Ratorium
I’ve got a question. Three days ago, I read an article about
selling your own photos from home, and afterwards I wondered whether that sort of thing is actually possible and whether it would be worth it?
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Does anyone have any experience with this? And is it worth it? Because then, in theory, anyone could sell their 100 or 200 photos if it were that easy, couldn’t they?
Bonderer
Ever since I started taking photographs (40 years ago), there have regularly been schemes promising to make money from photos, either in the form of paperbacks or adverts, but they’ve always cost something up front.
The only ones who really made money from it were the publishers and the writers. After all, if little green men were to pose for the camera, it might be possible.
Enjoy your hobby, and if you do ever manage to sell a photograph, I’ll be delighted for you. But I wouldn’t recommend actively pursuing that path. I know a photographer personally, and selling photos that get printed or end up in collections is a very tough business.
AchimBauer
Hello Ratorium,
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Of course you can sell your photos, provided you have someone to buy them. With analogue photography (I still hate that word), it’s probably more about getting good prints to hang on the wall.
In the digital world, there are plenty of agencies that sell stock photos, and people who’ve given up their day jobs because they were earning more from their photos. I don’t know if they’d be happy to have their old job back now.
The sticking point is image rights – if someone is in the picture, etc.
Then you have to pay tax on it; social security might want a cut too, but you’d have to ask the experts about that.
If someone wants a print for their wall, that’s probably no problem as long as they give you a few euros.
But if you only want to do it for the money, you’d be better off pushing shopping trolleys at the supermarket; otherwise, you’ll have to find yourself a new hobby, because the old one is now a job and a source of stress.
And whether you’ll still enjoy photography – or, as it used to be called, the ‘sport of photography’ – is questionable.
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Regards, Achim
piu58
The agencies don’t actually buy the pictures; they take them on—let’s say—consignment. This means that anyone who needs a picture has a huge selection to choose from and can buy something for next to nothing. If you have hundreds on offer, you might sell one picture a year for €50.
Prints from exhibitions are what really sell. It’s not enough to get rich on, but you might recoup the costs of the materials you put into the exhibition.
Ratorium
Thanks for the info. So you can’t really make much money from it, but it’s more a way to earn a bit of pocket money on the side. That’s what I thought. Well, it’s better than letting the photos ‘gather dust’ on my hard drive. Oh, is that what it’s called? Stock photography? Yes, that’s right – when I type that into Google, I get loads of information about it. It really does seem to be called stock photography :)
Ratorium
I’ve been looking into this a bit more recently. I mean, photos on Fotolia. And there are actually loads of amateur photos that are in demand. Take news agencies, for example, when they’re writing about car parks and need a simple photo of a car park.
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So it seems that even as an amateur, you can make quite a bit of money there – though, of course, far less than a professional.
Urnes
It doesn’t matter at all whether you’re an amateur or a professional. What counts is the quality of your work and, of course, the quantity. Whilst amateurs might sell more photos they’ve taken as a side project (which tends to be fewer images), professionals produce exactly what’s in demand – and in large quantities. The quality standards are correspondingly high, and as an amateur you’ll need a fair bit of patience. When you do sell images, it’s possible they might only fetch 20 cents. Otherwise, prices generally range up to around 2 euros. Copyright is also a tricky issue. So you have to make sure that a Coca-Cola bottle, a brand logo or a person doesn’t accidentally end up in the picture. Furthermore, images are rejected if they’re deemed unsellable or if there are already too many similar ones in the portfolio. An agency offering editorial images is a good option. With these, copyright is somewhat relaxed due to the different licence, working much like in the press. This allows you to add a few more images to your portfolio, even if you don’t necessarily sell more. In any case, you should consider working with several agencies; you only need to tag the images once and can then upload them to, say, three agencies. Overall, you should never calculate your hourly rate based on this. Preparing and tagging images (preferably in English) takes time.
Regards, Sven.
Morte
And so the mindless flood of images merrily continues.
Is that really what you, as photographers, want to be contributing?
To paraphrase Walter Ulbricht: You really don’t have to go along with every bit of rubbish.
Urnes
Hello Morte,
Only time will tell which images are trivial and which are not. There are plenty of iconic images from the analogue era that are, quite frankly, utterly trivial. You can’t have it both ways. On the one hand, you have a medium that is truly accessible to everyone – and has therefore become democratic – and on the other, you have only images with intellectual merit.
What working with the agencies really gives you is self-criticism. You learn very quickly to distinguish between good and bad images. And to recognise whether an image has potential or not. After all, the picture editor is paid to scrutinise your images. Besides, they don’t know you personally. In that respect, the whole thing is simply a drill.
However, the days when microstock agencies were trading platforms for designers are, unfortunately, over.
Regards, Sven.
Morte
Democracy is a form of government. Photography is not.
A great many excellent and important photographs would still be rejected today by editors who take themselves very seriously.
One is art, the other is a consumer product. You don’t have to ‘wait for the future’ to tell the difference.
Urnes
That's right. However, art is just another commodity.
Best regards, Sven.
sputnik
I’ve got a question. I’ve just read the surreptitious advertising for Fotolia in this thread and it got me wondering whether that sort of thing is actually allowed and whether it’s worth it?
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Does anyone have any experience with this? And is it worth it? Because then, in theory, anyone could start 100 or 200 threads in various forums if it were that easy, couldn’t they?
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:D
Ratorium
Thanks for your replies. So it seems to be a bit of a rubbish site, or rather, you can only earn a bit of pocket money from it?
?
@sputnik
hahahahahahah :)?But Fotolia is a bit of a rubbish site, isn’t it? I mean, if I were to sell photos like that, I probably wouldn’t use Fotolia, because there are so many people signed up there that the prices get driven down.?
