Making money from photography

Jim05

Hi just wondering if any of ye make any money from your photographs?

Not from weddings but we'l say from landscape photographs,

How do you advertise your photographs, I've tried creating websites but I'm not great with computers! I've started uploading photos onto flickr. Is it worth upgrading my flickr account. Also how much should I charge for a photo if I ever manage to sell one??

clive_odonohoe

upload some links to your flickr and website..

Sabre0001

If you have webspace hosted, you can put up a nice professional looking site using Joomla or Wordpress. Don't have to be a whiz at computers - and you can always ask around for little bits of help.

Saint_Mel

Jim05 wrote: »

Hi just wondering if any of ye make any money from your photographs?

Not from weddings but we'l say from landscape photographs,

Talking about landscapes, I was at a talk a few weeks ago at my local photography club. After the talk someone said to the speaker (a full time photographer) that he must make a good bit selling landscape pics to people etc.

"Not really" was the reply. The lad who asked the question looked a bit surprised until the speaker followed up with "Look at it this way, when was the last time you bought a photo of a landscape, or any photograph".

"Never" was the reply, to which the pro replied "Exactly, most people dont"

pipandtink

Jim05 wrote: »

Hi just wondering if any of ye make any money from your photographs?

Not from weddings but we'l say from landscape photographs,

How do you advertise your photographs, I've tried creating websites but I'm not great with computers! I've started uploading photos onto flickr. Is it worth upgrading my flickr account. Also how much should I charge for a photo if I ever manage to sell one??

A good way to advertise your work is to set up a facebook profile in your own name, then create a group with the name of your Photography Business ie;
Lisa Callow Photography, then upload your photo's to that group (with a watermark on to prevent ppl downloading them) add the price in the comments box under the photo. add as many friends to your facebook group as you can, and join other photography groups and more and more people will join. You can also put them on ebay, .uk, .com, and .ie, set up a paypal account so you can recieve monies for your photo's its far safer.

I hope this helps you? let me know if you need any help doing this if that's the way you go, Have fun! Paula

Paulw

pipandtink wrote: »

A good way to advertise your work is to set up a facebook profile in your own name, then create a group with the name of your Photography Business

I'd be very very cautious about putting your images on Facebook. Make sure you read, and fully understand their terms and conditions before you post images there.

YourName

What about being a freelance newspaper photographer, can you make a bit of cash with that???

Paulw

mcgowaner wrote: »

What about being a freelance newspaper photographer, can you make a bit of cash with that???

A bit. And you can make a bit with sports photography.

But, it's a lot of hard work, and not an easy way to make money. I don't envy those who do it for a living.

YourName

Whats the best way to go about doing it, taking the pictures at the matches and sending them into all the newspapers???

And if you came across an incident and you had your camera and got some great pics, you knew the incident would be in the paper the next day, would you just email them in???

melekalikimaka

mcgowaner wrote: »

Whats the best way to go about doing it, taking the pictures at the matches and sending them into all the newspapers???

And if you came across an incident and you had your camera and got some great pics, you knew the incident would be in the paper the next day, would you just email them in???

i think being a member of NUJ is helpful too, especially for larger publications

Paulw

mcgowaner wrote: »

Whats the best way to go about doing it, taking the pictures at the matches and sending them into all the newspapers???

And if you came across an incident and you had your camera and got some great pics, you knew the incident would be in the paper the next day, would you just email them in???

Best of luck to you. There are already a good number of sports photographers here on boards that cover various sporting events.

As for newsworthy photos, you need to be first there, and get exclusive images in to the papers before anyone else.

Again, the money isn't much, so you need to do a lot to earn a little.

Ballyman

mcgowaner wrote: »

Whats the best way to go about doing it, taking the pictures at the matches and sending them into all the newspapers???

This is unlikely to work. For local media, a newspaper will have a reporter and a photographer at most games that they are intending to print. They won't accept photos of random games as they will have no report to attach if there wasn't a reporter there!
For the national media, then at most major sporting fixtures you will have someone from the two main agencies present. The vast majority of newspapers and media outlets in Ireland will have contracts with them already so won't accept photos from outsiders.

This is mainly the case across the board. There is no harm in sending in stuff of course. It helps get name recognition for yourself as well with editors so if they need something down the line they may contact you. Make sure the stuff you send in is of high quality though and correctly titled, cropped and captioned.
If you send in junk you will also get name recognition, for the wrong reasons.
Just remember, what looks like a masterpiece to you on screen may in actual fact be complete junk to a sports editor so keep that in mind also.

mcgowaner wrote: »

And if you came across an incident and you had your camera and got some great pics, you knew the incident would be in the paper the next day, would you just email them in???

Yep. Correctly titled, cropped and captioned. And if the photos are printed, ring the paper and find out how much there photo rates are and invoice them accordingly.

Borderfox

I am working at Tattersalls Horse sales today and I am directly hired to provide press coverage but also I sell a lot directly to sellers and buyers of Horses. Mostly they approach me and ask me but I also fish a bit too...:)

Jim05

thanks for your replies my flickr is
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcroninphotos/
c&c welcome
I've a lot more to add though. Have any of ye upgraded your flickr account is it worth it?

Also is there free software I can get so I can add a frame to some photos and also text in the frame
Thanks

melekalikimaka

unless you upload alot and need more bandwidth/more photos up, i wouldnt bother upgrading... stats is pretty neat tho

nice work

added as contact

Paulw

Jim05 wrote: »

thanks for your replies my flickr is
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcroninphotos/
c&c welcome
I've a lot more to add though.

A rough C&C is that the sports images you have there are average. Nothing special in them. In some, the white balance is off, in others there isn't a great DOF to the image (too much background in focus). You may find it hard to make money from images like that.

I don't make a large amount of money from sports images, but I do more than enough to cover my annual costs (insurance, association memberships, etc).

If you're going to cover sports in a serious way, make sure you get the proper insurance, especially when it comes to Public Liability Insurance.

Anouilh

Jim05 wrote: »

Hi just wondering if any of ye make any money from your photographs?

Not from weddings but we'l say from landscape photographs,

How do you advertise your photographs, I've tried creating websites but I'm not great with computers! I've started uploading photos onto flickr. Is it worth upgrading my flickr account. Also how much should I charge for a photo if I ever manage to sell one??

Your question is very interesting. I don't think that having a professional Flickr account would improve your situation, but I may be wrong. Flickr is meant to be a sharing site and I think that commercial interests are not encouraged, though many professional photographers post there.

I was recently approached by a company who wished to buy one of my photos. Since I am not in a position to organise ongoing photo sales, I did not pursue the contact. However, this might encourage you, as there is always a market for sports photos and, given the right contacts, you could do well. Perhaps you could send your photos round to the various Flickr groups and see how they get on?

Also, you might think about starting a photo blog and sell your work through it. I have just posted some thoughts on the fact that blogging is, seemingly, a dying art:

http://moderntwist2.blogspot.com/

but there are enough people with blogs to keep the show on the road for the time being.


Selling to family and friends might cover your costs without calling for a major capital investment in equipment and advertising.

Best of luck with it.

Paulw

An interesting article on selling your photos

http://digital-photography-school.com/what-to-do-when-asked-to-sell-a-picture-on-flickr