THE 8 STEPS
TO BECOMING A PUBLISHED
PHOTOGRAPHER
By Rohn Engh Copyright 2011
Rohn Engh Smashwords Edition
You know it. Your photos are just as good as many you see published in magazines, books, brochures, periodicals and travel booklets. Your friends and relatives have confirmed this.
So how can you get your photos in those publications? Whether you’d like to sell two photos a year or two hundred, there are 8 photographer-tested steps you can take to see your photos in print.
You know the satisfaction you feel at capturing aspects of the world around us through the magic of your camera. Imagine adding the excitement and gratification of having others able to see and enjoy what you say through your pictures.
“JUST WHAT DO I DO TO GET PUBLISHED?”
This report gives you the answer to this question. And the great thing about this pursuit is that you can choose to make it a labor of love, or make it an income provider. How many photos you sell a year, or a month, is solely up to you, and the amount of time you want to spend at it.
Thanks to today’s electronic world and digital photography,
you can both sell and deliver your pictures to buyers using the
Internet exclusively. And remember that when you “sell”
your photos, you are actually “renting” them to your clients. Photobuyers expect to use a photo on a one-time basis unless other arrangements are specified. You can sell (“rent”) the same photo over and over again.
As a published photographer you can enjoy a lot of “perks.”
YOU CAN:
Live anywhere. No need to live in the canyons of Manhattan or downtown Los Angeles or Chicago “to be close to the markets.” They’re as close as your computer. You can work entirely by email, entirely at home, and still score in the wide world of markets open to you. Whether your headquarters is a high moun taintop cabin in Wyoming or a high-rise in Hartford, you can work with markets all across the country and around the world.
Pick your hours. You can arrange your own schedule and enjoy the flexibility of being independent. You can work at your photography full-time or part-time.
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“WHETHER YOU’D LIKE TO SELL TWO PHOTOS
A YEAR OR TWO HUNDRED. . . .”
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Be your own boss. Photobuyers don’t care whether you’re an amateur or a pro, a housewife or a dentist. They’re concerned about the on-target quality of your photo and whether the content meets their current need.
Take paid vacations. You can actually pay for your trips through assignments you initiate or by selective picture taking and picture placing. If you enjoy travel, you’ll find you will be able to pick and choose among the many trip opportunities open to you.
Earn more money.
You will sell (rent) the same photos over and over again.
You’ll choose from scores of good-paying markets you never knew existed, and you’ll enjoy working with them because they constantly need photos in the subject areas you like to photograph.
See your pictures in print. You’ll be seeing your photographs in national circulation, sharing insights and your views of life in all its beauty, humor, discord, poignancy, delight, tragedy, and fascination. Sometimes one of your picture swill make a tangible social contribution; sometimes it’ll be business as usual. But it will all be deeply satisfying, with the gratification that comes from starting with a visual idea and creating something entirely your own, and then seeing it published where others can enjoy it, learn from it, or be entertained by it. And all this is thanks to the Internet and digital technology. Let’s move on to…..
THE 8 STEPS
1.You distinguish between service photography and stock photography (photo illustration). Service photographers sell their services – on schedules that meet the time requirements of ad agencies, corporations, wedding parties and portrait clients. Stock photographers (that’s you!) sell their photos – on their own timetable, selling primarily to books, magazines, newspapers and publishing companies of all kinds all over the world. You’ll want to focus on stock photography.
2.You determine your PS/A, your personal photographic strength/areas– and specialize. Achieving this will give you invaluable insight and powerful momentum. You focus on a select few areas that are satisfying to you. This could be aviation, nursing, dog training, industrial, landscapes, underwater, historical, and so on. You maintain a passion for these areas. As the saying goes, “Wild horses
couldn’t pull you away.”
3.You target only a slice of the market pie. Not the whole pie. You work with markets that use photos in your specialty areas. first
4.You find the market, and then create for that market. You do not do the reverse, that is, take pictures of subject matter that’s all across the board and then try to sell them, “somewhere,” exhausting yourself in the process. Instead, you find markets in subject areas you like to photograph, by using resources such as Google searches, publisher directories at your local public library, and directories such as Photographer’s Market. You identify a dozen or two dozen strong
markets that use photos in subject areas that match your focused areas. When you find these targeted markets you’ll discover they’re eager for talent such as yours, that “speaks their language.” You use the Internet search engines to find on-line sample issues of these magazines and background about the book publishers, to become familiar with their content. You determine which markets you’d like to work with, and create your own special Market List. This makes
“getting published” much easier than in the past.
5. You distinguish between good pictures and good marketable pictures. The former are the colorful scenics, wild flowers, sunsets, and silhouettes of birds in flight, tranquil shots of the lake, and pet pictures. These are A-1 pictures, but in spite of the fact we see them everywhere in the marketplace (on greeting cards, CD covers, posters, websites, travel brochures, magazine ads), they’re terribly
difficult (and they can cost you money) to market yourself. This is because there are so many of this kind of photo available, that buyers can find them everywhere
– from stock agencies, established professionals, their staff photographers, and their own company database files.
If you’ve been taking this kind of photo, you place these good pictures in the right stock photo agency or Internet portal that can market them for you, for
now-and-then supplementary income. In contrast, your good
marketable photos, i.e. those that you can sell (rent) successfully over and over again yourself for a regular income, will feature real people doing real things in the world around us, reacting life in all its aspects. These photos in most cases contain these elements:
1. Background is uncluttered. 2. Reasonably close up. 3. Bold in design, poster-like. 4. When people are in the pictures, which is 75% of the time, they are engaged in meaningful activities or dialog.
6.You set yourself up to look like a pro, with first-class business stationery, cover letter and query letter forms, packaging, and a basic web page. Software programs are now available that enable you to create a website even if you have no technical or HTML knowledge.
7.You position yourself to get published by utilizing Internet tools. Photobuyers today use search engines to help them find the photos they need. If you list descriptive keywords for your photos on your website, or on a photo service that gets lots of photobuyer web traffic, such as www.photosource.com/bank, you will be making your work accessible to photobuyers. This is an Internet advantage that
formerly was not available to you. Not only can you showcase your work, but also by including extensive keywords with your photos, you will have photobuyers contacting you.
8. You don’t rest on your laurels. You actively refine your
Market List, actively research new markets, and you continually add descriptive keyword phrases of more of your photos to your own web photo page or a photo gallery service webpage. Some of your markets may be local, or regional. Others might be n-tion-wide or foreign. The markets you find will surprise you by having photography budgets of $10,000, $30,000, and $70,000 a month (a month, not a year).
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“Are the major markets in New York, Chicago, and L.A.?” you might ask. No. Times have changed. New York, Chicago, and L.A. are still the top market areas for commercial photographers, but publishing markets for the stock photographer abound all over the country, and now with the Internet, all over the world!
By concentrating on a select number of markets
that coordinate with your PS/A areas (photographic
strength areas), you’ll discover the real excitement.the genuine exhilaration, of the venturesome process of producing your pictures and sharing them through publication.
Onward
With today’s dramatic increase in the use of images in the expand-
ing number of new markets and special-interest magazines, books, CD-ROMs, TV, and websites, the challenges and satisfactions have never been greater. You can be part of them.
The sky is the limit. Where you go with your photography is up to you. -Rohn Engh
Rohn Engh
is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. E-mail: info@photosource.com . Fax: 1 715 248 3800. Web site: www.photosource.com .