Lessons

Lesson Info

Online Resources and Closing Thoughts

People ask me a lot how do you price or images what do yu license an image for? Because there's kind of sort of to market glen's market at least initially is what's called business business to consumer though I think his time goes on you may find yourself moving up to the business to business market ok but my stuff is primarily business to business licensing fee photos for publications, websites and stuff like that and people say well how do you price the usage and the answer in any pricing at all? What will the market bear it's really a simple is that so you can actually go to any of a dozen different photo sites this is one is called photo shelter which I'm sure you've heard off and you go and I picked out this image on ly because I have an image very similar to this from my own work from india and so I would actually go to this image literally and say okay somebody wants to license my image and then I could go to get e I could go to corbis I could goto alami I could go to almost any...

photo site and they're pricing engines are right on the site go right over here in this case they're selling prints but I'm not interested in prince but you can see what the market would bear in terms of prices there I'm actually thinking of downloading this image for publication and they ask you a series of questions let's go with us uh the concorde the country on second thought okay united states uh and you see what I'm doing I'm just asking a bunch of questions and when the person who is going to use your image says c I'm thinking of using that picture you made of that fabulous dancer for a record album cover and I am not being at all theses it by the way and you say wow two hundred dollars I'm gonna call you and kill you because you just left like five thousand dollars on the table so you want to go here and you put in things like oh I don't know let's try billboard okay and then license stardate five hundred displays one year we're talking about real money here and you want to do the exact same thing on the getty site and the corvus citing the alami so you get four five numbers in the aggregate but these things this is what the market will bear okay these people who make up these sites getty corvis alami photo shelter they get paid to figure out what they think people will part with money for and I would never depend on photo shelter alone I wouldn't depend on getty alone but he aggregate between four of them that's what the market will bear and so there's all this incredible pricing information that's right out there that you can get basically for free if you find an image it's similar to what your licensing you can also go and this is a software actually that I use called photo quote, which is the software they have to buy but I like having my laptop because I can't always get online and I can't always do what I just did but photo quote is basically doing the same thing it's the industry it is they call themselves in italy is largely true the industry standard for pricing photography and so the software's called cradock is the company and I don't know if they have it there if they have some kind of deal but you might want a least look at it just so you understand how you understand the pricing and I won't go in tow photo quote but it's exactly the same thing those pull down menus of his stock is an assignment how many days? All the other stuff and it'll give you a number um they didn't work yeah, okay, so here's some other resource is that I strongly encourage you to look at this is the trade group for photographers like me there are many trade groups national press photographer association which I belong to is a new favorite photo journalist group american society of media photographers it's, the trade group for people who do publication photography used to be american society of magazine photographers but they changed the m to media because a multimedia new media but if you look over here they've got all this stuff business resource is tutorials, educational videos, book ex pricing guides and most but not all of this is not a member specific there is stuff here that you have to be a member for and I understand that but a ton of this information is actually open to anybody and the reason snp hasn't opened is really simple you're all going to be in the business someday and if you get this stuff and you don't undersell the market we all have a collective chance of possibly surviving so I encourage you to look at snp dot or ge specifically the resource is paige that same software company I was talking about before cradock software they also make a very nice business management software here which is called photo biz and photo biz is what I use there are a bunch of business management software out there this is one of the few that's photographer specific half of it's like any other business management software it has, you know, billing clients list, but it also has a great thing where you can put together a contract language and copyright language and create letters that you send to people when you're cranky you know, create letters when you send people who had been misusing your work and so this is the business management software I use I don't get a piece if you buy it but I just want introduce you to it we haven't talked that much about the sort of end market in terms of who you're going to approach and submit your work to analogue just give you two really useful resource is this is think is technically a wicky where people voluntarily do this tracking but it's called mastheads mastheads online blog's spot and this is simply a list of all the ill just click on I don't know architectural record okay, click through and if you go down here this is a magazine architectural record and as of august two thousand twelve this is all of the staff and if you were going to approach the art director or the media development director or somebody else, you can get that information turn right here and so this is, um mastheads dot or ge block spot and so this is and I'm in the process of doing this right now going through there spending an hour finding like maybe five magazines cutting and pasting and building my own list it gets mind numbing fast so I only do maybe five names at a time if by chance you wantto jump start the process, you go to a company called ad base and you can get that same information we have to pay for it okay, but both of these are ways of getting list of who's the art director who's the photo editor who's in charge of multimedia for all sorts of publications and that's publication specific only in the case of master it is on ly editorial publications where ad bases actually everything from art directors editorial, commercial annual ports, corporate etcetera and so that's one way of also getting the lists you do want to be subscriber to this not me you want to get on their email lists just because they'll send you periodic giveaways were given away for a week a certain amount of numbers or stuff like that so you could do some of this finding of people for free you may at some point time decide to create a campaign and then you're probably gonna want to pay for it on my site the wells point dot com under the about page I have a list that's probably not completely up to date but these air art consultants and corporate fine art dealers these are the people I was talking about before mostly decorate hotel interiors office parks hospitals and they buy work within a fairly narrow range of interest but it's one of my more regular markets basically what happens is you email them or you go to their site you goto all these sites and you'll find out that maybe five percent of the amount of business because it's the business of terms if you do, you'll send me an email and say that one's out that I'll take them off and you go on somewhere on their sites it'll say submit this way, join us submissions they'll ask you avarice pacific thing is usually twenty images it's usually digital files and then they put him in some file and when they get a call for that kind of project, we need pictures of water that are calming. We need pictures, the train station that looked like in the late nineteenth century, then they'll call you the rest of time they just sit there, there's nothing involved in terms you'd have to pay to be in them and they're not going to do much with you until there's a call. But it's a resource you want to have on your list? Um another one on that same page is a further directory on pricing rates and rights, and it basically goes a little further than what I just showed you on photo shelter for other places where you can get some information on pricing rates and rights from all sorts of different resource is again snp is one there's one back down here and best practices for registering copyright there's actually a whole separate page on my sight is well for copyright if you decide you want to start pursuing that you want to first to your reading and then the last two things are something that I read every morning like clockwork and I strongly encourage it doesn't cost you anything to subscribe these are the two most useful, um email newsletters that you could be reading and it's just called pro photo daily it's from the old american photographer magazine david shown our who was he editor there now produces this once a day digest and this is from a few days ago but it's just it's amazing where this guy I find stuff every single day can come up with five different things that are vaguely photo related uhm like demystifying copyright three generations of women in the same clothes not quite like my wife work national geographic fellows somebody's stuff he just don't get some of it's fascinating, but I read pro photo daily every single day like clockwork it's probably the first starting point to know it was kind of going out there immediately and then the sister too that is motion arts pro daily and if you google those two names, you're going to come to thee american ay ay ay ay site right here and you khun subscribed either one and doesn't cost anything you'll get an email in your box, I scan the headlines half the times I'd be perfectly willing to admit I say they're not interested today, but every now and then there's something and I got open I want to read that it might become part of my process might become part of a work shit a workshop all those things so those are some of the online resource is that I refer to pretty much every day all right, so we're winding down I want to throw out some closing thoughts to you this is something I found recently good teaching is fundamentally about connecting, which I like to think we did but also it's about how this is a great thing making you believe in yourself and then giving you a path and I'm saying this because you still got the hard work to d'oh okay? But I think you could do it. I hope this was actually from daniel coyle who wrote a book recently big bestseller book recently called the talent coat and the other part of what he said it was really interesting was on dh I'm paraphrasing him again but I used to be there and I think one of the reasons I like to think you connect and I tried to take you on my journeys so you understand that I did it you can do it you have a lot of work to do but in theory I've down giving you some of the tools daniel pink, another writer who's I've read and I like to quote observes in a book called dr surprising truth about what motivates us twenty first century workers are motivated by three things autonomy, mastery and purpose notice there's no money in there and all the research says this I think I know from our conversation you're not interested. You want to make a living gotta make a living but that's not the core driving thing right autonomy you want to be able to control your situation? Tell the stories you want tell mastery of course you're interested mass trails who wouldn't be studying you wouldn't be here and purpose and every project that we discussed issa's much about the purposes it is a about those other steps and again I really I liked us quote because he goes on and the rest of book and says money is actually really pretty far down there um now I'm going to circle back almost to the closing but not quite we live in an age when anyone can claim to be a photographer you now have the tools to differentiate yourself as a prize as a professional by developing, promoting, disseminating personal project you still have to do the work, though we only have given you the tools your projects will carry over the personal the professional and showcase your skills enabling others to figure out who you are, what your personality is, what your passions are the's same end users love exceptional photography and personal projects but they're going to end up paying you to do something else. We talked about this before there was a question a couple questions I think online and from you as well, but what about when it becomes a job? Well, you have to be prepared for that or you may want to say I'm not going to do job and again you don't want to go out too early because you don't want to get the job and not have the skill set the personality management's heals people management seals the access the organizational skills don't get hired, do a job and then blow it organizationally that workflow thing okay, you know what you know now that the trick is to build a visibility and get the work even when the two things don't appear to overlap, you're gonna have to work really hard on your projects and try to dovetail them with a larger political thing I really feel contra we've all pretty much settled on how you're going to fit into this larger discussion that's going on now you do you do, you do in brazil we just got I just got back from brazil in brazil this is the sort of universal signal from yes, thank you for letting me cross and running a car without killing me it's going to be a good game it's amazing this is just ubiquitous so I know you now have the confidence to go out and create and promote your project by following these steps and doing the exercises you got to go back. I know today you're tired, but tomorrow you want to go back in struggling due back some of those exercises and you got to do elevator pitch is too okay, you'll get more work, more visibility, more satisfaction and more control of your time. So I know it's a big issue for all of us, all right? With the explosion of choices brought on by the internet, curation is a big trend and it's simply people want to be told by people they trust that what they're looking at is invaluable and as important as they think it is, and you have that opportunity now to be on the right end of curation, the third party validation that you get when your project is published exhibited this ever gives your clients clients to be potential outlets, the curation that says to them, yeah, their faith in you and the outside world's faith in you says, yeah, you actually can't do this. This is w sona business to consumer side, which is what you're working on right now, gwen, because a lot of times the business and consumer side people don't have the expertise to say, yeah, that actually is better work on the business the business side, I deal with a lot of people who were image professionals, so they generally know how to evaluate work, but in the business of consumer sight, which is a large part, I think of what you're all going to be doing. You really need to give your clients to faith. Yeah, you are really the right person, and that comes from the external validation the clients to be in my world have some experience in the business to consumer world, less so and again struggle back don't think, oh, I'm gonna go out there once you finish school and do personal work and professional work and keep them separate, you don't want to be separating them out, you actually want to take them close together and they are the thing that is your brand twitch you master it's your expertise and they become one in the same and yes, you get paid to do stuff that may not be as interesting as you, your work, but occasionally you'll get paid jobs. I've had plenty of great paid jobs and a lot of but together in the aggregate I get to still make a living control my time, all this stuff, so the call to action here now we're heading towards the very end of this, but not quite yet, okay list of various kinds of net works that you have start putting your peers your family, your friends, your relatives into these various lists start building your personal project your sources of access in your dissemination partners through that list remember I said everybody you know should know what you're doing you didn't know it but your uncle actually works with x organisation that funds research into some sort of family crisis issues I don't know what but you don't know who knows you don't know what you know you don't know what you don't know until you get this work out there so you really in fact do you want to be creating these opportunities for yourself by sharing what you do? You don't want to do it now by the way okay? You need to really think about what I'm I going to remember I said you want to build a calendar one of the parts of that calendar's okay, six months from now I'm gonna have my shooting approach settled I'm going to sit settle black and white color thing I'm going to get a little more stuff to some more time maybe have some more work in your case, your module on your mother and so you know when you're ready to go out there and then you're gonna start doing this, sharing this stuff giving it out to people and then really start going forward with it all right