Marketing your photographs



Minolta Maxxum 9, 300mm f-2.8 APO lens, Fuji Velvia 50, Bogen Tripod and ball head.
Spot meter (face), 1/60 sec at f-5.6. Manual exposure mode and manual focus.

Business of photography is different from just taking pictures. This is a very competitive business and not that many photographers become rich doing it. Very few get hired for specific jobs which means you have to find your own markets to sell your photographs. Don't expect to get hired by a publication with paid expenses. It doesn't work that way. You can try to sell your images to books and magazine publications or galleries and advertising agencies. You can also work with stock agencies by paying them a percentage of the sale, usually 40 to 50 percent. I can't tell you which kind of marketing works best for you. You need to try all and see which ones make better sales. I have tried all kinds of marketing. I prefer finding my own buyers by requesting a guideline from the publishers. This way I know exactly what my buyers are looking for and how much they are willing to pay. This takes a lot of time, but is the method that's been working for me. I used to work with stock agencies, but the number of images that stock agencies receive makes my competition even tougher. Agencies now have so many top images that some no longer even accept new photographers. No matter how you decide to market your work, you should consider the following tips. Keep in mind that rejection is part of this business. We all get more rejections than sales. If my sales were anywhere near my rejections for the images I have submitted through the years, I'd be very rich today. Rejections don't mean your pictures are bad. It means the editor didn't need the types you submitted or perhaps another photographer had submitted better images than yours.

1. Take lots and lots of pictures. You need a lot of images to make successful sales. I don't mean bracketed shots of the same subject. A stock agency for instance, wants to see a minimum of 300 images of different subjects per month.
2. Examine your work for sharpness, exposure, and composition. Use a quality 8X loupe to examine your slides and send only the best. Unless the client accepts prints, send only duplicate slides. Many buyers are now accepting digital images as well.
3. Bigger sells. Photo editors prefer medium format and large format images over 35mm. It is worth making 70mm dupes from 35mm slides to have a better chance against medium and large format shooters.
4. Use professionally made letter heads and business cards. Don't use plain paper to send request for photo guidelines. You can't make money without investing some money. I remount my slides before submitting them to clients. Regular plain white plastic or cardboard mounts are fine for storing or projection. I use dark gray mounts to send to clients in either regular plastic sheets or black mats with 12 or 20 borders. Dark gray mount and black mats won't distract the viewer and bring out the colors in the image. I use 4X5 black cards which holds one 6X7 slide inside a clear pocket which allows easy viewing and protection. These cards are also available for other formats including large format. For prints use professional looking albums or presentation boxes and boards. Be professional and look professional. Your clients rarely if ever see you in person. If you live in California and sending your images to a publication in New York City, the buyers sees a package not a person. If the package doesn't look professional, no matter how nice your images are, the client will most likely reject it.
5. Pick the right images for the right market. Don't send architectural images to a pet magazine! Find out the type of photos publishers are looking for and send only related images along with all the necessary information you can give. Nature magazines for example, want to know where a photograph was taken or the name of a specie, but don't care what type of camera or which exposure setting you used. Photography magazines on the other hand, want equipment information as well as approach you took to take a photograph.
6. Send at least 20 images. This increases your chances of selling. Include vertical shots especially if you are submitting to magazines. Most magazines use vertical shots on their cover, and cover shots are what every photographer is after.
7. Send a resume only if the client requests it, otherwise your images along with description or article will be enough. A post card and poster company doesn't care if you graduated at a top photography school. You are not applying for a medical or government job. They want to see top images. If a buyer needs images of tigers, they don't care if a person with a photography degree can supply them with some or a high school student who shoots only on the weekends. Buyers care only about top images and top articles.
8. Keep track of your images and submissions. Have a working file system so you can quickly find any image of any subject in your stock. Several computer software are available for filling pictures. Mine is an old photo database which still works fine. I can find how many bird pictures I have in my files in seconds. I can also look for specific bird specie and to see how many images I have sent out and to whom. If a client requests photos of Great Herons, I can find out how many Great Heron images I have and where to look for them. I won't go over filling images here. See Cataloging Images for more information.
9. Always send material via registered mail and include SASE. If your package gets lost, you need to prove whom and where it was sent to. Clients won't return images unless you have included an SASE. They receive hundreds or thousands of packages each month and will not pay for shipping and handling charges to send back your package.
10. Submit as many images to several clients each month. If photography is going to be your main source of income, you need to sell several images each month to make a profit. I sent 250 slides to few buyers in one month and only one of them kept a handful on file for future use. This is not unusual and must be expected. Don't get discouraged. Just pick more images and send to other clients.