Questions About The Photo Biz: Part 2
Thursday, March 6th, 2008Q: How would you advise a budding photographer such as myself or classmates to begin marketing themselves? And how do you market yourself now if different than before?
A: A lot of marketing depends on the type of photography you plan to specialize in. Portrait and wedding work is a very different business from commercial photography or photo journalism and they all require different approaches. Landscape, nature and travel photography like I do is different again. I can’t speak too specifically about portrait, commercial and journalistic photography, but there are tons of good websites, books and seminars out there. Portrait and commercial photography probably have the greatest potential to make money.
My goal is to work for myself, shoot what I want to shoot on my own schedule and then find markets for the images I create. At this time, my main markets are art collectors, corporate art collections, print media (magazines, calendars, cards, posters, etc.), advertising and web design. For students interested in this type of photography, word of mouth and name recognition is huge. Developing a web presence is critical these days by building a professional web site, blogging, posting on photo forums, and entering contests on a regular basis. I also keep a growing email client list and send out regular email newsletters. At the student level, this is also a good time to begin making contacts in the industry and getting to know publishers, gallery owners, seasoned photographers, art consultants and so on. Assisting an established photographer or working for a publisher can give a good idea of how the system works. Getting your work out in public is another key factor. Look for contests, community art shows, restaurants, banks, galleries, art fairs, offices and any place else that shows photos to the public. Don’t count on selling a lot of work early on in these venues, but look at it as good exposure, a chance to meet people, share your ideas, get reactions from the public (wear your thick skin), see what others are doing, learn how to develop a first class way of presenting and try to stir up some buzz around your name.
I’m at the point where I also give presentations to groups, send out postcards to potential photo buyers, submit images to magazines and publishers and work with galleries, art consultants and stock agencies that help to market me and get me out to even broader audiences. It takes time and constant work to build this all up. I’m not sure I’m doing much different now than before, I just keep adding new branches to my strategy, improving my approach and broadening my reach.
Q: Have you dealt with stock photo companies at all? If so what are your thoughts on them?
A: I work with a couple of stock agencies that represent my work. There are many dedicated stock photographers who make a good living. To succeed solely as a stock photographer, you have to be willing to shoot any subject that there is a need for (puppies, babies, medical equipment), have an understanding of the elements of what makes a valuable stock image and produce huge quantities of work every month. There is an old adage that says you can expect your stock sales to average out to $1 per image per year. That means to make $30,000 a year you need to have 30,000 images on file and being actively marketed, and those images need to be constantly added to and updated.
That being said, I know that I can’t produce enough quantity, nor am I willing to shoot things I’m not interested in, to support myself strictly on stock. However, I have an ever growing collection of images that I might as well have available for licensing as one of my sources of income. I license stock through my own website and with two other agencies that market to different types of clients. Some agencies will want you to sign an exclusive contract that doesn’t allow you to work with anyone else. Almost all stock agencies will want exclusive rights to market the specific images you submit to them for a period of a few years.
It is important to find the right fit when deciding how to represent your stock. Self representation gives you the most control and the most profit, but it is hard to have the kind of reach and connections that an agency does. The right agency can get your photos out to a much bigger audience, but of course they take a cut.
The big thing to watch out for is the new trend of stock agencies on the web that will take pretty much anyone and all you need to do to be represented is pay a monthly or yearly fee for hosting your gallery. Such outfits don’t actually care if they sell a single image since their income comes from the fees and the more photographers they get to join, the more they make without the need to sell anything. Agencies that only get paid when they sell images have a much bigger incentive to bring in good photographers, aggressively market your images and actively search out and stay in contact with reliable photo buyers. Avoid any stock agency that wants you to pay them a fee to represent you.
Q: As far as your intent goes when it comes to taking photo’s do you have a client or market in mind when you shoot a photo? Or do you seek potential clients after you have the images?
A: I do some of both. I really like to shoot for myself and chase my personal vision, but I also go after specific shots if I think there is a market for them. However, I do this all within the framework of my style of landscape, nature and travel photography. I have never set up a studio shoot, or hired models to create photos that I thought would sell. However, when I’m out shooting the landscape, I will also look for compositions that include roads in them because I work with an agency that provides backdrops for computer generated car ads. Normally I would rarely include a road in my photos. I also try to shoot some of my images composed in a way that would allow for text to be added or to be conducive to fitting in an ad layout. I also do assignment work from time to time, where I’m hired to create specific photos. This is when I most often end up shooting something I wouldn’t otherwise, such as furniture, architecture, cars and people.
Q: What would you have done differently (in regards to your photography career), knowing what you do now?
A: If I could start all over I would get into it as a career much earlier, when I was still single, so that I could have moved around, taken a variety of types of jobs, spent time on the road, lived on a modest income and spent more time being in the main flow of the industry. I also would have looked for some formal education in running a business instead of learning it the hard way. On the other hand, I think starting out later like I did I’m much more confident, focused, mature and world wise than I would have been starting out in my early 20’s, so perhaps I’m doing it right.
