Business Trends

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Business Trends
Can You Make It As A Travel Photographer?: Working Pros Reveal Market Realities
Maria Piscopo  |  Dec 18, 2012  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2012  | 
Technology and availability of “good enough” images has seriously cut into the income potential of professional travel photographers. Even though the lure of travel photography is still ever present in the minds of many photographers, the question needs to be asked—can you still make money shooting travel in today’s marketplace? The answer is “yes…and” due to the qualifiers today’s market has placed on this field of photography. Yes…and you may need to seriously look at stock sales. Yes…and you may want to add value and sales by becoming a writer as well as a photographer. Yes…and you may need to consider adding professional services like video capture to your business plan.
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Business Trends
The Greeting Card And Calendar Industry: Hidden Markets For Your Photos?
Maria Piscopo  |  Nov 09, 2012  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2012  | 
One of my favorite topics is helping you find ways to make money with your photography. Greeting card and calendar clients seem “hidden” only because most photography marketing articles usually focus on the bigger and broader markets like advertising, editorial, or even weddings and portraiture. But the “paper products” companies are still publishing, even moving into e-cards, and they still need images. I will confess, surrounded as I am by photography and photographers, I am still a Gold-Crown-card-carrying Hallmark club member!
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Business Trends
Making A Difference: Working With Nonprofit Organizations
Maria Piscopo  |  Oct 10, 2012  |  First Published: Sep 01, 2012  | 
“Doing Well by Doing Good” is how you might describe the subject of this column. It’s one of my favorite topics—photographers working for nonprofit organizations and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and finding a way to both make a living and make a change in their community. Whether it is local or global, photography has always been used to advocate for social change. There are many local and international communities and organizations you can serve.
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Business Trends
Staff Jobs For Photographers: On The Payroll For Pictures
Maria Piscopo  |  Aug 14, 2012  |  First Published: Jul 01, 2012  | 
Yes, there are staff jobs for photographers! Not as talked about as those who earn their living working freelance, this career path proves to be still viable today. The seven photographers interviewed for this column have a variety of job titles and work for a broad range of companies, including newspapers, big corporations, educational institutions, and hotels/resorts. Though they work in very different environments, it was interesting to me how much they have in common. As I learned, you will find that just being a technically competent photographer is not enough for a staff photography job. Also, make note of their employers’ use of freelancers. You’ll find that freelancing (working as a stringer) is one path to a staff job.
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Business Trends
Advertising Photography: What’s “Client Direct” And How Has It Changed The Game?
Maria Piscopo  |  Jul 23, 2012  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2012  | 
Advertising photography could be thought of as simply making images designed to sell a product or service. Traditionally, this meant a company hired an advertising agency to create ads to sell their products and services, so the ad agency hired a photographer to do the shoot or sought stock or other image sources to fulfill their image needs.
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Business Trends
Location Photography: When More Than Stock Is Needed
Maria Piscopo  |  Jun 07, 2012  |  First Published: May 01, 2012  | 
Clients buying location photography can include those from the travel, fashion, editorial, corporate, and even architectural fields. You might well ask—why don’t they just use stock? With so many sites and so many agencies and photographers offering images from every imaginable corner of the globe, hasn’t stock killed this market? Stock photography for this market is a topic for another day—this is about companies that need location photography because they need their people or property photographed and they know that stock will simply not fit the bill. As a related sidebar, we’ll also cover how you can rise above the iReporter-type shooter who often degrades the market by offering travel and lifestyle images for a “dime a dozen.”
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Business Trends
Social Media Marketing: The Next Best Thing?
Maria Piscopo  |  May 15, 2012  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2012  | 
“With any marketing campaign you need to excite potential clients so they will want to contact you, and you need to keep current clients interested and be sure they think of you first.”
—Jeff Colburn

There are so many choices today for online and social marketing. Here’s a partial list: Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, Online Groups, Twitter, Tumblr, Myspace, Digg, StumbleUpon, and of course your website. How effective are these new marketing scenarios in helping you sell photography services? We asked four photographers using social media to share their experiences. Thanks to Jeff Colburn, Karen I. Hirsch, Gail Mooney-Kelly, and Ian L. Sitren for their helpful opinions and advice. Please see their web addresses and visit their websites to see their work.

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Business Trends
Marketing Your Wedding Photography: Wedding Pros Share Their Tips
Maria Piscopo  |  Apr 24, 2012  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2012  | 
Finding clients for your professional wedding photography work can be a challenge. In this article we talk with seven wedding photography pros about their business today and how they find clients, what portfolio formats work best, and where they think the wedding business is heading in the next five years. We interviewed photographers from across the US; their styles range from beautifully posed portraits to wonderfully natural candids.
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Business Trends
Internet Infringement: Right-Click Conflicts
Maria Piscopo  |  Mar 16, 2012  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2012  | 
We have been concentrating on copyright issues in this column of late because of its importance to photographers. (See July, 2011, available at www.shutterbug.com, search Business Trends.) One topic we felt needed coverage was access to and use of images available on the Internet, including some background on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and some updated Internet educational resources that you might want to explore. We also wanted to touch on issues of public domain and image theft, and protection. Though many copyright infringements are non-malicious or unintentional, it remains an issue to be studied in order to defend and protect your images on the web.
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Business Trends
Building Business In The New Year: Start Making Plans For Growth
Maria Piscopo  |  Feb 08, 2012  |  First Published: Jan 01, 2012  | 
For the New Year, I talked with a handful of working photographers willing to share their tips and techniques on building a photography business. We discussed portfolios, new media marketing tools, how often they market to their clients, and their recommendations for starting (or restarting!) your photography business in today’s marketplace. As you read their responses, please note that though they are in different fields of photography—consumer and commercial—there are remarkable similarities in their business building techniques. Also, check out the online references section at the end of this column. Online marketing is already big and will be even bigger in 2012! In the interest of form and continuity, all online marketing references for each photographer are listed in this reference section.
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Business Trends
The Business Of Editorial Photography: Telling Stories With Pictures, And Getting Paid To Do It
Maria Piscopo  |  Jan 17, 2012  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2011  | 
Editorial photography has always been a glamorous and sought-after career with many dreaming of National Geographic-type assignments. The reality of selling editorial work today is the focus of this month’s column, and as you’ll see it’s not all glamour and glitz. Finding and keeping editorial clients is hard work, requiring marketing expertise as well as good people skills.
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Business Trends
Fine Art Photography: Striking A Balance
Maria Piscopo  |  Dec 06, 2011  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2011  | 
How do you define photographic success—by making money or by creating works of art? If both appeal to you then there is a way to reconcile what might seem by some as polar opposites: doing both by selling your work as fine art images.

Everywhere you turn—from assignments, self-assignments and from personal work—you can create opportunities for fine art images. Creating fine art photography can add a revenue stream to your commercial photography business. While the goal of selling images as fine art might be seen as unreachable, in fact the marketing and self-promotion methods and techniques for commercial work and fine art are very similar.

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Business Trends
Show Me The Money: What Do You Charge? Let’s See What It Costs
Maria Piscopo  |  Oct 17, 2011  |  First Published: Sep 01, 2011  | 
“Day rate is not an accurate measure of photography cost, as it does not include expenses. Day rate does not transfer usage or licensing rights, the real sale in commercial photography.”

“What do you charge?” There is something about that much anticipated, yet dreaded question that causes many photographers distress. There are probably a dozen psychological reasons for this feeling. Rather than take on those feelings, which is beyond my ken and that of this magazine, I’d like to look at specific actions and steps you can take to improve your behavior when it comes to pricing and asking for money.

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Business Trends
The Portrait Photography Business: From Kids To CEOs
Maria Piscopo  |  Sep 27, 2011  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2011  | 
While the destiny of the commercial photographer is still in the hands of the current corporate and advertising economy, the pro-active consumer portrait photographer seems to be doing well, even considering the times. Yet challenges remain from the shopping mall photo studio (26 photos for just $7.99!) to the DIY market, where everyone with a D-SLR gets in on the act.
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Business Trends
Copyrights & Privacy Rights: An Update On A Vital Issue
Maria Piscopo  |  Aug 11, 2011  |  First Published: Jul 01, 2011  | 
Among legal issues critical to photographers, copyright and privacy rights are worthy of your attention as they affect both what you can shoot and how you can protect your images. In this month’s column, we talk with three attorneys to develop a better understanding of these complex issues: David MacTavish, Law Office of David MacTavish (www.mactavish-law.com); Mickey H. Osterreicher, General Counsel, National Press Photographers Association or NPPA (www.nppa.org); and Carolyn E. Wright, Law Office of Carolyn E. Wright, LLC (www.photoattorney.com).
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