Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
I just received three emails from 500px this evening. I was informed that three of my images were sold.
In other words, I can expect a payment of $2.55. In all honesty, it feels like a mockery.
When 500px launched Marketplace in 2014 we photographers could receive a 70% commission if 500px was our sole licensing agent for a particular image. Back then it was actually possible to get a decent payment if you sold a few images.
A few weeks ago, I was in town and I heard a lady say to her friend “That photo you posted of Sebastian was soooooo beautiful. While you’re on maternity leave, you should totally start doing photography as a business…”. Before I write anything else, I just want to say that this is exactly the kind of thing that my friends would tell me a few years back. And it’s lovely when your friends encourage you to pursue your passion and turn it into a business. But in my experience, starting any kind of business isn’t something that you should decide to do on a whim!
Why artists need to market themselves? So that, you the artist, wouldn’t starve to death.
No, but seriously. Otherwise, you risk ending up like Vincent Van Gogh who (in the words of Steven Pressfield) “produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.”
A lot of artists have this notion that they’re the creative person, and marketing belongs to the business world. Some even think it’s evil or dirty to promote themselves, and they don’t want to have anything to do with this” filthy” world.
The truth is, it’s your job to market yourself. You are the artist, and you know how to spread the word about your work. After all, you created it. You can’t rest after creating your art; you need to start marketing it.
If you’re good at photography, people have probably already started asking you “Why don’t you start a photography business?” You yourself may also be thinking the same. However, there’s more to business of photography than just taking good photos. In this video from SLR Lounge, photographer Pye Jirsa gives you five reasons to not start a photography business. Or in other words, five reasons why running a business simply may not be right for you, no matter how great photos you take.
I just read an intriguing article by MDG Advertising that breaks down a new report showing that approximately half of the marketing professionals studied have no idea how to actually quantify the business value of social media.
The question then becomes: if marketing professionals cannot calculate a return on investment for social media, why is everyone still investing in likes and followers?
Starting a business is a struggle, as well as keeping it successful. When you’re just starting out as a professional photographer, you’ll face a lot of challenges and might make some mistakes that will cost you the business. In this video, Chelsea Nicole talks about three common mistakes that could potentially ruin your business. If you’re just starting out, pay attention not to make these if you want to start and run a successful business as a photographer.
Copyright and intellectual property law are the foundations of the photography industry and all other creative business.
However, it is shocking how misunderstood (and strangely controversial) copyright and intellectual property law are among photographers and other creative professionals.
What is even worse is the amount of misinformation there is online when it comes to copyright and your intellectual property rights as a creative professional and content creator.
In this article, DIYP sits down for a Q&A session with Pixsy (a global leader in pursuing monetary compensation for copyright infringement on behalf of creative professionals) to answer 20 things photographers must know about copyright and intellectual property law.
It’s that time of the year again – New Year’s resolutions!
In this article I am going to take a look back at the photography business goals I set for myself last year, and re-calibrate my resolutions for 2018.
Everyone has different goals and business targets so I hope you’ll leave a comment and share yours too!
You don’t own your Facebook page. Yes, the page that you invested hundreds of hours to build, nourish and cultivate is not yours. It’s Mark Zuckerberg’s. The new Facebook’s Explore Feed feature works differently in Serbia and a few other countries than in the rest of the world. This shows that, by building a photography page, you’re actually working for Mark. You have to either pay, or forget about Facebook for business promotion and growing your audience.
Photography is and has always been a very personal vocation.
For many photographers, the process of capturing an image is just as important as the end result – the long hours of preparation, planning, overseas travel, getting to the right place at the right time and the inner satisfaction of clicking the shutter at just the right moment, knowing you’ve got it.
However, in recent years there seems to have been an explosion in tourism that has completely drained the joy out of the process of photography – from world renowned locations like Moraine Lake to simple local locations like a nearby waterfall – if it is a tourist destination it will be overrun with hordes of people and the experience of photography is ruined.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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