Category Archives: Photography Business

Stop Accepting $200 Assignments!

I’m a struggling freelance photographer just like many out there, I’m sure. I’m not widely known, nor have I been in the industry for decades with a client list that stretches for miles, but I know the sooner I learn to value my own work and the sooner I learn to value the industry in [...]

Use Their Work Free? Artists Say No to Google

“Both of these jobs were high-profile and gave my work great exposure but both clients still paid me.”
Melinda Beck, an illustrator who is based in Brooklyn, wrote in an e-mail message to Google rejecting its offer for exposure instead of cash (right here).

Fantastic Man Magazine

Found it on MagCulture.com. View it online (here).

VII Mentor Program

The VIIMENTOR PROGRAM (here), a new initiative conceived by VII Members, seeks to provide professional development for emerging photographers whom the Members consider to be the brightest new talents in the industry. After being nominated by a VII Member, each selected photographer will work with a senior member of VII for two years to build [...]

The Challenges In Photography

People make way too much out of the digital versus film. The challenges in photography—focus, crop, shutter, aperture, and of course the biggest ones of all, the ones that really matter: what you actually point the camera at, and with what intelligence you use it… are all still there, completely unchanged.
Q&A with Paul Graham, PDN.

Secret Hopes Of Becoming An Artbro Star

Changing my life plans from wanting to be a teacher with the secret hopes of becoming an artbro star to really wanting to become a teacher and participating in creating art as a side hobby whenever I feel like it. My new ideas on how I’ll be distributing my work will make “living off my [...]

Portfolio Reviews

Over on Conscientious, Joerg delves into the world of portfolio reviews (here) which I mentioned in my post on perceived scams in the photography industry but didn’t really get into because of my limited experience with them. Overall there’s some great advice for potential reviewers and reviewees and I plan to report my own experiences [...]

The Biggest Scam In Photography

What’s the biggest scam in photography? Judging purely on angry comments I get and see (here’s some on PDN Pulse) when the topic is raised, it’s photo contests with portfolio reviews running a close second. Of course the first time I even mentioned contests on the blog I was caught a little off guard because [...]

Can Editorial Photographers Make A Living Anymore?

I’ve often wondered? I certainly know plenty of photographers who do make a living in editorial photography and have always assumed there’s a large cliff between them and those who want to make it their profession but I have no clue what kind of money is being made and how many people are making it.
PDN [...]

Getty announces deal with Flickr

Interesting development in the stock industry, Getty Images and Flickr are working together to establish the first commercial licensing opportunity for photo-enthusiasts in the Flickr community:

Images can be tremendously powerful. Images, empowered appropriately, can challenge, convince, delight and inspire. At Flickr, we think one of our most important missions is to enabe images to be [...]

A Couple Blogs I’m Reading

Thoughts of a Bohemian, first pointed out to me by Kim Taylor of 180mag.ca in the comments of a post, is written by Paul Melcher a stock industry veteran who happens to also be a bohemian, which I dig. He speaks my language as well. Here’s a good example on a post entitled “A [...]

Corporate Greed

Robert Wright delivered part 3 (here) on the “business” of editorial photography and we both agree that corporate greed is the source of the problems we face in photography and generally in business today. It always seems like I randomly run into information that further clarifies what we’re discussing and this time is no exception:
From [...]

Copyright And Photography On The Internet

So, it appears this story where photographer Lane Hartwell asked YouTube to remove a video, created by The Richter Scales, under a DMCA take down order is not going to get resolved quietly. I think they could have paid her a fee and removed the image and gotten on with their lives, but we shall [...]

Making A Living As A Photographer

Robert Wright delivers a couple smart posts on the business of photography and that oh so important part, many photographers overlook, making sure you treat it like a business. He’s got some strategies for dealing with the current state of affairs which amounts to a stagnant day rate and thinly padded expenses.
US vs. THEM… or [...]

Photography as Art

Quite a few blogs have posted this story in Newsweek sensationally entitled “Is photography dead?” My take on the whole thing: A painter/art critic lashes out at photography for hogging all the gallery space with photos of photos, slick fashion spreads and editorial outtakes.

“The truth is very few people really like art.”

“This is the dirty secret that makes a living for artists such as Caroline Shotton. She is a new addition to that august company of artists who have careers, it seems, solely on the back of the joy the public takes in upsetting art critics, especially at Turner prize time.”
[...]“And I sympathise, I really do, [...]

Copyright and Movies

There’s a great post (here) from A.E. Vogler a screenplay writer in Hollywood. Here’s a couple highlights:
Residuals, along with larger up front fees, are what we writers receive to compensate us for the fact that the studios retain legal copyright (i.e., authorship) over our work. What does that mean? It means that once we turn [...]

Finding an Agent

Our friendly neighborhood agent over at AVS has a post on getting an agent (here). Let’s head on over there and see what’s up.