Earning money in photography???

[Peter "RamMan"]

Hello!
My name is Peter.I am a photographer with some certain amount of experience.
I'd like to find some way how to earn money with the help of my photos.
Of course i am not a professional but i am still trying to find some sources of income.
I tried to write an e-mail to newspapers,magazines etc.Then i registrated myself in a few photostocks but
then i understood that it will last to long to sale a photo and even for a small prize.
There was also a situation with auctions but all of them were saying to me something like "F*ck off!".
Now my story continues here,on this forum too.
What do you think?


Some of my photos:

=

 

[tirediron]

I think I really can't see past all the white rectangles on your images! That said, photography is a tough way to make money these days. Stock is so saturated as to be pointless unless you're exceptionally good, and landscape/nature/fine-art is the same. You can make some money in retail (family, headshots, etc), but most of the big earning avenues are dead.

 

[Designer]

I don't get why you put rectangles on your photos.

In short; selling a photograph is producing a photograph that someone would be willing to pay money for.

It really is just that simple, but it's not an easy thing to do.

You can either find that one person who simply loves your stuff, all of it, and is willing to pay you handsomely for any and all of it.

Or you can produce photographs for which LOTS of people would be willing to pay a small amount.

 

[JoeW]

The two best ways to make money as a photographer (as a business) are:
--sell to other photographers (studio space, equipment, workshops, etc.)
--weddings (which needs to be done as a full-time gig and devoting your art/craft to this if you're going to make consistent money off of it).

 

[jcdeboever]

Are the rectangles watermarks?

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

[AceCo55]

IMHO, I'm treating this as a troll until the OP at least responds.
Too many one post wonders lately

 

[Derrel]

I think the rectangles are an anti-theft measure, put on those images to keep people from stealing them and using them for monetary gain.

 

[Dave442]

I like the white rectangles. If each one was was something like a canvas wrap print and then one stacked above the other then the final work might be something I would buy.

 

[astroNikon]

I'm either way about the rectangles .. mostly "no" though.
But I've seen them used in more creative ways.

Such as the cherry photo. A rectangle around the 2 front cherries, then non-symmetrical boxes expanding from there. So the main item in the photo - the 2 cherries are not cut in pieces by the boxes. Then it may interfere with the bowl, which may need to be placed differently.

I think more thought has to be put into it rather than putting symmetrical, mostly even spaced boxes on a photo. And then, the photo still has to be interesting.

 

[tirediron]

I think the rectangles are an anti-theft measure, put on those images to keep people from stealing them and using them for monetary gain.

Makes sense, that's always a concern.

 

[Village Idiot]

The two best ways to make money as a photographer (as a business) are:
--sell to other photographers (studio space, equipment, workshops, etc.)
--weddings (which needs to be done as a full-time gig and devoting your art/craft to this if you're going to make consistent money off of it).

You can make money off of weddings without doing it full time. Of course, it probably won't be your full time job either, but making $20,000 a year off of 10 weddings would be a nice little chunk of change. It would sure by a lot of booze.

 

[KmH]

Photos of the type and quality posted are not very marketable, because there are millions and millions just like them all over the Internet.

Of the photos posted the mountain valley photo is the best but could benefit from some judicious post process.
Even with that I would suggest that photo still would not be very marketable.

To make significant money from photography done on speculation requires investing a lot of time and effort marketing and promoting the photographer.
Those few that do make decent money doing photography on speculation do invest the time and effort marketing and promoting themselves.
Those few that do make decent money doing photography on speculation also produce stunning images the average photographer can not propduce.

Photography done on speculation - making a photograph not commissioned in advance by a buyer.

 

[Village Idiot]

Photos of the type and quality posted are not very marketable, because there are millions and millions just like them all over the Internet.

Of the photos posted the mountain valley photo is the best but could benefit from some judicious post process.
Even with that I would suggest that photo still would not be very marketable.

To make significant money from photography done on speculation requires investing a lot of time and effort marketing and promoting the photographer.
Those few that do make decent money doing photography on speculation do invest the time and effort marketing and promoting themselves.
Those few that do make decent money doing photography on speculation also produce stunning images the average photographer can not propduce.

Photography done on speculation - making a photograph not commissioned in advance by a buyer.

This is why I find the idea of the current stock market and stuff like non commissioned sale of stuff like landscape photography tough. There's a local photographer that recently posted on facebook that he's was done and ready to sell all his equipment because he poured time, talent, and money into his photography business where he created prints and showed them off at trade shows but never sold anything.

The photos would have to be absolutely striking and unique for me to stop at a random show and say, "I must have that!" Same thing with the current stock trade. Before when stock was controlled by the big stock companies and literally not everyone with a camera could open an account and start submitting photos, you didn't have the vast amount of options to choose from and choices breed competition and competitive prices.

As a photographer that shoots portraits, events, and weddings, people come to me for my style. I produce a product that they want and the experience is tailored to my customers as opposed as being tailored to my own likes and hoping that someone else shares that strongly enough to want me to pay me for it. With that you can also afford to charge more. How many photos would you have to sell to break $2000 a month?

 

[astroNikon]

Problem is when someone sees something that they like (such as online) they'll download it in one method or another, remove the watermark, and make their background that picture.

Or just take a picture of a photo/painting with your cell phone.
No wonder they don't like cameras in art studios.

 

[KmH]

Stock photography as a regular income stream for photographers has been killed by 2 things:
1. The consolidation of the stock photography industry caused by Getty Images and Corbis buying up all the independent stock photography houses.
2. The shift from Rights Managed (RM) use licensing to Royalty-Free (RF) use licensing that has made stock photos a bulk commodity.

RM use licensing allows the one-time use of a photo as specified by the license. The license specifies - how long, what media type(s), geographical area of the use, maximum size used, number of impressions (print run) and can specify more.

RF use licensing is like buying a bushel of corn, with each reproduction of the same photo equal to one grain of corn in the bushel basket.
RF users pay a one time low fee for 500,000 uses with no time or size limitations. Photographers get paid a small % of the one time low use licensing fee.
RF stock houses make money buy selling 10's of thousands of cheap RF use licenses.

Back in the day I could make $20,000 over a few years from a single stock photo that sold with an RM use license 50 or 60 times.

Today's RF use license pays the photographer pennies for each RF license sold, even though each use license usually allows up to 500,000 uses - with only a few restrictions.
Most stock houses won't send the photographer a check until the check can be written for at least $100. If the photographer gets paid $0.20 per use license it takes 500 sales to make $100.

It has been said that 85% of all the photos that sell have people in the photos.
That's how retail photographers are able to make money.
People in the photos, and/or immediate relatives of the people in the photos, buy the photos they paid to have made.

Commercial photos made for advertising more often than not have people in them too.

No people in the photo is what makes landscape, flowers, and other photos with no people in them almost impossible to give away, let alone sell.
Photos with no people in them that then also have mundane content and low quality production values hardly ever get stolen, let alone bought.

The bottom line is - it takes substantial business savvy and skill to make money doing retail or commercial photography, of any kind.
Today, stock photography is not a way for photographers to make money.