AboutJohn and Chris Expertise We are both professional photographers, with over 15 years experience. We can answer questions about photography, as well as questions about cameras from the 60s to 90s. (extensive 35mm, quite a bit of other formats.) Please, no darkroom questions.
Expert: John and Chris Date: 3/23/2004 Subject: selling pictures
Question Hi,
I am a quite serious amateur photographer. I think I have lots of technical and compositional experience. I would like to try to sell some of my pictures but I have no idea how to get started. I would appreciate it very much if you could offer some insight. How would you get started? Is there a website or some organization etc. etc. I do not intend to become a professional photographer but every once in a while I would like to sell some pictures to make my hobby of photography less expensive. I have specialized in landcape and nature photography.
Thank you very much,
Sebastian
Answer Sebastian,
Well, there are many ways to approach this. It depends on the amount of time and money you are willing to put into this. What it boils down to is finding ways to get your pictures in front of people who have money with them.
This will be partly dictated by where you live. For example, some cities have lots of little coffee shops. You could put your pictures on greeting cards and try and retail them from established locations like that. I live in Oregon and I've seen lots of folks trying to sell their images in the tourist towns along the coast. Flea markets and farmers markets may be worth a try as well.
Then of course there is the internet. You could build and register a website and try and sell pictures that way. Or you could register with a stock agency. A stock agency will have your images on file organized by catagory with the work of other photographers. So if someone is looking for a certian picture, they go to the stock agency and look at all the pictures that meet their needs. The agency then sells them the right to use your image for a specific purpose, for which the agency may get a cut or a flat fee.
I don't know of any websites on the subject. Of course you could just google "selling pictures".
