Selling Wildlife Photo's.

[Lancashire Lad]

Just been reading a thread on the main wildlife photography forum regarding experiences of some Wabbers who've managed to sell pics. (Congratulations to all of you by the way).

Didn't want to take that thread off track but thought the subject would make a very interesting new thread on the advice forum.

Would anyone with experience of this care to post advice on what conditions were imposed regarding images in order to get them accepted with agency etc.

There must be quite a few Wabbers who feel they've got a couple of very good photo's but need a nudge from someone who's already taken the plunge.

I've toyed with the idea in the past, but have been put off by requirements for file sizes of 50MB plus, having to submit hundreds of images, wanting only images from 6x4 or larger originals etc.

Have any of you been successful in having normal 35mm / DSLR images of 4-5MB accepted?, or had just a few images accepted? - There must be many snippets of info out there that could be very helpful to nudge people in the right direction.

I'm sure that many Wabbers would find your experiences both interesting and possibly beneficial. Who knows - they might even be able to contribute a percentage of any subsequent sales to WAB.

Regards
Mike.

[pressld2]

Good question Mike.

The only agency I have registered with is Photographers Direct. The photos uploaded to their databse are only 500 pixels wide but they do insist that the originals are a minimum of 3000 pixels on the longest side. This meant that I could submit images taken with my 6 megapixel Nikon D70 but only if they were un-cropped (or cropped from landscape to panoramic, keeping the original width).

I did look at rspb-images.com but, for submissions from new photographers, they want un-interpolated tiff files in excess of 25Mb. An un-interpolated D70 image is only 17Mb and I don't think the 8 megapixel Canons quite make it either. Now that I'm using a D300 with a 35Mb tiff file I could submit to them but still haven't, partly because they want their photographers to "submit 100 recent images to a picture edit every two months." I'm afraid I don't take 50 shots a month that I would consider good enough for sale.

Other sites, such as Alamy, want larger files still - 48Mb for Alamy and over 50Mb for some. This means that even with my D300 I would have to start interpolating which is not something I've played with yet.

I recall someone (afraid I can't remember who) posting in another thread that the time and effort needed to prepare images for uploading to an agency was prohibitive.

Then there is NHPA who specialise in wildlife and nature photography. They ask for "TIFF files from a high end digital SLR of no less than 10 megapixels made from RAW files". I can do that! What's putting me off is that they represent "the world's leading photographers in this field", including Laurie Campbell, Andy Rouse and Mark Cawardine to name just three. Admittedly they have a lot of photographers on their books that I've never heard of but even so, I couldn't even think of lumping my photos in with what those guys produce and keep a straight face.

Dave P.

[zan]

Most of my sales have actually come through people finding my stuff on Flickr and following the links through to my main website. Having an online Gallery is pretty important to showcase your work to the world if nothing else, and you can get some good template sites if you're not a webmaster I don't sell much because I don't really push for sales as hard as I could, but those I have had have mostly been for digital image files (for commercial use) rather than prints (for domestic use). I also use Photographers Direct, but haven't sold anything through them (although I have <100 pictures with them).

If you want to start selling photos, the one thing I would recommend doing early is to work out the dull stuff, like your terms and conditions and pricing, learn the jargon for selling licenses to your pictures, and think about what rights you would be happy to sell in each case. For wildlife pictures, most people would want to keep the copyright to their images, whereas this might be much less important if you were commissioned to take head shots of an office staff. Either way, you would want to charge accordingly. Get a manageable system in place for storing (keep backups!), printing and sending your work to clients early and it will save you a lot of bother later on.

Then it's a case of pimping your photos wherever you can Get onto magazines, papers, websites etc. with illustrated articles, or for reciprocal links to your webpage and hopefully it'll go from there.

Zan

[JennyS]

Hi Mike,

I've sold the use of about 20 of my photographs this year, but thats been because of a couple of people contacting me directly via my website. My photos aren't of big enough file size and my camera hasn't enough megapixels for the agencies, though I do like the look of photographers direct.

One difficulty I'm having is with getting one of the buyers to honour the terms I supplied the images under........
I'd stipulated that their commercial use of my images included providing a link to my site from their company one, they agreed but weeks and reminders later I'm still waiting for that link to materialise .......

An agreement is one thing, but enforcing it once they have the images seems to be a problem!

[Lancashire Lad]

Originally Posted by JennyS

One difficulty I'm having is with getting one of the buyers to honour the terms I supplied the images under........

To paraphrase an old chestnut, "There is no honour among thieves and certain businesses!"

Sounds like they are trying to take the "small guy(lady)" for a ride.

I'm no legal expert, but assuming your terms were watertight, and you've given them sufficient time to honour their part of the bargain, you must surely have either a "material" or "fundamental" breach of contract situation.

However, with the vagueries of the legal system, whether you'd get any satisfaction by pursuing the issue is anyone's guess. I suppose it would come down to the probability of any court determining if you are actually losing some material benefit by these people not linking to your site.

I'll be amazed if there aren't any Wabbers who could give you a more informed opinion on what your best course of action might be.

I hope you do get a result, as I cannot abide the nonchalant way some firms treat people.

I suppose if all else failed you might post something on your site stating that they had failed to comply, or threaten them with doing so. Maybe they wouldn't want to risk bad publicity?

Good Luck.
Mike.

[jennyb]

Mike, when I built my web site, the last thing on my mind was selling the photos and I was completely gob-smacked when I was contacted by a couple of newspapers in the US asking to buy some of my photos. At that stage my photographic skills were very limited and I was just using a little point and shoot camera.

Since then I have become much more interested in photography, have some much better kit and I think I am improving.

I regularly get requests to use my photos and I allow free use of them to charitable and not for profit organisations. It gives me quite a thrill that anyone wants to use them!

I did look into the photo library option and I think you will only make any real money if you upload hundreds or thousands of images to the stock libraries. I tried out a few (mainly to see if my photographs were good enough to be accepted) and uploaded to Photographers Direct, Alamy and iStockphoto.

I only sold any through iStockphoto and if you are not already aware this is a microstock library. I would suggest that you avoid these like the plague. They sell images very cheaply and the photographer only receives a few cents per sale! It is a real rip-off. I have since removed my photos from there.

If you are planning to upload to stock libraries, I would suggest that you look for gaps in the market. If you submit robin photos for example, you will have thousands of photos in competition with you. If you submit something like green woodpecker photos there is much less competition. So, choose more unusual subjects.

Whatever you decide, good luck with it.

Jenny

[Lancashire Lad]

Originally Posted by jennyb

If you are planning to upload to stock libraries....

Hi JennyB

I don't think I'll be trying to sell any photo's in the near future - I've only just got back into photography after a lay-off of quite a few years. (You know how it is - other things in life seem to take up your time). I don't think my old transparencies would make the grade today. It's nice to be getting back into the swing of things though, re-learning old skills etc.

I started this thread because of what I'd read elsewhere on the site, and I'm just curious to find out what other people are having to do to get their images accepted - what is acceptable - in terms of image sizes etc. etc.

I've seen some outstanding photo's while browsing WAB, both in technical quality and composition, to say nothing of the skills involved in actually being able to get into suitable locations to get the shots.

Hopefully, this thread, by the information being fed back in by your good self and others, might just nudge a few of these very competent photographers to chance their arm in the "professional" arena.

I hope we get more replies, as the thread seems to be getting a good number of views, so presumably there are interested people out there.

Best regards
Mike.

[Keith Talbot]

great thread started mike,

i'll be keeping an eye on the replys,i would be interested on how to go about things,

i suppose it depends on the pic and person but whats the going rate for a pic these days?

ive got some pics on photobox but havent had alot of sucsess (too many people trying the same thing on there!)

im planning my own website in the new year so hopefully might get a bit more luck then.

keith

[nutmeg]

I've sold quite a few images through my Flickr site and they've all been ones that fit a specific need by the purchaser - usually for books and usually for non-British publishers. For example, little did I think that when I posted photos of my children taking part in local BioBlitz events that some would end up in ecology based children's books in Canada!

I suspect it very unlikely that I'd get the same requests for my photos of more popular (and aesthetically pleasing?) wildlife subjects.

[djeyewater]

Originally Posted by matt_xyz

My local wildlife trust (Leics) has started to use some of my images (for free) so I'm at least pleased that my images are getting used somewhere!

Matt

Cool, I'm a member of Leics and Rutland Wildlife Trust, are your pics in/going to be in the magazine?

Dave