Black Star Rising

My first blog post for the Black Star photo agency’s blog, Black Star Rising, is now up. It is based off of my previous blog post on blogging best practices. I will be contributing articles to their site periodically so if you like my blog you might want to bookmark Black Star Rising as well.

Here is the article: Seven Strategies to Ensure Your Blog is Worth the Effort

Thanks.

Blogging Best Practices for Photographers

Blogging is one of the most powerful tools that a photographer has available due to the intimate nature of the medium. Those same benefits can also be drawbacks without proper etiquette. It is surprising to see how off-putting some photographers are when it comes to representing themselves on their own blogs. A blog at best is a method of establishing more personal communications with your audience. There are a lot of ways to attract an audience, which I will get to later, but attracting eyes is easy. Retaining an audience is another matter. Just like in advertising, you only have a few fleeting moments to grab someone’s attention and keep it. So what are some things you can do to build loyal relationships via a blog?

1. Write for your readers. People don’t want to be talked at or down to. Be personal. (There’s a fine line though. For example, don’t discuss your three abortions from 15 years ago unless that is an underlying theme of your blog.) There’s a photographer I’ve seen that writes half of his blog posts in the 3rd person. That sounds really bad. I don’t know whether that photographer drinks too much of his own Kool-Aid or not but I think he would be better suited not even having a blog than writing that way.

2. Post photos. That sounds really obvious but surprisingly, there are a lot of photography-oriented blogs out there that are overly-chatty don’t feature too much photography. It is really easy to get side-tracked from the main concept of the blog but I would try to minimize that. Create another blog if you need another venue to talk about photography-related topics not focused around your own work; like this blog for example.

3. Post consistently. This doesn’t necessarily mean everyday but be predictable enough so your audience can have a general expectation of when you might have posted something new. It is really hard to maintain much less grow an audience without consistent posting.

4. Keep the shameless self-promotion to a minimum. It is okay to do some but too much comes across as bragging. There are more appropriate venue for promoting. People are on your site because they generally want to like you. Reward the reader with quality content then you’ve got word of mouth marketing.

5. Enable blog comments and respond to commenters. People are taking time out of their day to offer you something so it is polite to acknowledge them. The advantage to having a blog over the rest of a static website is that it allows for two-way communication. Take advantage of that!

6. Widgets. Install relevant widgets and badges on your blog where appropriate such as Twitter badges, Yelp if you are a travel photographer, etc… These are things that should be adding extra value to the experience for your audience.

7. Make your RSS feeds and subscriptions easy to add. Not everyone uses feeds to read blogs but it makes it much more convenient for those who do. Most importantly, it is a timely way to distribute your blog without any effort.

How to attract an audience

1. Write content that interests your audience and is conducive to discussions. My article on Top Ten Most Influential Nature Photographers of All-Time is an example of this. Once I wrote the blog post, I started a discussion thread on the Nature Photographers Network forum. Then it led to other photographers starting discussions on several other nature photography forums and wound up being discussed on Outdoor Photographer magazine’s blog in addition to a number of other photo blogs. All I essentially did was start a discussion.

2. Social media integration. Having a presence on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, niche forums, etc… is a perfect vehicle for seeding links back to your blog. Be sure to participate more than just shameless self-promoting though. Communicate with people. It is called social networking for a reason. TV commercials are past their moment in the sun because they don’t engage people. Facebook and Twitter are as hot as they are because you can “talk” with people who you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. It adds a human element to the work.

3. Participate on other photographer’s and industry blogs. This is a really rewarding thing to do. As a photographer, you may only care about selling your own work but there is a lot of value in building relationships with your colleagues. Many times, they end up becoming regular participants in your blog or on the social networks with you as well. And yes, there is a bit of marketing psychology to this but that doesn’t mean participating with a “salesman-like” mentality. Be yourself!

4. Write articles for magazines both print and online. Be sure to include a URL back to your site if possible. The readers that are interested in you will find your blog through your site.

5. Public speaking engagements. Photographers like Chase Jarvis, David Hobby and David Alan Harvey for example have tons of people participating on their blogs because they have big offline visibility in addition to an online presence. Another thing they have in common is that they care about engaging with their audience.

6. Write good blog titles, categorize blog posts, and tagging. This is both good for search engine visibility and for overall site usability.

7. Be an innovative photographer and do any of the above effectively.

There are a lot of photographers out there doing an excellent job of blogging. Those are the people you should follow. Don’t copy them necessarily but figure out what they are doing and see how that fits in what your plan.

Professional Photography in the 21 Century is Like Mixed Martial Arts

For thousands of years, masters of a single martial arts discipline would have an almost mythical status. Karate, Kung Fu, Muay Thai, etc… If you could master your art then it was assumed that you could win any fight with relative ease. It wasn’t until the early 90’s at UFC 1 that a skinny Brazilian in a white bathrobe (gi), Royce Gracie, stepped into the ring and submitted his opponent, a pro boxer, with moves that most people had never seen before that a new era was born. After defeating two more far larger opponents that night in similar fashion, Gracie went on to win several more UFC tournaments but people started to realize that they needed to add jiu-jitsu and other skills to their existing arsenal just to compete. Experience, toughness and size were rendered irrelevant by Gracie because they had been caught off-guard. Unprepared for change.

I see much of the same things going on in the professional photography industry nowadays. Photography has always been seen as a print medium since it was invented but now the Internet has matured, many experienced photographers are struggling to adapt to the technological changes. Photojournalism is the area that has experienced the greatest amount of change due to all of the cutbacks and financial struggles of mainstream newspapers. Even in good times, the pay was shit, but now there is just not enough work doing traditional news for the amount of people qualified to do it. Many of the ones that are still working now have either adopted new business models such as the Strobist or those who have become multi-media journalists simultaneously recording still photos, video and sound gathering. Those who are still working and haven’t tried to learn anything new are treading on thin ice.

As if becoming a great photographer wasn’t difficult enough, now people are saying that we have to be photographers, videographers, writers, social media experts and recording artists at the same time?!? Crazy! I think that is a bit alarmist but there is truth to that as well. To fight in the Octagon, professional photographers have to at least have a working knowledge of the various disciplines in case they might need to apply it sometime. Not knowing is going to severely limit the upside for income opportunities.

Honestly I believe that once this all plays out there will be a place for everyone if they play their cards right. Just like there still are karate instructors, there are still going to be successful photographers that never record any sounds or video but there are also going to be those who don’t specialize in any specific discipline and create their own style by mixing a little bit of everything together. But I guarantee that all of the successful ones will be the ones who keep tabs on what else is out there even if they never pursue those avenues.

Recently, a Karate expert, Lyoto Machida became the light heavyweight champion of the UFC so now Karate is the rage again. But he didn’t get to the top by solely training in Karate. He also has a black belt in BJJ and is trained in sumo wrestling. He uses that other stuff to prevent others from dictating the fight, so he can stay upright the whole fight kicking people however he feels like. It is the same concept for photographers. Don’t let the changing market conditions take you out of the game. Adapt to it, dictate where you will play and kick the competition’s ass.

By the way, I recently posted a multi-media project on my site. Check it out: Nature Photography Multi-Media Video.

ASPP Event: Copyright / Copywrong in Image Licensing

I had the opportunity to attend a fantastic lecture this past Saturday that was hosted by the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) and Picture Archive Council of America (PACA). The featured speaker was Nancy Wolff who is an attorney that specializes in intellectual property law. There were quite a number of people packed into the venue which was a photography studio in Culver City. The audience appeared to consist of photographers, stock photo agents (including one of mine), publishers and filmmakers. I was told that that is what the difference between the ASPP versus the other photography trade organizations because it caters to everyone involved with in the photography industry not just photographers. I tried my best to take notes for those of you who might not have had the opportunity to attend. Keep in mind that I’m no legal expert but here goes:

- The event was sponsored by the Copyright Clearance Center and they wanted to promote their new image licensing platform called Ozmo. (I personally know nothing about this product or the organization so I have no opinions on this at the moment.)

- Nancy started off by listing several popular myths regarding photo copyright laws including, “If I remove my image after being served a notice, I don’t owe any money.”

Copyright Basics

- Copyright laws were founded to give incentive to creators to continue advancing the arts and sciences in the U.S. The incentive is exclusive rights to the work for the length of the author’s life + 70 years. For corporations it is the lesser of 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation. I believe this time period designation was established in 1978.

- Anything created 1923 is now part of the public domain.

- Works not protected by copyright law include anything created by the U.S. government. (I got the impression that this is not as black and white as it sounds.)

- Copyright laws were revised again in 1989 stating that copyright notices were no longer required to be displayed in order to claim ownership. This is purely voluntary but recommended. A proper copyright symbol goes like this – ©year, name.

- Freelancers by default own the copyright to their work. However if you are an employee (work-for-hire) then the employer owns the copyright.

Fair Use

- Allows for limited duplication of material for educational uses including criticism, news, teaching and research. A good example would be photocopied class handouts, short excerpts and quotes.

- Fair Use is not about merely choosing an image to illustrate a news story just because it might look appropriate alongside the words. The image must actually be the news story. (I’m trying to paraphrase this part.)

- Must be transformative. Not merely repackaging the work. Does it harm the creator in any way?

- Parody can be fair use such as the famous Annie Leibowitz picture / Vanity Fair cover of a pregnant Demi Moore being mimicked for the Naked Gun 33 1/2 movie poster.

Nancy proceeded to show more side-by-side comparisons of situations that claimed Fair Use.

- Social commentary can be Fair Use.

- Merely changing the medium is still an infringement because it is derivative works.

Most in the crowd seemed to believe that Shepard Fairey, creator of the Obama Hope poster, infringed on the AP’s photo by creating the poster without asking for permission. Nancy mentioned something interesting that when Fairey sued the AP, the AP countered by hiring the attorneys that had just defeated the Stanford University Fair Use Project in a recent case.

Copyright Infringement

- Who is responsible if there is an infringement? The publisher, includes both companies and employees.

- One must show that the infringer had access to the original works. (I think this means that if the “infringer” has never seen the original work in question then it might not be an infringement and just merely coincidental similarities.)

- There is no hard and fast rule to determine “substantial similarities” as this is determined in court on a case-by-case basis. The judge will often compare two images then use that to decide if the case will go to a jury or not.

Nancy then showed an example of a photographer that sued an ad agency. The ad agency had contacted the photographer to use an image but apparently didn’t like the price so they went out and photographed their own similar version. The giveaway was the featured model in both had the same jacket on in both images carrying a briefcase. The photographer was rumored to be very happy with the settlement.

She then had a section about Scenes a Faire, which means that certain scenes or ideas can only be seen in a limited number of ways hence not being eligible for copyright infringement. An example would be photographing a well-known landmark in a public place such as the St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The more staged the original work however, the more likely it is to be considered an infringement.

- Why register your photos with the U.S. Copyright Office? You can’t get attorney’s fees waived if not registered. (This is one of many reasons to do so.) This can be done so now by electronic filing. Send thumbnails in large quantities marked as unpublished works. If the photo has already been published before filing, then mark as published works. Once an image is registered you never need to re-register it again.

- Avoid sending your registration via USPS because since 9/11 stuff just gets backlogged and lost due to anthrax scares. Send it via FedEx if you must.

- Internet Service Providers have a safe haven. When serving a take-down notice, you have to send to the ISP’s registered agent and give them proper time to address the situation? (Wasn’t quite clear in my notes.) You also have to identify the work in question, the location of where the infringement can be found, include either a physical signature or electronic signature on the document.

1st Amendment

- The 1st Amendment offers much more protection for editorial uses including art, news, and exhibits. Commercial uses have much more limited 1st Amendment protection.

- A proper model release should contain the name of the model, date of birth and have a witness’ signature. This applies to the U.S. mainly because every country has their own laws. In some countries the model can decide at any time to invalidate your model release.

- Pets are considered property and require a release if they are well-known and has been exploited commercially in the past. (I think this is primarily to avoid brand confusion in the marketplace.)

- Buildings photographed from public areas do not require permission to publish commercially. Several property owners have tried to sue for trademark infringement such as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland suing a photographer for selling a poster of the city skyline. The museum lost because there was no obvious trademark apparent in the photo. Same goes for photos of the Empire State Building. There is no trademark confusion apparent.

At the end of the presentation, Nancy recommended visiting two sites: stockindustry.org and copyright.gov.

Next they had a door drawing for three of her autographed books. I won the 3rd. For the record, I was planning to buy the book if I didn’t win it.

Question & Answer Session

- If a photo agency or an individual photographer wants to promote their own work are they allowed to use non-model-released photos in the promotional materials?

Nancy said there was not a lot of established legal precedent for this sort of situation. She thinks that if you have multiple images together in the promotional material then there is no confusion as to whether the model endorses your business. If you have a single photo depicted then it can more likely be questioned.

- Copyright doesn’t protect styles of photography. If you popularized photographing subjects on white seamless for example, then another photographer does the same idea then you can’t claim copyright infringement just because they used a similar style.

The PowerPoint presentation is available for download at the PACA website if you are a member.

Overall I would highly recommend attending a session like this if you are a professional artist or deal with intellectual property of any sorts. I learned new things and got some clarity on previously fuzzy concepts. You might think oh, law, boring academic stuff but this really was an interesting presentation and even entertaining at some points.

Friends Pay Friends for Photography Services

Charging friends and loved ones for your photography services is probably the hardest thing to do as a photographer in my opinion. There has been a lot written about this topic but I think this advice from the Anderson Independent Mail in South Carolina is short and sweet:

Photographer Ill at Ease Charging Friends for Service.

(Photo) Business Efficiency Decisions

When thinking in terms of your own photography business, it would be wise to observe what other types of businesses are doing like retail stores, restaurants, business-to-business service industry, etc… There is a lot that can be learned from evaluating the good and bad decisions that these other businesses are doing. I’ll use this local Japanese restaurant as an example:

I got this menu in the mail a while back. It was fully illustrated with nice pictures of sushi and other dishes. It probably cost them a lot of money to produce so I decided to order take-out from that restaurant one night. I knew where the place was located on the map right on Route 66 but while driving into the strip mall parking lot, I started to question whether or not I was in the right place. The reason why is because from the traffic flow directions, there is no line of sight to the restaurant. The view is completely blocked by a Merrill Lynch office from every angle. To complicate matters, on the strip mall marquee, the restaurant wasn’t listed.

Now I can understand that if the restaurant does okay business-wise during lunch when there is foot traffic from Merrill Lynch, but when I went for dinner there was no one in the restaurant except for the owner’s family and another fellow take-out patron. I wasn’t surprised because due to the location of their restaurant, it is impossible to get unsolicited walk-in diners after the work day ends. Heck, I knew where the place was and still was unsure of where it was.

All of the restarant’s dinner customers are being driven there purely by their direct mail efforts. Well that costs a lot of money per customer so as a result, they are probably not as profitable as they would be located in a more strategic location. This strip mall doesn’t have the type of businesses to bring people in during the dinner hours either so really at this rate, they should either consider relocating their business or just shutting down for dinner IMO.

My point is that if there are opportunities to get customers for your business that do not require your direct involvement then that is the most efficient type of sale you can ever get. It is about getting visibility as efficiently as possible. Whether those customers are parents driving by on the highway looking for dinner one night after work or a local hospital looking on the internet for prints to decorate their hallways, a smart business owner considers these factors in their business marketing plan before setting up shop.

LicenseStream

I’ve been reading about LicenseStream on various blogs and photography business forums so I decided to sign up for myself. The first year is free for the standard account and then $50 afterwards. There is also a pro account which you can get 1/2 off for the first year but I am testing the standard account on myself to see if this is potentially a viable option for licensing images.

LicenseStream Stock Photo Invoice

This image is of an invoice that I processed to myself. The price should be on there too but I whited it out before posting it online. If you are like me, that hates to do paperwork, then LicenseStream is definitely worth looking into. All I did was select the terms of use via drop-down menus and then email it to the “client”, then once I received the email, I clicked on the link to receive this invoice and payment options.

LicenseStream was touted as being fully integrated with the PLUS system hence the code under “Media Summary”. Basically how this works is that this code is embedded within your image meta data and the person who licenses the image should be able to copy and paste this code into the PLUS Decoder and get the terms of use instantly.

I personally think this would have limited use to buyers because only hardcore industry veterans would likely know enough to understand how this works. It is hard enough to get some photo buyers to understand the basic concept of image licensing to begin with. The plus side is that you can theoretically protect your copyrighted work a little better since the license would be embedded in the meta data. Given all of the Orphan Works b.s. that is happening in Congress, you can never be too safe.

PLUS License Decoder

PLUS Stock Photography License

Photoshelter’s payment and distribution options are pretty similar to LicenseStream’s but the difference is that the photo buyer can’t look for another photographer’s images on the site. This is a pretty big deal because whenever you send an instant license via Photoshelter you risk losing sales to other photographers if they decide to browse the Photoshelter home page out of curiosity. On the LicenseStream home page, there is no such site-wide archive search.

If you’re interested in seeing it for yourself, check out my LicenseStream gallery.

Be in Control of Your Own Destiny

I read on the Photo Business & News Forum yesterday that several template-based website services such as LiveBooks and BluDomain have been having problems with their Google rankings as of late. I personally do not have a website with these companies so I can’t say for sure how much if any control their photographers have over their own site design but from what it sounds like they don’t have much. If ranking high is really a top priority for your business then the only way to go is to either have a site designed specifically for your needs or to do it yourself. At the least you should understand how things work under the hood so you can give adequate direction to your service providers.

I might sign up for a portfolio site with one of these companies eventually but I don’t expect that their search engine rankings are going to be as good as what I can do for myself on my current site. If you think about it, if every photographer out there had the same website structure then it’s just random luck that you’d crack the top ten on Google for anything. But with my own website, I can tweak and adjust my web content at any hour of the day according to how I see fit.

Getting the most out of the search engines isn’t just about throwing all of your eggs in one basket such as “Las Vegas wedding photographer”, you need to have a strategy – casting a targeted net if you will to draw people into whatever it is you want them to do. If one word falls off the list then you should have other variations of the subject to make up for that. Lets say that tomorrow my ranking for Southern California coast photos drops, well that’s not really a big deal in my opinion because people can find me still by typing in Point Vicente Lighthouse stock photos or Venice Beach travel photographer for example, where I’m currently ranked at or near the top on Google, Google Images and Yahoo.

Sherri Meyer Photography Lands on National Television

Joe Winkler of “The Boomer Report” interviewing Sherri

When Jeff and I returned from our recent Road Trip, we had a very exciting phone message awaiting.

The message was from Joe Winkler of “The Boomer Report” (the first and only television news program for the Boomer generation) in Sacramento. He wanted to do a story on me, because I specialize in photographs of “Baby Boomers.”

Joe had stumbled upon my previous interview with Professional Photographer and Writer Richard Wong. A story on Baby Boomer Photography was the perfect fit for his on-line and nationally televised news program.

I returned his call and a date was set. This past Thursday was the big day. Fortunately, Jeff was home that day and got to be a part of this too. Joe spent a couple hours at our house and produced a great video clip about Sherri Meyer Photography. It started airing on ABC, NBC and CBS on Friday, in numerous states across the country. Unfortunately, it will not appear locally and San Diego is the only city in California in which it is airing.

Joe filming Sherri photographing Jeff & Cocoa

The good news is, you can view it on-line at “The Boomer Report.”

Note: Please allow a couple of minutes for the video to load. Loading times will vary, depending on what type of Internet connection you have.

Thanks to Joe Winkler and Richard Wong for making this all possible. It is a day Jeff & I will never forget!

Sherri Meyer Photography

Outdoor Adventure & Baby Boomer Lifestyle Photographer, Sherri Meyer Interview

Professional outdoor adventure and lifestyle photographer, Sherri Meyer is based out of the historic, Sierra Nevada Foothills gold mining town of Auburn, California. Having access to the Sierras as her backyard, she has photographed a variety of adventure sports such as kayaking, marathon running and off-roading. Here are her thoughts on the current state of the stock photography industry:

Hiker viewing the spillway at Clementine Dam, on the north fork of the American River, Auburn, California

I noticed that a number of your images appear to be of the baby-boomer generation. From what I have read, this is a category that is in demand and under-photographed so was it a conscious business decision of yours to photograph this demographic?

The main reason I photograph “Baby Boomers” is because I am one and most of the people I know are too. Some of them have become regular models for my photography. But, it is also a fact that photos of this generation are of high demand and in low supply. That is the other reason why I focus mainly on the “Boomer” generation. The “Baby Boomer” generation is the largest segment of the population. So why is there such a low supply of photos of them? Go figure! By the way, according to the publishing industry, you are also considered a senior if you are 50 plus. Photos of seniors are also of high demand and in low supply.

From a business perspective, what would you like to photograph that you haven’t already?

I would like to Photograph for REI and Title Nine. I would love to have my attractive and fit “Baby Boomer” models featured in their catalogs. Title Nine does use women of all ages in their catalogs, but REI seems to focus on children and models in their 20’s and 30’s. I really think they are missing the boat by not featuring older models in their catalog also. I would like to change that. Since the “Baby Boomer” generation is the largest segment of the population that means they also spend the most money for products [and typically have the most disposable income.] Therefore, they also deserve to be part of their marketing program! I would also like to do some food product photography. Every month, I pick up the Raley’s “Something Extra” magazine where I shop. It’s a free publication they put out for their customers. It’s full of recipes, accompanied with outstanding food photographs. I love looking at the photos and thinking that is something I would like photograph. Also, one of my sisters photographed food years ago, for the natural food company she and I worked for. I always admired her work. That may be where it all started.

Business reasons aside, what would you like to photograph that you haven’t already?

Cowboys. I have always been attracted to photographs of cowboys. I have stayed at a dude ranch and photographed cowboys, as well as other activities that go on at a dude ranch. I have also photographed rodeos and cowboys performing various other ranch duties. But, what I would really love to do is go on and photograph a real cattle drive. I would also love to photograph singer/songwriters Emmy Lou Harris and Jimmy Buffett, two of my all-time favorites.

Silhouette of a woman running at Mackerricher State Park

When dealing with a client directly, is there a minimum price that you set for negotiations?

Absolutely. Our fees are negotiable; however our minimum fee for any usage is $150.00.

When a potential client inquires about the use of an image and claims to have no budget for photos, there are some amateur photographers out there that are willing to give the client unlimited use of the image for free in exchange for a credit. They generally believe one of two things: 1. it will lead to a higher paying transaction in the future, 2. they only care about seeing their work published so they can brag about it. How do you feel about this?

I don’t think anyone should give their work away for any purpose, period. If your work is good enough to use for free, then it’s good enough to charge for! Richard, this question really hits my hot button. I’m giving you my short answer to this question for now, but I would love to write more in a future post.

Without naming names, tell us about a client from hell type of story.

I have worked with more than one client from h**l and they all have something in common. They have no respect! The three that come to mind were back in my earlier days and they were all regional, low paying markets. One of them was a brand new magazine. The editor knew nothing about working with photographers. I had to educate him about everything. Then, when one of his employees left on bad terms, she left with a CD of my images. Who knows where they ended up? I had another editor lose 4 of my [slides.] After contacting him several times, I managed to get all but one back. One of them was “nowhere” to be found until I sent him a bill for $1500.00. The next day, it was found. Amazing isn’t it? Then, there was the client that lost a whole submission consisting of 40 slides. I billed him also for $1500.00 per image. Soon thereafter, the images were recovered. I didn’t stop there, however. I did get compensated for the inconvenience of it all. The biggest problem with this type of client is they get treated the same way a good paying respectful client gets treated.

Couple hiking through a meadow of wildflowers in the American River Canyon

I noticed that you recently switched from the Photoshelter Archive to hosting your own Lightbox photo archive. What factored in your decision to do so?

There are a couple of reasons why I chose to go with Lightbox Photo over PhotoShelter for archiving my images. First, I wanted to have my images on my server rather than someone else’s. It’s more expensive to use Lightbox and there is a huge learning curve to setting up the galleries, but the benefits are worth it. I feel like I have a lot more control of my images, I’m getting more traffic and uploading images is much faster. Don’t get me wrong. I love PhotoShelter. I think they are one of the “best bangs for your buck” out there. I do still use their basic service and I plan to contribute to the new PhotoShelter Collection (PSC) very soon.

Any photography business announcements or personal projects that you would like to tell us about?

I don’t really have anything in the hopper right now, but there are a couple of things I would like to do down the road. I would like to publish a coffee table photography book featuring photos of… We will keep that a secret for now. Also, I would like to teach photo workshops and maybe do a little consulting. I did teach a few classes a couple of years ago which included a photo workshop through the adult education program here in Auburn.

Thanks Sherri. You’ve provided some great insights for the rest of us to ponder.

See more of Sherri Meyer’s work at: http://www.sherrimeyer.com

“Do I really need the (fill in the blank), or can it wait?”

When you freelance to pay the bills, (unless you’re already loaded), it’s not about how much gross income you make, it is how much net income you come away with. When you have a full-time job, it’s nice to get health insurance benefits (hopefully), have taxes taken out with every check and money put into retirement. When you don’t have one, then it is up to you to manage all of those things. So the freelancer really has to think of their income as business income, not salary. The IRS says so as well. Regular jobs don’t come with an overhead cost usually, but freelance jobs usually do, particularly photography. If you’ve ever had to do temp work or in an industry with no job security, then you can probably relate also.

I’ve heard a joke from some professional photographers that you can tell the difference between the full-time freelancer and a serious hobbyist just by looking at them. The F/T freelancer has a beat-up camera & lens and drives a 20 year old car. The other photographer has the latest equipment and makes sure everyone knows it. For the freelancer it’s as much about minimizing your expenses as much as it is generating income. So what types of costs are there to consider?

Camera: Do you need the latest and greatest body? It depends. Can you get the job done effectively with your current gear?

Lenses: Can the images I can only make with the image stabilizer lens sell for enough money to justify the extra cost? Can I get similar image quality with a non-Canon L lens? Would it be smarter in the long-run to put this money into a mutual fund or property investment so I can upgrade later?

Car: Does your 15-year old car still work? What is the gas efficiency? How much does it cost to maintain?

Travel: Hotels or camping? Can you get an inexpensive room in the city without fearing for your life? Does camping still save you money once you factor in the driving distance? Can you find someone to split the travel costs with? Haven’t I photographed alpenglow on Half Dome ten times already? Would I ever sell an image from this place if I go there?

Office: Where you handle your daily business – can you get the same amount of work done conveniently in your own home rather than renting studio space? I’ve read and heard all sorts of things from wedding photographers believe that meeting in the photographers home helps to seal the deal, to having a downtown studio sounds more impressive to photo editors.

Other Stuff: Everything else that normal people have.

The moral of the story: It’s hard to earn a living doing what you enjoy but many are doing it. It can be an incredibly rewarding occupation or part-time business. It requires a lot of personal sacrifice however. There are some people making a mockery of photography by giving work away for free or selling royalty-free for pennies. If you are going to shoot serious pictures, then charge appropriately for your pictures. If they are good enough to be published then they will sell for market value. With the general public suspecting each photographer of being a paparazzi member, terrorist or a source for free photos these days, really all photographers are being affected by the actions of a few. This is not simply a matter of economic philosophy. What it comes down to is that photography needs an image rehabilitation and that should start today with you and I. It’s about educating those in need of one.

Stock Photo Agencies

To start this blog off the right way, let’s take on one of the most popular photo business topics of them all – stock photo agencies.

Quick background info: Stock photo agencies are a source where art buyers (advertising agencies, publishers, corporations, small businesses, etc…) can license pictures for publication. A stock photo agency can range in size from large corporations like Getty Images to a family-owned business such as Galen Rowell’s Mountain Light Photography. Getty is considered to be a general photo agency that has every type of photo imagineable while Rowell’s is a niche agency consisting of his own outdoor adventure and landscape photos primarily.

Getty is the industry leader by far, but not too popular with many professional photographers at the moment due to questionable business decisions and unfavorable contract terms for their contributors. In recent years, photographers have flocked to competitors like Alamy Images and start-ups such as Digital Railroad Marketplace and the Photoshelter Collection.

Pros:

- Reach markets that you currently aren’t

- Let someone else handle the day-to-day licensing of your images

- Earn $$$ for your photos

Cons:

- Some agency contracts take more than 50% commission ie. Getty.

- Some agencies require image exclusivity, meaning that you can’t license those images anywhere else for the duration of your contract. ie. Getty, Corbis, Age Fotostock, Lonely Planet Images

- Time consuming to produce and supply a large quantity of digital files on a regular basis

- The market is over-saturated with images

- The need to keyword and caption your images

- Most do not tell you the exact source of your photo credits, some will give you basic info about the type of publication

- Competition with other agency photographers for a share of the pie

Legit stock photo agencies:

The Big Ones- Getty, Corbis, Alamy, Jupiter, Age Fotostock

Up & Comers: Photoshelter Collection, Digital Railroad Marketplace

For a more comprehensive list of agencies check out A Photo Editor’s Stock Photo Agencies list. Be sure to avoid the agencies under the “Crap” category…

(I have images with Alamy, PSC and DRR (distributed via a niche photo agency) and will discuss my own experiences with them in a future blog post.)

Exclusive or non-exclusive?: The idea behind signing an exclusive contract is a matter of maintaining higher prices by limiting the amount of photos available in the market. Getty Images for example makes contributors agree to not market their images elsewhere during the duration of the contract. The goal is to maintain a higher licensing fee because those same images cannot be licensed anywhere else but through Getty. Before the onslaught of high-resolution digital cameras the past few years, Getty routinely licensed images for $500+ so this made sense. Those rates are a thing of the past now partially due to an over-supply of images in the market and some naive photographers giving away rights to their images for pennies. I have read that Getty’s average licensing fee is around $250 now.

So if non-exclusive agencies tend to go for a slightly lower rate, why would the photographer choose to do so? Because you can submit the same images to multiple agencies in addition to marketing them yourself.

Photo agencies that ask for exclusive terms are usually established enough so that can back it up with numerous sales of your images. So the question is can you make an equal amount of sales if not more through your four non-exclusive agencies? Either way, it is pretty hard to get by with only licensing images through stock photo agencies these days whether or not you decide to go with Getty’s 30 / 70% commission split or Alamy’s 65/35% commission. There are a number of photographers out there that have had a fair amount of success using a combination of non-exclusive photo agents as well as running their own licensing business. Much like investing in the stock market, diversification is a smart strategy.