forum in which to talk about different birds, their environments and how to photograph them.

It also helps that he has plenty of support. Lorenzo’s book was written jointly with his father, Michael, who also helped him to find a publisher, and still helps him to win speaking bookings and to do the sort of promotion necessary to find an audience and spread his name. Few photographers can count on family members to do that for them. Most, in fact, have to balance their self-promotion with a regular job and a family life while still finding the time to head into the field, research their subjects and take the pictures they want. Lorenzo will have schoolwork, which will only get heavier, but he’s fortunate in having a close relative willing to work as a manager and handle his growing photography career.

Photography: Andrew Brooks

With photography stock dominated by two exclusive agencies and microstock so saturated that sales figures rarely now cover the cost of an image’s production, photographers hoping to sell licenses need new ways of delivering photos to buyers. For many, and particularly for part-time photographers who might once have been drawn to iStock or Fotolia, that means selling licenses directly from their own website — and overcoming the challenge of finding buyers, quoting prices and handing over the images.

Klaus Herrmann, for example, used to be a computer scientist. Over the last couple of years, he’s made a name for himself as an amateur photographer, offering advice to other enthusiasts exploring High Dynamic Range photography. Earlier this year, he began the process of building a new career in image-making and teaching.

“It was one of those moments where you know that not taking the opportunity will haunt you for the rest of your life,” he said. “I could have stayed in my old job, but I would always have looked back and asked ‘What if….’ So I quit my job, and I am taking a chance.”

Herrmann’s website promotes his educational products but his store also pitches both prints and image licenses. License sales number no more than one or two a month but with prices based on the usage fees for Rights Managed images rather than bargain Royalty Free rates, those single sales made on his own represent hundreds of potential downloads on a microstock site. The inventory on a stock site would have needed to be much larger and Herrmann’s sales aren’t subject to commissions of between 70 and 80 percent, the amount typically taken by stock sites.

Andrew Brooks, a professional photographer in the UK, is doing even better. He has been licensing his own images for about seven years when he began receiving direct requests from new clients. He now sells between eight and ten licenses a month from his website, adding an extra revenue stream to his commissions and prints. (The image above was used by Kellogg’s, Aardman Animations and JWT Advertising, and was seen by 8 million people during a commercial break in one of the UK’s top television shows.) The sales allow Brooks to make use of his back catalog but more importantly they give him control of both his images and his relationships with the people who want to use them.

“I want to know where my images are going, who’s using them and how,” he says. “As I sell prints and have exhibitions, I want to make sure my pictures don’t get overused and are featured in interesting places. Also dealing directly with clients can lead to long term commissions and new projects, plus [they] extend my networks.”

Promotion and Negotiation

While the benefits of selling your own stock are clear, though, the process isn’t. Both Herrmann and Brooks use Internet marketing to bring people to their sites. Herrmann relies on sites like Flickr and 500px to show his work and bring in buyers; Brooks uses Twitter and Facebook to keep his profile high. Each year, Brooks also creates a list of agencies and companies to approach directly.

Making the sales and delivering the images is a challenge too. Buyers on stock sites need only push a button to purchase an image, download it and use it immediately. While some website templates do allow photographers to make sales that easily, photographers who want greater control over pricing and usage —  or just a simpler website — need to push buyers through an enquiry and negotiation process. Both Brooks and Herrmann provide a form at the enquiry stage that asks for information about the required licensing period, the sector in which the image will be used and the media that will be using it. Herrmann then checks stock sites like Getty and the Association of Photographers Usage Calculator to generate a current price for comparable images and similar usages.

“For me, the biggest challenge is still to find the right price,” says  Herrmann. “It can be very hard to set the price for an image license as it is depending on so many factors.”

The negotiation process usually takes him a couple of days. Brooks tries to get things moving as quickly as possible and says that he can make an agreement within a couple of hours, an important consideration for buyers on deadline.

So both photographers obtain real financial benefits from selling their own stock. Both use the websites from which the sales are made as hubs whose spokes lead to community platforms from where they draw their buyers: photo-sharing sites for Klaus Herrmann; social media sites for Andrew Brooks. Both also have to negotiate the prices for their licenses directly, a difficult balance between audience, media and keenness to sell.

But both photographers have a couple of other important factors in common.

You Have To Be Unique

Each also specializes in a unique niche. Klaus Herrmann is an expert on HDR; Andrew Brooks has a clear style and a quality that’s visible in both his rural and urban photography. That ability to stand out and offer buyers something that they can’t buy at a lower price and with a click of a button is vital, says Brooks.

“If you want people to be using your images then your work has to be unique to you. If a client sets their heart on an image and nothing quite like it is available by any other photographer then if puts you in a strong position if you’re selling the images yourself or through an agency.”

And neither photographer depends on the revenue their stock sales generate. For Klaus Herrmann, the occasional stock sale adds to the educational products he’s hoping will form the backbone of his business. For Andrew Brooks, they help to pay the costs of images he’s shot in the past and by talking to the buyers directly — rather than through a stock agency — they may lead to commissions for more work in the future.

The difficulty, of though, attracting the buyers and negotiating the sales does mean that selling your own stock is still largely a luxury for small producers.

“Traditional stock photographers are always better off using agencies,” warns Herrmann. “If you have a big portfolio that is targeted to stock photography clients, spread your work over as many platforms as possible and let those agencies do the work for you. If you sell licenses only occasionally, and if your work is not really the typical stock photography work, you probably will find that putting in on some stock photo website will not result in a big profit.”

Breaking into the photography market should be simple: photo editors at magazines, art buyers at ad firms, designers at marketing firms all need images. If you can shoot a beautiful picture that meets one of their needs all you have to do is swap permission to use your photo for a nice, fat check. The only thing that photographers really need to know about image buyers is that they need good quality shots that they can put in ads, at the top of articles and in brochures; the rest is detail. At least three of those details though are vital. They might not be as important as the image itself but they are powerful enough to kill off what should be a lucrative picture sale. Professional photographers know them — and it’s that knowledge as much as the quality of their photography that marks them as professionals, wins them sales and leads to commissions.

1. Buyers Want to Purchase Fast

Two platforms have democratized the photography market more than any other: Flickr and iStock. Only one of those platforms though has developed into a successful business model with a turnover of sales worth millions of dollars and an inventory so huge it’s suffering from saturation. The best images at Flickr might be more interesting and more varied than the most commercial shots on a microstock site but they’re so hard to find and so hard to buy that it’s Getty’s subsidiary that’s attracting the buyers.

An editor looking for an image of a “beach,” for example, will be offered more than 400,000 results on iStock. On Flickr, he’ll get over 22 million, including shots that range from unusual sunrises to screenshots from CNN. Having sorted through variations on a theme of azure skies and white sands on iStock, the editor has to do no more than push a couple of buttons to use a pile of credits and download the image. The search might take a little while but the purchase is immediate and the usage can start right away. On Flickr, not only will a search through a wider variety of images take longer but the buying process will take even longer still. The photographer has to be contacted directly, usually by email, leaving the buyer uncertain whether he’ll receive a reply or when that reply will come in.

“I’ve had several instances where people on those sites were hiding behind aliases and either don’t check their comments, PMs or email, or they just don’t believe we are offering them money to use their photos or may think we are scamming them somehow,” one designer informed us in response to a question on a buyers’ forum.

The result is that they often don’t bother. Forced to balance the risk that they won’t get a response at all or in time, and the certainty offered by a microstock platform, buyers often sacrifice an interesting image they might never receive for the certainly of service that guarantees delivery of the product.

Show that you can act like a professional — even if you’re not one — by promising to respond quickly, and you’ll go a long way towards meeting one of your buyer’s most important needs.

2. Buyers Want to Put You in a Box

When a buyer has found an image he wants to use, he’ll want to know he can buy it and get to work on the design straight away. But he also wants to know that his next search for a similar image will go quickly too. If he can feel that a photographer he used once can always supply images with a look that matches his publication or his client’s style, he won’t just have found an image; he’ll have found a source of future images too.

That’s because buyers don’t just need images. They need particular kinds of images covering particular subjects and shot in a particular way.

“A strong opening splash image that demonstrates the photographer’s skill and style is paramount,” an art director at an editorial publication told Photoshelter’s Buyer Survey earlier this year. “A photographer’s work separated into galleries by clearly labeled categories is also helpful – I can choose to focus on the subject or style that I am seeking.”

You don’t have to limit yourself to shooting just one kind of image in one way for your entire career. But if you can let a buyer with consistent demand believe that you can deliver images in a consistent style, you’ll get repeat sales.

3. Buyers Want to Talk About You

Photoshelter’s Buyer’s Survey did more than underline the emphasis editors place on a clear style. It also showed that the first place they look to find photographers who can deliver that reliability is their colleagues. Two-thirds of the buyers surveyed said that they ask other buyers for a recommendation when they’re looking for a photographer.

That means that an enquiry about an image shouldn’t be treated as a chance to make a sale. The request has to be seen as an interview about producing a series of images to sell not just to that buyer but to that buyer’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

Sell one image to a buyer, and you’ve always got a chance of finding that your name is passing along a network and bringing in more sales and even paid commissions.

You don’t have to ask for those recommendations (although it won’t do any harm.) You just have to prove your reliability. You need to show that you can create high-quality images. You need to show that you’ll be responsive to enquiries and easy to work with. When that happens, your buyer will have a name to supply the next time a colleague asks them if they know anyone who can shoot images like yours.

They’ll be able to share the contact details of a photographer who might not be a professional but who knows buyers well enough to be able to act like one.

Photography: Steve Barry

The car might have beaten the train as America’s vehicle of choice but when it comes to photography, it’s hard to beat the allure of an old locomotive. Whether it’s the appeal of giant pistons and wheels, a fascination with engineering, the experience worn into the hands and faces of railroad workers or the vanishing point created by parallel tracks that have sent every photography student ever to their nearest level crossing, there’s something particularly photogenic about the engines that built America. There are no figures that show the popularity of railroad photography but Trains, the country’s most popular railroad magazine, is holding steady even as other print magazines struggle. RailPictures.net, a community site dedicated to pictures of trains and tracks, now contains more than 367,000 railroad images, and when twenty specially painted “heritage” locomotives were put on display in Spencer, North Carolina in July, around 4,000 photographers turned up to shoot them.

The Center for Railroad Photography & Art was founded 15 years ago to interpret the connection between railroad art and American history and culture. The center organizes traveling exhibitions, holds an annual conference and maintains a collection of railroad visual media. Its current project is an exhibition of World War II-era portraits of railroad workers from the Chicago area called “Faces of Chicago’s Railroad Community: Photographs by Jack Delano.” The exhibition will be held at the Chicago History Museum from late October to early January.

“Like all forms of photography, good railroad photography begins with understanding composition and lighting, and beyond that, it’s very subjective,” explains Scott Lothes, the Center’s Executive Director. “I personally like railroad photographs that include a lot of context and show how the railroad relates to the landscape. The Center’s president and one of its founders, John Gruber, has really focused on railroad workers and portraying the human side of the industry. O. Winston Link made dramatic night photographs of steam railroading in Appalachia by using elaborate arrays of flashbulbs to create theatrical lighting conditions…. Other great railroad photographs convey emotion, or tell a story, or draw your attention to a particular detail.”

Photography That’s As Easy As Pie

The classic railroad image is the “three-quarter wedgie” in which the train is captured traveling towards the photographer, the cars trailing into the distance to form the shape of a pie wedge. With the sun over the photographer’s shoulder the train is three-quarters lit. It’s a shot that’s not just dramatic but also conveys a great deal of information about the locomotive type, company and paint scheme.

For many railroad photographers, that documentation is more important than the artistry of the photograph. Creators of railroad imagery are often train buffs first and photographers second. They’d rather capture a dull shot of a piece of unusual equipment than a beautiful image of modern or common subject.

“Many railroad photographers are not much more than snapshot shooters looking to share information,” says Steve Barry, a railroad photographer and editor of Railfan & Railroad, a magazine with a 30,000-strong readership. “On the other hand, the younger generation of rail photographers are moving more towards the art side of photography, or at the very least are very well grounded in strong photojournalism.”

Competing with those new photographers to sell railroad images will require beating a number of challenges. Barry offers his own photographs on his website which is where he makes most of his sales. Prints make up a small percentage of the income but buyers can download stock images for editorial use for $400. Those buyers have tended to be trade magazines and graphic houses although the attention the site has received has led to publishers enquiring about book projects and editors of non-specialist magazines have commissioned articles.

Selling commercial stock is a little harder. Railroad logos and heralds that appear on equipment may be copyrighted and employees included in images need to sign model releases which they may be too  busy — or just unwilling — to do.

Steve Barry’s magazine, however, relies on freelance submissions for 90 percent of its content. The publication uses about 50 photographs a month. News photos are the easiest way to break in. The images pay about $30 each and should show new paint schemes on locomotives or new railroad operations, for example, rather than crashes or accidents. Final Frame, a vertical image that appears on the last page of the magazine, pays $75. Feature stories written and shot by the photographer pay the most: stories tend to be around 2,000 words, include about 15 photos and pay $50 per magazine page. A typical fee will be $300-$400 with an additional $100 if an image from the story is used on the cover.

Match Your Photography Skills to Your Train Knowledge

Those stories, though, require a good knowledge of trains and railroads to accompany an eye for photography. The best way to begin building a portfolio of railroad images, says Barry, is to publish on your own website as well as on Flickr. RailPictures.net is also important and is increasingly becoming the place where industry turns for stock railroad photos.

For more ambitious — or more artistic — railroad photographers, the Center for Railroad Photography & Art runs an awards program for its journal and welcomes submissions to its Railroad Heritage pictorial site. The Center is actively trying to encourage young photographers and offers discounted student rates to its annual conference. Its annual John E. Gruber Creative Photography Award draws a large numbers of entries from younger photographers who have made up many of the previous winners. The Center also plans to begin offering scholarships to promising railroad photographers.

The real key to success though will be to marry a love of photography with a passion for trains and tracks. For railroad buffs with a keen photography hobby that shouldn’t be too difficult. Photographers who are keener on cars (or ships, yachts, bikes or anything else) can do worse than check the image-buying markets for their own passion and use their picture-taking skills to give themselves a secondary income that lets them earn from two hobbies at the same time. That’s an opportunity that never gets old.

Once you’ve developed your talent, honed your skills, loaded up on the equipment and filled a hard drive or two with folders full of beautiful, well-shot images, you’ll be ready to start putting your pictures in the market. But the market might not be ready for you. Whichever branch of photography you want to focus on and whatever kind of images you want to shoot, you should always expect to have to wait between making your pictures or skills available for sale, and actually seeing that first check.

Microstock Delays

Microstock appears to be the easiest market to break into. To offer images through sites like iStock and Fotolia, you won’t need to build a website or do any marketing yourself. You’ll just have to register, upload your images and wait for them to be approved, a process that won’t take more than a few days.

The sales though may take a lot longer.

iStock has an inventory of around 10 million photos and sold an estimated 21.5 million downloads in 2011. But despite receiving contributions from more than 100,000 photographers the site is dominated by a relatively small group. More than 90 percent of all the images in the collection are owned by little more than a third of the contributors. Fewer than 200 photographers are responsible for one in four of all the sales that iStock has made in its history.

You could get lucky when you upload a photo to a microstock site. It’s possible that you’ll have taken just the right unusual image at just the moment that someone needs it. It’s more likely though that your photo will join the thousands of others on the same topic, which have been on the site longer, sold more downloads and because they have a track record will be returned higher in the search results.

Your sales won’t start coming in until your inventory has grown large enough for one of your images to stand a chance of being spotted. You’ll then need to keep that inventory growing — and accept that you probably still won’t make enough money to cover the cost of production.

Art Fairs Take Advance Bookings

The problem with microstock is that because anyone can join, the competition will beat you most of the time. Art fairs are easier places to make sales because the competition is restricted. Juries check applications keeping out as many as 90 percent of artists hoping to show.

That already means you could be waiting a while. You won’t be ready to show at an art fair until you’ve produced a good body of work with a clear style and theme, and understand the quality of work that art fairs are looking for. Until that happens, you’ll be getting rejections. And even if you do make it through the selection procedure, you’ll still have to wait. Applications for art fairs begin a good six to eight months before the fair opens. Between shooting a collection of images good enough to sell, and actually making that first sale at an art fair, you could be waiting the best part of a year.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t choose to sell at art fairs. They’re often a good way to get your foot in the door of the galleries. Just don’t expect either of those opportunities to open just at the moment you’re ready for them.

Prints Depend on Trust and Attention

To have a chance of pitching your images to buyers at an art fair, you’ll first need to persuade a jury that your photos are likely to sell. Offer your prints online and you’ll get to pitch directly and without asking anyone’s permission first.

Like microstock, that should be fast and easy. Flickr and 500px both allow members to offer their images as prints so there’s no need even to build a website.

But you will need traffic — and that takes time. On a website that means getting your search engine optimization right, promoting blog posts and trying to build links and keyword-rich content, all of which can take months. On social platforms like Flickr and 500px, you can take part in a slightly more enjoyable process of commenting and following, and joining photography groups on subjects you find interesting.

Your ability to land sales through those sites will depend not just on your images being high quality but on your name being known. Buyers won’t just want to own a beautiful shot of a landscape. They’ll want to own your beautiful shot of a landscape. They want to own a print by someone they consider — or would like to consider — a friend. It takes months, at least, before your activity builds that level of trust either on a website or on a social platform like Flickr and 500px.

Word of Mouth Travels Slowly

For photographers who rely on bookings and commissions clients tend to come in through two channels. Some wedding photographers describe word of mouth as their main client generator while others say that it’s their optimized website that brings in the bulk of their leads. We’ve already seen that climbing the search engines can take “weeks or even months” and referrals are little quicker. If your first shoot was a portfolio-builder for friends, you’ll have to wait until one of their friends gets hitched before you can benefit from that single shot at a referral. It’s only when you have lots of clients that those referral processes really start to kick in.

It would be great to be able to say that all of those wonderful images on your website can be shifted to buyers within minutes. But in practice, it rarely works that way. It took you a long time and plenty of practice to learn how to shoot images good enough for people to want to buy. Selling them might not take that long but don’t expect to start your photo-selling with the same skill and ability with which that you now take pictures.

There are lots of ways to bring clients into a photography business but ask an established photographer where they get most of their orders and the answer is often referrals. It’s not unusual for as much as 90 percent of a wedding photographer’s bookings to come from couples they’ve photographed in the past, with the remainder usually coming from Web searches. That may come as a surprise for many new photographers though. Instead of seeing their income snowball naturally as happy clients pass on their name to their friends, new professionals can often find themselves struggling to win work even though they’re certain their clients are satisfied with the results. The problem isn’t the photography, and it isn’t the clients. It’s the studio’s referral program and the poor choice of incentives that the photographer is using to encourage word-of-mouth marketing

That was the experience of Leah Remillet of Go 4 Pro Photos. A children and family photographer who describes herself as “an entrepreneur at heart” she launched her photography business in 2008 and within a year was averaging sales of $2,000 a time. What she wasn’t doing though was winning recommendations that translated into new bookings.

“I knew I truly was creating a great experience, and I knew my clients loved me, but the numbers showed that something was broken.  Because — despite their raving reviews and their claims that they were telling all of their friends — my bookings weren’t coming from referrals.”

At the time, Remillet was doing what many photographers do to encourage clients to pass their names on to people they know: she was handing out referral cards and hoping that the clients would be keen enough to give them to their friends.

It’s an approach, she realizes now, that has two weaknesses. While it’s convenient for the photographer, who only has to print up a bunch of pretty cards, it’s inconvenient for the client who has to remember where she put them and keep one on her every time she runs into a friend looking for a photographer. And the rewards tend to be low value. Clients are rarely excited at the prospect of receiving a free 8 x 10 print and when photographers pass them out to anyone who gives a recommendation, the recommendation itself looks as cheap as the reward.

“We hand over a stack of referral cards and ask our clients to pass them out,” says Remillet. “And while we want it to be a super big deal to them, all of our actions say, ‘dime a dozen.’”

There are a few things that you can do, though, both to increase the perceived value of the reward and to get clients excited about passing on referrals.

Reward Referrers, Incentivize Leads

Baby and child photographer Tennille King, for example, uses two kinds of rewards in her referral program. Each referral wins a $50 credit towards prints after the client’s next photography session — credits that can be combined to deliver large value deductions. But the new clients are also given a $25 coupon to help pay for their print order.

Clients aren’t just giving a card to a friend and receiving something with an apparently low value; they’re also giving a friend $25 of someone else’s money and receiving $50 for doing so.

Remillet now does something similar. She still uses referral cards but she limits the number she gives to just eight to make them look exclusive and special. She has also handed out free 3 x 3 accordion mini-books which are more attractive than referral cards and therefore more likely to be kept close and shown off. She offers gifts with each new purchase, such as a printed iPhone case, which guarantees that her photo will always be in a client’s handbag and motivates new leads to buy. And she keeps in touch with clients who have given her referrals, sending them handwritten notes thanking them for their recommendation and complimenting their friends, together with a gift certificate to a local theater.

Even more importantly though, Remillet tracks her results, identifying the rewards and the programs that are most likely to produce the best results.

“I track everything. It’s nearly impossible to grow if we don’t know what is and isn’t working,” she says.

To measure the degree to which a free iPhone case can incentivize referred leads, for example, Remillet creates a spreadsheet (or just uses paper and pen) to mark the number of collection sales acquired during the promotion. She then compares this number and the number of sessions booked during this time to the figures acquired during previous months.

“We can always take this a step further and compare different promotions, as well. So, for example, I could promote the iPhone Case one month as the ‘Gift with Purchase’ and then offer a couple mini albums the following month.”

A Referral is a Client’s Way of Saying “I Love You.”

That’s not too complicated although it will take some thought and plenty of discipline to link bookings made at a particular time to a reward given through a particular period. But improving the rate of your referrals should happen naturally. Tennille King began, like many photographers, by rewarding clients with a free 8 x 10 print or some other product that could only be won through a referral. She soon found though that clients who referred multiple friends had little need for five 8 x 10 prints. Her combination of a reward for the referrer and an incentive for the new lead now means that 95 percent of her business comes in through personal recommendations.

That stable revenue stream should be a reward enough for the photographer but it’s also worth remembering that each referral isn’t just a new order. It’s also a vote of confidence in the photographer.

“Clients who tell others how great it was to work with me, and about the high quality of the product and service, is priceless,” says King. “There is no greater compliment than a client recommending my business to a friend.”

One of the more surprising results in Photoshelter’s Buyer Survey was the number of buyers who reported looking for new photographers in their mailboxes. No less than 44 percent of the survey’s respondents said that they turned to email pitches they’ve received from photographers when they’re looking for someone to commission. That’s the same percentage that use agents and agencies, and a method that came second only to asking a colleague for a personal recommendation. It is a figure, though, that might have been skewed by the survey pool. Photoshelter teamed up with AgencyAccess to query photo buyers, a marketing company that supplies promotional services, including email marketing, to photographers, illustrators and other creative workers. But the willingness of the respondents to receive unsolicited pitches is revealing about a promotional strategy that many photographers choose to ignore.

AgencyAccess is used by about 1,600 photographers who are able to build targeted lists of around 90,000 potential clients, including 16,000 art buyers. Most of those photographers are established full-timers although some are “‘new’ or up-and-coming professionals.” They work in fields that range from lifestyle and food to fashion and editorial. The company supplies photographers with a variety of services that start with the ability to draw up a list of potential buyers, such as magazine editors and ad agency art buyers who work in a particular field or in a particular region, and send them a marketing pitch. But photographers can also manage their entire email campaign through the site, purchase design services, hire a campaign manager and put together a direct marketing mail campaign as well.

The results are fairly typical, and perhaps even a little low, for email marketing. According to Christine Andrews of Agency Access, photographers who send email pitches to buyers on the company’s lists can expect their messages to receive open rates of between 15 and 20 percent, and clickthrough rates of between 3 and 5 percent. That compares to open rate averages across different industries of 24.8 percent at the end of 2011 and click rates of 5.2 percent.

A Marketing Message is Part of a Plan

Photographers though don’t need to have giant clickthrough rates because they don’t need to have giant client lists. Each commission may be worth several thousand dollars, generate repeat offers and win the kind of personal recommendations that buyers use the most. A single commission would be more than enough to justify the expense and the time involved in creating the campaign.

While AgencyAccess has the contact lists though, the addresses themselves are only a small part of a successful email campaign.

“We find, and advise, that having a plan for your marketing campaign is the best way to achieve these rates,” says Christine Andrews. “It’s all about consistency and taking the time to out to market your professional work in a professional manner.”

That professional manner might begin with a targeted list but it should also include a professional-looking template email, an awareness of seasons and holidays, as well as eye-catching subject lines and copy that can appeal to a buyer. An email campaign shouldn’t be a one-off but should be part of a strategy aimed at a particular group of buyers who are impressed by an image and click through to see a website that’s easy to browse, filled with a portfolio showing a style of photography they can use, of subjects they need, and containing a contact page that’s responsive and quick to find.

Mostly though, successful email marketing is about the picture.

Call the Clicks

Amanda Sosa Stone, for example, is a creative consultant who works with photographers to help them improve their portfolios and enhance their marketing efforts. On AgencyAccess’s blog, she listed a number of very simple emails — messages that consisted of little more than an image and contact details — which resulted in job offers from recipients. Coolife, a studio in Manhattan, picked up a cover for Bloomberg Businessweek with  a quirky take on Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium perfume. Craig Mitchelldyer won a shoot from Barron’s with an emailed image of a chief executive.

And even failure to win a job directly can still win opportunities too. Gregory Costanzo implemented the second part of his email marketing plan when he followed up an mailshot by checking his email clicks. He identified which of his recipients had clicked through to his website but failed to contact him, and used Agency Access’s telemarketing service to make phone pitches to people who had already shown an interest. According to Sosa Stone, he won three meetings each of which led to potential jobs or bid requests.

But those stories may be exceptional. Even a 5 percent clickthrough rate is not the same as a 5 percent conversion rate and with 1,600 photographers appealing to the same group of buyers, photographers will need exceptional images and websites to stand out. They’ll need to choose their images and their targets carefully and follow up their pitches.

“Photography is a business,” explains Christine Andrews. “It’s having the ability to execute your client’s vision, but it’s also about forming and maintaining relationships with your clients. That is of course where personality AND marketing come into play. You wouldn’t want a client to go with another photographer because you sent one email and one mail card to keep in touch while your competitor sent emails quarterly and followed up with mail and/or a phone call.”

All of that, of course, costs money. AgencyAccess’s services start at $82 per month for access to a list and rise to $395 for complete campaigns with statistical analysis of results. You’ll also need to add on the costs of any follow-up calls, as well as the time involved in creating the marketing copy. In return for that investment though, you do get access to a giant database of leading photography buyers.

Alternatively, you could use your website to build up your own email list, make sure that your website can be found by search engines, and go straight for the most popular way that buyers find clients — ask satisfied customers to pass your name around.

Photography: Sara Rosso

Photography enthusiasts starting to earn money from their images eventually find themselves facing a difficult dilemma. They have to decide whether they should give up a day job that gives them a steady income in favor of a freelance career in which they have to scrabble for commissions. It’s a choice between work they might barely tolerate and a lifetime creating images that make them proud and which others love, between a reliable salary and the risk of hand-to-mouth budgeting. But it’s a choice they might not have to make completely. As stock prices have fallen and art budgets have largely frozen at best, it’s become increasingly difficult to make a living as a photographer. At the same time though, digital technology has made life as a freelancer much easier in a range of different fields. Giving up the day job to become a professional freelance photographer no longer has to mean relying on income from photography alone.

Image credit: Sara Rosso

Sara Rosso, for example, describes herself as a  “writer, photographer, technology lover, and business and digital strategist.” She has a bachelors degree in Managing Information Systems, an MBA in Managing Innovation and Technology, and has worked in technology for Hewlett-Packard and Ogilvy. Since 2003 though, she has been living in Italy where she writes about food, technology and healthy living. She also sells her photographs, sometimes through Getty, sometimes through her own website and she accepts wedding jobs too. While some photographers are choosing to build their brand through specialization and a tightly-defined niche, Sara Rosso is able to live in a beautiful location and make a living with a range of freelance jobs that include and relate to photography.

“I definitely feel we’re in a new Renaissance period characterized by the sheer number of tools available which allow us to indulge our interests and create things – music, photography, books – without anyone’s permission or validation,” she says. “I can’t ignore the more practical side of me which is interested in things like site statistics, financial reporting, and money-making experimentation – I love it, actually…. I love it when my two halves cooperate on something together.”

Photography Meets Digital Branding

Rosso’s work has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired Italy, Sky News, Italian Glamour and Vanity Fair. Her expertise in technology has her traveling from girl geek dinners in Milan to the SxSW festival in Texas delivering talks on topics that range from WordPress techniques to the distributed company. Her blogs let her write about travel, food, business-growing and — a key interest — Nutella, a chocolate-hazelnut spread.

But while Rosso’s range of interests is broad, they all support each other. Her ebook about Italian coffee is self-published through Kindle and uses her own photography on the cover. Her food blogging complements her inventory of food images on Getty. Her travel writing gives her an opportunity to take more pictures of attractive scenes in a beautiful country.

Most importantly, though, Rosso’s knowledge of business and technology, and their meeting point at digital branding, gives her the expertise she needs to sell her services to clients online. She describes her website as a “hub” that provides an overview of who she is and what she does, and shows off some of the photography she shoots for clients and for personal use.

That knowledge of technology and business is a huge advantage that ensures that she’s not just able to create great images but find buyers for them too.

“I used to rue not being a specialist when I was growing up, but now I’m happy with  being more of a generalist and I think it’s the best way to adapt to the unknown future,” she says. “[T]he technology and digital strategy parts of me are probably the strongest because while the underlying core of what I enjoy stays the same (the written word, a visual image, a business idea), the methods of exploring, developing, and sharing them are changing all the time. And that’s exciting to me. Understanding and being interested in technology is the best way to adapt your work.”

The Websites Are Wrong

It also means that Rosso has an overview of how other photographers are using technology to promote their work. The most common mistake, she argues, is in the way photographers use their websites. Many are beautiful, she says, and show off the photographer’s work but they often have very little functionality. They’re not indexed by search engines, buyers have trouble finding them, identifying the services on offer or understanding how to contact the photographer. It’s a criticism that buyers themselves have often made.

When it comes to branding, photographers need to know who they are and where they want to go, recommends Rosso. Their site, whether it’s a static website, a blog or, like hers, a network of blogs, should offer content that reflects their personality, their interests and their knowledge. As users leave Rosso’s website for one of her blogs on food or travel or photography, they get an idea of the sort of topics that interest Rosso and in which she has expertise.

 “I would say I built [my] brand by sharing not only who I am, but what I know and what I’m interested in…. I think that is a good foundation for anyone’s personal brand: tell who you are, share what you know and what you’re learning, and curate the best of the rest.”

Although her photography has been good enough to win the attention of Getty as well as a number of big-name buyers, Rosso says that it’s unlikely she’ll ever devote herself to photography full-time. Part of that comes down to fear, she says. Putting all her eggs in one basket makes her nervous (“especially with how fragile the photography basket is.”) But it would also mean cutting out other activities and interests that she enjoys — and it’s also not necessary for her or for other photographers. Asked how she would advise other enthusiasts thinking of creating a one-person business, ideally in a beautiful location, that includes photography, even if it’s not made up entirely of photography, Rosso suggests getting good at video or writing as well as creating stills.

“One of the two, and preferably both.”

When you’re looking to sell photography services, you know you’re going to need a website — and ideally one that’s free of Flash, easy to browse and contains an impressive but select portfolio. You might also want a Facebook page, either for advertising or as a way to stay in touch with previous clients. But what about a YouTube channel? Should photographers be thinking of video-sharing as a way of showing off their talent for stills?

Certainly many photographers seem to think so. Search for “photography” on YouTube and you’ll be offered over 450,000 results covering every aspect of photography from rules for street photography to time-lapse photography of the Earth shot from the International Space Station. A large portion of those videos, though, tend to be didactic. They’re often tutorials in which one photographer explains to other photographers how to take certain kinds of images. Andy Booth, for example, is a UK-based photographer who shoots in the evenings and at most weekends. Despite holding down a full-time job in the insurance industry he might also complete a couple of paid wedding photography jobs a month, and since 2010 has uploaded more than 50 photography-related videos to YouTube.

Shooting Without a Plan

Those videos are a mixed bunch. They include a clip of the photographer unboxing his Canon 5D MKII, shooting a client in his makeshift studio and explaining water droplet photography.

“I don’t have any set rules, themes or targeted audience for the videos,” he said. “The subject/theme is usually decided by subjects that just spring to mind.”

Measured by views alone though, those random videos have been relatively successful. Altogether, Andy’s uploads have been watched over 330,000 times, with two videos picking up more than 60,000 views each. The traffic comes in largely through his Twitter account and Facebook page, a platform that also serves as Andy’s main website. Sometimes, he’ll also place a link to a new video on his Twitter stream. Mostly though, he banks on YouTube’s search engine to turn up his videos in search results and present them to interested viewers.

Ed Verosky, a professional photographer in New York, takes a similar approach to YouTube. He started uploading two years ago with the aim of sharing some behind-the-scenes footage as well as some music video work. His 23 uploaded videos, many of which are audio podcasts, have now been seen more than 111,000 times, with his most popular video an explanation of a one light portrait setup that picked up nearly 31,000 views. Like Andy Booth’s channel, the bulk of his uploads are tutorials.

“I started sharing tips and being very open about my work and how I do things,” he said. “Other photographers responded to that content and I found that I really loved teaching and inspiring other photographers to do better work.  My videos are about sharing what I know and love about photography.”

Ed aims to keep his shoots simple and casual. He even shot his first videos on a low-end cell phone or a “toy video camera.” As his videos became more complex though, so the time he needed to invest in shooting and post-production, and in learning new techniques, became greater too. Editing takes the most time now, he says, but he’s also had to learn how to do 2D and 3D animation, rendering, video lighting and audio recording and editing.

The question though is whether that investment pays off financially — and the answer is that it probably doesn’t. Neither Ed nor Andy could a recall winning a booking from someone who had first seen their YouTube videos. Ed wins most of his work from search engines, word-of-mouth, a good sales page and through his portfolio. Some clients have said that they hired him after enjoying one of his blog posts but none have mentioned his YouTube videos as the factor that led to the hire.

“Photographers, like myself, look to YouTube for entertainment and tutorials,” he says. “As for targeting potential clients, I just don’t see them looking through YouTube to find a photographer.”

Even Information Products Don’t Sell

But if YouTube is primarily used by photographers looking for an education it should be a good place to promote information products created by photographers. Even that though, doesn’t seem to be the case. Ed Verosky offers a number of guides and ebooks on different aspects of photography but doesn’t believe that any of the sales of even his educational products can be traced back to his YouTube videos.

“I’m sure the videos must help,” he says, “but I have no hard evidence of that.  I think everything helps in a cumulative way.”

The problem with video-sharing as a way of winning clients might have less to do with the videos and more to do with the sharing, particularly on YouTube. Our book The Successful Wedding Photographer contains a chapter on the benefits of video advertising in which Lan and Vu Bui, photographers who double as videographers, discuss the importance of shooting behind-the-scenes videos in which the photographer talks to the camera, relaxes and builds a connection with the viewer. It’s that connection, they argue, that can be more powerful than any other marketing technique.

The marketing though has to be aimed at the right market. If YouTube’s photographer channels are watched primarily by other photographers looking to improve their skills, they’re going to be the wrong place to upload a video aimed at potential clients. To persuade leads that you’re talented and reliable, easy to work with and capable of producing the images they need, you should be putting that video on your website, not on YouTube. And that video itself should be about you and the way you shoot, not about the viewer and the shots he or she would like to take.

YouTube can be useful for photographers. It can be a good way to teach other photographers how to take pictures, to spread your love of photography and photographic technique, and to dabble in images that move. But if you’re looking to make money out of photography — and you want to use videos to help you — watch it for the tips but shoot for the clients.

The camera you use to take your pictures affects the pictures you produce. That’s especially true when the camera is far from the studio, held in your hands and embedded in a mobile phone. Those images — the spontaneous shots snapped by an iPhone — are unique, natural and have a real value for image buyers.

That, at least, is the assumption behind foap, a new stock service launched in Sweden in May this year. The site is the idea of Alexandra Bylund and David Los, two workers in the travel industry who had struggled to find stock images that had a “local feeling” and a look that was more natural than stylized. Microstock sites like iStock might offer huge inventories, explained Ms Bylund, but many of the images are similar and few have the kind of emotional impact she was looking for to promote travel destinations.

“Even if there’s millions of photos [on stock sites] it’s difficult to find photos in which people can recognize themselves,” she said.

Flickr, which some buyers have found to be a good source of naturalistic images, poses different problems. Without an inbuilt buying system, making a purchase is difficult and although the photo-sharing site “has many good photos,” Ms Bylund said, the lack of selectivity and the absence of sorting on the site makes those images hard to find. Users can upload any photos they want so there’s no minimal level of quality and no easy way to filter searches for professional-quality shots.

“My nightmare is that if I’m looking for photos from the beach I don’t want to see grey shoots. On Flickr there are many fine photos but also many you don’t like.”

Cats and Keyboards

Foap’s website looks little different to that of traditional stock sites — or even microstock sites. The home page broadcasts a flat price of $10 per image of which 50 percent is returned to the photographer. Images are sold on a royalty-free basis and are divided into editorial and commercial usage depending on their content. (Images of subjects that require special permission from copyright owners, such as logos and some buildings, are automatically marked as editorial.)

But the website is limited and appears to be geared mainly towards buyers. For sellers, uploads can only be made from the iPhone app, and it’s here that it’s possible to see images that have received the highest ratings from other users and those which have just sold. It’s even possible to take pictures from within the app, allowing users to shoot and sell at the same time.

The images themselves are a mixed bunch. Although the biggest market demand is for pictures that show faces and people (and which come with model releases), the most common uploads tend to be of nature, beaches and buildings. While some of the landscape images are as professional and attractive as any you can find on a traditional stock site, others look like they might have been better uploaded to Facebook. Like Flickr, there’s no shortage of cute kittens and happy-looking cats but mixed in among them are also the sorts of standard office shots more usually found on microstock sites. Altogether foap currently has around 200,000 images with more added daily.

It’s Easier to Capture the Moment

That variability, and in particular the emphasis on nature shots, may well be the result of the site’s dependence on the iPhone. (An Android app is in development and should be released in the fall.) The ubiquity of high quality camera phones, the ease of taking a beautiful scene at the moment you see it, does enable anyone to capture moments — of sunsets, street scenes and fields, for example — that would previously have required planning on the part of a photographer. Now anyone capture them at any time — and everyone does. Foap aims to bring a new kind of image to the stock market.

“People think differently when they take a picture with an iPhone,” says Ms Bylund. “They see other views. It’s easier to catch the moment. That’s the big difference. Even my mom takes pictures every day now.”

Sales are beginning to pick up. Alexandra Bylund herself has sold three of the thirteen images in her portfolio of children’s photos and Swedish scenes. The site also has a deal with a number of companies who place requests, or “missions,” for particular images that they need. Solanum Odlarna, for example, is looking for barbeque photos for a campaign. “Think grill, cozy, summer, vacation, sunset,” it says.

In September, when foap launches a new version, images will need to be exclusive, a move that might help to keep out some of the more obviously stock-style images. The site also plans to bring the community into the review procedures, a development that might help to ensure a higher overall quality on the site — although it could also enable photographers to keep out competitors.

While foap may be able to make money selling images shot spontaneously, the challenge will be for photographers to make money at all. They certainly won’t be able to do it professionally. The site emphasizes that the same image can be sold multiple times but repeat sales usually require the kind of general but flexible images more usually found on stock sites. If the images on iStock are similar or bland it’s because photographers need them to speak to enough art buyers to sell enough times to recoup the cost of production. Foap’s missions, too,  may raise the chances of making a sale but photographers won’t make a profit by setting aside time to shoot an image that gives them just five bucks.

When microstock started, it provided an opportunity for a few top photographers to avoid the large stock sites and make a living as professionals. Saturation and falling royalties have now so reduced profits that even Yuri Arcurs no longer uploads to third party sellers, preferring to sell through his own site instead. Foap won’t fill that gap. But it may provide a way for photography enthusiasts to make a few bucks from their talent each time they spot a scene worthy of a picture — and which they’d miss if they hadn’t brought their iPhone.

Photography: Peter J. Dean

If you’re hoping to take your DSLR with you to London to watch the Olympics, shoot some pictures and perhaps make a few bucks by selling them… there’s a good chance you’re going to be out of luck. Just as you won’t be able to buy fries unless they’re produced by Tier 1 sponsor McDonalds (or if they’re sitting alongside some traditional fish) or buy a soda if it’s not made by Coca Cola, so you can’t sell an image shot at the Olympics if you’re not an accredited member of the media.

Getty, an official partner, will be there with more than a hundred photographers, producers and field editors taking thousands of images mostly for editorial buyers but also specifically for some client brands. But if you’re not one of the 5,600 accredited members of the media, you’ll find that your problem won’t only be the view your ticket provides. You’ll also be specifically prohibited from selling the pictures you take. Amateur Photographer has pointed out that the conditions of entry to the Olympics games make clear that selling your images is a breach of organizer Locog’s terms:

“Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes.”

You Can Tweet the Olympics

That might sound unenforceable, especially the bit about publishing images taken at the Olympic games to social media pages. You don’t have to look far on Twitter or Facebook to find shots of people sitting at the hockey or watching the beach volleyball, a usage that, despite the policies, Locog does, in fact, appear to allow.

Those shots tend to be pretty amateurish though, the kind snapped on a mobile phone as a momento rather than an image composed for sale. It’s the commercial use, the sort that enthusiasts will find the biggest opportunity, that Locog is trying to stop. And it’s doing it with more than a policy that’s badly worded and hard to enforce. According to Petapixel, the Olympics security staff at most venues are also allowed to confiscate all camera equipment over 30cm, including tripods and monopods. And because there’s no storage there’s a good chance you won’t be getting your gear back when you leave. As the site points out, if your expensive lens or monopod mean something to you, you’ll probably want to leave them at home.

Not all of those conditions are entirely unreasonable. Spectators arriving to watch the games shouldn’t have to try to see over a photography enthusiast putting up a tripod or squeeze past a giant telephoto lens. And athletes should be able to run, jump and throw things without wondering whether their look of disappointment is going to appear alongside an ad for a painkiller. You won’t be getting a model release, so there’s little point in trying to get a close-up.

And yet, there is plenty of demand for Olympics images. PicNiche, a service that measures the difference between the frequency of keyword searches on microstock sites and the size of the inventory available to meet that demand, gives “Olympics 2012” a score of 575.4. The site nominates anything over 100 as a “niche,” its highest ranking. That’s a rare opportunity in an industry suffering from saturation.

Meeting that demand while obeying the restrictions placed on photographers won’t be easy. You can forget about selling shots of athletes, and logos of either the Olympic rings or the London 2012 symbol are protected. Third party sellers will reject them and buyers will recognize them in the inventories of photographers’ own websites.

One option is to sell Olympics-related images for editorial use. You’d still have to take out the shots of the sports themselves, unless you’re accredited, but you could shoot buildings and scenes around the games as well as the logos. The highest-selling Olympics-related image on Dreamstime, for example, combines a shot of Big Ben with the Union Flag and the Olympic rings. It’s only for editorial use but it’s sold 57 downloads.

Focus on the Tagging

The problem with that strategy will be the connections and the timing. Big editorial buyers will be picking up their images from the accredited photographers, leaving lean pickings for independent enthusiasts; those 57 downloads will have barely paid for the image’s cost of production. And once the Olympics are over, the demand is likely to drop.

“I think the demand will primarily be before the events for commercial use, and after the events for editorial,” says Robert Davies, the creator of picNiche. “If photographers don’t have Olympics-themed images in their portfolio already, they’re probably too late for the vast majority of commercial sales, and will have to rely on editorial (which is of course during the events a significant market, reducing somewhat heavily afterwards.)”

Considering the restrictions on photography at the games themselves, on the commercial use of the images and the difficulties involved in both creating editorial images and getting them to the market in time, the best opportunity for photographers attending the games might be in the way the images are sold. “Olympics 2012” might have a picNiche ranking of over 500 but that figure drops into the fifties when you take out the year.

According to Robert Davies, it’s that extra detail in the tagging that makes the difference between one image among thousands and an image that can stand out from thousands.

“It’s not exclusive to the Olympics; it would apply to virtually any dateable images,” he says. “Specificity ‘usually’ (but not always) leads to higher conversions and thus higher picNiche ratings.”

If you’re looking to make money from the Olympics forget about taking your camera to the games. Start mashing together images related to Brazil and sports. Make sure that you tag them “Olympics 2016”… and enjoy the Games on television.

It didn’t take long for the appointment of Google executive Marissa Mayer as Yahoo CEO to ignite hope in the hearts of Flickr lovers everywhere. Entrepreneur Sean Bonner bought www.dearmarissamayer.com and used the domain to appeal not for a more friendly Yahoo Mail or for a better search facility but for a better photo-sharing site. Writing in 100-point font, he pleaded as someone who loves flickr “and it breaks my heart how Yahoo! has just let it rot for all these years” for the new chief executive to “please make Flickr awesome again.” The page was signed “the internet.”

Flickr was quick with a response. The site put up a page urging the internet to come and help make Flickr “awesomer.” That page linked to the site’s jobs page as well as to its github and code pages.

The pleas from both Flickr’s number one fan and from the Yahoo-owned platform itself won a lot of play on the Web. Mashable wrote about it, as did CNN, and Flickr’s response picked up more than 2,700 tweets. But there was little said about what exactly Flickr (or the Internet) should actually be doing to make the tool as awesome and indispensable as it used to be.

Here are some ideas.

1. Sort Out the App

There’s no reason that Instagram should exist, let alone have a $1 billion price tag. Flickr should have beaten founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger to the App Store by years and with an inventory of hundreds of millions of photos. It should have allowed photo editing, simple batch uploading from smartphones on the go as well as all the filters that Instagram’s enthusiastic snappers have been using to hide their shots’ weaknesses.

Flickr does have an iPhone app. It was introduced in 2009, a year after the App Store opened, and despite several updates since then is still terrible. Search for “photography” in the App Store and it turns up in 52^nd place — 22 places behind an app that lets you put your photo in a cut-out of Justin Bieber.

Describing the fall of Flickr on Gizmodo earlier this year, Mat Honan put the app’s failure at the feet of Marco Boerries, the head of Yahoo Mobile and a man described on Quora by Kellan Elliot-McCrea, Etsy’s CTO and the chief architect of Flickr, as “without a doubt one of the most viciously political, and disliked Yahoo! execs.”

But in that same Quora answer in which Elliot-McCrea reveals the debates and lack of decisions about Flickr’s app, he ends on a positive note:

“It would actually be incredibly straightforward to build something like an Instagram on top of Flickr using the API, especially if you could convince Flickr to release an API to “Beehive” the friend finder tool, which among other things, benefits from Y! backdoor deal with Facebook.”

He wrote that back in 2010, before Instagram joined Facebook and before Facebook was the size of a continent. But Flickr does still need to sort out its app problem. Members should be able to shoot, edit, add filters and upload to their accounts from their phones. They should also be able to browse similar images taken near their location and chat, Twitter-like, with other members. Instead of checking in, like Foursquare, they should be able to take pictures to show where they are visually and beautifully.

And they should be able to browse their own and others’ images on their iPads. That’s not awesome; that’s basic.

2. Open the Networking  

Flickr’s real benefit wasn’t that it was a place to store images. It was a place to share images, to talk about images and to like images. Top users quickly came to see the value of leaving helpful comments at the bottom of pictures and Flickr groups soon morphed into real offline Flickr Meetups and photo walks. Long before Facebook was helping college kids to stay in touch, Flickr was bringing together strangers and helping them to meet in real life. Marriages happened.

As basic social photo-sharing has leaked to Facebook, that activity seems to have died away. Mat Honan describes how browsing his friends’ Flickr streams reveals die-offs in image uploads from 2010.

But Facebook isn’t a photo site. It’s a networking site that also lets people share photos. Just as Mark Zuckerberg added Flickr’s albums and uploads to his networking, so Flickr could just easily let members send public messages directly to and from each other. If Twitter can put strangers in touch, how hard would it be to follow Facebook and Google+ and let image-lovers build lists and circles based on their relationships and photography interests?

Flickr wouldn’t replace Facebook. It can’t do that now. But a photo-sharing site without some form of networking capability feels as strange as a networking site that doesn’t allow image uploads. Even Twitter understood that. Eventually.

3. Refine the Search

Here’s the flaw in Sean Bonner’s plea: for image users, Flickr is still awesome. At least a bit. According to Photoshelter’s buyer survey  16 percent of image buyers say that they have found new talent on Flickr. That’s much less than the number found on Facebook — as well as Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter — but the site is still the number one place for bloggers and others to go for free photos. Getty’s Flickr collection of commercial images now contains more than 120,000 photos.

But despite the ability to tag and keyword images, search on the site has never been more than basic. While stock companies allow buyers to browse by category, suggest keywords and offer attributes, Flickr searchers have to know exactly what they’re looking for — and hope that it’s been tagged properly.

Make Flickr easier for image users to find photos — and far easier than images are to find on Facebook — and they might discover more photographers. That might bring back more photographers hoping to be discovered.

4. Free the Developers

The most important thing that Marissa Mayer can do though is to let Flickr’s people get on with it. Flickr was once innovative, fun and cool. Its APIs produced a host of neat additions and its Explore algorithm that picked the best pictures each day was simple, clever and good enough to churn up plenty of inspiring images.

Does anyone believe that had Flickr’s team been free to develop the site without needing everything to be rubberstamped by Yahoo, it wouldn’t have produced all the basic functions described here itself? Even if it hadn’t done, its users and developers would have.

Flickr needs to catch up. It needs to add the mobile functions that have allowed Instagram to beat it on the move. It needs to add the social functions that have allowed Facebook to take its photo-sharing features. And it needs to develop the search function that will bring in the image users who in turn will bring back the photographers.

And then it needs to develop the original, innovative functions that it used to do so well and which will allow it to move ahead. Then Flickr will be awesome again.

When Kelly Lindsay was asked to donate to a charity auction in 2011, the seniors photographer from Boston, MA, saw no reason to refuse. Although she had been asked to contribute to charities before, this time the request came through a friend who was close to the family organizing the event. The cause, a scholarship for local seniors, was one that she identified with and there was always the chance that being part of a benefit that involved parents of seniors might just translate into new business.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Kelly donated a $250 gift voucher. She has no idea how much the winner actually paid for her services and despite some initial attention, none of the prospects that she talked to after the auction actually made a booking. In the end, her gift didn’t cost her anything; the voucher has never been used. But Kelly, a relatively new photographer with a three-year old business, was willing to give away $250-worth of work and would have received nothing in return except the warm feeling that comes from supporting a good cause.

Kelly was unusual in that as a photographer who depends on bookings, she was able to donate the offer of a service rather than a product. For art photographers, requests for charitable donations can be a much bigger dilemma, forcing them to question whether they should give, what to give and whether they can expect their good deed to deliver anything in return.

Which Images to Give?

Cole Thompson, a fine art photographer who works in black and white, receives requests for donated images around once a month, agreeing to about half of them. Each donation requires looking through his stock of printed images to find something suitable to offer.

“Because time is my most precious and scarce commodity, I donate something that I already have printed and ready to go,” he says. “Often it will be one of my previously exhibited prints, they are in excellent condition but I cannot sell them as a new print.  The harder question is; do I donate one of my top selling images or one that doesn’t move as well and has been sitting in my gallery?”

His motivation for donating is always two-fold: he gets to support a worthy cause and at the same times raises the exposure of his art to bring in new sales. It should be a win-win situation. Since reading an article sent to him by a friend last year, though, he’s been reconsidering.

The article, written by Matt Gleason in the Huffington post last August, argued that photographers shouldn’t be giving away their works, not even to charities.

“Don’t ever donate your art to a charity auction again,” Gleason warns photographers. “Half a century of charity art auctions have changed the way collectors buy art. These fundraisers have depressed prices of art across the board and kept artists in a subordinate position that has no career upside or benefits.”

Boycotting art auctions, the article claims, stops money from leaving the art world, helps artists to maintain the value of their work and lowers the chances that a photograph that might go for a large sum in a gallery sale will be seen publicly receiving no bids at an event not attended by collectors. Charity art auctions, Gleason states, depress the value of photographic art.

The counterargument, he continues, doesn’t add up. Even when a sale raises money for a good cause, much of the revenue will be eaten up in the costs of organizing and publicizing the event. The tax benefit for the photographer is minimal; the Inland Revenue only allows photographers to deduct the value of the materials — a negligible amount — not the value of the image on those materials. (A collector, on the other hand, can write off the entire retail value of an artwork they’ve bought.)

And worst of all, the publicity benefits that should translate into future sales and make the donation worthwhile rarely, if ever, pan out.

“I would love to hear the story of the artist whose career rocketed to success because he or she donated a work to a charity auction and this act alone tipped the first domino toward an avalanche of success coming his or her way,” says Gleason. “This narrative is always implied. I’ve never seen it happen.”

That was certainly Cole Thompson’s experience. He says that he has seen no evidence that any of his donations have increased his sales. In fact, auction organizers often take artists for granted, fail to tell them the amounts for which their works sold or give feedback on their choice of print. Cole received back one unsold work to find that it had not been taken care of properly and was in “terrible condition.”

Forget About the Marketing

Cole’s discussion of Gleason’s article on his blog raised something of a storm. Some commenters stuck to Cole’s original belief that donated images both help a good cause and raise a photographer’s profile. Others looked at the low amounts that donated works often raise, question how much of that actually reaches the charity and, when they compare it to the cost of the materials used to make the pieces, wonder whether they shouldn’t have simply donated cash instead.

The one consistent point that runs through all the arguments in favor of photographers supporting charity auctions though is that donating should do some good — and that’s the only reason that anyone should help a charity.

Cole began the discussion on his blog with the confession that he didn’t know where he stood on the issue. He now says that he still donates, but only to local causes, to causes for which he feels a passion, and where he believes that the sale of one of his prints will make a difference. He doesn’t expect the second win of what he used to see as a win-win proposition will materialize:

“I no longer consider how the exposure will help me, simply because I don’t think that happens very often.  Better to be realistic and donate because you want to help others and because you believe in the cause.”

What do you think? When should photographers donate their art and their services to charity auctions?

Photoshelter, an online portfolio site, has been asking clients the question that’s always on photographers’ minds: what do they want from us? The company’s fifth annual survey of photo buyers, a collaboration with Agency Access, a photography marketing company, has recently been released — and it throws up a number of surprises.

The survey covered more than 1,000 image buyers who commission and license photography worldwide. Forty percent of respondents worked at advertising agencies, 15 percent at design agencies and another 15 percent at editorial publications. Their most common job titles were “Art Director” or “Creative Director” although respondents also included designers, copywriters and photo editors.

Asked about the mistakes photographers were making as they try to make sales and land bookings, the buyers offered up a mixture of old errors and new tricks. Buyers still prefer to see websites that are easy to browse, free of slow-loading Flash and have clear contact information so that they don’t have to waste time searching for ways to buy a license or commission the photographer. Mixing content from different specialties — showing sports photography alongside wedding photography, for example — on the same site was also a bad idea, they said.

“It’s one thing to show off your range, but another to position yourself as a ‘jack of all trades,’” explains Andrew Fingerman, Photoshelter’s CEO. “Instead be seen as a specialist and the buyer will have an easier time mentally and physically categorizing you for future work.”

Those complaints aren’t new although it is remarkable that photographers are still slowing their website with unnecessary extras and failing to market themselves clearly. A new trend though has also been raising the hackles of photo buyers: the habit among some photographers of sending a marketing email to a buyer with an email whose subject line begins “re:”. The aim is to dupe the buyer into believing that the message is part of an ongoing exchange. It’s a tactic straight out of the spammer’s handbook — and the messages are treated with the same contempt.

The Power of Email

That photographers are using email for direct marketing was also surprising. Asked where they turn when they need a photographer, 66 percent of the survey’s respondents said they ask a colleague for a recommendation. But the next most popular places to look were emails from photographers, photography representatives and agencies, and photography websites.

Nearly half of the respondents, in fact, said that when they need a photographer, they turn to their inbox.

Those high figures may be the result of survey bias. Agency Access, whose database of buyers was used to conduct the survey, specializes in email marketing. The recipients of its emails are used to receiving marketing messages and acting on them. A broader survey might have produced a lower figure but the willingness with which buyers accept photographers who turn to them directly and without solicitation is encouraging — but only if they do it right. That means targeting each pitch to the buyer and explaining why you’d make a match for their magazine or agency.

“Again and again, buyers told us that they often receive pitches from photographers who have clearly never looked into who they are or what kind of photography they commission or license,” says Andrew Fingerman. “The photo editor at Scuba Diving Magazine summed this up perfectly in saying, ‘Photographers need to take the time to research who they are sending their work to. I am the photo editor for Scuba Diving Magazine. I have no need for fashion photography.’”

Social Media Is Not a First Stop, It’s a Constant Source

But while email marketing has proved surprisingly effective, social media, despite its hype, is not a popular place for image buyers — at least not as a place for first contact. Only 9 percent of respondents said that they turn to a social media platform when they want to hire a photographer.

Those that do use social media though, use it in different ways and have found it remarkably effective.

Flickr remains popular with book publishers, despite the rise of Instagram, but buyers in other industries now focus on Facebook. LinkedIn, which was the most popular social media platform among buyers in 2011, is now in third place after Facebook and Pinterest.

But while fewer than one buyer in ten will turn to social media as their first stop when they need a photographer, nearly one in four respondents overall said that they had discovered a new photographer on a social media site, with more than half finding them on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform. Broken down by category, 59 percent of buyers from advertising agencies, 72 percent from editorial publications and 63 percent from design agencies said that they had discovered photography talent through Facebook.

According to  Andrew Fingerman, the difference between the reluctance to search for a photographer on Facebook and the success buyers are having on the site can be explained by the way buyers are using the service.

“Anecdotally, we hear that while social media may not be the first resource a buyer will use to find new talent, social media for many buyers is a powerful platform for keeping tabs on the photographers they’ve worked with. With this in mind, maintaining a freshness of posts – regularly sharing your own work and other valuable content – will pay off because it keeps you on the radar of former contacts and clients.”

Photographers need to make sure that their websites are simple to navigate, non-Flash, fast and have clear contact information.

If they’re not already pitching for jobs by email, they should be considering it and writing pitches that are targeted to the buyer and explain why they’re the right person for that agency or publication.

And they should be active on social media, and especially Facebook, updating their status regularly so that buyers can see who they are and keep track of what they’re doing.

And they should do all of these things because of what may be the most important statistic in the whole survey. Asked what was happening with their buying budgets, 78 percent of respondents said that the money they had available had either stayed the same or grown in comparison to 2011.

Figuring out what buyers want from photographers might be difficult. But it’s not hard to know what photographers want from buyers.

Photography: Naomi Solomon

Photographers who work with clients from the engagement shoot through the wedding to the baby photos and family portraits might just be missing an opportunity to shoot another lifetime landmark: the birth. It’s a trend that’s been growing in line with the use of doulas and home births, non-intervention and natural birthing. The International Association of Birth Photographers, an organization established by a birth photographer who kept receiving enquiries from women out of state, now lists 400 members. The phenomenon has been covered recently on Canada’s CTV News and by The New York Times.

The rising popularity of birth photography might be surprising. Weddings are pretty, public events but births are messy, private and personal. Women in labor are more concerned about their own pain and the welfare of their baby than in smiling for the lens and looking their best on film, and the newborns themselves are a long way from the clean, posed images of babies held in swaddling blankets and sitting next to puppies. Filled with nudity, nature, blood and disorder, birth photography has little in common with the kinds of jobs most photographers are used to completing. The requests though come in from a wide range of women, each with their own reason for wanting to record the arrival of their family’s new addition.

“My clients range from women whose personal choice is to schedule a Cesarean before ever feeling a contraction to women giving birth in water at home with midwives,” says Naomi Solomon of The Journey of Birth, a birth photography business. “They are diverse in culture and ethnicity. The one common thread is their appreciation for art of photography and for the decisive moment.”

Birth photographers tend to arrive when the client is at six centimeters and remain with the family until about three hours after the baby is born. The aim is to shoot the last few hours of the pregnancy and the first few hours of the family’s new life. It’s a time of huge emotions, a combination of concern, relief and joy, and the challenge for the photographer is to represent those feelings without focusing on the medical procedures or producing images that are graphic or overly biological. Naomi Solomon makes a point of not shooting the administration of epidurals or any invasive preparatory procedures and rarely photographs the woman while she is pushing. Informational shots such as clocks, monitors and scales are ignored too in favor of a series of images that tell the story of an emotionally-charged movement from pregnancy to family.

“When people hear ‘birth photography’ an image immediately pops into their mind of a woman pushing a baby out,” says Solomon. “That is why I refer to my work as photographing birth journeys; the fully pregnant belly, partnership during labor, the first time parents see their baby, the bond between parents and baby during the first hour of life, baby’s first bath, first nursing, meeting siblings and grandparents. I look for shapes, lighting and expression that capture the charge of emotion, exhaustion, struggle, anticipation, triumph and celebration.”

Nor is birth photography something that can be captured by anyone but a hired professional. Fathers may no longer be busy fetching hot towels or boiling water, but they will be too emotional and too involved to whip out their camera phones. Few mothers want a room filled with onlookers or friends as they’re struggling to push out their baby. Unlike some weddings and plenty of family portraits, documenting fully the moment of birth is something that can only be done by a hired hand.

Partner with the Birthing Team

Solomon has been a professional photographer for fourteen years. She launched her birth photography business in 2009 after starting a personal project documenting home births. It was a niche business, she felt, that she could manage while staying local and raising her own family. She now photographs two births a month and charges around $800, a rate that seems to about standard for birth photography. Clients come in through Internet searches, by word of mouth and from her listing in the International Association of Birth Photographers’ directory. Partnerships with other birthing professionals can also attract clients. Solomon receives referrals from doulas and other birth photographers, and clients will often have picked up her card at their doctor’s office, or from their midwife, chiropractor or Yoga center.

Those fees though have to cover both an unreliable number of hours and an event which is entirely unpredictable. Like doulas, birth photographers have to available at a moment’s notice. The New York Times describes photographers booking vacations ten months in advance and always traveling with their own families in two cars in case a call from a client comes in while they’re in the park or out shopping. Naomi Solomon recalls one client who had planned for a home birth but whose water broke 30 days before her due date with no signs of contractions or labor. With just 24 hours to produce the baby before the risk of infection would force her into hospital, and possibly to have a Cesarian, she birthed naturally at home in the last hour.

Photography: Naomi Solomon

A Friend with a Camera Bag

Home births, though, do provide a solution to one challenge faced by birth photographers: the willingness of the hospital to let the photographer do her job.  Different hospitals can have different polices towards the arrival of someone who is not a family member turning up in the delivery room with an armload of cameras and a box of lenses. Enforcement can be patchy too: some delivery rooms might turn a blind eye to a “friend” taking pictures but be more stringent if the birth requires surgical intervention.

The practical challenges of unpredictable timing and shooting permission aside, birth photography can do a lot more than provide professional photographers with one more earning opportunity. It can let them document a lifetime moment that’s unlike any other event they’ll be hired to shoot — and unlike any other birth they’ll have been asked to photograph.

“When you go to photograph a birth, don’t walk in with expectations or preconceived images you hope to create,” advises Naomi Solomon. “The power of a laboring woman’s mindset can and will make miracles happen.”

“I want to die in Bhutan” from Children’s Forum. Photography by young Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. © Bishnu Maya / Children’s Forum / PhotoVoice

In 1998, Anna Blackman, a photography and anthropology student at Edinburgh University, took time from her studies to travel to Southeast Asia. Staying in Vietnam, she was moved by the plight of the country’s street children. She teamed up with Ho Chi Minh Child Welfare Foundation and established Street Vision, a photography course for homeless youth. Participants were taught photography, given an opportunity to expand their academic knowledge and received vocational skills that would allow them to be creative and generate their own income. Over the next ten years around 200 young people passed through the course, receiving skills, camera equipment and work placement in Ho Chi Minh city and beyond.

At the same time that Blackman was setting up her program in Vietnam, Tiffany Fairey, another Edinburgh University photography student, was doing much the same thing in Nepal’s Bhutanese refugee camps. Her Children’s Forum project provided training in photography for young refugees, a creative outlet and a way to make an informal income through wedding and event photography. When the two travelers returned, they met, compared notes, saw the value of participatory photography in helping marginalized communities, and founded PhotoVoice, an NGO dedicated to using photography to help disadvantaged groups around the world.

PhotoVoice has now run more than 50 projects in 23 different countries. Since 2006, it’s been able to employ full-time staff, and is currently running projects in Albania, Ethiopia and in Russia and Bosnia Herzegovina among others.

“We find ways for photography to work.”

Some projects begin at PhotoVoice as a response to an issue or situation which the group decides participatory photography can help. They look for a local partner with links in the community and raise funds through grants, trusts and events.

“We are not issue-specific,” explains Matt Daw, PhotoVoice’s Projects Manager, “but rather are experts in finding ways for participatory photography to work practically in any context to provide a group that is in some way marginalized with a way to represent themselves and speak out through photography.”

At other times though, an organisation already working on a specific issue brings PhotoVoice in as consultants. PhotoVoice designs the project but again, the group works with a partner organisation that understands the issues and has local knowledge.

All projects use participatory photography techniques. Members of a community affected by an issue are given training in digital photography, in understanding how images communicate and in ethical representation that touches on consent, political risk and child protection. They’re given skills and equipment, and taught how to use captions to explain to different audiences the contents of the images.

“Our participants are not encouraged to tell their own stories – although if they wish to we support that process and advise them on risks and implications,” says Matt Daw. “The aim of projects is to give them an opportunity to explore issues that affect them and to create work that conveys their thoughts and perspectives.”

Participants retain copyright of all the images they produce but choose photos and captions that may be exhibited and which PhotoVoice and the local partner can also use for publicity. Participants also get to keep the equipment, and local systems are set up so that the new photographers can continue to enjoy support and get their work seen.

Each project is unique and each throws up special challenges. A project intended to bring together Israeli and Palestinian teenagers, all of whom had lost family members as a result of the conflict, ran into some difficult bureaucracy even if the result was productive. Working with a landless indigenous tribe in Paraguay last year threw up some different problems. With no electricity, solar panels had to be used to charge the cameras, and the traditional hierarchy dictated that all decisions were made by the community rather than by individuals, a process that ran all the way from initial project approval to choosing the captions.

That a foreign organization has to teach communities how to use cameras at a time when even the simplest mobile phone has a lens, and shared images have powered revolutions across the world might seem a little strange. But Daw points out that there’s a difference between having a camera and knowing how to use it to safely convey messages and stories so that there’s no negative backlash from subjects or audiences.

“A perfect example of how understanding is as important as ability is the prevalence of young girls sharing nude or suggestive photos of themselves and then being the subject of stigma, mockery or exploitation,” says Daw.

Nor does everyone have access to even the lens on a phone. About 40 percent of the world’s population have no mobile phones let alone the handsets and structure to share images, says Daw, raising the risk of what he calls “double marginalization.” While those with cameras and Internet access are able to communicate their views and issues through images, those without cameras become easier to forget and ignore.

Do it for them, not for you.

For marginalized communities, participatory photography provides an opportunity to communicate a complex message quickly, directly and by themselves. It’s empowering, increases understanding and can even provide employment opportunities. For photographers though, it’s also a way to use their skills to give back to the community. PhotoVoice runs a three-day workshop in London four times a year through which some 170 individuals have passed, including some photographers. The group does receive interest from photographers interested in working on their projects and provides a form to receive applications. Usually, however, they require applicants to have undertaken the organization’s training course or to have voluntary experience before being considered for paid work in such a specialized field.

But neither Anna Blackman nor Tiffany Fairey had experience or training when they set up their first projects. Nor did they have the advantage of the experience of other trailblazers who had already used participatory photography to help disadvantaged groups and provide a path for others to follow. If you are planning on setting up your own project, you will, however, need to do it carefully.

“It is more damaging to attempt a participatory process unprepared or claim that a project is participatory when it is not, than to avoid participation at all!” warns Daw. “Don’t underestimate the task, take advantage of PhotoVoice’s many free online resources, and make sure you are doing it for the participants, not for yourself.”

Photography: Anthony Danielle

Instagram made Anthony Danielle a professional photographer. The 25-year-old New Yorker and entrepreneur went pro within eighteen months of opening an Instagram account. He now has more than 180,000 followers on the mobile photography platform and wins commissions from corporations as large as airlines to shoot events and put images of their brand in front of his massive online audience.

The work comes in through Mobile Media Lab, a creative agency founded in April of this year by Danielle, together with fellow New York Instagramers Brian DiFeo (@bridif) and Liz Eswein (@newyorkcity).

The company offers a range of different marketing services, including custom website design and “interactive experience” but it’s the photography and Instagram marketing campaigns that really stand out.

“We see Instagram as another outlet for brands to use that we can help them with,” says Danielle.

So far the firm has covered about five brand events that have included the Volvo Ocean Race, a sailing event held over six days in Miami, the launch for the new Costello Tagliapietra line at Barneys New York, and a campaign to promote Warby Parker’s new range of sunglasses. Danielle’s favorite job came when he was asked to cover a New York Rangers playoff game against the Ottawa Senators at Madison Square Garden. The company was hired by Delta, sponsors of the New York Rangers.

“We were given access to parts of Madison Square Garden that are off limits to the average fan,” says Danielle. “It was a cool experience for us and our followers.”

Balancing Branding with Integrity

Not all the shots of that event were captured by Danielle and his two partners. The company used a team of six Instagramers to photograph and publicize the match, giving the airline a potential audience of more than half a million.

When Mobile Media Lab receives an enquiry, the firm first turns to its network of New York City Instagramers to see whose photographic style best fits the brand.  They then make sure that the photographers they use are comfortable shooting a number of images that “they feel is right for their Instagram feed.” A fashion event held at W Hotels NYC, for example, generated just ten images for the client. The six days that two of Mobile Media Labs’ photographers spent in Miami  shooting the Volvo Ocean Race, produced 53 images. Those ten fashion photos though generated 270 comments and 7,446 likes while the shots of the ocean race picked up nearly 60,000 likes and more than a thousand notes on Tumblr.

Shooting for companies while maintaining a relationship with followers may well be the biggest challenge in commercial Instagram use. Few social media platforms are forgiving when adverts start to intrude on users’ streams, and few serious users of any social media platform would want to be seen as a shil for a company, a reputation that would quickly cost them followers — an asset that’s at least as important as their photographic talent. Mobile Media Lab tries to balance the client’s demand for exposure and positive coverage with the Instagramer’s desire to entertain and inform his or her followers by demanding as much freedom as possible for the photographer.

“We don’t take shot-lists and [we] don’t have the brand review the shots as that tends to impede on the Instagramer’s view, which is what their followers are following them for anyway,” says Danielle. “We trust the people we work with, and believe in their vision as photographers will do what’s right for the brand we’re working with as well as their own personal brand.”

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More Ways to Make Money with Instagram

Instacanvas

A print-on-canvas service for Instagramers with more than 40,000 galleries in 30 countries.

According to CEO Matt Munson, the company is generating “thousands of dollars a day” and most images are bought by admirers rather than the photographers themselves.

Plusgram

An Instagram-based stock service. Photographers set their own prices and the site takes a relatively low commission of around 25 percent. The site is still new, sales are rare and without a tagging and search function will remain limited. But it could grow to rival Flickr as a source for off-beat images.

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Win Your Own Instagram Branding Work

Winning work from Mobile Media Lab will involve being known on its network, having a large following and shooting in a style that matches a client’s brand. But there’s no reason to depend on someone else’s firm to channel work your way. Mobile Media Lab was founded after brands sought out Danielle and his partners, hoping to cash in on the size of their following and the ease of spreading images across the Web. Build up a large following on Instagram and you might well find that brands are approaching you too.

The principles for creating that audience on Instagram are the same as those on any other social media platform. You have to create content — photos — that people will want to see and share, and you have to take the time to comment, discuss and interact with other Instagramers.

“I find the key to being popular on Instagram is providing good content and being interactive within the community,” says Danielle “I’m a firm believer of you get back what you put in.”

Once you’ve built up a following, ideally one in six figures, you might find that brands approach you directly. If they don’t, put up a website to show that you’re available and make sure that your community interaction on Instagram includes marketing firms and art directors as well as photographers. Let them know that you — and your followers — you’re available to be used as part of a campaign.

Instagram has been around for less than two years, during which it’s managed to pick up more than 30 million accounts and overtake Flickr as the photographer’s most important image-sharing site. Its acquisition by Facebook means that its future — and its audience — are secure. Not all Instagramers who use the service will be able to go pro, but those who can combine attractive imagery with online sociability and entrepreneurialism might just find that the service will pay for their photos.

When science fiction writer John M. Ford died in 2006, he left behind a valuable body of work consisting of more than a dozen novels, as well as short stories and games. He didn’t, however, leave a will. Writing on his blog shortly after his friend’s death, author Neil Gaiman described the “grief and concern” this caused to the people closest to him as they saw his literary estate disposed of in a way that the writer might not have intended while he was alive.

Ford, of course, isn’t the only creative artist to die intestate leaving behind works of art, some of which may be valuable, to be distributed according to inheritance law — and it’s a problem for photographers as much as it is for writers and painters. They too create pieces of art that have both sentimental value and a real financial worth. Nor do the works have to be great pieces of art sold in galleries and bid on at auctions. A collection of images on a hard drive, some of which could generate a stream of sales in the stock photo industry or royalties every time they’re reproduced in a photography book is as much an asset as an artistic print.

Although there are no figures that show the number of artists who die without a will, the percentage of people in the population as a whole who fail to prepare for their death has been put as high as seven in ten, pushing $100 million through probate court each week in the United States. Photographers are unlikely to be any better at preparing for their future than the rest of the population.

“Many people do not plan effectively,” says Jeff Marvin, a lawyer who specializes in creative property cases. “Most people do not like to think about the subject and ignore it rather than planning for their estate.”

How Do You Divide a Photo?

The laws that govern intestacy vary from state to state, but copyrighted works such as images and writing are generally treated as property and distributed, as part of the estate, between the heirs.

That’s a situation that can cause all sorts of problems. A photographer might have created more than one family in his or her lifetime, leaving estranged children and former spouses to battle with new partners for the ownership of an artist’s work. Heirs who are minors pose particular challenges. A trust containing their portion of the photographer’s work would have to be created, but it’s not easy to divide an artist’s work and if minor heirs are in different states, a decision has to be made to name a trustee, creating a new opportunity for fresh fights, difficult negotiations and the kind of conflict that he artist could have avoided with a will.

More worrying are the unexpected consequences of any agreements hidden in previous deals and old contracts that could end up negating even the assumptions worked into estate law.

“Any number of clauses could be written in to give away the rights to the publisher or agent,” warns Marvin. “Many artists are unaware of the rights they have or have given up if they have signed a contract.”

Marvin, whose clients consist of a mixture of artists, musicians and writers as well as small businesses, spends much of his time filing trademarks and guiding artists through the copyright process. Often, the trademark agent will want to make an amendment to the application and he’ll need to manage the negotiations on his client’s behalf. Occasionally though,  he’ll run across an incident that’s at least as surprising as the accidental loss to a publisher of a copyright’s ownership on the artist’s death.

In one case, for example, a client gave a series of interviews which were published in a trade magazine. Someone took the answers and published them word-for-word in their own book. Surprisingly, although the questions were protected by copyright, it turned out that the client’s answers were not since he did not have a contract of ownership with the interviewee, something that few interviewees expect or demand.

Those kinds of legal entanglements though are rare. The most common legal problem is the sort of copyright infringement that sees images swiped from photo streams and republished on websites and blogs. That’s easily fought with watermarks, low resolutions and demands for the image to be taken down. For more serious infringements, registration with the copyright office can impose additional statutory damages on image thieves who made real money out of an artist’s work.

You Own the Photo But Who Owns the Image?

Those measure, plus a will, may go a long way towards protecting the works of a photographer but even they may not settle the issue entirely. One of the biggest lawsuits concerning the use of images started in 2005 with the sale of a t-shirt in Target showing Marilyn Monroe, and has put the children of four photographers in a battle with Anna Strasberg, the widow of Monroe’s acting coach to whom she left her estate. Although the images sit in archives owned by the photographers’ heirs, the inheritors of Monroe’s image place strict limits on how their photos can be used. One heir has described how he once made $300,000 in a usage deal with a winery. He now makes less than $10,000 a year. The court case revolved in part on whether Monroe lived in California, where the estate owns images rights, or in New York, where image rights die with the subject, allowing the photographers’ heirs the right to sell their fathers’ pictures.

Even if a properly drafted will can’t protect heirs from all legal entanglements, they can make sure that a collection of work will at least pass to the people the photographer wants to own them. And it’s not a difficult step to take. Asking a lawyer to draw up a will is relatively simple and inexpensive. Neil Gaiman has made it even easier. Prompted by the difficulties raised by his friend’s intestacy, he asked lawyer, author and Sherlock Holmes expert Les Klinger to draw up a standard will for creative types that anyone can copy and sign — or better still, take to a lawyer.

Photography: Yuri Arcurs

Yuri Arcurs, microstock’s most successful contributor, has launched his own sales site. The Danish photographer who has managed to build an international business out of microstock contributions with offices in Aarhus, Denmark and Cape Town, South Africa, is now offering photos directly from PeopleImages.com.

The site, which currently contains 70,000 images, is not a stock agency. All images are owned by Yuri Arcurs — even those shot by his assistants and in-house photographers. PeopleImages, however, is not accepting outside contributors and does not pay out royalties.

Only 6,000 of the photos on the site are exclusive. Most of them can be found in the “Premium” collection, a group of sophisticated photos intended for high profile projects that make up 10 percent of the site’s inventory. “Pureplus” — images that are rare, expensive to produce, excusive to the site or include top models — makes up 6 percent of the site, and “Micro” which includes much of Yuri Arcurs’s  microstock collection already available on other platforms covers the remaining 84 percent. All of the images contain people, the kinds of images for which Arcurs is best known and a niche he considers his strength.

Prices are higher than those typically available on microstock sites. An “XSmall” Micro image measuring 248 x 561 pixels costs $3, a price that rises to $15 for a 4.9 megapixel version and $35 for a full resolution 33 megapixel photo. Prices of PurePlus photos are generally about twice that of Micro images while the Premium collection has fees more in line with traditional stock but without either the exclusivity or the link to usage. Prices here start at $45 for an XSmall photo and rise to $670 for full resolution.

Buyers can also purchase additional licenses. Exclusivity is available on a monthly basis that ranges from $140 to $325 for Micro images and rises to between $1,000 and $3,000 for a ten-year buyout of a top-ranked Premium photo. Retouching services can also be included in the purchase, and PeopleImages — somewhat hopefully — provides an option for illegal users to purchase a late license.

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How to Sell Your Own Stock Licenses

• Focus on a niche. Yuri Arcurs’s site sells images of people because those are the images for which he’s best known. Sell your photos by their subject, not just their photographer.
• Offer exclusivity. Microstock sites are poor at offering the exclusivity that some buyers need. Offer a range of options that will let you take the bulk of an image’s revenue up front.
• Include services. Image retouching allows Arcurs to add a small premium to his sales but it also increases the flexibility of his compositions. Images that are near-sales can be converted into completed sales with an additional fee.

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Stock Commissions Are Too Low

A stock photographer offering his images directly to the market isn’t new, even if PeopleImage’s retouching services and exclusivity options are unusual. But the move does send a warning to other photographers wondering whether they too can build a business — or even work full-time — as a microstock photographer. Arcurs hasn’t turned to his own site to create an additional revenue stream; he’s done it to ensure that the revenues coming in from the four million licenses he sells each year are able to cover the costs involved in creating them.

“Almost all stock agencies have been pushing commissions to an extremely low level for the past few years,” Alessandra Digsmed, Arcurs’s Personal Assistant told us. “If Yuri is to continue making a profit from doing stock, he simply has to look at new ways of approaching the industry.”

Microstock photographer Yuri Arcurs and founder of PeopleImages.com

The suggestion is that microstock has a problem that stock photographers have been warning about for years, including Arcurs: that the low returns paid by the agencies can’t cover the costs of a professional shoot. If even Yuri Arcurs, for years microstock’s most successful representative, says he can’t make a profit from cut-price images alone, it’s safe to say that the industry can only sell images by enthusiasts who don’t bother to count their expenses. That can only have a negative effect on the quality of the images on the site and on the desire of other photographers to contribute fresh photos.

But launching your own site might not be the solution for every photographer. Yuri Arcurs is as much a brand as an image-maker. Buyers know his name and seek his images out directly on stock sites. Some may be willing to pay a little more to do that more easily on a site that carries only his shots, especially when they can fine-tune the exclusivity and receive the images edited and ready to run based on their specific needs. Less-known photographers will struggle to bring in buyers who are likely to prefer the wider choice available on sites like iStock.

If All Stock Photographers Cut Out the Agencies…

Nor is it clear that a direct sales site can compete with the cheaper images available on microstock sites. Asked about take-up among buyers, Arcurs described PeopleImages as “still a very small player” and said that he hadn’t seen any effect on the sales if his images on other sites. If PeopleImages is to provide a solution to microstock’s tiny commissions though, Arcurs will need to persuade at least some of his regular buyers to abandon their microstock subscriptions and purchase from him directly.

It’s possible though that PeopleImages will have an effect not just on Yuri Arcurs’s earnings but on the stock industry as a whole. If other photographers decide that they should follow Arcurs’s lead, add a direct sales stream to their microstock contributions and try to wean customers away from the middle man, then microstock sites might have to work harder to keep their top contributors on board. That could mean higher returns for everyone.

“Yuri always encourages photographers to push for higher commissions,” says Digsmed. “He hopes that many more will sell directly, and in this way help send a message to the agencies that they are squeezing their producers too hard.”

A few lucky photographers get to live wherever they want, win jobs from clients on the other side of the planet and receive plane tickets that will take them to a shoot in some exotic Caribbean location. Most don’t. Most photographers’ clients are local. They photograph people who live within perhaps 50 miles of their studio, a distance that doesn’t make the commute too difficult or add too much to expenses. That means that despite the power of the Internet to reach millions of people who need of a photographer, the most important marketing for most photographers will be local marketing.

Here are several ways you can win clients close to home:

Careful Keywording

Gavin Holt is a wedding photographer in Los Angeles. Before he became a professional photographer though, he was a computer programmer with a degree in engineering from UCLA. Those two professions don’t usually mix but a look at his website shows what can happen when you combine computer know-how with a need to sell photography services.

The site isn’t pretty. It does have a single image that dominates the center of the page but it’s static, not a slideshow. Scroll down the page, and you’ll find acres of text with big, bold headings that end with a list of recent shooting locations. Whether anyone reads that text is questionable. But it’s not there to be read; it’s there to be noticed by search engines who pay attention to the terms “wedding photography” in the titles and pick up on the locations at the bottom of the page.

Search for “Los Angeles wedding photography” in Google, and Gavin Holt’s site turns up on the first page of over 16 million results.

Benefits

Leads without recommendations are likely to start their search for a photographer by using a keyword string that contains their location. When Gavin Holt turned professional, all his bookings came in through his optimized website. As he built experience, half came in through referrals but Google was still responsible for 50 percent of his earnings.

Disadvantages

SEO optimization isn’t straightforward. It’s competitive, slow to yield results and can change at any time. When we first spoke to Gavin while researching our wedding photography book, his site was second on Google’s results pages. It’s now third from the bottom — although still on the first page.

How to Do It

The easiest method is to hire someone to do the SEO for you, but that can cost around $2,000. You can learn to do it yourself, or you can build a website using a template service that provides space for keyword tagging.

Craigslist

Photographers might once have advertised their services in the classifieds sections of local newspapers. As the newspaper industry has declined  those small ads have moved online — and they’ve moved to Craigslist in particular. In New York alone, the site serves 30 cities, giving photographers a chance to pitch their skills to potential clients within easy reach. Search for “photography” in New York’s Craigslist site, and you’ll get a thousand results offering services from seniors and graduation photography to wedding shoots and portfolio photography.

Despite that competition though, advertising on local Craigslist sites can be effective. When Chelsea Kuhn advertised on her Montana Craigslist, renewing her free ad every couple of days, she found that she won a client for every ten to fifteen postings.

Benefits

Craigslist is free advertising to a local market. While you’ll need to renew the ad at least every couple of days to ensure that you return high in search results, you can use the same ad again and again. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes. Craigslist provides an opportunity to put your services in front of a large number of local leads at no cost.

Disadvantages

Craigslist’s competitiveness doesn’t just affect the frequency with which you have to renew your ads. It also affects prices. Many of the photographers advertising on the site are offering cut-price packages. It’s a place to pick up quick budget jobs, not major bookings.

How to Do It

Create two ads and run them on alternate days to see which approach delivers the best results. When you’ve got an ad that works, renew it frequently to ensure it’s always visible and doesn’t drop too far down the search result listings.

Local Press

The local media might have less power than it used to, but it is still important. Reporters don’t just put the name of a local service in front of an audience, they also confer a particular status on that business. Because the local newspaper and local radio stations are seen as vital pillars of a community when they discuss the work of a local business, that company — that photographer — comes to be seen as a vital part of the local community too. They’re not just another wedding or portrait company; they’re the town’s main wedding or portrait photography business.

And that endorsement can stretch beyond the appearance in the press. Place a cutting of an article about your photography service on the wall of your studio and you remind leads who want to hear about your service in person that the local press approves of you.

Benefits

Local publicity is free and powerful. While an ad in a local newspaper might cost several hundred dollars, a write-up about your work will provide more detail, samples of your images and cost you nothing. It also delivers an endorsement from a respected local institution that no paid advertising can ever bring.

Disadvantages

Publicity is unreliable. Anyone can buy an ad in a local newspaper or a spot on a local radio station but to win a write-up on the feature pages, you’ll need to persuade a journalist that you are a story that would interest their readers.

How to Do It

The way in is through press releases. You’ll need a gripping headline, contact information and, most importantly, a good story. Announcing a discount on your wedding package won’t be enough. You could tell the press though about wedding trends, offer a list of the most romantic locations for engagement shoots or tell people how to avoid looking stiff during a portrait session. Submit the press release to sites like PRWeb.com but also email it to lifestyle editors and reporters in your local press.

Image courtesy: Moo.

Moo cards have become easy but creative ways for photographers to grow their businesses.

For photographers, winning bookings depends on referrals and connections, on personality and on reliability. But mostly it depends on the pictures. Produce great images and you won’t have to do much more than show them to prospects to convert many of them into clients. Moo has been making that easier for photographers to do since 2004. The UK-based print company that specializes in producing small products now prints “millions of cards” each month. They’re sold to hundreds of thousands of customers in more than 180 countries around the world.

The products themselves don’t sound very original. The company didn’t invent business cards or stickers and it certainly didn’t invent the postcard and the greeting card. But it did offer a way for photographers to print their images on a small scale, and at an affordable price that allows them to give them away to leads and win new business.

It’s an approach that’s not been lost on Moo itself. The company’s latest product is Facebook cards which use a customer’s main Timeline image as the graphic, and add text on the back. At the moment, Moo is giving them away for free, not including postage, as a way of reaching new potential buyers who might order more traditional business cards, and in order to benefit from Facebook’s viral posts. Each time someone’s Facebook page tells their friends that they’ve got Moo cards, the company spreads its name a little further.

Where Moo really stands out though is in its “Printfinity” technology that allows photographers to print a different image on each card in a pack of 50. Instead of trying to choose one photo to represent a photographer’s complete portfolio and range of talents, photographers can pick 50 different photos and show clients just how flexible they can be at a shoot. It’s no surprise then that the most popular use for Moo cards, even among photographers, is as business cards that show off their images as well as tell clients where they can be found.

Give Them Away at Weddings

It’s also no surprise though that creative photographers have managed to stretch the use of the cards so that they act as more than reminders for leads they failed to convert. Moo’s greeting cards become “thank you cards.” Its sticker books become free gifts as treasured, used and as effective as day calendars were before apps made paper diaries outdated.

A number of wedding photographers, for example, include a free engagement shoot in their wedding packages. By printing some of those images on Moo cards, photographers are able to use them not just as reminders but as gift cards. That’s a strategy employed by British photographer Mark Dolby who used the firm’s highest quality “Luxe” cards to create his Moo-based gift cards..

In addition though, Dolby also prints the engagement images on mini cards that he distributes at the wedding itself. The cards offer congratulations to the couple and include both a URL and an access code that allows guests to see the wedding photos as soon as they go up. Instead of relying on word of mouth to encourage guests to look at his photos, his Moo cards tell them where to go. New York wedding photographer Melissa Lynn, goes even further and does so with even less text. The mini Moo cards of her engagement shoots simply include the words “in two weeks you can see what I see @ beimagedblog.com,” telling guests not just where they can see the pictures — a collection that presumably will include photos of the card’s readers —  but when they can see them.

 “I always commit myself to posting a sneak peek collection of your wedding photographs within two weeks of your big day so these cards provide some direction to your friends + family who just can’t wait to see the photos and to relive the day,” she says on her blog.

Skip the Fax Number

The effectiveness of that approach relies not just on the image but on the content of the text on the back of the card. According to Rebeka Fluet, Moo’s Marketing Manager, some information traditionally found on business cards is becoming much less important than it used to be, leaving space for contact details with greater relevancy.

“Be sure to only include the most relevant information,” she recommends. “For instance, fax numbers are becoming less and less important, as are physical mailing addresses. Social media accounts are now the norm. Be sure to include company URL and email, as well as any of your business social media accounts.”

The text then can be very simple. And when you can include as many as 50 different images in each pack of cards, choosing the photos to spread at the wedding or offer to potential clients should be simple too; just about any image that looks good can go in the mix. If there is any complexity in using Moo it’s a challenge that every photographer faces as they prepare to print their images: ensuring that what they see on the screen is what they see on paper — that the colors are sharp, bright and accurate.

Rebeka Fluet recommends that professional photographers who have already enhanced their images turn off Moo’s own dynamic photo enhancement when they place their order and suggests that black and white or greyscale images be converted to RGB or CMYK color spaces. Moo uses Coated GRACoL 2006.

Most photographers though seem pretty happy with their colors and the print quality of the cards they get back from the company. Photographers’ blogs are as filled with images of packages from Moo being opened as geeks’ blogs contain unboxing images of Apple products. But perhaps the biggest advantage that Moo offers to photographers isn’t the quality of the printing or even the number of images you can squeeze into a single 50-card box. It’s what you can do with them to spread your name and your pictures — and win new business.

Photography: Grant Kessler

Apple has used pop up outlets to sell iPads to conference goers. Chefs have used them to serve diners at temporary restaurants. But can one-off studio shoots, open to anyone who wants to drop by, work for photographers? The answer depends on how you plan them, what you offer — and what you hope to get out of them.

The idea comes mainly from the catering industry. Chefs travel from location to location, sometimes using food trucks to prepare the meals, allowing them to experiment with new dishes and meet diners who otherwise wouldn’t be able to taste their cuisine. In photography, where pop up studios are still relatively new, the aim is similar. Instead of meeting clients in their studio or shooting one client in one location, photographers pick a spot, announce where they’ll be photographing and invite anyone who wants to come along to make a booking and pick up some professional pictures. They get to reach new markets, take new orders and spread their name further than their fixed studio usually allows.

In March this year, Rhapsody Road, a new two-woman wedding photography studio in the UK, used a pop up studio to launch their business. They rented a room at Craft Central, a London arts initiative with space to hire and a generous approach to creative ideas. Helped by their intern — as well as family and friends — they brought in their camera equipment and lighting gear, then set about converting the room into a branded studio.

“We really had to think about how we wanted the studio to look,” said Emma Lambe, one of the company’s founders. “So we used lots of props, made lots of things, invested in signage. If you are going to do it, do it properly.”

A Six-Day Event

Their “Wedding & Family Photography Pop Up Studio” lasted for six days and offered portrait sessions, bridal shots and children’s photos, as well as workshops, games and talks.  The pair teamed up with other businesses including a dance studio which put on a class, wedding providers who were able to give brides expert advice , and food companies that helped to market the event and fill goody bags with snacks.

“Everyone involved found it useful for self-promoting plus it’s good to be connected with strong professional brands,” said Emma.

The biggest costs were the room hire, the event leaflets, travel and signage, which is reusable. Costs were spread out though and all the expenses came back in the form of bookings for future wedding shoots and portraits. Both Emma and her partner Natalie Sternberg were happy with the results. People are talking about them, Emma said, and referrals are coming in.

But things don’t always turn so well. Chicago food photographer Grant Kessler found that his pop up studio was much less effective; his first attempt barely broke even and he called off his second attempt after two of his three bookings canceled.

Like Rhapsody Road, Grant used a public location that suited his clients: a shared kitchen where start-up food producers can rent space to prepare their products. His aim was to move around in future, using different locations which would promote his service to their users. He took his usual location gear: a simple lighting kit, a white background sweep for table-top work, cameras and a laptop.

“If a client wanted anything else in terms of background and props, that was their responsibility to bring along,” said Grant.

His only hard expense was the cost of renting the kitchen.

Offline Networking Beat Social Media

The level of investment was one difference between Grant Kessler’s pop up studio and the six-day event organized by Rhapsody Road. But the most important different was the intention. Rhapsody Road saw the pop up studio as an investment in the future of their business, a chance to “shout it from the rooftops” and give people an opportunity to get to know them without any sales pressure. Grant Kessler divided his pop up studio into nine paid slots of 45 minutes each and saw the day as a way of creating a reliable revenue stream that he could control.

“Typically as a freelance shooter, you are at the mercy of others as to whether you shoot on a given day or make any money in a given month,” he said. “Had this pop up idea worked, it seemed to me I could repeat it on an ongoing basis and essentially define for myself that on Day X I am going to earn a certain amount of money.”

Grant only managed to fill five of those nine slots and all were for small businesses who won’t need to make a repeat booking. The only full job that the pop up studio produced came from a firm whose project turned out to be too large for the small space available.

Grant’s marketing differed drastically too. He posted a page on his blog to encourage people to register and turned to Facebook and Twitter to spread the word. The space would have helped, too, but competition between users of different shared kitchens in the city meant that clients of one space would have been less likely to attend a studio used in a rival kitchen.

While Grant depended on online networking to bring in paying clients, Emma and Natalie of Rhapsody Road used their offline networking to bring in sponsors. Emma dances when she’s not shooting so was able to persuade her dance studio to participate. They had connections with food brands and both had worked with a number of wedding providers before going into business together. Those connections allowed them to expand the scope of the studio, increase its benefits and reach more potential clients.

Creating a successful pop up studio will require some solid marketing and preparation. Emma talks of a pop up studio requiring six months to prepare and generating six months of work. But it also seems to work best as a marketing tool rather than a sales tool, a way of giving away as many free samples as possible that will lead to future jobs rather than a way of making as many paid bookings on the day as possible. And it also gets you out of the studio.

Updated: At Em and Nat’s request the post has been edited to reflect more accurately sponsor contributions.

Image courtesy: WinWatermark

“If a photographer fails to protect their work via a copyright symbol or Trade Dress Registration, it is considered open source on the web,” says a spokesman for WinWatermark, specialized software that helps photographers to protect their photos. “If you publish your images and do not watermark them, they become free for anyone to take and use in any way they like.”

That’s not true, of course. Even without a watermark, an image remains the property of the photographer who created it, and while registering a photo with the Copyright Office might increase the damages in the event of abuse, it doesn’t confer any extra rights the photographer doesn’t already own.

Try telling that, though, to bloggers — and to Pinterest users whose boards are largely made up of lifted photos. But while you’ll have to look hard to find an image on Pinterest that was paid for, placed in the Commons or taken by the poster, you will have to dig around to find a stolen picture that carries a watermark. A translucent logo placed on an image might not classify it as private property but it might just prompt users to stop considering it “open source.” At the very least, it could damage the look of the picture just enough to send the pinner off searching for something unprotected to steal.

Creating a watermark shouldn’t be difficult. But when you’ve spent hours composing, shooting and editing a beautiful photo, you will want its protective cover to look good too. The watermark might be there to make the photo unusable, but you don’t want it to be unviewable, a mistake that one photographer satirizes in this image. The mark needs to be distinctive and attractive but also quiet and understated.

“A good watermark should be insignificant,” says WinWatermark. “You can watermark an image and ruin the image impression. Make a watermark subtle. Let the watermark be a background presence.”

[box_green]Protect Your Images

• Choose a watermark that’s clear, subtle and carefully located.
• Use Tineye and Google Search to locate stolen images.
• Upload images no larger than 150 dpi to ensure they can’t be used for print.[/box_green]

Turn Your Logo into a Watermark

One approach is to use a transparent version of the studio logo. Designer Amber Mabe has created a number of logos for photography studios and charges an additional fee of $25 to convert those logos into watermarks.

“The main difference is that a watermark is usually a simplified version of someone’s main logo,” says Amber. “Also, it’s best that it’s monochromatic and transparent.”

The most important characteristic of a good watermark, she says, is simplicity. Like WinWatermark, she believes that a watermark shouldn’t overpower or distract from the photograph but she does say that it should be easily identifiable. Her logo designs usually incorporate the name of the studio rather than relying on a design element alone, a useful way to help people who see the logo remember the photographer’s identity and make contact with them later. That can be especially valuable if, despite the watermark, the image is stolen and spread around the Web anyway.

Some photographers prefer to skip a visual element altogether and opt for text alone, a choice that makes the message of the photographer easier to put across and switches the creative challenge from the design of the watermark to the choice of font. That might be simpler for a photographer but it’s still not entirely straightforward. Photographer Amanda Lee gets it right on this photo which includes a large, bold watermark in a font that matches the atmosphere of the image. Dixon Marshall, on the other hand chooses something plainer, stronger and a great deal more intrusive.

Location is vital too. Amanda Lee’s watermark lies at the bottom of the photo, below the focal point of the image — low enough not to disturb the picture too much but high enough to make removal difficult. Go too low though, and the photographer won’t have to worry about the image thief trying to edit the watermark off the picture; they can just cut it off with a simple crop.

Now Paste Your Watermark

Producing a design that can be clear enough to show who you are and yet subtle enough to sit on an image without disturbing it will be one challenge. The other challenge, though, will be to create the logo and to add it to every image that you place online.

For most photographers that might mean producing a transparent layer in Photoshop and making its addition to the image a part of the workflow during the editing process. For WinWatermark, however, which was created by a lover of photography who donates all profits from sales of the software to charity, Photoshop is poor at handling many of the aspects involved in creating and adding a watermark, particularly the text, EXIF data, transparency level and fonts.

“Photoshop is killer,” the company says. “It is also expensive, complicated, and really not meant to do watermarks… it can, but you need expertise, knowledge, and patience.”

The program allows for batch processing, enabling photographers to add a pre-designed watermark to multiple images simultaneously.

Watermarking involves a series of decisions for photographers that look easy but which can have serious consequences. Choose not to watermark an image in order to protect the way it looks, and some Internet users will consider your photos fair game. They’ll place them on their blogs, pin them to their Pinterest board and even add them to commercial websites in the hope that no one notices. Use a watermark to signal that your photo is private property and to make it less attractive to steal, and you’ll have choose a design for the mark that’s clear but subtle, create it — or pay for someone to create it for you — and decide where to put it. And you’ll have to make adding the mark a part of your workflow, a step that will only add to your processing time.

It’s not the only way to protect your images online but it is important, especially when even image software companies believe that an watermarked image is “open source.”

Photography: Billy Quach

Landing your first photography job will take time — as well as lots of preparation, practice and networking.

Selling your first photo is relatively easy. Image sales, especially stock licenses, depend more on the quality of the photograph than the name of the photographer. Get the subject right and shoot at the right quality, place it on a microstock site or a well-connected Flickr page, and you should find that you’re making a sale even though the closest you’ve ever come to professional photography is walking through a gallery and wishing those were your images on the wall.

For photographers looking not to sell an image but to win a paid job, life is a little harder. Commissions are more expensive than licenses that can cost as little as a dollar, and they require trust. A customer buying an image knows exactly what they’re getting; a client hiring a photographer can only hope that he or she delivers the images they want. It doesn’t always happen.

So what can a keen photographer do to build the trust necessary to win their first commission? Here are the seven steps you’ll need to take to win your first paying gig:

Step 1. Know the Jobs You Want to Win

Photographers are paid to shoot all kinds of jobs, from wars in Somalia and Ferraris for adverts and from local soccer matches and second weddings. Before you can even begin preparing to pitch for your first paid job, you’ll need to know what kind of photography you’d like to be shooting.

Bear in mind that clients will take talent and ability for granted. They’ll assume that every photographer they consider will know how to handle a camera and use light. What will land the sale will be reliability. They’ll want to know exactly how the images they’re buying unseen are likely to look.

So while you should choose a field for which feel a passion — whether that’s pet photography, children’s photography, or shooting buildings — you should also choose a field to which you can bring a unique style, your own interpretation and a distinctive way of photographing. It’s that approach which will win you the jobs. There are thousands of wedding photographers, for example, but Del Sol Photography has become a growing business specifically because of its unique Trash the Dress photography.

Step 2. Practice, Practice then Practice Some More

You never stop learning to be a photographer but no one will pay you to learn. By the time you’re pitching for your first paid job, your photography should already be at a professional level. You shouldn’t be surprised by anything you find on the shoot, and you should be able to handle everything the job throws at you. You should certainly know how to create the images and understand what you have to do to capture them.

That knowledge only comes with practice. Shoot as much as you can. You might not be able to get to Somalia to shoot a war but you can go to the inner city and shoot documentary images. Weddings might be hard to come by but you can bring your camera to some friends’ second nuptials and offer your images as a gift that saves them hiring a photographer. Pet and children’s photographers always have plenty of opportunity to hone their skills and work on their style.

Step 3. Build a Website

Commissioned photographers often win work as much through word of mouth as through online marketing but you’re still going to need a website. Pick up a recommendation from a friend who knows your work and their friend will want to see your pictures for themselves — and they’ll expect to be able to find them online. The lack of a professional-looking website might well set some alarm bells ringing and suggest that you’re less than reliable.

The website doesn’t need to contain more than a small portfolio, a bio page and a contact page. Plenty of portfolio sites, such as Foliolink, make creating those pages very simple. Just be certain to upload only a selection of your very best images and to set aside a section for your personal work, a display of your style and artistic preferences.

Step 4. Network Online

The biggest reason to network online isn’t that it might bring clients into your site. It might, but that’s not something you want to rely on. Most of the people you’ll be chatting with on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter will be other photographers rather than potential clients. But those photographers will give you a unique perspective on your photography. They’ll see flaws that you missed and offer advice that can help you to improve your photography and your website. They’ll help to prepare you to win your first job.

And it’s easy — much easier than the next step which is to network offline.

Step 5. Network Offline

Photography jobs are usually commissioned offline, and the work is certainly completed offline. So that’s where your most effective networking will take place. Once you’ve honed your skills, built a portfolio and have somewhere to display it, you should be letting people know that you’re available for work.

Tell your friends. Bring your camera into the office. Volunteer at an animal shelter if you’re hoping to break into pet photography or hand out cards in the playground if you’re looking to be a children’s photographer. But make sure that the people you know think of you as the “photography person” so that when they hear of someone looking for a photographer, you’re the person they recommend.

Step 6.  Work for Free (or Nearly Free)

One of the most common ways for professional photographers to win their first job is by combining the learning and the networking by volunteering. They work as assistants at wedding photography studios, tag along with newspaper reporters to help at sports matches or they take their cameras with them when they do charity work abroad. The work isn’t always free. Even assistants are usually paid small stipends (which can become significant income if they bring valuable skills such as Photoshop knowledge) but they’re not being paid for their image; they’re being paid to help the person who has been hired to make the images.

In the meantime though, they’re showing off their professionalism, learning the job and building valuable contacts.

Step 7. Do the Job

The combination of practice, portfolio-building and networking should bring in your first job. It might be a reference from a photographer you once assisted. It could be a recommendation from a friend who’s seen your children’s images. It could even be an online request from someone who’s seen your website and wants to know when you’re available. Now you have to complete the work… and use it to keep more commissions rolling in.

For print-on-demand art site, Fine Art America, the challenge lies in creating the demand, not making the prints.

If you’re looking to sell your photographic art online, there’s no shortage of options. From Zazzle and Cafepress to RedBubble and even Etsy and Ebay, artists, including photographers, are spoilt for choice. All of those choices though share the same problems. Stuffed with other artists all selling similar items, marketing your own work on the site means delivering potential customers directly to your competitors. And because the difficulty of standing out on a platform as large as Zazzle makes the marketing even harder while the size of the site attracts plenty of visitors, many users do no more than create a store and hope that enough buyers flow through to generate some income. It rarely happens.

Fine Art America, however, takes a slightly different approach. It too, serves as a giant platform from which artists can sell their work, but the site places as great an emphasis on marketing —and on tools that allow that artists to promote themselves — as it does on delivery.

The site launched quietly in 2006, about the same time that Zazzle was beginning to make headway. Sean Broihier, a self-taught programmer and Web designer, had built a simple website to help his brother, a salesman at a Chicago art gallery. Every time one of his brother’s artists created a new work, however, Sean would be asked to update the site. Realizing that there were plenty of other galleries and artists who also wanted to be able to update their portfolios, he adapted code written for his manufacturing business and spent the next couple of years growing Fine Arts America slowly while still working as an engineer.

Your Art, As Seen on TV

By 2009, the site was the most-visited, fastest-growing art site on the Web. Today, with Sean working on Fine Art America full-time, the site has just over 99,700 artists, with 100-200 new artists joining every day. About half of the artists on the site are photographers. The site even has a deal with television channel ABC which has licensed several hundred prints through Fine Art America for use on shows that include Desperate Housewives.

“It’s a very exciting program for our members,” says Sean. “Not only does ABC pay full price for the prints, they also pay out an additional licensing fee to the artists… and then there is obviously the thrill of seeing your artwork displayed on national TV.”

The basic process is familiar. Artists create their profiles, which are only viewable once they contain a headshot. They upload images and price them. Those pictures are then sold on a print-on-demand basis, giving Fine Art America a chance to add its own mark-up to the cost of printing and framing. While sellers can quote any price they want, fees typically start at $10 for an 8″ x 10″ print and go up in $5 or $10 increments. The most popular subjects include landscapes and cityscapes, as well as art shots.

But while sites like Zazzle and Cafepress see themselves as the center of the sales process — a kind of giant mall to which shoppers have to flock in order to buy artworks — Fine Art America is really more of a fulfillment center that provides a way for artists to deliver their work easily. The real benefit of the site is in its marketing tools, which include a second website that carries the artist’s name. Create a profile at Fine Art America and you’ll receive two URLs: http://yourname.fineartamerica.com and http://yourname.artistwebsites.com. Update the content on one site and the other is updated automatically.

The advantage, other than a doubling of the chances of picking up passing traffic, is that the personalized site is a walled garden. Visitors aren’t going to be attracted to the contents of someone else’s store, turning a lead into a competitor’s customer.

“It’s very important to be able to sell through your own website because a lot of artists don’t want to refer their potential buyers to a big site like FAA where their buyers could get distracted by artwork from other artists,” explains Sean. “With the websites that we provide, our members get the full power of FAA packaged into their own personalized websites.”

Other marketing tools that are rarely found on other art sites include a shopping cart that can be added to a Facebook page; HTML newsletters into which sellers can drag and drop their images, letting them turn subscribers into customers; and PDF sales sheets that can be handed out at art fairs, conventions and other places where selling happens person-to-person instead of across the Internet.

Nothing Happens Without Marketing

According to Sean, a number of artists who make use of the tools available on Fine Art America are making more than $2,500 every month in profit. But they’re the minority.

“Many photographers join FAA and take the ‘wait and see’ approach,” he says.  “They join… they upload their images… they set their print prices… and then they wait for orders to start rolling in.  That’s a recipe for disappointment…. You will get some sales, but your sales volume won’t be nearly what you want it to be.”

That’s likely to be the biggest difference between Fine Art America and other art store sites. While others sites see the platform and the logistics as the main challenge — and a job that’s complete once an artist has a way of taking orders and making sales — Fine Art America recognizes that that’s where the work really begins.

Making art is fun. Delivering it through the Web is a job for an engineer. But bringing in the customers and landing the sales is a whole different task, one on which the results depend as much as the quality of the shot and the content of the composition.

Since Getty bought iStock in 2006 for $50 million, we’ve been used to seeing stock giants snapping up their smaller rivals. At least one of those smaller rivals, though, is also expanding through acquisition. Fotolia, one of the leading microstock sites, has now paid an undisclosed sum for Wilogo, a crowdsourced design firm.

Fotolia isn’t short of money. In 2009, private equity firm TA Associates injected $75 million into the company. The firm also generates more than $100 million in revenue each year from its 3 million users and 16 million files, giving Fotolia a solid foundation on which to expand. Nor is Wilogo the site’s first acquisition. Fotolia also owns stock site Photoxpress.com and Flixtime.com, a site that lets users create videos from their photos.

For Fotolia, Wilogo makes a natural addition to its stable. Like microstock sites, the design market is open to anyone who wishes to sell, not just professionals who design for a living, and it serves a similar client base: publishers and developers who need images and branding for their websites and companies. It was those two complementary aspects that most attracted Fotolia to the company:

 “First, we strongly believe in the democratization of photography,” explained Jessica Hughes, a spokesperson for the company. “It’s photography and art for the people, by the people. So, when we came across Wilogo, it was the perfect match — it was design for the people, by the people. From there, adding logos to our product line was a logical business choice to expand our services.”

One Winner for Every 167 Designs

But while Wilogo sells logo designs, Web pages themes, banner ads and business cards to the same kind of people who search Fotolia for royalty-free stock photos, the design company’s process differs in important ways to the model used on microstock sites.

Rather than search for appropriate designs that they can use — in the way that stock buyers purchase images — Wilogo’s clients upload a description of the design they need, state their price and invite designers to submit work on spec. The client gets to choose from up to 80 designs, ask three designers to refine their work and then chooses a winner.

The prices paid are relatively high — and much higher than those on Fotolia. A logo design costs $295, a business card $195 and a Web page costs $895. Wilogo advertises that it’s paid out a little over $1.52 million for the 2,068 designs sold through the site. While that works out at a handsome $736 for each sale of a commissioned work, those sales are only being won by one out of the scores of designers who put effort into taking part in the contest. Wilogo declares that it’s able to produce an average of 167 designs for each “contest” so a great deal of work is being done for nothing. (The other two candidates selected in a shortlist are also paid a fee but none of the other rejected participants receive a dime.)

A designer who has to enter ten contests to win just one sale will, in effect, be working for a tenth of what the site considers a fair fee. That makes Wilogo’s contests exactly the kind of spec-based competition that professionals most hate: clients expect them to work in the small hope that they might get paid.

But at least it wasn’t the process that attracted Fotolia to Wilogo. The stock company sees common ground in the opportunity the site gives to independent talent but it has no desire to import Wilogo’s spec competitions to the microstock market.

“We believe the compensation model for Fotolia and the stock photo industry is proven, tried, and true,” said Jessica Hughes, “so no changes are planned.”

Wilogo, in fact, will continue independently under Fotolia’s umbrella. The service has plans to expand into new territories and accept payments in more currencies but Fotolia’s management intends to sit back and the let firm continue doing what has brought it success in the past while benefiting from the two companies’ overlapping client base.

Microstock Versus Spec Work

It’s tempting then to look at Wilogo’s purchase as a near-miss for photographers. However low the rates might be for microstock photographers, at least they aren’t being asked to work on spec. Sites that have tried similar models by offering bounties for specific images have wasted away as photographers quickly worked out the costs and effort involved in producing the pictures and realized that shooting them just didn’t pay.

But it’s also worth noting that the differences between the two processes aren’t as big as they look. Just as Wilogo’s designers will produce lots of spec designs, of which only a small number will sell, so microstock photographers produce large numbers of images of which only a small number will generate downloads. Each image will cost less to produce and take less time to shoot than the hours involved in creating Web pages (although business cards might be a little faster) but unless your photo becomes a hot seller, the payments are going to be much smaller too. Photographers also have to try guess trends and spot gaps in a market that’s increasingly suffering from saturation. At least Wilogo’s freelance designers know what they’re aiming for, even if they can’t be sure that hitting the target will be enough to land the sale.

For Fotolia, the purchase of Wilogo will be seen as investment. The company will have crunched the figures and decided that future revenues make the outlay worthwhile. But the purchase also provides an opportunity for Fotolia’s photographers to make their own return-on-investment calculations. As they look at the piles of unsold work piling up on Wilogo, they should be reviewing their own portfolios and calculating their return per image. Some photographers might well discover that they could be earning more money if they were working on spec for a publisher who told them what to shoot.

Photography: Gripnerd

Assistantships can pave the way to a career in photography but do you need to complete a boot camp just to help a photographer?

Photographers looking to take their first steps as professionals often use assistantships to build experience. Helping working professionals by carrying equipment, setting up lights or even taking shots as a second shooter puts them in the studio and at events, lets them see how a photography business works and gives them the kind of familiarity with rigs, lenses and people that no photography class can ever teach. According to James Sullivan, a 22-year photography veteran, photographers who have been assistants:

“are better at lighting, have better production skills, are better able to produce the images that their clients are hiring them for,  are better at dealing with clients and their crew, and are more secure with the knowledge of their own abilities and thus have the ability to instantly transition between the technical and the creative during a shoot.”

But Sullivan doesn’t just recommend that aspiring photographers knock on photographers’ doors and ask if they need any help. The former assistant who went on to become a lighting technician, producer and photographer/director teaches a boot camp that trains people who want to become assistants.

Teaching Assistants Isn’t a Photographer’s Job

The two-day workshops, which cost $425 (or $475 for late registrants) cover flash and color temperature meters, flags and nets, soft boxes and light modifiers, studio strobes and light stands, as well as the photographer’s kit and marketing techniques. The class also tries to teach problem-solving, an activity that accounts for 80 percent of what a photographer does, says Sullivan.

Most participants are students at photography schools and people who have never assisted but can include experienced photographers too.

“I’ve also had photo school teachers attend who had Masters degrees in photography but had no idea how to use studio strobes or meter or color correct and were expected to teach a studio lighting course at their respective schools,” says Sullivan.

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James Sullivan’s Tips for Assistants

• Give 200 percent every day.  If you’re not willing to work flat out, others are.
• Be aware. Watch everything, listen, pay attention, learn to have the problem solved in your head before it appears on set.
• Work for many different types of photographers.

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The boot camp contains plenty of valuable information for photographers but it’s knowledge that many assistants might feel they’re entitled to receive from the studio in return for their low-paid labor. The aim of assistantships has always been to learn and build experience rather than make money; the education for which Sullivan is charging several hundred dollars many assistants would expect to receive in lieu of better pay.

Sullivan himself would dispute that.

“Quite frankly,” he says, “it’s not a photographers job to pay someone to be a photo assistant and also teach them those skills during the course of a photo shoot.”

To judge by the demand for the workshops, photographers may be agreeing with him. Sullivan has trained more than 1,500 students in the eleven years he has been teaching the course,  and the boot camp itself developed both in response to requests from photographers across the country and as a result of discussions with equipment rental companies.

“At the time the rental companies and photographers were experiencing greater than normal equipment breakages and damages caused by people calling themselves ‘Photo Assistants’ but having no real world experience or skills,” Sullivan explained. “The photo schools just were not training their graduates for the real world.”

The problem isn’t just in the photo schools though. According to Sullivan, one of the reasons that a boot camp for photo assistants has become necessary is the absence of highly skilled individuals on set available to pass on their knowledge to assistants. Since 9/11, he says, a large number of people who used to be photo assistants have either left the industry or become photographers while budgets that once used to allow for half a dozen crew members now only allow for one or two specialists who bring skills that the photographer knows will make his or her job easier.

The Right Assistantships for the Right Careers

Looking at James Sullivan’s boot camp, its demand and the knowledge that it offers, it’s easy to conclude that the idea of an assistantship as a place learn a trade and supplement class-based learning with hands-on experience is dead.  Assistants should be working for their photographers, not expecting their photographers to teach them.

But that’s only true of some types of assistantships. There is still plenty of demand for assistants and no sign that event photographers and portrait studios have less need of a second pair of hands to carry equipment — or a lower willingness to explain why they’re using one lighting set-up over another or show an assistant how to put it together.

Participants in Sullivan’s workshops extend beyond students and the odd professor to include photographers from what Sullivan calls “smaller markets” who have never worked in a photo rental studio, used studio strobes or set up some of the continuous lights sources taught during the workshop. His alumni include people who have worked with Annie Leibovitz, Christopher Michaud and Gregory Heisler — top photographers used to working on complex shoots with large budgets. The benefit of taking the boot camp, says Sullivan, isn’t necessarily the knowledge that would allow an assistant to set up their own studio but the opportunity to work with famous photographers, sometimes for “big money.” Even that though, warns Sullivan, depends on an assistant’s personality, their drive and their willingness to give as much as they can.

It is still possible — even recommended — to begin a photography career with time as an assistant. But the kind of assistantship you do will depend on the kind of photographer you eventually want to become with the knowledge you pick up. If you want to photograph nuptials, then a practicing wedding photographer will be willing to show you the ropes.

Correction: In the original version of this post, we misidentified James Sullivan as William Sullivan. We have also changed a couple of sentences to better reflect Mr Sullivan’s views

Photography: Kanaka Menehune

Brides aren’t the only people who hire wedding photographers. Wedding planners choose them too — and they need them more often than couples.

Business owners are always told that it’s easier to hold onto a client than to try land a new one, but that’s not much help for wedding photographers. Clients will always hope they only need a wedding photographer once in their lives and few will return to the same company if they do find themselves working down the aisle twice. Baby photos and family portraits can help to turn a wedding couple into a lifetime client but years can pass between bookings, providing plenty of time for both sides to lose touch. Wedding planners, however, can be repeat customers. They put together dozens of weddings every year and while they might not need to hire a photographer for all of those events, having found someone they trust and like working with, that photographer can look forward to a steady stream of work.

According to Heather Smith, a wedding planner with more than seventeen years’ experience and President of Columbus Bridal Consultants, a networking group for wedding planners, about 8 percent of couples ask a professional to organize their nuptials. (A 2010 survey by The Knot, an online wedding resource, puts the figure even higher, at one in three.) The couples aren’t necessarily rich. Smith’s 300-plus clients have included school teachers and university students as well as doctors and lawyers. The average cost of a wedding in Ohio, where Smith works, is about $30,000, she says, and that’s roughly the amount she expects her clients to be spending on their event.

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How to Attract a Wedding Planner

1.  Network.    Attend wedding planning events and let professionals know who you are.

2. Be easy to work with.    Have a pleasant manner, avoid arrogance and show that you’re focused on the bride.

3. Reciprocate! You, too, are a wedding professional. If you’re getting referrals, you should be giving them too.

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Wedding Planners Want to Trust You

Not every booking, though, gives a wedding planner the chance to pick the photographer. Most clients, in fact, prefer to find the vendors themselves then turn to a wedding photographer to sort out the details, plan the day and make sure that everything runs smoothly. The wedding planner will only need to give a photography referral when asked to plan the entire wedding. At that point, talent, budget and a style that matches the bride will be important but trust will be the key factor in the photographer the wedding planner recommends.

“I have been in this business a long time, so I tend to recommend the vendors with whom I have had a long-term relationship,” says Smith. “I trust them, I know they’ll do a good job, and I love working with them.”

That doesn’t mean that wedding planners never change their photographers — Smith noted that she doesn’t always use the same photographer and that she does like to recommend new ones —but she has to trust them first.

That trust can come from a number of different sources. The best way for a photographer to win her trust is to come recommended by another wedding planner. That suggests that having broken into the community of wedding professionals, your name can spread widely bringing in even more business. It does little though to help a photographer make their first steps.

A website has surprisingly little use. Smith says that she won’t hire a photographer who has only invited her to look through their online portfolio.

“How do I know that work is really theirs?” she asks.

That might sound unduly suspicious but accounts of new photographers building their portfolios by filling them with pictures swiped from other photographers aren’t entirely unknown. A client who is paying $30,000 for a wedding wants to be certain that the images they’ll receive of the day are as good as the photographer promises — a return that the wedding planner is supposed to guarantee.

Send the Referrals Back

Even offering to meet the wedding planner might not be enough. When Smith started her business she used to arrange to see photographers at their home or in cafés to review portfolios and to discuss their work. These days, she says, she doesn’t have the time for speculative meetings, preferring instead for the photographer to make the effort to attend networking events for wedding professionals. Columbus Bridal Consultants, for example, invites vendors to two of the meetings they hold each year to hear about their businesses.

That networking doesn’t just allow Smith to look  through a set of pictures. It also gives her the time to assess the photographer’s personality and the ease with which she’ll be able to work with them.

“If they are taking the time to network, then I want to know who they are,” she says. “I gravitate toward the photographers who love what they do and are in the business to give the bride a great wedding.  If they are in the biz to get rich, I don’t care for them. There’s a lot of emotion in the wedding day….the photographer has to feel for the bride and put her needs over their need to fill their wallet.”

So a wedding photographer hoping to win referrals from wedding planners will need to produce great pictures and be reliable. But they’ll also need to invest in face-to-face networking, a method that will allow them to demonstrate their commitment and their personality, to show that they’re confident without being arrogant. The reward won’t just be a place in a wedding planner’s contact list; it can actually be the sharing of that list among other wedding planners. Smith says that she’s more willing to recommend a photographer herself if he or she has attended networking events.

And that’s one more thing that a wedding photographer can do to make sure that the jobs continue to flow in from wedding planners: return the favor. One of the first lessons that Smith learned when she started meeting wedding photographers was that they were after her business but didn’t always reciprocate.

“As a wedding planner, I need referrals, too,” she says. “So, I like the photographers who recommend me.  If they recommend me, I’m much more likely to recommend them.  The door swings both ways!”

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Interested in Being Successful at Wedding Photography?

Be sure to pick up a copy of Photopreneur’s wedding photography book on Amazon, The Successful Wedding Photographer. It’s filled with case studies of what’s working now for wedding photographers.

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When corporations want to grow, they hire business consultants to show them the way forward. When photography businesses want to grow, they hire creative consultants to show off their images.

When photography businesses run into trouble, their owners often feel that there’s nowhere to turn. They know they can produce great pictures. They know that their clients are always happy with their work. And they know that there’s a  market for their style, their approach and their talent.

They just don’t know how to reach it.

Instead of landing commissions from giant companies who want their oil rigs photographed or winning bookings from high-value couples who appreciate their artistic approach to wedding photography, they struggle to get past catalog shots for the local furniture store and nuptials for brides on tight budgets. They’re doing okay and they’re grateful that they can make a living taking pictures. They just wish they were winning more challenging work — and they’re not certain how to reach it.

And there’s no reason they should be certain. The sort of business planning and marketing skills that can take a business where it wants to go demand a whole range of talents that differ drastically from the creativity needed to be a great photographer. They also often require the kind of detachment that can only come from a disinterested observer.

Like management consultants, creative consultants aim to deliver those talents (and that detachment) to professionals working in creative fields. Unlike management consultants though, they often bring years of hands-on industry experience to their clients as well expertise in their niche.

Getting the Marketing Right

Amanda Sosa Stone, for example, studied photography at the Southeast Center for Photographic Studies. She then spent several years as an art buyer at advertising firm Draft FCB. She has been a contributing photo editor and co-authored The Photographer’s Survival Guide with Suzanne Sease. She now works with Agency Access, a marketing service for creative professionals, and provides personal consulting for photographers. The list of talent that she’s helped include Jim Krantz, the 2010 International Photographer of Year, Nick Onken, and National Geographic’s Assignment Division (with co-consultant Suzanne Sease.) More usually though, she works with commercial photographers who shoot advertising, editorial and corporate images, and with consumer photographers who photograph weddings and consumer portraits. Her aim, she says, is to provide help with editing, with creating presentation material such as branding, websites, portfolios and promotional material, and to lay out a marketing plan.

The process begins with the photographer sending Amanda an email explaining where they were, where they are and where they want to go. Amanda also asks to see current or older portfolios or any printed material the photographer might have. She and the photographer will then have two phone calls, each lasting an hour. The first call will discuss presentation and provide suggestions for ways in which the photographer can improve his or her website and portfolio. The second will focus on marketing and lay out a plan for the year ahead.

For photographers who want a Premium Consult, Amanda will then provide reviews of the photographer’s new marketing material (which includes list building), the final printed portfolio and the photographer’s new website. She’ll also follow up after six months and eleven months to see whether the photographer is still on track and moving towards his or her goals. The most common mistakes she sees photographers making, she says, are pretty basic:

“Not understanding their target market and what types of images best represent them and that market they are going after.”

Other than her knowledge of the photography industry and her own experience as a buyer, Amanda notes that what photographers really need is distance: the opinion of someone who is not emotionally attached to the images and can bring a fresh perspective to their presentation.

But that expertise and detachment don’t come cheap. A Basic Consultation costs $495 for the two hour-long phone calls, while the Premium Consult comes in at an impressive $1,495. For most photographers — especially those still trying to build the photography business they want — that’s a significant investment. So is it worth it?

Know Who You Are and What You Want to Shoot

It’s not an easy question to answer, if only because every photography business is different. Amanda works with photographers in the consumer market who promote themselves exclusively through social media but who still need a  strong website “to seal the deal,” she says. Other photographers though already have a good website and focus on search engine optimization, while some need a little nudging to market consistently — at which point they see the rewards consistently too. And Amanda’s work with Agency Access enables her to reach photographers who want to branch out commercially. Regardless of the niche, Amanda has found that the same methods tend to bring benefits to most photographers.

“I will say that my knowledge and experience has served both type of photographers (commercial and consumer) and the tried and true approaches usually work for both,” she says. “There are the rare few who always need a unique approach based on their market and/or their budget.”

In general, she notes, a consultant can help any photographer who has created a consistent body of work that contains between 100-500 images, knows what they want to be hired to shoot and understands who they want to do it for.

That last condition might sound simple, but it’s also likely to be the key to creating the kind of photography business you want. A photography consultant — like any other consultant — doesn’t build a business for the client. Nor does he or she provide the client’s career goals; clients are expected to deliver those themselves.

“Know who you are stylistically, know who you want to shoot for and know how to convey who you are, what you do and your style,” advises Amanda.

If you can do all of that, the only task left will be to bring in the clients, shoot the images they want and keep them. You won’t need a consultant for that part of the job.

Photography courses are meant to improve technique, encourage creativity, and often to increase earnings. These courses might not broaden your professional services but they’re fun, challenging — and you haven’t thought of them.

Wedding photographers might take classes on posing brides and shooting details. Portrait photographers will learn about expression and lighting, and there’s no shortage of courses for landscape photographers hoping to get more out of their foreign trips. But what do you do when you’ve studied the essentials and learned the basics? Here are four unusual photography courses that can take your shooting in all sorts of unexpected directions.

iPhoneography

We’ve already seen that it’s sometimes possible to make money from the images people shoot with their iPhones but those sold shots make up only a tiny fraction of the millions of photographs taken every year on Apple’s device. The other pictures are only meant to be memorable, pretty and artistic. London’s Kensington and Chelsea College wants to make that easier by offering a five-week course on iPhoneography.

The classes, which cost £115 for local students and £158 to students from outside the EU, will cover basic photography techniques such as composition, color, subjects and lighting (albeit on a camera with no manual aperture, ISO or shutter speed settings, and on which low light and zooming are best avoided.) But it will also introduce the range of apps available for editing and sharing images on the iPhone, explain how to use them and how to combine them for unique effects.

Richard Gray, the course’s teacher, concedes that the kind of artistic images that students are expected to produce will have little commercial value but predicts that the iPhone’s ubiquity and its potential as an image-maker will help to produce some exceptional images.

“I don’t think there’s any money in selling iphoneography,” he told us. “But it gives people a fantastic creative outlet for very little money and with relatively little technical knowledge. In that sense, it is a great democratising force for photography, allowing some very talented people to produce great art who otherwise wouldn’t have.”

If you’re in London, you can apply for the course here.

Digital Pinhole Photography

Take an iPhoneography class and you’ll be using the latest software applications to play with images captured on an advanced piece of consumer electronics. Take a Digital SLR Pinhole Workshop and you’ll be using a complex camera to recreate the effects of the simplest and oldest image-making device.

The three-hour workshop, also taught in London, introduces the camera obscura and describes the fundamentals of pinhole photography. Students get to make their own pinhole body cap and turn their DSLR into the kind of simple camera that’s been out of date for the best part of a century.

It sounds like a strange thing to do to a DSLR that will have cost students several hundred dollars but the effects could still be worth the downgrade. Pinhole photography on a digital device works on the same principle as the traditional technique, with the light landing on image sensors instead of directly hitting the film. The result though, says Photography Course London which is running the workshop, is images which are “softer and often painterly in appearance with a vignetting effect.”

Of course, you could probably get the same effect with an iPhone app but that would be a whole different course.

The Digital Pinhole workshop costs £65 if booked before March 17 and is available here.

Digital Infrared Photography

Photographers who prefer their photography techniques to be a little more advanced can go to the other end of the spectrum by taking a class on digital infrared photography. Taught online over four weeks by BetterPhoto.com, instructor Deborah Sandidge, author of Digital Infrared Photography, the class costs $198 but includes plenty of personal interaction with a teacher who has an expert knowledge of the subject.

Like iPhoneography and digital pinhole shots, it’s hard to see the commercial value of playing with infrared filters or a converted camera but the black and white images that infrared photography can produce do have a special softness that traditional monochrome shots just can’t replicate. Your $198 investment might not yield a rise in commissions or stock sales — and it’s even unlikely to win you a spot on a gallery wall — but it will give a whole new way of creating some unusual and special photographic art.

You can sign up here.

Ghost Photography

You can’t see infrared light but you know it’s there. The same can’t be said of photographing ghosts and yet you can still find people offering to teach photographers to capture orbs, snap spirits and picture poltergeists. The courses are often pretty unimpressive. The International Ghost Hunters Society, for example, offers a “Certified Ghost Researcher Home Study Course” that includes ghost photography techniques and analysis for both digital and analog cameras. The CD costs an impressive $175 and you’ll have to disinter an XP computer to run it. Not that you should. People who do want to photograph ghosts and spirits can find plenty of advice and tips available for free online — and of course, you can’t actually do it. As Bryan Bonner of supernatural investigation group Rocky Mountain Paranormal warned us:

“It would be great if I could tell you how to photograph a ghost, however because there has never been a documented photograph of a ghost it is not possible…. We don’t even know what a ‘ghost’ is.”

What you can photograph though is night activity, spooky abandoned places and ghost towns. Photographer Joe Reifer, for example, takes up to sixteen photographers out near San Francisco at night to explore long exposures and light painting. He’ll even tell you how to create “ghostly figures in your nocturnal images, a tradition that dates back to 19th century spirit photography.”

That kind of photography won’t just make for a fun night of picture-taking. It might even have some commercial potential. At least one photographer has managed to build a career out photographing the deathly silence of America’s ghost towns.

You can book a night photography workshop with Joe Reifer here.

Photographers have good reason to despise social media’s new golden platform but Pinterest is visual, viral and too big to ignore.

In December 2011, Pinterest achieved a landmark. The site drove more traffic to retailers than LinkedIn, YouTube or Google Plus. With two of those services supported by the Internet’s biggest company, that was some achievement for the two-year-old Palo Alto start-up that had struggled to raise cash to get off the ground. The new social media site is now said to have about 1.36 million daily users, an average monthly growth rate of 63.7 percent and an estimated value in excess of $200 million. More than two-thirds of its users are women. Half have children. And more than a quarter have household incomes above $100,000.

For photographers though, the most interesting aspect of Pinterest is that it’s visual. While Facebook and Twitter rely on texted updates to build interest, Pinterest is all about the pictures. Users create boards on which they can pin (or upload) images that relate to a subject — fashion, for example, or electronic gadgets. They can repin images that they spot on other users’ boards, giving the best pictures the chance to go viral. They can also add comments and they can follow boards and pins to make sure that they don’t miss out on an interesting post.

The images might be pinned from the users’ own websites, to which they receive links, but they can also be pinned from anywhere. Any Pinterest user is free to copy someone else’s photo onto their board from where other members can duplicate it.

Not surprisingly, that level of openness has met with some concern from copyright holders. Like YouTube, the site tries to position itself as a ‘safe harbor’ by telling users only to pin items to which they own the rights and by inviting copyright owners to report infringement. The first warning is generally ignored.

Getty has held discussions with Pinterest and the platform recently released a line of code that prevents any images on a website from being pinned.  Flickr activates the “nopin” code when a member disables sharing in the privacy settings. Try to pin an image from a Flickr user who has chosen  not to share his or her images, and you receive a pop-up inviting you to contact the copyright owner.

The assumption, however, remains that the copyright owner allows sharing unless he or she states otherwise. That’s not always a safe conjecture; there’s no shortage of images on Flickr copyrighted as “all rights reserved” but which can still be pinned. It’s a situation that’s likely to make Pinterest as difficult for image-makers as YouTube is for television companies. And perhaps for users too. One photographer and lawyer has now removed her pins after noticing that Pinterest’s terms make pinners responsible for copyright breaches.

But just as TV shows have benefited by uploading trailers and clips to YouTube so photographers can enjoy rewards by publicizing their work on social media’s newest and fastest-growing visual platform. Retailers are already ahead of the game, as are Etsy handcrafters whose stores are the biggest source sites, helped by the ability to place a price tag on their pins. (Pinterest then monetizes the pins by inserting its own affiliate code into the images’ links.)

In the same way that retailers are finding that Pinterest generates more sales in online stores so the results for photographers should be more traffic and more clients. Jamie Swanson of The Modern Tog, a photography blog, has claimed that in December 2011, Pinterest was her site’s highest traffic generator, beating Facebook by about 20 percent.

With such a visual site, gathering and driving so much traffic, what should photographers do to use Pinterest to build leads, make new sales and land new clients without weakening their copyright?

1. Pin Your Portfolio

The obvious place to begin on Pinterest is with a board that shows off your own images. These will act as samples that exhibit your talent and display the kinds of photos that clients can expect to receive. As Pinterest is dominated by women and almost half of its users are aged between 25 and 44, it’s a huge opportunity for both wedding photographers and children’s photographers.

Malisa Waldrop, for example, is a Dallas-based photographer with 32 Pinterest boards, including one on which she pins her favorite photos, mostly portraits and baby photos. The board acts a portfolio but one with viral potential as her followers repin, comment on and “like” her pins.

Not all images are treated equally though. According to Jamie Swanson, photos whose subjects look straight at the lens tend to do well, and pinning images with text, such as a headline, can be a useful way of promoting a blog post or a Web page. The image acts much like a link on Twitter or Facebook, with all of those sites’ potential for sharing.

Most important though is that the images should be watermarked.

As an image is repinned from one board to another, the link to the first pinner can be lost. Not every user will notice the source above the image and not everyone will click through to the original site. Nor is there any way to stop someone downloading the image to their own website and pinning it from there.

If Pinterest achieves only one thing for photographers, it will be to reinforce the need for watermarks that are clear, easy to see and tell viewers exactly who took the photo.

2. Pin Your Products

A portfolio board will help to sell your services. Some photographers are also using Pinterest to sell their products. Etsy, after all, isn’t just for handmade iPad covers and designer tea cosies. The site also has plenty of photographers trying to push their framed prints. Natalie Shuttleworth’s Snap! Shot! board, for example, shows off the prints that she offers on Etsy, as well as some of her images on Flickr. Few of those images have been repinned but each shared photo increases her chance of making a sale.

3. Pin Suggestions

Malisa Waldrop doesn’t just pin her own pictures to her Favorite Photos board. She also has boards for entertainment and travel, turquoise and sayings. One of her boards is called “Wedding Ideas” and it’s easy to see how a board like that would appeal to  wedding clients looking for inspiration for their own nuptials.

Jamie Swanson takes that idea even further with boards for bouquet ideas, veil ideas, details and rings, among others. The boards are aimed both at potential clients interested in wedding issues and provided as a free service to her own clients who get to see a kind of collated catalog of wedding ideas.

 “When you can point them to a board of resources that have been created just for them and their needs, it leaves a positive impression on them and makes them feel more excited about working with you,” she says on her blog.

4. Let Others Pin Your Images

One of the biggest advantages of Pinterest is that because users can repin images, photos that you place on your boards can go viral. But you don’t have to restrict that viral potential to the images that you’ve added to your own boards. Pinterest provides a “pinmarklet” bookmarklet that users can add to their browsers so that they can pin any image that they find on any site that doesn’t carry the nopin code. While that’s little more than a copyright infringement tool, it does give images the chance to spread. This wedding photograph, for example, was pinned from a photographer’s site using a pinmarklet. It’s been repinned almost a thousand times.

Pinterest’s Goodies page provides “Pin It” buttons that photographers can place next to their image to encourage pinning. Putting the button next to some images while adding the nopin code to other pages will help you retain control over the images you’re prepared to see spread into the wild.

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Have You Been Pinned?

Find out whether your images are on Pinterest by using the following URL:

http://pinterest.com/source/yourdomainname.com

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After You’ve Pinned, You Have to Push

Pinning images is simple enough. The real challenge will be to make sure that people see your pins and follow your boards. Keywords will be essential both to turn up in search results and — because Google does list pins added to Pinterest — it increases the chances that the source page will win search traffic.

To benefit from that SEO, you’ll need to add a full description to your pins that includes keywords. (Many Pinterest members use hashtags, a technique borrowed from Twitter, even though the method will only work if hashtags are known and agreed.) You can also include the URL of the source, including the “http” prefix.

Networking will be vital too. Most interaction on Pinterest takes the form of Facebook Liking and repinning but just as comments can build an audience on Flickr, so writing beneath images will help to raise your profile and draw to your boards the sorts of people who might enquire about your services or buy your products. As always, building a following will depend on a combination of good, regular content and interaction with plenty of other users.

The question though is whether all that activity will prove worthwhile. There’s no question that Pinterest has the capacity to drive traffic to source sites, and the site’s demographics certainly match some photography businesses’ main markets. If the result of that traffic flow is more clients then photographers might just have to take more liberal view of copyright and allow their images to spread across Pinterest.