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8 Steps To Becoming A Published Photographer
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Can They Find You?
Demographers tell us that in a mobile society, we can expect most people to have a new address every five years.
If you have moved recently, it's important to personally let your buyers and clients know of your new address (and/or if you have a new email address). Don't rely on the U.S. Postal Service to do the job for you.
In our day and age, technology offers ways we can make sure to stay on tap for our buyers, even during the transition of a move. Your email address and 800# can remain the same, independent of any changes in your mailing address. You won't lose touch with your photobuyers if you have one or the other or both.
I recently experienced another way that photobuyers can find photographers.
Nancy Ritz, photo coordinator at Prentice Hall, the book publishing company, wrote to me saying she was returning one of my photos (an original B&W 8X10) that her company had used way back in one of their textbooks. She pointed out that they've filed a digitized copy of the photo, and the number stamped on the back of the print is the database designation from the Corporate Digital Archive (CDA) of their parent company, Simon & Schuster. She said in her letter, "You are listed as the photographer, copyright holder, and source. When another buyer at Simon & Schuster should come across the photo, the information is already in our computers relating you to that photograph."
It's nice to know computers, databases, and mergers of large publishing houses can have a beneficial reward for independent photographers. My digitized photo will probably remain in their CDA a long time.
And it's nice to know that photo, taken in 1978 (28 years ago), is in an archive that might benefit not only me but my grandchildren, and possibly their grandchildren. -RE
Rohn Engh is director of PhotoSource International and publisher of PhotoStockNotes. Pine Lake Farm, 1910 35th Road, Osceola, WI 54020 USA. Telephone: 1 800 624 0266 Fax: 1 715 248 7394. Web site: www.photosource.com/products
Welcome
to PhotoAim.com. Here's where you'll find information
about stock photography, editorial stock photography,
specialized photography, stock agencies, mini-stock
agencies, selling pictures, and social photography.
Hurrah for digital!
The Way We Were
Advance Notes: The room is small, silent, damp and without light. The interior air is heavy and laden with chemicals, some of which could cause early death. The person inside receives no visitors. It is isolation.
Have I described a 19th century prison cell or a 21st century photographer's darkroom?
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Those of us who have spent many hours in the agonizing yet captivating atmosphere of a photographic darkroom recognize the scene. We are compelled to witness --and direct-- the birth pangs of each of our graphic creations. Yet all of us know it is contrary to human nature to confine oneself to such isolation and environmental danger. Such is the allure of the muse.
This is serious stuff. We wonder how many present-day darkroom photographers are short-cutting their longevity by continuing to engage in this archaic working method. Are we subjecting ourselves to Alice-in-Wonderland dangers similar to those faced by the Mad Hatter? (A reflection of the hat makers of a couple of centuries ago, who used arsenic in the fashioning of their beaver skin hats and frequently were gradually poisoned as a result.)*
But patterns of habit, customs, and institutions fall hard.
To put this in perspective, if digital photography had been discovered first, and then film photography, would any of us have opted for the latter?
Today's digital photography offers the promise of safe imaging.
Digital photography gives to all of us the luxurious shooting style of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the renowned French photographer of the mid-century. He never stepped into a darkroom. "No, I have never done my own printing," he told Charlie Rose in an interview. "Why should I spend my time in a darkroom when I could be out shooting?"
Most film photographers, because of the high cost of film and the processing delay, were conservative regards the number of pictures they shot. However, as Cartier-Bresson is famous for saying, "I want to capture the precise moment." Such moments escaped the average photographer who was stingy with film.
Not so with digital photography. One shoots with a freedom to not only capture the "precise" moment, but to also self-educate and experiment. Digital "film" is cheap. We can examine the results immediately, and, if the situation allows, try again.
The world of digital photography is easy to enter. Medium-quality images, ease of processing , enhancing, and transmitting, are now available to the average photographer. Digital results are readily acceptable if your work is web-based, or for buyers who only expect to use the image quarter-page size. The cost for serviceable digital is well within the budget of most.
Yes, there's a certain reverence we attach to analog pictures. In fact those black-and-white artifacts** are now becoming high-priced commodities at art auctions. So don't dump those boxes of your grandfather's pictures in the attic. His labor in the darkroom may result in some surprising monetary compensation.
Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and best-selling author of "Sell & ReSell Your Photos" and "sellphotos.com," has helped scores of photographers launch their careers. For access to great information on making money from pictures you like to take, and learn how to sell pictures, and to receive this free report: "8 Steps to Becoming a Published Photographer," visit his website, PhotoSource International or call 800 624-0266.
*A good reference book on the hazards in working with darkroom materials is "Artist Beware," Michael McCann, PhD; Lyons & Burford Publishers; ISBN 1-55821-175-6.
**If you have, or are in touch with retired photographers who have, boxes of original B&W's from the last century (not the negatives but the actual prints), give us a call and we will help find a collector or organization who may be interested in purchasing them. -RE
STARTING OUT. Break into photography
by taking an online photo course. This website maintains it
will help you avoid the usual pitfalls of beginners in photography.
Designed for all ages.
COPYRIGHT POSITION STATEMENT
(Publishers please take note.)
Our PHOTOLETTER subscribers consistently supply professional-quality photographs to the publishing industry. These pictures are provided on a rental basis. They are not provided on an all-rights, work-for-hire basis, which would conflict with both the letter and the spirit of the new Copyright Law enacted into force on January 1, 1978. We urge our subscribers not to endorse checks or sign agreements (`work for hire') which would imply that rights to a picture are transferred to the publisher (or person making the assignment.) Such rights are transferred only through special agreement and substantial compensation.
Advance Notes: How long has stock photography been around? You might say since 1852, according to Andrea de Polo, Marketing Director at Alinari, Italy's oldest stock photo agency. PhotoStockNotes interviewed him about the company's past and future in the digital era.
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PSN: You are the oldest picture library in Italy, maybe the world. When did ALINARI start?
A: Alinari is indeed the world's oldest photographic archive still in activity. It was established in 1852 in downtown Florence, Italy, by the Alinari Brothers.
PSN: Who are your target customers?
A: Before the opening of the Alinari website, the main clients were photographers, stock agencies, libraries, editors and publishers, professors and historians, students, universities from around the world. Today, thanks to the Alinari online picture database (bilingual with 150,000 images today and 400,000 by the year 2003) our customers are also press people, journalists, and other business users that need content around the clock.
PSN: How many photographers does ALINARI represent?
A: About 300 main photographers from around the world.
PSN: What's in your files?
A: The archive preserves over 2,000,000 glass plates negatives, slides, and film negatives. This is one of the largest photographic holdings in the world. We have over 1,500,000 vintage photographs from around the world made from the beginning of photography (1839) until today. The Alinari archive includes various photographic processes, including Albumen Prints, Salt Paper Prints, Ambrotypes, Daguerreotypes, Gelatin Silver, Photogravure, Collodion, Cyanotype, etc.
PSN: What size are the photos and how are they delivered (mail, in person, etc.)?
A: Before the opening of our Alinari online business (year 2000), Alinari was selling its pictures mostly as slide copies, and they were delivered by express mail; the picture inquiries were coming to Alinari by fax or by phone. Today, with the Alinari B2E (http://edu.alinari.it) and B2B sites (http://business.alinari.it), the images can be purchased and downloaded online, or can be sent on CD-ROM, DVD or, again, as slide copies.
PSN: Are many of your customers outside Italy?
A: Yes, in fact the most important clients come from Europe and the U.S.
PSN: What is the range of your sales today (geographical)?
A: About 50% from Europe, 40% from North America and Canada, and 10% from the rest of the world.
PSN: What is your annual dollar (revenue) volume today?
A: About $1,500,000 USD.
PSN: How many persons are employed by your agency?
A: Between full-time and part-time, over 60 people.
COST OF TRAVEL OVERSEAS is always prohibitive for the stock photographer
just starting out. One way to skirt around this problem is to become a
Travel Agent.
