In this issue:

Income from Photography This ebook covers everything you need to know about starting and maintaining your own photography business ... as soon as TOMORROW! You'll also learn information on where the markets are and where to sell your photos.

Sell Your Photos For Profit

Have you ever thought about selling your landscape photographs? Do you think that maybe your photos are really only snapshots? Or maybe you think only your friends and family will appreciate your efforts. If you're a member of a photography club, you might have won or been highly placed in some photo competitions which might boost your appreciation of your own efforts.

Whether you think you take saleable photos or not, that's really down to someone else - the person who's willing to buy your photo (or not!). Camera magazines abound, and all look for photo submissions from their readers, so submitting a selection of your best photos to them is one way to get into print and wave the obliging magazine under the nose of all and sundry while you crow about being a "published" photographer. ;-)

Stock Photography

But there is another ways of selling your work. It's called stock photography. What is Stock Photography? It's photos or other imagery of common landmarks, concepts, and events that can be used and reused for commercial design purposes. All photos are uncommissioned; that is - the photographer wasn't hired to do a job. Book publishers, speciality publishers, magazines, advertising agencies, film makers, web designers, graphic artists, interior decor firms, corporate creative groups, and other entities all use stock photography to fulfil the needs of their creative assignments.

By using stock photography instead of hiring a photographer to perform on-location shooting, customers can save valuable time and stay on budget. With a wealth of images, stock photography databases that may be searched online save photo researchers valuable time when they are looking for just the right image. With today's digital delivery methods, images can be bought online and delivered by download or email, the very same day.

Stock photography is sometimes called a photo archive, or just stock photos. The term photo archive often refers to the website or physical location where the photographs are stored. Photo archives are also sometimes called image banks. As modern stock photography distributors often carry stills, video, and illustrations, none of the existing terminology provides a perfect match for the state of the industry.

Stock Photography And You

Now that the dry definition of Stock Photography is out of the way, what's it got to do with you? Since there are so many image banks online, many solicit photo submissions from anyone instead of using work only from professional photographers. So that's where you come in. Select a few of your best photos, have them digitally scanned if they're on film, and submit them to some of the online stock photo agencies.

The agencies will review your photos before deciding to accept or reject them. Yes, they have some basic requirements that must be met before they'll accept your photos. Some of these are pretty basic and obvious like the photo being in focus, horizons being straight, the image size being large enough to be useable.

Different agencies will also have additional requirements. Some will only accept images in 3:2 format (the ratio of a standard film frame or digital sensor) so they may reject cropped or panoramic images out of hand. Others stipulate that grain or noise be almost non-existent. This can mean that digitally scanned ISO 400 (and above) film may be rejected due to its inherent film grain.

Subject matter can be another requirement. Some agencies may be focused on particular topics (like people, transportation or business) so photos of your pet cat may not be what they're looking for.

Submitting Photos

So it's important to read each agency's requirements before you submit photos to them. That way you won't waste their time or yours.

There are two things to keep in mind when submitting your photos for review: Title and Keywords. Choose as descriptive a title as possible for each of your photos as it'll help prospective customers identify the subject of the photo more easily. The other thing to think about is keywords related to the topic of your photograph. These are used to match the search terms entered by customers for photos matching what they're looking for. So the more keywords you use, the better your chances of your photo appearing in the search results which, in turn, increases your chances of a sale.

Selecting keywords can be difficult. A little lateral thinking may be necessary to come up with alternatives. Suppose you've taken a picture of some trees. What keywords could you use as well as the obvious "trees". Well, there's "tree". If it's a small clump of trees you could use "copse". If it's in a forest, you could use "woods" and "forest". Trees are made of wood, so you could add "wood" and "timber". Trees have leaves, so another couple of keywords are "leaf" and "leaves" (always use the singular and plural versions of a keyword to increase the chances of your photo being seen).

When was your photo taken - include the season, such as "autumn" or "winter" as a keyword. If the trees were covered in snow, you could try "Christmas" or "holiday season" as keywords. Keywords don't have to be single words, they can be phases as well. If there's fog or mist in your trees photo, another keyword might be "enchanted forest". If the photo was taken at sunrise, you could use "trees at sunrise".

Hopefully the above will give you some idea of how to go about building a list of keywords. However, if that kind of thinking doesn't come easy to you, download Good Keywords V2 from http://www.goodkeywords.com/ and type in the keywords you can think of and it will provide a list of alternatives. (The tool was actually designed for coming up with good keywords for Google Adsense).

Copyright Issues

You will always retain full copyright of your photos. All you are doing is granting the stock photo agency a licence to sell the use of your image and not the image itself. Most of the agencies operate a non-exclusivity arrangement which means that you can submit your images to as many agencies as you like. Some stock photo agencies do offer optional exclusivity clauses which can mean you get a higher revenue per sale but that's something you have to measure against the number of sales you might make for the same image at all the other agencies you've submitted it to.

Your Photos Have Been Accepted!

Ok, so your photos have been accepted, now what? Well, that's down to a couple of factors - current trends in the type of photos that are being bought, how often your photo gets seen and how it meets the needs of prospective customers.

Don't expect to see your photos selling like hot cakes! You might be that lucky, but it's not likely. Stock Photo agencies contain hundreds of thousands of images. Most agencies break their photos into categories for easier identification. But that can still mean your photos are up against several thousand or tens of thousands of images in the same category.

The simple rule is that the more photos you submit, the more you will sell.

So What Kind of Money Can You Expect To Make?

Stock Photo agencies don't pay a lot per image. They sell images at low prices (from a dollar upwards) and they cover the administration costs in handling transactions and hosting and serving the images to customers.

You can expect to make $0.20 to $0.50 on average per sale. Very popular photos will have higher payouts but it's best to assume yours won't be in that category. So you certainly aren't going to get rich overnight. But like I said above, the more photos you submit, the more you will sell.

There is one thing you should be aware of. Regardless of how many times a customer uses an image, you only get paid for one download. So, if a customer decides to use one of your landscape photos in a calendar, for instance, (that may sell hundreds or thousands of copies), you only get paid the download fee and you don't receive a royalty for each time the calendar is sold.

Is It Worth Your Time?

At the very least, you can use the submission process to get an objective opinion on your photos. Where else are you going to have professionals review your work for free? A reason for rejection will usually be provided when photos are turned down. So you can use this process to refine your photographs - either through improving your techniques (because you'll be told what you've done wrong) or in better identifying the kinds of photo that appeal more to people.

If you think you have an absolute stunner of a photo, then don't submit it to a stock agency. Try to sell it through other means. Reserve your "not quite magnificent but otherwise not bad" photos for the stock agencies. They could still make you a little money. And once they've been accepted by a Stock Photo agency, you don't need to worry about them again and, every so often, your monetary balance will increase a little!

My Experience

I wrestled with the fact that maybe some of my own photos wouldn't make me as much money as they might potentially have done if I submitted them to a stock photo agency. On the other hand, submitting to more than one agency increases the exposure for each photo and the likelihood of a sale. So, following my own advice, I selected images I thought were good, but not stunners, for submission to a couple of stock photo agencies. The two agencies I chose where ShutterStock and DreamsTime. I am looking at others and I'll report details of them on the Great Landscape Photography website (I'll be building a page dedicated to selling your photos online).

I've submitted less than 20 photos to each agency. Some are common to both but the criteria for the two agencies are slightly different which means the selection of photos to each is different. I signed up with both a month ago and, so far, I've had 25 sales through ShutterStock and only one sale through DreamsTime. I think the reason for the bad result with Dreamstime is that they're more focused on people/business type photos than landscapes.

Like I said, you won't get rich but you will make some money.

Reader Questions

I received the following questions from readers recently:

Q: I recently bought a cut-price Canon EOS Digital Rebel (300D) and have got back into photography in a big way. I want to make use of the slides I took years back and I'd like to be able to print large photos on my A3 photo printer. I know I need a film scanner but which one should I buy?

A: I bought a Minolta Scan Elite II film scanner a couple of years back which I was very happy with. The current Konica/Minolta DiMAGE 5400 II scanner has great resolution (5400 dpi) and a fast scan speed but is marginally more expensive ($570) than the Nikon CoolScan V (4000 dpi, $550) which comes with more software and a better user interface (it's the scanner I now own).

While the Konica/Minolta scanner offers higher resolution, it doesn't seem to resolve any more detail than the Nikon scanner. They're actually limited by the physical grain size on film itself, even for fine grain films like Fuji Velvia or Provia.

Both scanners have ICE4 which cleans up images but the Nikon user interface gives you better control over all the various settings and image enhancement options.

If speed is important (it might be if you need to scan a huge number of slides) then the Konica/Minolta scanner is the one to go for. The Nikon is fast (but not as fast as the Konica/Minolta) and there's really only about $20 in the price difference.

Q: When my Nikon D70's 18-70mm lens is at its wide angle (18mm) setting, I'm getting dark corners on my skies. Is this normal or is something wrong?

A: This problem is common with many lenses and it's called vignetting. It's caused by a reduction in light at the edge of the lens. It's an optical problem that, unfortunately, goes hand-in-hand with making lenses affordable. The only true cure is to buy extremely expensive professional lenses.

Vignetting is usually worst when the lens aperture is wide open, so switching to aperture-priority mode and stopping down the lens to f/5.6 or f/8 will help somewhat. Another solution is to zoom in slightly but that of course means you can't use your lens's widest setting.

If you've attached filters (e.g. and Ultra Violet or a Polarizing filter) to your lens, that can also lead to vignetting. So your choice in this case is to remove the filter(s) or zoom in slightly to remove the vignetting.

If you shoot digitally and in RAW mode, a software solution to vignetting can be found in the RAW converter in PhotoShop CS. In the Advanced mode, there's a Vignetting slider which allows you to increase the exposure at the edges of the frame, thus removing the problem. [On Nikon digital SLRs RAW files are called .NEF files]

Q: Why is it that when I take a photo of a dramatic twilight scene I either end up with a great looking sky and a silhouetted foreground or a well exposed foreground and a washed out sky? Why can't I get both foreground and sky well exposed?

A: It's a bummer when that happens, isn't it? There are a couple of things that can fix or at least help with the problem. The first is an in-camera solution: Buy and use some graduated filters. These will reduce the exposure difference between foreground and sky, bringing everything in the scene within the exposure latitude of the film or digital sensor.

The second solution is a partial in-camera one and requires the use of a tripod and cable release (or self-timer). Mount the camera on the tripod, frame the scene and take several shots at slightly different exposures (called bracketing - your camera might be able to do this automatically). Make sure at least one exposure has good sky detail and another has good foreground detail.

When you get home, load the best exposed photo of the sky and the best exposed photo of the foreground into separate layers in your preferred image editing software. Then blend them together to bring out the best parts in each individual exposure and achieve a good final photo.

General Photo News

virtualPhotographer is a free plug-in for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Elements and Paint Shop Pro that lets you instantly apply high-quality, professional styles to your images with just one click and includes over 50 presets that automatically apply combinations of film grain, color modification, high contrast, etc. The plug-in can also provide some image manipulation. Only works on PCs though.

StudioLine Photo Basic is a free download that offers a complete photo management solution. Add descriptions to your images, send photos per email in just the right size, print high-quality copies, display slide-shows, publish web-galleries, safe-keep your images on CD or DVD. You'll get dual-monitor support and smart updates. There's also an option to upgrade to StudioLine Photo 2.8 (for a fee).

Want to do low angle work but the neck strain puts you off? The ZigView is the solution. It's the world's first digital angle finder. It allows for the image in the viewfinder to be captured by a CMOS sensor which is then transferred in real time to a 1.9-inch TFT color display and can be used for overhead or waist-level viewing. The ZigView is supplied with an eyepiece adapter for Nikon, Canon and Fuji cameras and a separate adapter is available for Konica/Minolta and Pentax users. Price is about $230.

Site Update News

The website layout has now been fully changed (that took some time!)

There have been a couple of additions to the Photo Software page.

Some new photos have been added to the Panoramic Landscape page.

A new Landscape Photography Books page has been added which lists books I think are worth reading or perusing.

The Photo News page has been revamped. As well as the general news announcements page there are now three dedicated news pages available from the Photo News page that are updated daily.

Well, that's it for this issue. If you've any suggestions for the site, questions that need answering, pictures or articles you'd like to send in or you've come across some software you think we should know about, do let me know.

Likewise, if you have any thoughts about the things you would like to see in future issues, please let me know by using the feedback form to do this.

In the meantime, visit Great Landscape Photography to catch up with the frequent updates and keep your film dry, your digital sensors spotless and your lenses clean!

Warm Regards,
Gary