The latest photographs, trips, photo tips, and stories from the world of through-my-lens wildlife photography.
Will anyone buy my photograph?
No matter what type of camera we have — from cell phone to P&S to Digital SLR as photographers we capture images for a variety of reasons, wedding, birthday, travel, entertainment, sports, or children to name a few. There are hundreds of reasons to snap that shutter and capture a moment.
For a majority of shutterbugs the answer as to what to do next is simple, run to your local Wal-Mart and print a few 4x6’s, possibly email files to friends and family, or upload to a free photo site or Facebook and share links to your images. We then store the images on our home PC (only to lose them after it crashes, but I’ll leave that for another blog). On the other hand there are some of us that actually think our work is good enough to sell to someone for a book, a magazine, or web site. Just that thought that you might be published by National Geographic, or the local newspaper gets our imagination off and running. So how can we accomplish this? How do you get that exposure you need for your images so they can sell?
You could as an individual set up a web site and host your own photos or use sites such as Zenfolio, Smugbug, or Flicker to host your images. Using these sites or your own will still put the burden of promoting your images on you. If you’re looking for an alternative to this where you upload, title, keyword your images, and a person or company does the sales promotion for you, then stock agencies are for you.
Welcome to the world of “Stock Photograph Agencies”
Over the next 3 or possibly 4 blog entries I will attempt to put some kind of order to this process. I’m not the world expert on this subject but have done enough to give my ideas and impressions on how it should be done. Also I do not represent or recommend any of the agencies that I will mention in this article. Just one word of warning before we continue, if you’re looking for instant gratification, instantaneous sales, and the cover of a National Geographic book, you may want to try another hobby, but if you can take the time, effort, possible rejection, criticism, and wait, this may be the way to finance that next big trip, vacation, or at a minimum some new equipment.
I will give you some options and let you decide, I will mention some agencies by name but I am in no way saying that these are the ones to use. There are some things you will need to do for yourself.
Ok. So what is a stock agency and what is an image license?
The Stock Agency:
The stock agency is a company that allows approved photographers to upload images for sale to the agencies' clients. These images are then inspected for quality and usefulness, and if accepted, placed in the agencies' portfolio, stored, and placed for sale to their clients. Most agencies do not charge you for the uploading, storage, inspection, or selling of your images upfront but take a commission when your image is sold. Some agencies will allow you to have your image with different agencies, however some want you to be exclusive to them or at least have the particular images they are selling for you exclusive to them.
The License:
When the agent sells a copy of your image it also goes with a license that defines the uses for your image. There are 3 major types of licenses, they are:
- Rights Managed — This type of license can stipulate the exact use, production run, distribution, and location in the document if printed.
- Royalty Free — This type of license allows for any use of the image. This license has the broadest usage allowance and rules and regulations are dependent on the agency and it's policy.
- Editorial — This type of license is used for images that contain people or property for which you do not have model or property releases. Images sold under editorial license can only be used in newspaper or news production and in most cases must be relevant to a news or sports story.
We will take another look at licensing later in this blog when we explore the types of photos sold and the rights of the people and or property that may be in your image.
Next week we will look getting accepted at an agency and selecting that first group of images.
Wolves of the Lakota Wolf Preserve
It's been a long six years since I traveled to the Delaware Water Gap area and see the great wolves of Lakota. During my first visit the captivating Dan Bacon passionately showed off his Gray Wolves to us allowing some great photography. If there ever was a person that I could sit around a camp fire all night and listen to his stories it is Dan.
Dan now 82 has retired and I was a little apprehensive as to what changes had been made and if Jim Stein and his wife had that same great passion as Dan Bacon had. Another concern I had was the weather and I turned into what my wife calls me "the family weather man" and daily, ok hourly, checked the weather forecast for the week prior to trip.
At 4 AM on Sunday my son Sean and I left for Columbia NJ where we would meet fellow photographer Debbie Roma and her guest Beth Herrick. Weather when we arrived was spectacular and cool and my apprehension was soon gone as I saw some old wolf friends from 6 years ago. Yes they are a bit older but so am I. My old friend and favorite Lakota wolf still has that great Timber Wolf look.
After a short trail of paperwork we headed up to the preserve and started one fabulous morning of photography.
We started first with gray wolves that gave us some nice early morning shots as they moved around through trees and fallen logs. There all white winter outer coats made them look almost like Arctic wolves until the moved and the grey/black under coat showed.
They were beautiful healthy animals, reminding you of that dog you have at home.
Although limited there was some interaction between animals but none of the interaction shown by pack wolves in the wild.
We then moved to the top of that first impoundment where a little ice covered pond waited. It didn't take long before they had broken the thin ice and began walking in the cold water.
They didn't seem at all bothered by the cold water and after a short wait got some nice water drop and reflection shots. The very large enclosures are surrounded by tall double fences. As part of the package we were doing we were allowed between the 2 fences and could shoot through many rectangular openings in the fence. These openings are covered with hinged fence so you can shoot the wolves with no obstructions.
The Arctic wolves were next, this sub species of the gray wolf uses it's almost all white winter coloring as camouflage. They put on a great howling show for us and as they began there howl, other groups of wolves in the preserve began to join in. What a show it turned into.
Although both of my trips have been in February I have not yet lucked out to have snow on the ground to shoot this sub species. Well there is always the next time I come donw here.
It is a common misconception that black wolves are a separate sub species of the Gray Wolf, this is not correct. The black coloration in Gray Wolves can be seen in any of the subspecies of Gray Wolf. A black wolf is a melanistic color variant of the Gray Wolf.
I have seen a pack of wild wolves in Yellowstone National Park. The Drued pack if I remember correctly that had a 50/50 coloration split of Gray and Black. The year old black pups were beautiful animals and a joy to photograph.
The last group of wolves we photographed was the sub species commonly called Timber Wolves.
This sub species have a distinctive darker coloration to their fur and have the greatest eyes of all the sub species. They have what most people who view my photos the "LOOK" of a wolf.
When they stare at you those eyes look like they can look right thru you. Beautiful but almost scary!
Well at the end of the morning myself, Debbie, and Sean all had a great time and cards full of great images to take home.
Lakota is a treat for both professional photographers looking to balance out a portfolio and for the person who just has a love of these majestic animals. Want to see more follow this link to more photos from Lakota.
Next time you’re in the area make a reservation for a photographer session or a wolf walk. You will have a great time. Please visit Lakota Wolf on the web.