Cameras

Photography: Vlad Gerasimov (VladStudio.com)

Wouldn?t it be great to shoot a picture that you love, have thousands of people pay to own a copy and know that they?re going to see it, appreciate it and enjoy it several times a day? before coming back to pick up another one?

That?s not likely to happen through gallery representation, and even regular stock buyers are unlikely to give an image a second thought once it?s served its purpose. Turn your photo into a desktop wallpaper however, and you can be sure that it?s going to be unmissable. Create the sort of payment plan that lets buyers build a collection of your artwork and you can be sure that your creations will continue to be appreciated, even as they?re covered in icons and windows.

Wallpapers Bring More Joy, More Money

That?s not going to be easy. Toss ?free wallpaper? into Google and you?ll be shown more than 31 million results, including plenty of sites offering tens of thousands of images for nothing. But when so much is free, quality is valuable and stands out. For image-makers with talent who can build a following prepared to pay for their work, that creates an opportunity.

Vlad Gerasimov, for example, is a Siberian designer and amateur photographer who offers wallpapers through his website VladStudio.com. He began his career while a student, creating interface designs for his brother?s software company ? a job that forced him to get to grips with Photoshop. After nine years, he says he?s still learning how to use the graphics program, but in that time he?s also managed to migrate from graphic design to focus almost exclusively on wallpapers, work that he says brings him both more joy and more money.

Vlad?s original designs were naïve, childlike images created entirely on Photoshop. Although they?re offered for sale as posters and even t-shirts on sites like Zazzle, more than 90 percent of his sales come from his website ? a sales channel he?s never invested a penny in advertising, relying instead on links and a javascript program that lets online publishers show his latest wallpaper on their sites for free.

Recently however Vlad has started a new project that swaps the sketching for photography and which provides a lesson for any photographer interested in selling their images as computer decorations. Drawing on camera skills that he describes as ?advanced amateur,? Vlad is recording the old houses of his home town before they disappear completely, and offering the images from his website as desktop wallpapers.

?The city I live in, Irkutsk, has a lot of wooden houses more than 100 years old,? he explained to us. ?I could see how they degrade over the years, because the city does not have enough money (or will) to keep them all in good  shape. I wanted to take photos of them before they become history. The idea is quite simple ? to show the ?sad? beauty of old wooden architecture.?

Dark is Good

The images themselves are as good as you would expect from someone with a photographic eye and an understanding of light, composition and technique. They capture the texture of the old wood and provide a gloomy sense of their slow disappearance. Part of that feeling comes from the images? dark colors, one of Vlad?s rules for creating successful wallpaper. Other guidelines include going easy on the details so that the image doesn?t appear too busy, leaving empty space for icons and placing the most important parts of the composition in the center of the screen so that the image can be cropped for different screen sizes. Vlad?s Siberian Wooden Houses project now consists of more than 70 different images which are presented as photographic prints in the center of a textured background. They can be downloaded in more 24 different desktop sizes as well as in formats suitable for mobile phones. His original images, he says, are 3840 x 2400 pixels but he has been asked to produce dual 2560 x 1600 wallpapers which would be 5120 pixels wide.

While the layout and format of the images are important, it?s in his business model that Vlad provides a particularly interesting example. Although he provides free low quality downloads, Vlad also runs a subscription program that offers membership from $8.99 for three months to $29.99 for life. Paying members can help themselves to high-quality, signature-free images and Photoshop source files. Payments are one-time and not self-renewing, a policy Vlad borrowed from DigitalBlasphemy.com.

?I evaluated many ideas (pay per download, pay for member gallery access, recurrent payments, etc),? Vlad said. ?I chose what I  considered to be most fair. That is, I looked at my website as a usual visitor, and decided that this is the way I would buy it.?

It?s an approach that seems to work. VladStudio.com now has around 11,000 registered members.

Perhaps the best example Vlad provides though is of someone who has found a way to do work that he enjoys ? and earn from it. Creating the Siberian Wooden Houses Project has, he says, been ?a fun and relaxed process,? helped by the fact that although membership to his site might be time-limited, he only adds new wallpapers as they?re ready rather than according to a fixed production schedule. That laid back approach might well be the most important reason for his success.

?[A]nyone can make a good photo these days,? he says. ?You will have luck selling photos that tell a good story and make people happier? Most importantly, love what you do. If you do not, all else fails.?

It would be hard to do much as a digital photographer without Photoshop. But you can do so much more when your PS is loaded up with plugins. Some are free, some cost the earth. Some are useful, some? well, less so. And some might not push your photography career too far forward, but they?re so much fun, we just couldn?t resist.

Here our favorite five plugins.

5. Filter Factory ? A Bargain Basket Of Strange Tools
Filters are probably the most unreliable of PS plugins. There might be some you?ll find yourself coming back to time and time again, but there are plenty of others that will have you wondering what the creator was thinking when he made it. Fortunately, lots of filters floating around on the Web are free. You?ll just pay in time sorting the freaky from the fun and the helpful from the hopeless. Filter Factory is a good place to search.

4. Extensis Portfolio ? Functional, Effective? and Fairly Expensive
Photoshop isn?t cheap and it would be nice to think that once your credit card has recovered, you?re done with the big software purchases. You will be? at least for a while. But once your image library has built up, once you start selling licenses and begin owning photos that are worth serious money, you?ll need to start organizing your assets. At around $200, Extensis? Portfolio is pricey. But for the professional photographer, it?s an invaluable tool for storing and organizing your work.

3. Alien Skin?s Exposure ? Bringing Back Film
Portfolio is useful; Exposure is fun. Alien Skin produces a whole bunch of different PS plugins, but this one is very cool. The ability to make your digital images look like different film stocks gives photos different moods? and for photographers who remember what life in the darkroom was like, a sense of nostalgia too.

2. AKVIS Sketch ? Turn Your Pictures Into Drawings
It?s true, the only decent commercial use we could think of for AKVIS Sketch was creating images for computer games. If you?re doing that, we?re jealous and you probably have this plugin already. Otherwise, it?s just a huge amount of fun. Turn your images into pencil drawings, print them out and make your friends think you have talent.

1. Noiseware ? Lower Your Image Noise, Raise Your Image Value
Tackling noise on photos isn?t fun, but when you?re selling pictures ? and especially when you?re selling through microstock sites ? it?s pretty essential. Imagenomic?s Noiseware does the job. It?s easy to use, it?s effective and it fills in the gaps.

It?s the bread-and-butter for most professional photographers, the one job that?s always in plentiful supply and for which clients (rarely) quibble over the price ? which is usually pretty high. Wedding photography isn?t just an important way of making a living as a photographer, it?s also an important way of becoming a professional photographer.

Unfortunately, it?s not an easy profession to get into.

For many photographers in fact, the first wedding often comes about by accident when a friend wants a low-cost marriage and asks them to bring their Nikon. Word spreads, offers flow in and the photographer soon has a new niche. Jeff Campbell, for example, recalled his first gig this way:

About a year ago, I took pictures of a friend?s wedding just because (1) I had my point-and-shoot camera and (2) she didn?t pay for a photographer. I couldn?t let the wedding take place without pictures to document it. She and her husband liked the pictures I took so much it gave me the motivation to get some equipment together and start photographing weddings professionally.

Carrie Moore, who turned professional just two years ago, has a similar story. She took the most of an opportunity and word spread fast enough to land her nine wedding gigs in less than 24 months.

Want to be a Wedding Photographer? Match up your Friends
That might suggest that the best way to become a wedding photographer is to know lots of single people and persuade them to marry each other. Inevitably some will want to save money, giving you the opportunity you need. You could then follow up by marketing with a website and Flickr, handing out business cards and samples, and placing ads on bulletin boards.

But there is an alternative route.

Regina Jones, a photography student who has just finished a course on wedding photography, recalls her teacher telling her that a wedding photographer must have the right equipment: a good camera; a good camera flash; lots of memory cards; and a back-up photographer for at least the first job.

That sounds like an opportunity. If you?re looking to get your feet wet and don?t want to play Cupid for your low-budget friends, you could try getting in touch with other photographers and offering yourself as a stand-in. Initially, you might have to do it for free ? or at least for very little ? but you?d also get the chance build a portfolio and build up your confidence.

Earn $5,500 for an Evening?s Work
You?d need that confidence when it comes to giving a quote. Regina?s teacher advised her to offer three levels of service with the cheapest starting at $3,500 and the highest reaching $5,500:

[S]hooting the engagement pic and then wedding pics and then the reception and then Photoshopping the pictures takes too much time to shoot a wedding any cheaper

she says and she might be right. Wedding photography usually means focusing on a bride who might be closer to a pile of tears than her photogenic best. It means reaching the location long before anyone else to make sure you get the still lifes and the shots of people arriving. It means being unobtrusive while still getting the close-up of the kiss, the rings and the vows. It means making commitments a year in advance. And it means constantly learning so that you get better and better and can charge more and more.

As Carrie Moore advises:

The best thing you can do is be prepared. Read, learn, pack and repack, and practice.

Get it right though and you should find that you?re getting paid for that practice too.

Learn how to deal with an unco-operative bride here and discover a new way of taking wedding photos here.

And tell us about your first wedding job by adding a comment. How did you get into wedding photography?

Sample wedding photos of rings and vows by DHB Photography.