Cameras

Photography is amazing, it is one of the only hobby’s that can capture moments in time that will last a lifetime and allow you to recoup some, all or even profit. Unlike say, snowboarding, where you need to not only pay for the gear you use but a drive to the mountain and buy a lift ticket every time you want to actually snowboard, photography only has the initial investment; beyond that, the world is yours to capture.

Every few years a story breaks on the news about someone finding a priceless painting or artifact in their basement or attic worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. While we all dream for this to happen, what if you had a hidden gold mine in your photo collection stuffed away in a shoe box or hidden on your hard drive somewhere? Photography is becoming an increasingly great way to earn a little income on the side, both passively and actively.

What You Should Know About Stock

One of the best ways to earn passive income is through selling stock photography. Stock photographs can be used for anything from inner-office memo’s and company email newsletters to product packaging and billboards. Basically, anywhere you see a photograph that a graphic designer may have used has the potential of being from a stock photo catalog. If the ad agency or company doesn’t have the budget to hire a photographer to capture the shot they need, they can buy one from several places, often at a fraction of the cost. Some of the best performing photographs on a stock photo site can do several thousands of dollars in revenue yearly, each! Don’t think you need to be a professional either, often times candid family photos sell very well, as do far off destinations from vacations. There are rules, requirements and restrictions so make sure you familiarize yourself with all of them before submitting images.

Photo by Mike Baird

Famous moment in time. Did you or someone in your family photograph a famous moment in time, perhaps during something significant happening in history where they were the only person there with a camera? Museums, art galleries and news media outlets often look for these hidden treasures and can pay substantial money for them.

What About Celebrity Photography?

At the right place at the right time. One of the most hated words among true photographers is paparazzi, but that doesn’t mean you are one if you happen to photograph a celebrity or well known person in such a way that news outlets would find them interesting. If you happened to go to high school with someone who is now famous and have photos of them from school, they could be worth some big money.

Photo by Syd Daost

Selling Your Prints

Art & craft fairs and the Internet can lead to sales too! If you regularly have friends and family ask you for enlargements that they can hang on the wall of their living room, perhaps selling some of your work can lead to money. Check your local art and craft fairs out, get some prints made and frame them, rent a table and have a go at it! A great tip for making sales at events like this is to offer the same image in different sizes. If you have a 16 20 printed, matted and framed, chances are it will cost you $60-100 in framing alone, meaning you need to charge more then that to break even. Offer the same image as a 4 6 print and tape it into a 5 7 matte available for $1-3 pre-cut, less if you buy a matte cutter and teach yourself. Usually the single cut mattes come in a perfectly sized clear plastic sleeve, put the matted photograph back in there and sell them for $6-10, easily doubling or tripling your investment. By doing this, you’ve enabled someone to take your work home with them for a minimal investment, yet you can still turn a profit. Setting up a store front on the Internet is also now easier then ever before and will allow you to harness the power of hundreds of millions of shoppers. If the idea of doing it on your own is too scary, look at sites like Etsy.com that will get you selling your photos in a matter of minutes.

Photo by Circulating

No matter how you look at it, there are probably at least a few photos that are in your collection that you could be cashing in on, right now! Start sorting through them, plan your best coarse of action and earn that money!

lightstalking.com

You’ve just bought a new camera and couldn’t be happier to start using it, but there are a few things you need to do before you actually start taking photographs to ensure your camera is operating correctly, protected and enjoyable to use. Skip them and you could be in for a world of heartache!

Photo by KhE

Save everything as you unpack the box. While it’s far less common today compared to just a few years ago, every now and again a camera will have problems or be non-working right from the manufacturer. Most retailers and mail-order companies have no problem exchanging newly bought equipment, but it needs to include everything, from USB cables to the little plastic bags. Why is it such a big deal to save all the original packaging? Because when you return the equipment the retailer returns it back to the manufacture for credit and it needs to have everything or they will only get a partial refund.

Now is the time to protect your investment. When you first buy a DSLR, lens or other expensive piece of equipment, it will be the cleanest and most pristine condition ever, and now is the time to protect it and ensure it stays that way. Applying LCD protectors to the back of your camera before oil from your hands or dust have time to settle in means a better bond and longer protection. The same applies to lenses and putting UV filters on the ends, before dust or other environmental contaminants have a chance to effect anything. Also, I suggest unboxing on a clean table with plenty of room, not on the couch or in your bed where dust or pollen could get things dirty. I also suggest taking the time now to scan copies of all your receipts and use another camera (if you have one, or borrow a friends) to photograph all of your equipment. Take the receipts and photographs and create a text document that contains the model numbers, serial numbers and purchase date and burn it to disk and keep it in a safe place. Keeping that information handy can help if you need to reference it for warranty work or in the event it’s damaged or stolen you can provide your insurance company with accurate, detailed information.

Don’t rush to use everything. Charge the batteries fully, the first charge is the most important. While it’s charging, RTFM, read the fun manual, get to know your camera gear and how it functions, where the controls, buttons and menu systems are. Make sure you know how to put on and remove the lens hood if one was included with your lens, attach the camera strap and overall familiarize yourself with how the pieces all fit together. When the battery is fully charged, insert your media and format the card before you do anything, even if it’s a brand new card.

Photo by jurvetson

How will you transport your camera? Digital camera’s are portable and meant to go anywhere with you, and should go everywhere, but transporting them is often one of the most over-looked aspects of buying a new camera. I had a friend a few years ago spend $2,000 on a DSLR and then wrap it in a kitchen towel and stuff it in a backpack because he didn’t want to spend even $50 on a half decent camera bag. If you don’t have a bag, buy one for your lifestyle. Some prefer backpacks, others like messenger style bags and a few prefer hip packs. I have about five bags now that I use based on where and how I’ll use my camera. If you have a bag from your previous camera, take the time to clean the inside of it out. Use a lint roller and / or a vacuum with hose attachment to get dust and dirt out of the bag, which could potentially cause harm to your new gear.

Shoot! Your first few shots on the camera should be of controlled lighting, things you know, colors you are familiar with and then checked in a computer to ensure the camera is functioning properly. Then shoot the camera in every possible mode and at all ISO ranges. If you are a professional photographer or even an up and coming shooter who freelances from time to time, thoroughly test your equipment before getting paid to shoot. Nothing is worse than disappointing a customer because of a problem with your new camera that you should have identified the day or week before and nothing can be more frustrating then learning how to use your new camera on the fly. Get to know how it works, then put it to work.

lightstalking.com

A photograph is just like a bar of soap. You might not be able to wash your hands with it and you wouldn?t want to take one into the shower with you but an image, like anything else that?s bought and sold, is a commodity. It has a price that someone is prepared to pay and beyond which no one will buy it.

That?s a simple fact that tends to get lost when the product is artistic. It?s easy enough to add up the cost of the materials, packaging and marketing that went into a bar of soap, then compare the bar to others on the market to come up with a competitive sales price, but how do you place a value on the beauty of an image? What do you compare it to when every photo is unique?

There?s no easy answer to that question ? the only way to find out the correct price for certain is to place the photo on the market and see what people are prepared to pay.

But that assumes the marketplace is open and efficient: buyers know where they can find other images that would equally meet their needs; sellers are aware of the prices that buyers are willing to pay for similar types of images for similar uses.

Creating the Photographer?s NASDAQ
Not all of that knowledge is easy to come by. Stock sites might be filled with a particular type of photo but they do little to show the value of artistic images, and the prices are fixed. One of the biggest criticisms leveled at sites like iStock is that they undervalue photographs. If a buyer is willing to pay a dollar to use an image, there?s a good chance he?d pay $2 ? or more. A stock site doesn?t allow the photographer to ask.

Private negotiations between buyers and sellers like those that take place regularly on Flickr then might be closer to true market rates but they?re not transparent and prices are skewed by sellers? lack of knowledge. Few photographers on Flickr really know what a buyer would be willing to pay for their photo and many consider their first sale a learning experience.

That?s why we were intrigued when we received a comment from John Griffin in response to our post on what photographers should consider when charging for a photograph. John and his partner, both former stock traders, are the founders of a new service called CutCaster that aims to price photographs as accurately as the stock market prices assets.

?[T]he idea was to create an electronic marketplace similar to the one we worked in, which gave control over pricing back to the sellers and buyers in the market and provided tools to educate the participants in order to make better decisions over buying, selling and creating,? John told us by email. ?We wanted to create a dynamic marketplace much like the NASDAQ stock exchange and also give people tools to educate themselves on what the marketplace was looking for, analyze the data surrounding their content and find available market research like? Bloomberg [does] in finance.?

The site, which has only recently opened for business, allows sellers to use CutCaster?s pricing algorithm to suggest the correct fee. At the moment, all prices are based on a single royalty-free (RF) license but there are plans to offer a range of different licenses as well as extended rights. CutCaster takes a commission of 60 percent for non-exclusive content and 40 percent for exclusive images.

John and his partner took two years to examine how the photography market prices content for different licenses, the amount different sites were charging buyers, and what people thought about pricing their own content. As a result, images start on CutCaster with a default price of $5 which then rises depending on factors that include: the number of views and downloads it receives; its exclusivity on the site; the amount of time the image has been offered; originality; and an increase in keyword enquiries.

Similarly, images that spend a long time on the site without being sold; have poor metadata management; or are similar to other images available on the market are likely to see their prices fall.

Set your Own Rates
But buyers can also offer less than the algorithm?s suggest price and sellers can override the algorithm to charge their own fees which they can then adjust in response to demand. According to John Griffin, sellers choose their own rates about 40 percent of the time.

?[G]enerally they will price [a photo] higher [than the algorithm does] but if it is priced too high a buyer can go in and submit a lower bid so the seller can still capture that sale if they do happen to price their content too high.?

Clearly though, a high price is also likely to put off potential buyers and reduce sales.

CutCaster?s main goal is be to provide a fluid marketplace enabling photographers and buyers to reach a fair price, but it?s not the site?s only goal. It also aims to be open to all photographers.

?We wanted to create an open marketplace to all and get away from the Getty
exclusiveness, which works well for them but excluded a large part of the market,? John explains. ?There are no ?gatekeepers? saying you are not good enough.?

And if the system works, there shouldn?t be any buyers saying your prices aren?t realistic enough either.

Take a look at the sort of images CutCaster is looking for and tell us what you think.