selling photos
 

Can anyone tell me the best company or library to sell my photo's? I had a look at Upixa which is advertised at the top of this web site and they look quite good. They dont charge you for uploading your pictures or signing up with them either but i'm just wondering if anyone knows of a better one. My boyfriend keeps telling me that my pics are really good and "people would pay good money for that" but i dont know if i've got what it takes as some of the photos on there look like they're out of my league!:( My real passion is macro too and i cant see any photos like that. My Dewy stamen pic looks good but could i cut it with the big boys?! Cheers, Polo

Selling your photo's is a cut throat business these days, there's so many people out there that have good camera equipment and digital output is so cheap. Many are only too willing to let their images go for a song, or even nothing at all just to get their photo and name in print, editors have never had it so good. The bird watching magazines are a good case in point, there's an headlong rush to be first with a picture in those magazines, the price for a photo in those magazines has been kept so low for so long that it's barely worthwhile making a submission when you take into account the amount of work necessary. If you do decide to send in some of your images make sure it's a reputable image library you send them to, many of the web links that offer to post your images for free and sell them for you are ripoff merchants who plagerise your work and sell it on to various outlets without you even knowing about it. Many have been used in TV commercials for high bucks, but the photographer gets nothing. Try approaching magazine editors direct, tell them what you've got and ask if they have any particular want's, try to specialise. Lead in times can be several months ahead of the magazine production, Winter shots should be sent in as early as June. Offer to send them a portfolio of your work, send only your best images, make sure they are well presented and follow a theme, also that they are fully documented and complete with your full name and address. Make sure you include full post and packing to cover return of your material if it's not required. Don't get disheartened by what appears to be little interest in what you thought were superb photo's, you will probably have to keep plugging away for some time before you make a sale. Be prepared to wait for a reply to your submissions, picture editors are notorious for dragging their heels, after about a month make a casual enquiry as to whether they liked your work, it may just prompt them to either use it or return it, in any case you may pick up some tips from the editor that could be usefull for future submissions. Sometimes they may sit on your material for years before it's used, sometimes they sit on it for years and then it suddenly drops through your letter box unused with a return slip.

nirofo.

I agree with Nirofo's comments.

There are numerous agencies out there, including agencies who specialise in almost every topic you can imagine. Check out BAPLA, it's an association for photographic agencies and most of the reputable ones will be members.

Some agencies charge a membership fee, i.e. fotolibra, I personally don't know how succesful they are, others such as Alamy don't charge but are very fussy on the quality. My understanding is unless the pictures are truly outstanding, they won't consider anything less than a 48mb file and these size pictures can only be achieved on the high end FF dSLR's.

Be careful wherever you do submit images, check out their policies first - even big organisations like the BBC have a standard submission policy for images, if you send it to them, they can use it whenever and wherever they like, they can send it to whichever company they want to globally and you as the photographer, though still holding the copyright, are not entitled to a penny, (out of kindness though, they will credit you)!

They're all heart :rolleyes: though they can't even gaurantee that anyone else they send them to will credit the photographer!

Have a look at the 'Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2007' - listings of contacts in all areas of publishing and image libraries plus useful articles.

I can thoroughly recommend you contact the Bureau of Freelance photographers. The annual subsciption fee (about £40 last time I looked) gets you a yearbook/contacts book and monthly newsletter highlighting some new potential customers for your images. They also offer advice, recommendations and publish numerous books helping freelance photographers.
They advertise in many photo mags, and I'm sure they'll also be on the web too.

Quote: jon sharp.

Providing you have a good quality image to start with it's quite possible to increase it's file size by use of software designed just for that purpose. For instance a full RAW NEF image from a Nikon D200 renders into a 28mb 8bit TIFF file, (don't bother with JPEGS for submissions). After initial tweaking in Photoshop or similar, it's easily possible to create a 48mb file or greater using a Genuine Fractals Photoshop plugin. Other software programs are available which can do a similar job. I've submitted many photographs of increased file size to various publishers and agencies over the years, if they are good enough and image content is what they require then they are acceptable by most editors. Image quality is paramount when considering a submission, it's no use sending in non descript below par photography, even if you have managed to increase it's file size to 48 Mb or larger!

nirofo.

I can certainly vote for joining them to. I joined up the back end of last year with a deal in a magasine giving me 3 months free before paying. They print a yearly handbook which is great to.

Re stock libarys. Have a look at www.photographersdirect.com. Its free to join and you either upload the photos of your choice or there is daily photo requests added where you can add photos to. The photos do have to be from at least a 6megapixl camera though and they have a rating systen.

A number of publications are stealing images MGN was caught not so long ago. La Repubblica just the other day. Commercial websites are notorious for theft of images, CNET for example constantly steals images.

Try www.istockphoto.com - royalties are pence but I have made about £100 in 7 months with just 30 images uploaded so if you have a couple of hundred stockworthy images you could make a fair bit that might buy you a shiny new camera or lens!