Photography and Money?

[dux]

I was thinking, how difficult is it to get money for photos and such? Would you need to spend a fortune and camera and kit before you could even think about it or is it possible to go about it with my £120 camera?

[mjens]

If you have talent (making good photos which are available for printing) and you know how prepare photos to sell them (prepare for printing, correct modifications etc.) you can earn some nice money (not that big as professionals have but enough to buy new camera or better lens). In our "movie cam" world there's a lot of pepole that needs some still images (photos ) - now you need to find them and do them that photos. Sometimes you'll need to get some additional flash lamps or even postumes

Now the only barrier is that what you can do with your camera and how good photo quality can provide your camera/lens (don't sell shitty photos ).

Edit:

And BTW. I earned some money on photos but I wasn't aiming for earnings from photography so I don't forced anyone to pay for the photos but if someone gave me money then I took it

[e-freak]

well i've been doing some minor photography jobs for language centers and car selling (and simmilar easy jobs) (and I even did a photo-book once but that was only printed once for myself as I helped the printing company with adjusting the software) which brought me some money but it's nothing about the big money and i doubt you can make a fortune with photography you sell over the internet.

you can always just try to put your stuff on deviant-art, promote it a little and hope someone will buy it, but it's simmilar to making money with custom maps.

well and if you want to deliver for larger prints (equivalent if you work as photographer or just sell prints of your pics via some random internet service) you will have to look into better equipment most probably as resolution and image-quality won't be enough.

[Corwin]

I figure the less painful way would be to sell your shots through stock photography websites like istockphoto.com, but considering the amount of photos in there, I really have no idea how lucrative it could be, and your photos would really have to stand out to get bought.

Other approach I can think of is doing contract work for advertising agencies and other similar designers who need custom photographs taken for clients but don't actually have all the tools and techniques to get these done by themselves. Where I used to work, some clients were charged from 100 to 500 euros for a few pictures of their products taken by a professional photographer. But as you can imagine, you'd need something more than a pocket camera to be able to find that kind of contracts, and a good portfolio aswell.

[Blunkka]

I've heard some people making a living out of stock photography. I don't know if that's just a rumour though.

In your case, anything that requires more than just showing the end product(s) is out in my opinion. Someone coming to a formal photo shoot and pulling out a P&S camera just can't be taken seriously.

[JeanPaul]

If you have talent (making good photos which are available for printing) and you know how prepare photos to sell them (prepare for printing, correct modifications etc.) you can earn some nice money (not that big as professionals have but enough to buy new camera or better lens). In our "movie cam" world there's a lot of pepole that needs some still images (photos ) - now you need to find them and do them that photos. Sometimes you'll need to get some additional flash lamps or even postumes

Now the only barrier is that what you can do with your camera and how good photo quality can provide your camera/lens (don't sell shitty photos ).

Edit:

And BTW. I earned some money on photos but I wasn't aiming for earnings from photography so I don't forced anyone to pay for the photos but if someone gave me money then I took it

Printing well is more difficult than you can imagine.

[Grinwhrl]

Shutterstock buys all sorts of shit from people. You might want to look into what they offer?

[st0lve]

Sell to news paper.

You need to be on your toes, but you could try.

[Ginger Lord]

One of my girlfriends course technicians (Photography degree) makes his living between being a techie and selling stock images.

She also makes a fair bit of money off the back of her projects as she usually appeals to hearts and minds with her animal portraiture. Quite often gets more than enough to cover the cost of the prints/ink for her degree (often £150+ a month). Helps obviously being with like minded people and have the network that the course brings.

One thing for sure if that "joe public" definitely won't respect you doing portrait style stuff with a compact. All they see is big bodies and big lenses and anything less is amateur.

[JeanPaul]

The money is not made in stock photography. its in photo shoots.

I am making $1000 next Wednesday for doing some corporate portraits (about 3 hours of work)

[DvS]

The money is not made in stock photography. its in photo shoots.

I am making $1000 next Wednesday for doing some corporate portraits (about 3 hours of work)

What sort of lighting equipment do you have?

[JeanPaul]

Well I will be using a Profoto acute kit

[Wunderboy]

Just got contacted by Rättviks Kommun up in Sweden who wanted to buy one of my pics to use in their tourist marketing campaign.

Price was nice too