The editorial stock field has grown tremendously in the past decade -- mostly because photobuyers have discovered it is now easier to find the photos they need. In the past, their only recourse was to get lucky at research libraries or consult stock photo libraries for generic photos of the topics they wanted to illustrate. Nowadays, with the web, fax, phone, and email distribution systems that we all enjoy, makes it much easier to get in touch with the source of a photo. (You!)
The result is that photobuyers, having become sophisticated in their photo acquisition methods, and knowing they can find the photo in a reasonable time before deadline, are turning more to individual photographers. Buyers build up a list of select photo suppliers who photograph in their mutually beneficial area of interest (expertise).
The result is that buyers are able to satisfy their readers (book, web, and magazine, (-we rarely list newspapers in our marketletter services because of the low pay), knowing they can find appropriate images that mirror the quality of writing in their periodicals and books.
MATCHING PHOTOBUYER INTERESTS
This shift to individual photographers has been a boon to part-time stock photographers who may have what it takes to be a pro, but spend their working day in other professions. Rather than try to compete with the full-time pros, part-time editorial photographers usually select a niche area that they enjoy photographing in (gardening, auto racing, rodeos, submarines, humming birds, astronomy -you name it) and then match their stock photo services with special interest magazine and book publishers. When these part-timers travel, it's usually to venues where they know the vernacular and can capture images in their areas of specialty, knowing they can put the pictures on an interested photo editor's desk on their return. Not only is building a deep file in one basic area good for their stock photo sales, but eventually will lead to an historical file (depending on your subject matter) that they can pass on to their heirs.
This kind of marketing insight helps these part-timers pay for their vacations and involvement in their personal interest areas (horse racing, antiques, dog shows, skydiving, etc.) . Begin today to start building a strong, deep file, in an interest area that few other stock photographers are exploring.
Welcome
to AvailablePictures.com. Here's where you'll
find information about selling pictures,
photography how-to, digital photography,
and photo specialization.
Digital Casinos
Advance Notes: On-line photo-display websites are proliferating on the Internet. Not only the sites themselves are increasing, but the numbers of images available are growing. "Something's gotta give."
The popularity of casinos across the land provides us with a parallel to what's happening for on-line stock photographers. There are some big winners. We always hear about them. We seldom hear about the losers unless chat group members crow about their unsuccesses. However, few artists or photographers like to brag about their lack of sales.
The other parallel is related to how casinos seem to multiply across the country, not only in numbers but also in physical size. If you've ever re-visited a casino, you are surprised to see how the facility has been enlarged.
On-line photo-display websites have proliferated in the same way on the Internet. Not only the sites themselves are increasing , but the numbers of images available are growing. Some sites boast that they receive 1,000 new pictures a day. My arithmetic tells me that's 30,000 pictures a month, or nearly 11 million a year.
SOMETHING's GOTTA GIVE
Of course not all on-line venues receive 1,000 new pictures a day, but let's say they receive 100 pictures a day. That 's 3,000 per month, or 36,000 per year. And, let's not forget all of those personal websites that provide a mini-on-line service to photobuyers.
Now if there were 350 on-line stock photography websites (which there are at the time of this writing), contributing 36,000 images per year to DigitalCasinos, plus all those personal sites, we would have a total picture count of … well, my pocket calculator can't calculate that high.
Can the storage world of present-day servers handle these kinds of numbers of images? If they can't today, we know that some way, somehow, they will figure out a way tomorrow to meet the expanding nature of DigitalCasinos.
And why do I say "DigitalCasinos"? Because for a qualified stock photographer, it's a big gamble to put talent and labor into an endeavor where the law of probability is not on your side.
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"The on-line proliferation of images is making
the Internet a big gambling casino."
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Digital cameras and upscale scanners are driving the number of available images upwards. Anyone with a quality digital camera and sensitive eye for imagery and a desire to figure out the technicalities of uploading images to an on-line website(s), can climb aboard, and they are doing so in droves. With this on-line proliferation of images, the Internet has become a big gambling casino.
Why a gamble? Like with any lottery, your chances are diminished by the expanding number of entries. It always makes big headlines when a person wins a lottery. The rest of us dig into our pockets for the next try. Should this be discouraging to you?
Not if you look at this phenomenon as a purely artistic endeavor. More so than ever, specialization becomes a key to escaping the lottery factor and getting your images published. The specialization approach has turned things around for hundreds of photographers. "Specialize and you will succeed." Those who have listened to my drumming away about this concept have gone on to build deep collections of images, all focused on a few select subject areas - that they love photographing, and that build equity each time they are out photographing.
If you're just starting out as a photographer, forget being all things to all people. Figure out what select few areas of specialization you enjoy the most (education, medicine, auto racing, reptiles, skydiving, etc.) and concentrate those areas. Become a mini-expert. Become a monopoly with few competitors.
And why is this important? As the Internet expands and on-line image sites expand along with it, photobuyers find it more difficult to find that just-right photo. They no longer wish to surf through hundreds of nature pictures when they are looking for a photo of, and I'll use a keyphrase here, 'Tapping Rubber Trees Rugen Island.' Are there many on-line galleries that can indicate to you the source of that photo? Only those that have required their contributors to use key phrases to describe their images.
In the last century, locating a hard-to-find image was a luxury. Most researchers settled for "good enough for government-work" -and books and magazines from that era reflect this. Today, for photo researchers, Google and other search engines have become a magic wand for finding that precise hard-to-find image. Using a word-search feature on their computer, they are able to sift through hundreds, even thousands of keywords to locate the source of that exact photo-in just seconds. The laborious search process of the last century is over. Search engines are teaching us that finding the exact location of a specialized photo quickly and easily is only a matter of learning how to do it.
If this new era of stock photography has made photographers become pre-press specialists, it has also made photo researchers become library scientists.
Photographers are unique in their style and picture content. By specializing in your photographic interest area or areas, you can escape the big digital-casino-in-the-sky and become an important resource to specific photobuyers, who will discover you thanks to search engines.
Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of "Sell & ReSell Your Photos" and "sellphotos.com," has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and to receive this free report: "8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer," visit http://www.sellphotos.com
Business
Notepad
STOCK PHOTO AGENCIES
can be an outlet for some of your pictures. Do agencies object to you marketing your own pictures when they also represent you? No, not the established ones. They encourage you to also market on your own. They want to share the sales with you, and also to share the setbacks. They know that a photographer who markets pictures on his/her own will understands the pitfalls (and glories) of selling ... Full
Story
STARTING OUT. Break into photography
by taking an online photo course. This website maintains it
will help you avoid the usual pitfalls of beginners in photography.
Designed for all ages.
Are You Selling From An Empty Wagon?
How many pictures are in your file? Wait. Let me re-phrase that. How many _marketable_ pictures? You may be selling from an empty wagon.
Fruit vendors know that all the bells, whistles, and solos of "Figaro" won't sell a tomato if everyone on the street already has tomatoes in their backyard gardens. If the vendor has only tomatoes, he has in effect, an empty wagon. Here's a test to see if _your_ wagon is empty.
First, a reality: if photobuyers at an ad agency, pr firm, or publishing house need a "typical" dramatic scenic, they go to their favorite stock agency to find it. Why? For the same reason you do your shopping at a supermarket, not at four or five Ma & Pa grocery stores: a large selection to choose from and time-saving one-stop shopping.
Attempting to sell your "standard excellent" shots directly to a photobuyer can be discouraging. For this category of photos a buyer wants to deal with the predictable source of a familiar agency or a handful of photographers familiar to him. He doesn't want the time-consuming and unpredictable task of dealing with an individual photographer he doesn't know, with the added trouble of processing and being responsible for lots of additional photos.
It's a tough field to break into. You might say, "I see so-and-so's pictures published all of the time." That's true. Those photographers are superstars. If you were to try to break into the field of music, painting, writing, etc. - you'd face the same uphill battle.
There are several routes up that hill for a stock photographer. And not all roads lead to the top. Just knowing how to choose a road can save months, even years of lost motion.
And now the test, which points you toward the right road. Is your wagon of pictures filled with sunsets, covered bridges, waterfalls, hot air balloons, -- all top quality? It may be no surprise to you that the next guy's wagon is also filled with the same subject matter and high quality. If a photobuyer broadcasts a call for a picture of a hot air balloon, he gets an Oklahoma land rush charge of wagons coming at him. He has learned to go to a simple one-stop stock agency for those standard, scenic pictures.
In a sense, your wagon is empty. It is filled, yes, but with pictures hard to market because they're up against stiff competition in terms of the sheer numbers of similar photos available.
Put your own standard scenics in an agency, and begin today to expand your files of pictures in special interest areas of your own.
Examine your interest areas, whether outdoor recreation, education, medicine, gardening, dogs, etc. Photobuyers will come to recognize you as a valuable resource for these "working" photos. Develop your markets in the area of your strongest interests - and begin filling your wagon with these highly saleable images. You'll find you'll be moving along the right road in that journey to the top of the hill.
At the heart of editorial photography is illustration. You illustrate a mood, a place, a city, a flower or whatever it might be, to complement a magazine article, book chapter, brochure, etc. To successfully illustrate, you need to know as much as you can about your subject. As you know, this is a powerful confirmation of the advantages of specializing, and you've no doubt experienced that it's a lifelong process to continually add to your knowledge in your special interest areas.
But sometimes knowing a lot about a topic or area isn't quite enough. Sometimes your imagination can be your most useful tool.
Inspiration From The Web
These days there is help available to get those creative juices flowing, swiftly and cheaply, and it’s right at your fingertips. Search engines are fast becoming the photographer’s most powerful idea tool.
If you find that you are running low on new creative ideas, browsing the work of others might be just the thing you need. In the past this would require a trip to the library and countless hours flipping through books and magazines.
Not so any more.
These days, all you need to do to browse the work of hundreds, if not thousands, of photographers, is to fire up your computer, get online, and let a search engine such as Google work it's magic.
Go to www.google.com and select the “Images Tab.” Then key in whatever special area/subject you photograph. Click “Search” and you'll soon see what I mean. You will encounter a huge number of images from photographers in all corners of the earth.
Find inspiration
“Is this legal?” you ask.
Finding inspiration from the work of others is not illegal or morally wrong. (Unless you downright copy what you see, of course.) To browse the work of other photographers, painters, peers, to find inspiration, is not only perfectly O.K., it's also a great way to get your creativity kicked into high gear.
Study what others have produced. Think about how you would improve their concept or their images. Observe the symbols that were used. Try to understand the concepts that were incorporated in the production of the various images. This whole process can help you come up with new fresh ideas for your own photos.
Just around the corner
While in the past it was common to say that inspiration was lurking just around the corner, these days it might be more fitting to say that inspiration is waiting for you just within your next Web-search.
Photojournalist Mikael Karlsson has 18 years' experience of working for magazines and newspapers in more than 30 countries. He moved to the United States in 1998 from his native Sweden. He lives in Nebraska and is currently US correspondent for 11 Swedish magazines and a regular contributor to a wide variety of U.S. publications. Reach him at mike@photosource.com.
Of
Interest
HOME OFFICE PERKS . . .
KNOWING THE ROPES
TO PUT MONEY IN YOUR POCKET
Advance Notes: If you’re self-employed, you’re eligible for specific tax deductions that can, in effect, “give yourself a raise.” There are many tax deductions you can claim that relate right to the place you probably do much of your work, your home. Here are some tips from the book, “422 Tax Deductions,” by Bernard Kamoroff, C.P.A.
The IRS accepts that a “home” office can be in a house, apartment, loft, condominium, trailer, mobile home, or boat. The term also includes any separate structure that is part of your residence, such as a garage or barn. You can deduct the expenses directly related to your home office, such as utilities, insurance, property taxes, etc. You must, however, meet certain requirements for your home work space to qualify as a “home office,” and be eligible for these deductions. (See below).
The home-office rules apply to sole proprietors, partners, and owners of an S corporation. The ... Full
Story
BETTER VIDEOS COMING Canon, Nikon video-shooting SLR cameras ready for action
Two new SLRs can now shoot high-definition video, taking advantage of
the superior lenses (much better than video cameras,
way better than point-and-shoots) available for SLRs.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-10-01-slr-video_N.htm?csp=34
HOW DO THEY DO IT? Yuri Arcurs - Microstock Entrepreneur - Not content with an
annual microstock income of US$1.3 million and being the top selling microstock photographer, Yuri Arcurs is creating a microstock empire. Here's a summary of his new entrepreneurial activities.
http://www.microstockdiaries.com/meet-the-new-yuri-arcurs-microstock-entrepreneur.html
WHO SAID PHOTOGRAPHERS CAN’T WRITE? History in the Buffer - David Burnett, photojournalist, wrote this piece about his experience "in the buffer" covering the election night in Chicago. A remarkable diary of his election night experience.
http://werejustsayin.blogspot.com/2008/11/history-in-buffer.html
TAKEAWAY: When TIME Magazine made “the computer” the Man of the Year, they sent David Burnett to Pine Lake Farm to photograph me and my new Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II. You can see the picture TIME used at:
http://www.photosource.com/rohntime
