Cameras

Photography: ToastyKen

Photographers have felt the effects of outsourcing in surprising ways. Back in the glory days of photojournalism, shelling out thousands of dollars to ship a photographer to a war zone might have been considered as much a part of a news magazine?s expenses as typewriter ribbon, shoe leather and lengthy bar tabs. Today, with subscriptions falling, advertisers turning to the Web, and perfectly good local photographers with top-of-the range equipment available in locations from Afghanistan to Zambia, it makes little sense for a publication to pay a foreign photographer?s per diems, let alone the plane fare. When the war in Iraq was at its hottest, many of the images that appeared in the world?s top news publications were shot by local photographers who were working for the wires. But how has geography affected other aspects of photography, and are the price differences something that smart photographers can take advantage of?

Clearly, the differences in the cost of living around the world offer plenty of advantages for clients. When Grazia, a style magazine originally from Italy, opened its ninth edition in India in April 2008, local assignment and fashion photographers should have been rejoicing. They now had an opportunity to shoot for a prestigious magazine that valued images and would pay a professional rate. The reality though was slightly different.

Major Magazine Publishers See Local Photographers as Cheap Labor

To judge by an ad placed on Lightstalkers.org by the magazine?s photo editor, Natasha Hemrajani, Grazia appears to have seen its location on the sub-continent as a chance to tap into some particularly cheap labor. The magazine was looking for a photographer in Kerala to take a portrait of a Yoga teacher for one of its first editions. The budget for the shoot was 2,000 rupees. That?s about $50.

The request caused a bit of a storm and to her credit, Natasha, a freelance photographer herself, did sound embarrassed to be making it:

?[F]or some reason we?ve been asked to launch on a ridiculously low budget and shoots come to my department pre-expensed,? she wrote. ?[I]f this doesn?t work out we?ll have to run with images sent to us by the subject herself but I?m hoping that there?s someone out there who?ll do shoot for us at this price.?

It?s possible that she got lucky. The average income in India is about $66 per month so $50 for a day?s shooting (minus expenses) might not look like such a bad deal ? at least to the magazine. But for a local photographer who?s still had to buy several thousand dollars? worth of camera equipment, it would make more sense to stay in bed.

Or turn to wedding photography, where prices can be more comparable with other parts of the world. At least one Indian photography firm is offering shoots that range in price from 20,000 rupees to as much as a million rupees. $500 might sound like a bargain rate for a wedding shoot, but it?s likely that most customers are taking packages that are much higher. Frank Chen, a photographer based in Shanghai, for example, charges 20,000 yuan for a typical wedding package. At around $3,000, that?s roughly equivalent to the amount typically paid in the United States. (Although if he were in the United States, it?s possible that Frank, a particularly experienced wedding specialist, might be able to charge more.)

It?s likely that other photographers ? those who don?t speak English, don?t advertise on the Internet, and who target only local markets made up of people with average incomes ? are charging a great deal less. It is clear though that for some photographers it is possible to charge a rate that?s close to the amount earned in richer parts of the world. Whether they actually get those rates as frequently though, is a different question.

Who Cares Where the Stock Photographer Is?

The situation looks a little rosier for stock photographers. While the prices of rights-managed images are set in part according to the location in which the image will be used, in practice, the region appears to have little effect on the fee. Changing the area in fotoQuote, for example, software that generates Rights-Managed quotes according to the industry standard, has far less effect on the price than changing the usage. EnviroSEA, a photography organization that promotes the work of photographers in Southeast Asia, charges up to $149 for prints of its members? images and uses fotoQuote to generate its fees, rejecting any image priced under $49. Even its royalty-free images start at $69 for a 500 pixel ?Web? image and rise to $289 for an ?original size? photo. There are plenty of microstock photographers in places more expensive than Thailand who would like to be earning sales prices like these.

But EnviroSEA?s approach makes sense. When it comes to buying images, clients don?t care where the photographer who produced it lives. They only care whether the photo can do the job they want and whether it?s worth the price that?s being asked.

The effect of geography on photography then is mixed. For clients, the presence of a professional close to the location of a shoot can have a dramatic effect on the expenses involved in getting the picture. Natasha Hemrajani wasn?t just looking for a photographer in India; she wanted one in Kerala who could reach the subject of the shoot without incurring more than ten or twenty dollars? worth of expenses. But the price of the equipment alone means that there?s a limit to how low photographers can cut their prices even in parts of the world with low incomes.

On the other hand, when it comes to selling pre-made items such as stock images on a global market, the location of the photographer has little effect. If a buyer in London or New York is willing to pay several hundred dollars to use an image, he doesn?t look at the photographer?s bio to see where he is. He just pays the fee and takes the picture? and uses it on the other side of the world.

Correction: The original post incorrectly described Amit Bhargava as the photo editor who posted Grazia?s ad. He is not a photo editor at that magazine nor, he says, would he ?offer or work for such a ridiculous amount.? Our apologies to Amit.

Photography: Janet Towbin

The biggest challenge for any photographer hoping to sell their images isn?t understanding lighting, f-stops or composition.

It?s understanding the market.

You can read up about lighting, play with your camera settings and re-frame shots until you create the effect you want. The image on the screen will tell you right away how you?re doing. If the lighting?s off, the shadows will be too dark or the background too bright. If your focus is wrong, you?ll be bothered by the blur. And if the composition isn?t balanced, you?ll see what you need to change to create the harmony you?re looking for.

Then it?s just a matter of doing the same thing until you?re ready to move on to the next technique.

But the market doesn?t tell you anything.

Put up an image for sale, hear nothing and you?ll have no idea why. You won?t know if the image is wrong for the market, if you?re marketing it in the wrong way to the wrong people or if there?s just something wrong with the pictures you?re shooting.

It?s only when you make a sale that you actually make contact with the market. At that point, it?s vital to collect all the information you can to increase the chances that that sale will happen again ? and soon.

Learning What Sold your Photo

The first thing you learn is what sold. That?s not just the image itself but the different elements that make up the image. Every photo contains a number of different parts and if you can identify which of those attracted the buyer the most ? the subject of the photo; the style; the price ? you should find it easier to repeat the trick and continue making sales.

The simplest solution is to ask the buyer what he liked about the photo, but that?s not always possible. The only alternative is to look at the other images the buyer would have seen and pay attention to the differences. If the buyer was faced with two images showing a similar scene, then the differences in the photo he bought can tell you a great deal about what your market is looking for in an image.

You also have an opportunity to learn about your customers. You could be selling your images to a range of different kinds of buyers. Many of the images sold on Flickr, for example, are bought by Web designers and publishers. On Etsy, a site for arts and crafts, you?re more likely to find small art-lovers looking for attractive items to decorate their homes.

Those are big differences but even small differences in buyer demographics can have a large effect on your marketing and your sales. Young, trendy buyers and design houses tend to want different images ? and look for them in different places ? in comparison to older couples who might just want a nice photo for their condo.

Again, you can?t always ask your buyers to complete a survey each time they make a purchase ? which is why sites like Facebook, which are filled with demographic details, are so valuable ? but you can chat with them and ask them how they plan to use your image. All of that information can help make sure that you put your pictures where your buyers are most likely to be.

Where are your Buyers from?

A third piece of information you can pick up from a sale is how your buyers found you.

Flickr?s stats can reveal which search terms that people who found your images were using, and help you to optimize your tags to catch more of them.

Your server stats can tell you which sites buyers were looking at before they reached yours.

And even looking at the metadata on Web pages that have used your images can provide you with some information about the terms the buyer thinks best suit your photos.

If you can see that you?re getting a lot of views and sales from people who click a link on a site on a related topic, for example, it might be worth talking to the publisher about running an ad on those pages.

And the easiest piece of information you can learn from a sale is where your customers bought the image from? but that?s no less valuable for being easy to discover.

There are lots of different platforms that let photographers sell their images. You can set up your own website, upload your photos to stock sites, create an optimized Flickr stream, place them on products and use any one of a gazillion other methods to move your photos.

You?ll probably do more than one of them.

And you?ll probably also find that most of your sales come from just one or two of the strongest streams. Microstock photographer, Lee Torrens, for example, uploads his photos to half a dozen sites but finds that iStockPhoto outperforms the others.

Spread your images around to maximize your options but when you know which outlets deliver the best, you can focus your marketing efforts to make them more efficient.

Every time you make a sale, you make money. But you also uncover intelligence about your market that could be worth far more than the cash you earn for the print or the license. Don?t leave that money behind.