Making Money From Your Photography
Can I make money from my photography? The short answer is... yes!
If youʼve got a good eye for photography, there are designers, advertisers, marketers,
newspapers, magazines, journalists, startups, global companies and even individuals who might want to use your images.
But how? There are lots of ways to make money from your photography: image licensing via
stock agencies, selling canvas prints, commissioned shoots, or selling via your own shop.
If youʼd like one central platform to earn money selling your photographs via image
licensing, selling canvas prints, commissioned shoots or selling through your own online
shop, perhaps a platform like Picfair would be ideal for you. More on Picfair later in this post.
Stock images are traditionally professional photos of places, landmarks, nature, objects,
people or events that are taken for the purpose of being used multiple times for different
projects. Photographers usually keep ownership of the images and make them available for
licensing, whereby they are paid for a specific usage.
What is image licensing? When you use a stock agency, you are not selling your images
outright. You are making them available to license. Every time someone licenses your
image, they are paying to use it according to a licence agreement. Licence agreements differ
between agencies, but as an example, some licence agreements allow a buyer to
use your image for just one project per licence purchased.
Making your images available for licensing means you can make money from the same
images multiple times, in multiple places, from multiple buyers. Many services are non-
exclusive, meaning you can maximise your earning potential and offer your images to a variety of different stock agencies.
What Do Photo Buyers Want?
Authenticity. Buyers want images that feel real. If the image includes people it is better that they look natural rather than posed or staged.
Uniqueness. Images that theyʼve never seen before. For example, there will always be a
demand for images that represent love - but if you can represent it in a unique way, it will be
much more attractive to prospective buyers. This is one reason developing your own unique
photographic style is so important.
Diversity. Images that accurately display our culturally diverse modern world. How can you help buyers to celebrate diversity honestly and accurately with your photography?
Copy space. Often, a designer will want to overlay some text or their logo on your image. Consider this when framing your shots - leaving enough clean space for copy could help your images sell more.
Be Inspired. Almost any image could make you money - you never know how unusual an image buyerʼs brief could be! However, there are certain things you can keep in mind to maximise your sales...
Stay up to date. What topics are trending culturally, socially and politically? If the World Cup is approaching, authentic football images will likely be in demand. Big story about climate change coming up? Then itʼs time to upload any images you have that could represent it.
A good inspirational tip is to take a look at Google Trends, which gives you insights into topics that are trending on Google right now and how they change over time.
Keep an eye on the calendar Images of major national and global holidays are always in demand, but by using something like National Day Calendar you can be inspired and prepare images for things like Earth day, Pride week, or... National dance like a chicken day. Look for change Images celebrating diversity and documenting social changes are in high demand. Are things changing where you live? Think about how you can illustrate that change with your photography.
Travel. Travel photography is extremely fun - why not make it profitable too? There are already millions of images of popular landmarks, so try to find unique angles or viewpoints. Try to illustrate what life is like for the locals. Look for the things that most tourists donʼt see. What are the local foods and traditions? Be as specific as possible and try to leave your destination with images that nobody else could have taken.
Take Photos That Sell
Framing Your Images...Use The Rule of Thirds. This is one of the golden rules of photography - use it to produce more aesthetically pleasing, balanced images. The key point is to avoid placing your subject directly in the middle of your photograph.
Imagine every image is dissected into a 3x3 grid. Important compositional elements should not be centred, but placed along the vertical or horizontal lines or their intersections. Most modern cameras have a feature which will overlay a 3x3 grid on your viewfinder to assist.
See how the photographer has aligned the subjects with the lines of the 3x3 grid to create a beautifully framed image?
Avoid Camera Shake. If you donʼt have a tripod, try resting your camera on a stable object like a table, fence or bollard. Images need to be crisp and focused to maximise their commercial value (though out of focus images do have a market if done correctly.)
Think About the Background. The background can be the difference between an average shot and a fantastic shot. Make sure it contrasts enough with your subject, that it is not too busy or noisy, and that is is aesthetically pleasing to compliment the shot as a whole.
Learn to Use the Exposure Triangle. Shooting on auto is a good way to start, but learning how to use manual settings gives you ultimate creative control. And itʼs not as hard as it looks! There are three settings thats make up the ‘Exposure Triangleʼ:
Aperture. Aperture is the measure of how wide the iris of the camera lens is open. Narrow apertures (higher f-numbers) give a greater depth of field and are good for landscapes and keeping the whole image focused. Wide apertures (lower f- numbers) create a narrow depth of field, which isolates the subject and can create a blurry background effect called bokeh.
Shutter Speed. Refers to how long the shutter will stay open and thus how much light the lens lets in. Higher shutter speeds are required for moving subjects, though lower shutter speeds allow for more detail in a shot. In general, you want to use a shutter speed that will ensure your subject is clear. For fast subjects like birds, this may be 1/1200; for kids it may be 1/200.
ISO. Increasing the ISO allows you to work with less light - however, the higher the ISO, the more grainy your image will turn out to be. Always aim to have the lowest ISO possible that still gives you a good looking shot.
Why would you use a high ISO? Working with lower light, you may find yourself using the widest possible aperture and slowest possible shutter speed available for the shot - at this point, your only option is to increase the ISO. Better to have a slightly grainy image that can be improved in post production than an unusable blurry one.
A Word About Model Releases. To make your images available for commercial licensing, you need model releases from any recognizable people.
If you donʼt have model releases, you can still make any images you have with recognizable people available for editorial licensing, though.
Editing
Cropping. You should try to avoid cropping unless you need to. Take time when shooting to concentrate on the composition of your image ‘in cameraʼ - getting it right first time and it will avoid unnecessary fiddling around later.. But if you need to, well, you need to.
Cut The Clutter Out: It needs to be as clear and as clean as possible, make your image is as uncluttered as possible. If you have a stray foot or a stray arm sticking to the left of the frame, that should be cropped out. Anything which isnʼt essential to telling the story needs to go.
Where there are figures in the frame, animal or human, try to keep them complete. Cropping figures can lead to awkward positioning and could potentially even ruin your photo. So, avoid it at all costs — no one likes to see feet chopped off human beings.
Stick to the established aspect ratio: DSLR cameras, like their film ancestors have a default aspect ratio of 3:2. Keep your cropped image within that if possible. Image buyers want to be able to do their own cropping when designing their products if possible, so give them as much room to play with to let them craft their own story.
Post-Processing Professionals shoot in RAW and process their images after for the best results. There are lots of free resources online for learning to use editing programs, and it is definitely a worthwhile time investment.
Metadata. If you are processing your photos in an editing program, it is worth keywording your images in the program via the metadata settings. This will embed the keywords, titles and captions as IPTC metadata, and any time you upload your images to a site like Picfair, Getty Images, Alamy and the like, the data will be read automatically. This can save you a lot of time if you intend to make your images available through multiple agencies.
Keywording. Keywords (or tags) are incredibly important - good keywording is the only way to ensure your images can be found.
Here Are Some Keywording Tips for Images:
Put Yourself in an Image Buyerʼs Shoes. One of the simplest ways to get your head around how to keyword your images put yourself in the shoes of an image researcher or picture buyer. For example, if you were looking for images to illustrate a travel feature on Morocco, what keywords would you use to find a suitable image?
Base Your Keywords On The Following:
Place. It is a must to keyword a location-specific image with that particular area, city, region, and country. Ask yourself also, does the image show a noteworthy street, famous landmark or building?
Noteworthy Features of the Scene. Does the picture depict any traditional ways of life or typical scenes, or something unusual or alternative? Does the image include a person, multiple people, a crowd or show anything noteworthy taking place? Include this in your keywording.
Formal Elements. Does the image feature any patterns, architectural highlights, designs or obvious formal elements? Or are there any particularly dominant colours in the scene? These should be tagged and included in the keywords.
Concept Keywords. As important as highlighting any visible features in the photo, other keywords describing relevant, but ‘unseenʼ elements of the picture can be paramount to the image buyer.
Copy Space. Often buyers are looking for images where there is a ‘cleanʼ area to place copy: this is often in the form of the sky or large blocks of a single colour in an image.. The keywords and tags used across the board are ʼcopy spaceʼ, or ‘copyspaceʼ - include both. Include Latin names for flora/fauna When a buyer is looking for an extremely specific species, the Latin name is extremely important as it is used as a global standard.
Include Seasons and Weather Conditions. Many image buyers work on features and campaigns based on particular seasons, and if this is particularly obvious in your photo – make sure that it is keyworded as such.
Describe People. Make sure you are as specific as possible when it comes to keywording an image of a person. Keywords describing gender, race, age, and appearance, profession and actions are all of importance and are used regularly by buyers.
Variant Spellings. For common words that appear in image keywords such as harbour/ harbor, and center/ centre. Include both the US and UK spellings.
Just remember, the more specific keywords you can include, the better. The information Iʼve shared with you today will help get you started to earn money from your photography. When you remember that photography is indeed a business, the road to success doesnʼt take less time but it does make life easier.
Earlier in this blog post I mentioned Picfair. I receive no compensation whatsoever for recommending Picfair. I simply find the platform an ideal way to offer both photographic prints and commercial licensing. Ideally, you want to offer your images to anyone and any company and Picfair easily allows both options.
Picfairʼs image licensing marketplace operates a little differently to most agencies. On average, stock agencies take a 74% cut from the photographer. Picfairʼs commission is only 20%. Picfair also allows all photographers to choose their own prices for their work, unlike most agencies who set prices themselves.
There are far more ways to earn money with your photography than just stock photography licensing and selling prints. Sign up for Mark Paulda Mentor's email list to keep up to date when new how to make money with photography blog posts are available.