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Key words in this issue: Politically Correct | Difficult Living | Happy Customers | Audience Focus | Marketing RF | Group Portrait | Alamy.com | Sell Photos |

NEWSWORDS: RF Preference | Travel Junkie | Train Photos | Kodak Job Cut | Screensaver | WWII Photographer | Lying | Satellite Photography |

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## PhotoAIM weekly newsletter for 11/15/02 ## 386b

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PhotoAIM, the weekly newsletter from PhotoSource

ISSN 1530-0511

If you no longer wish to receive PhotoAIM, see the instructions at the end of this newsletter.

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ARE YOUR PHOTOS POLITICALLY CORRECT?

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As an editorial stock photographer you are not coached or art-directed by someone else, as is the commercial photographer. You make the decisions. As an editorial stock photographer your mission is to produce images of the world as you see it. This is the same license given to any artist. If you are constrained as an artist, then you are influenced, and if you are influenced, your directions are coming from someone other than you. If this be the case, then the photograph is not really yours.

Society would have artists produce material that is 'politically correct,' or to put it another way, to not produce material that is considered insensitive to local, regional, or national mores.

Within our own industry, critics of your editorial stock photography will often wave the banner of "ethics," claiming that you have overstepped certain boundaries in photographing wildlife, or natural objects. Or that you’re intruding into the private lives of individuals or government officials.

What does "ethics" have to do with art? Or don’t you consider yourself an artist? If you think of yourself as an engineer, or a technician, maybe ethics plays a role.

For example, a couple of decades ago, photographers were wringing their hands over the possibility that digital photography would disrupt the 'ethical purity' of a photograph by allowing the manipulation of the contents to create an altered image from the original. Today, the voices of protest have subsided and society accepts a digitized image.

This seems to be a cultural question. I don’t think that before digitizing, or before film for that matter, artists ever thought of "ethics" in their art. Before film and digits, there were sketches, oils, pastels, watercolor, engravings, lithographs -- and no one ever asked the artist if he or she were being 'ethical' by manipulating a scene to change it or improve it.

Photography, in my opinion, was never meant to be a mechanical art where the medium was in control, not the photographer. Editorial stock photography allows you to go beyond the mere 'taking' of a picture. It allows you to make a picture - and that's being an artist. -RE

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This week's featured photographer on PhotoSourceFolio: Charles Cecil:

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TRAVEL NOTES

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A Hard Way to Make a Living!

In response to my previous articles, an e-mail from Scott Kemper of Minneapolis asked a key question of concern to all travel photographers: "How you might be making a living at this?" and the answer is simply -- "With difficulty!"

Travel photography is a wonderful way to make a living, a lifestyle combined with meeting people from all walks of life, and getting paid for it, much better than working. A commonly held view. But anyone reading Rohn Engh’s excellent book ‘sellphotos.com’ will know that to be a generalist and stay solvent is virtually impossible today.

A RE-EDUCATION

I speak from painful experience, having been such a generalist for far too long, and my lack of a substantial bank balance is testament to that. But I have changed, not because I wanted to, but in order to stay ahead of the crowd I had to, and I’m actually enjoying being more focused as to what I shoot. Turning away and not shooting a subject that only a short while ago I would have taken six frames of, was not easy at first, but my golden rules now when I look through the viewfinder are, ‘Who’s going to buy this?’ and ‘What market will this go to?’ I would never miss a really good opportunity for those good frames even now, but I have re-educated myself after reading Rohn Engh books.

Like me, you can specialize in more than one area, as I have written about in this column recently. To recap, I shoot aircraft and flying pictures for an aviation stock library, I shoot well-considered (as opposed to grab) pictures for a high-profile travel image stock library, and I am now shooting more editorial pictures which I intend to go onto alamy.com, a scan-and-send-CD online stock library.

SIDE BAR

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Keeping your customers happy

Submitting Right

As you know, there's a right way and a wrong way to do pretty much everything, and this, of course, also holds true when it comes to submitting your images to a photobuyer. If you do it right, you might win a client that'll stay with you for 20 years. If you do it wrong, you might miss out on sales that could result in thousands of dollars lost over a period of several years.

Here at PhotoSource International, we always stress - sometimes to the point of harping - that the cosmetics are very important when it comes to putting together a photo submission. After all, this is a visual industry and that makes "looks" even more important.

Does your package submission arrive clean, crisp, inviting and interesting? If it doesn't, chances are it'll end up in the 'to-do-pile' for whenever, or ignored completely.

Why not a manila or brown envelope? Most materials sent in that color of envelope tend to be regarded as "parcel post," or "third class." Stick with the white envelopes.

Do your homework before mailing. Find the name, and the correct spelling, of the individual photobuyer and send your package to that person's attention. Double check with the receptionist at the publishing house for an accurate spelling of your contact's name and title. (If at all possible avoid addressing the submission to simply a title, e.g. designer, researcher, photo editor, etc. This signals the photobuyer that you are an amateur at marketing.)

SELF-PROMOTION

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Remember Your Audience

If there is one piece of advice travel writers must constantly bear in mind, it is to remember who they are writing for.

When coming up with ideas for articles, and when writing those articles, you must always bear in mind the nature of the audience your work is targeted at. Writers' guidelines from publications and newspaper travel sections can be very helpful in identifying your target readership for a particular market.

Try to form a mental image of your target reader:

- What age is your reader?

- What sex is your reader?

- What income does your reader earn?

- What does your reader like to do in their leisure time?

- What is your reader passionate about and what gets them really excited?

- What are your reader's travel aspirations and what destinations do they most want information on?

Some examples:

If you are thinking up article ideas to propose to a lifestyles magazine catering for fairly well-to-do over-50s, stories involving backpacking travel and basic hostels are probably not going to be the most relevant.

Many over-50s are highly fit and active but they more often appreciate travel comforts and will require a certain degree of luxury on trips. Relaying information on four and five star hotels would generally be more appropriate for the readership than reviewing hostel accommodation.

Or, if you are thinking up ideas for a young, adventure/travel magazine readership, a $25,000 trip circumnavigating the globe in a luxury hot air balloon, although undeniably providing adventure, might be beyond the reach of many readers and therefore inappropriate. A story with more of a backpacking, camping or trekking angle, and more accessible in cost, would be expected to have greater appeal and relevance to this publication's readership.

BUSINESS NOTEPAD

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GOOD STUFF

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GROUP PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY HANDBOOK, by Bill Hurter, editor of Rangefinder magazine and former editor of Petersen's Photographic magazine. In this book, Bill presents a detailed study of what makes group portraiture work, with discussions on lens selection, film choice, metering and other techniques. Additionally, he discusses the special need in group portraits to create lighting that yields a sense of dimension. Both location and studio images are discussed in this comprehensive handbook. ($29.95; ISBN: 1-58428-082-4; 128 pages; 120 color photos) Contact: Amherst Media, 155 Rano St, Ste 300, Buffalo NY 14207. Phone: 1 800 622-3278. Fax: 1 800 622-3298.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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"I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time".

–Orson Welles

FREE THIS WEEK

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FREE Inventor's Kit. Need help marketing that invention? Here’s a FREE Inventor's Kit to point you in the right direction.

THIS WEEK'S WEB FEATURE

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Got a question about " on-line"?

Watch for developments in the field of stock photography in PhotoAIM's

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE NEWS

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You'll be the first to know…

Note: If the URL is long, it may extend to two lines. In that case - clicking on it won't work. Instead, "copy and paste" the URL.

Photobuyers Increasingly Prefer Royalty-Free to Negotiated-Use Fee Images Almost half of design and production firms plan to buy royalty-free images; one-third plan to invest in negotiated-use fee images.

Capturing the moment - I've become a kind of travel photography junkie. People often ask what equipment to carry. My answer is always the same: Define your end product -- e-mail, prints, display enlargements -- and work backwards to the tools that will do it best.

Photographing trains a challenge

Kodak to Cut 1,300 to 1,700 Jobs

Create your very own screensaver! Here's how

Comstock Makes Major Commitment to Larger Royalty Free Image Scans; New 12-Inch X 18-Inch Scanned Image Size Offers Exceptional Resolution for Larger Uses - Comstock Images, a leading international provider of premium quality professional stock photography, today announced that all its future royalty free images will now be offered in a new "extreme" size scan.

AP Photographer Eddie Worth Dies He Covered WWII, Nuremberg Trials

Man charged with lying to agents after photographing bridge

Inspectors have plan for flushing out illicit weapons U.N. officials are seeking access to commercial and government satellite photography;

Warhol, other 'People'. Washington-based photographer Joseph Virgilio may be the only contemporary artist whose work has been exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art unbeknownst to him.

India's bronze omnipotence: The curator wanted to photograph the original, undressed figures before the priests bathed them in milk, curd, honey,sugar and butter and clothed the gods in fresh garments.

Cousteau's coming to showcase the society's worldwide undersea expeditions, a rotating photography exhibit.....

Celeb photographer Kishin Shinoyama's new work proves he's as hungry as ever.

Finnish police increase security at U.S. Embassy after alleged filming incident. Police confirmed they had stepped up security in the area, which also includes the British, French and Estonian embassies, but said they could not stop people filming or taking photographs.

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386b

Next Week: Medium Format in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century

"Your books have been most helpful. Thanks for all your stock photo guidance over these many years."

–Billy Grimes, Photographer, Norcross GA