You take excellent photographs, put them on display, people come and see them. You web site gets plenty of traffic and everyone says what a great photographer you are (some even pay you the absolute compliment: “you must have a good camera”). So why aren’t you making money? There may be more than one reason, but these are the most likely ones:
1. You are making it hard to make a purchase
2. You are not reaching people who are in the market to buy
3. You think that a great image is what people want to buy
Just to be contrary, I want to address point 3 first. That’s because the first two points are about not about photography, which is what I want to talk about. Maybe I will come back to them in a separate piece, but for now, I really want to make one particular point: what photographers show with pride as a great image and what photo-buyers want to buy are not the same thing.
Oh, it’s true that when I buy a picture, I want it to be a good one...a great one would be even better; but what I really look for when I buy a photograph is one that will serve the purposes that I have in mind. Photo buyers - even buyers of photos as Art - have a place or a function in mind even before they see the work.
As a photographer, you understand and strive to master technical skills, composition, artistry. You seek out the pure light, and aim for creativity in every image. Photo buyers don’t particularly care about that, except perhaps Art curators, and they are looking for particular works to complement or complete a collection or display.
Mainstream buyers want pictures with “universal appeal”, pictures that tell a story or provoke an emotional response. While you are thinking in terms of ‘leading lines’ and ‘the Golden Mean’ they are thinking ‘will this sell more cars?’ or ‘what will go with my new curtains?’ or ‘there must be something that will set my web site apart.’ And, of course, while you are worried about what to charge, and the most appropriate form of licensing, they are thinking that anyone can take a snapshot - why should I pay twice for the same picture just because I want to use it in the brochure as well as on the web?
Most photography magazines web sites and books are all about technique to help photographers compose and create more artistically satisfying pictures. Commercial, stock, wedding and news photographers take pictures with other people’s wants in mind. We would be more likely to succeed in selling our beautifully crafted images if we started out by planning our shots with sales in mind. The task is to actively look for subjects that sell – subjects that tell ‘stories’ which appeal to photo buyers.
Start shooting more industry, business, concepts, lifestyle, kids and still-life imagery. Visit stock photo sites and look at their best sellers. Although technically very good, from a photographer’s perspective these photos are hardly masterpieces; yet they really sell!
Do the picture that sell well have anything in common? Well, they tend to be pretty generic -photos of people and scenes; you’d think famous landmarks would sell, but travellers buy postcards (yes, someone had to take them) or take their own Grand Canyon and Sydney Opera House pictures, and a lot of these, advertisers can’t really use for copyright reasons. Magazine and calendar producers have the famous landmarks in abundance, and why should they buy yours?
The big selling g photographs lend themselves to having text dropped into the image, and their compositions are simple (not poorly composed - just not fussy). They tend to be strong on mood.
Advertisers, people designing jacket covers, people who want you to identify with the subject, want images that are open to the viewer completing the story inherent in the picture. That means that you have to relate to the image in some way.
Yesterday I received a notice of sale for one of my works with an accompanying e-mail that said “I couldn't stop thinking about how beautiful this is.... My living room will be much brighter now.” The previous sale of this same picture (a field of tulips) referred to how calm and serene it made the buyer feel, and the one before that wanted it as a birthday gift for someone who had visited Amsterdam - the photo was taken in Australia. The point is that an image is a vehicle for people’s emotions, memories and desires. Photographers who use it as a vehicle for their personal worldview share much about themselves; but most people are more concerned with themselves than with the unknown artist.
Why do images of roads wandering through evocative landscapes sell better than landscapes without? Because whether it’s a coach or travel company that drops its logo into the picture, or a car sales agency, or someone wanting to promote a safari, or a new edition of “The Road Less Travelled”, the chances are that it is going to strike a chord with people.Highway and Open Road are synonymous with so many of our dearest myths, dreams and memories. Of course, in a country where travel is not “the freedom of the road”, the impact and universal appeal will be different,
One common factor in landscapes that sell well is people . As a photographer, I go to a great deal of trouble to remove signs of man in my landscapes: I avoid power lines and buildings and I’ve been known to carefully comb the sand free of footprints and litter. That’s a photographer’s eye at work, not a buyers! A human presence, whether a lit-up cabin in the woods or trampled path through snow, maybe a tent on an ice-flow, suggests a story and allows the viewer to invest themselves in the scene.
The viewer seem to relate to a ‘populated’ scene differently. Perhaps they imagine themselves to be there, or want to be the person, or with the person in the scene. It is a basic compositional rule that people add scale to the composition as does evidence of human activity in a wilderness scene, but it also adds an emotional narrative which impacts on sales.
The evocative landscapes and dramatic compositions I love to shoot in the Outback always draw praise and admiration: even win prizes; but the ones that sell are the ones with people in them, or with the incongruous signs of humanity.
Anyone familiar with my work will know that I love to photograph wildlife. They don’t sell. Not unless the animal is doing something. Wildlife portraits are very satisfying, and they impress other photographers who appreciate the skill and patience they represent. But photographers don’t buy pictures: they take pictures. People who buy photographs want animals displaying human traits - consider the Optus ads -If you want to sell wildlife aim for action, behaviour and emotion, and preferably something that seems disturbingly human and funny.
The photos that sell well often suggest a perfect world populated by beautiful people. Certainly, a headache tablet company might want a ‘before’ picture, but that is an exception (and a low volume sale). Repeat sellers and high volume photographs are those of attractive people at work, having fun, or even better, in an ambiguous setting that the purchaser can personalise. Well saturated, colourful pictures of nature or desirable places and things are the good performers.
Other images that seem to sell well (though not my field) seem to be business people, sales performance charts, office related scenes and objects. The people that sell well tend to be photographed against plain white or sometimes dark backgrounds - no shadows, ready to be dropped into an advertising spread. Same with the objects; if you really want to sell a lot of these, a light tent would be a good investment. They are little different than catalogue-style products shots waiting for a page to sit on. Some have the watermark “TEXT HERE”, but really, they don’t need it...the composition makes it obvious!
In my research for this Intel, I found many of these generic images in the Stock Image high sellers lists: electronic gadgets and computer “bits” like mice and keyboards, Mp4 players (no obvious brands), cameras, cell phones and kitchen appliances and table ware.
On the “People” sales, Beach and boating life and anything featuring family enjoyment like a holiday or theme park visit seemed popular.
Babies, children, teenagers and pets were also popular, but less so than the broader images - maybe that has to do with copyright or concerns about exploitation; nevertheless it seems to be a reality worth noting if you want to sell more: concentrate on the genres that buyers look for, concentrate on story and emotion, keep it generic and compose for the text that someone else is going to add to your photo. That is why the most popular pet photos are shot against a white background (general pet snapshots do not sell well). Isolated images like these appeal to buyers because they have less processing to do: they would have had to cut the subject from the background to use in their campaign, and you have done the work for them!
There is a real conflict between what we want to do as photo-makers and as photo-sellers; a photographer of my acquaintance recently refused an $800 sale because the purchaser (a mental health charity) wanted to reserve the right to add text and possible crop the image for use in different media. The photo is one which is never likely to be seen by anyone other than the photographer and her immediate circle, and not likely to be sold to another market.
Perhaps your sales also suffer because you are shooting for yourself rather than to the needs of your customers.
