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We're just relaunching in January 2012 with a new angle. DSLR Blog will be about images and their stories (we also write about other topics on Photography too). We welcome submissions from any type of photographer - from baby portraits to gut-wrentching humanitarian photography to pure art. Read our submission guidelines.
Category Archives: Photography Business
Write a Marketing Plan for Your Photography Business
Today, pro photographer and fellow Photocrati contributor Steve Buchanan offers some advice on marketing plans for your photography business. Steve is a commercial photographer in Maryland. His work can be seen at www.buchanan-studios.com.
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When is the last time you updated your marketing plan?
This is of course assuming you have a marketing plan. If you do – good for you. If not – get on it. I certainly don’t want to hold myself up as a model of small business marketing. I have definitely made my share of mistakes (and will hopefully continue to do so) but I have invested a lot of effort, time and even some money into learning about what works and what doesn’t.
I’m not here to tell you what will work for you and what won’t because those will be different for each photographer. Your particular market, the type of work you do and your geographic location all come into play when determining the right mix. The point I want to make is that all successful marketing campaigns have a few things in common. Continue reading
Using Google Adwords to promote your photography business and find clients
This article is about one of the most effective and precise ways to promote your business and find clients. Google Adwords makes advertising easier, faster, and more cost effective than ever before. If you want to, in a couple of hours, you can send a veritable flood of traffic to your site. And if you design your campaign correctly, the vast majority of those visitors will be people who are specifically looking for a photographer doing your kind of work.
So here are some tips on how to get started with Google Adwords and how to make sure you get the biggest bang for your advertising dollars. Continue reading
How to Choose a Stock Agency
First article in a series on how to choose, submit to, and work with stock photography agencies.
I’m assuming that most readers of this blog are familiar with the basics of how stock agencies work. You take photos, you send them to the agency, they sell them, and you split the sales proceeds. That’s the basic model. That said, that said, the stock photography world is a universe unto itself. Various articles in this series will deal with some of the bigger differences you should be aware of, as well as more detailed thoughts on how to pick and work with any given agency.
For now, let’s say you’ve decided to sell through a stock agency…how do you decide which one to sell through? I’d say the answer depends on where you are in your photographic journey.
Part One: If you are just starting out
If you are completely new to stock photography and / or if you do not have at least 500+ high quality images in a singe niche area, then I would recommend that you take two steps.
What kind of photographer are you?
What kind of photographer are you? There are several different ways to categorize the work photographers do—what we might call business models. When finding your niche, keep in mind these models can produce dramatically different lifestyles and daily work routines.
Stock versus Assignments (Selling Photos versus Services)
The first and most common division is between those who sell images (“stock” shooters) and those who sell their services (assignment photographers). Stock photographers take photos on their own time and resources, accumulate large libraries of images, and sell the rights to use those images. Assignment photographers, by contrast, are paid to take the specific images that clients need. After the assignment, they may or may not retain rights to those images. Continue reading
6 Guidelines for Finding Your Photographic Niche
Greetings, readers. I’m Erick, and this is a first post on DSLR Blog. This will be the first is a long series of articles on the business of photography, all targeted toward advanced enthusiasts interested in starting and running a photography business. While I’ll post an about me introduction later, for now, I just wanted to point out I’m also the editor of two other blogs: the photo gear blog SLR Geek and the group pro photographer blog Photocrati.
Since specialization of photographic energy is the subject of this post, let me also add that I specialize in Asian editorial imagery.
With that, onward. In this first article, i want to take up the subject of photographic specialties. You know you need one to transition from enthusiast to pro, but how do you find a niche?
Deciding areas in which to specialize your photographic efforts is, ultimately, a very personal decision. And it’s important, because your career will display “path dependency”—once you develop a reputation and established relationships with buyers, there will be strong pressure and incentives to keep shooting in the same niche.
Based on my own experience and photography volumes, I would suggest there are six important factors to keep in mind in picking on niche. Continue reading
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Do you need a model release?
I’m going to try to bring simplicity to a complex question. Here’s a comprehensive legal answer in two sentences.
The General Rule: If a photo of a person, or of copyrighted or trademarked property, is used to advertise something, then the publisher of the photo needs a release.
The Privacy Exception: If you are hired to take photos of someone (say a wedding or studio shot), those photos cannot be published, even editorially, without a release.
If you really understand those sentences, then you know almost all you need to know about the legal requirements of model releases. Most of this article elaborates on these sentences above to make sure each part of it is clear. Continue reading »