Think of a subject and chances are there’s at least one magazine title in print that deals with it. Photography, gardening, canoeing, caravanning, walking, camping, fitness, food, wildlife – the list goes on and on. Despite the shift from print publishing to digital, these magazines still have a voracious appetite for photographs – they couldn’t survive without them – and the vast majority are supplied by freelance contributors. Getting your shots printed in magazines doesn’t have to be difficult, you just need to know how to approach them…

Don’t send editors a huge collection of images in the hope that there might be 1 or 2 that strike a chord…

Don’t assume that only professional photographers stand a chance of getting published in magazines. Editors are constantly looking for new, inventive and fresh photography, and it may just be that your particular vision coincides perfectly with theirs. However, don’t go to the other extreme and assume that as soon as they see your work editors will be fighting to get to you first. There are any number of great photographers out there and you’re just one of them – no matter what you might think about the quality of your images.

Brilliance and style are important, but patience, persistence and willingness to study the needs of the magazines you’re approaching are what really count.

The easiest way to start selling work to magazines is by targeting specialist titles that deal with a subject you know something about. Photographic magazines are an obvious choice, but you may also have other hobbies – restoring classic cars, backpacking, angling, and woodworking. They’re an ideal market because you’re bound to take photos while you’re involved in those other hobbies so you may have material on file already.

Before making a submission, spend a little time analysing magazines that you could target. Specialist interest magazines almost always rely on freelance contributors and though the same names may crop up month after month that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a closed shop. Editors tend to rely on regulars who they know can come up with the goods, but they’re also keen to use work by new photographers as well.

Improve your chances

DON’T send editors a huge collection of images…

… in the hope that there might be 1 or 2 that strike a chord. What actually happens is any really good images that might be in there will be obscured by a fog of mediocrity. That’s assuming the editor even gets as far as looking at them all. Any editor will have a glance at 6 photos, might be losing interest at 12 and if faced with dozens may not even bother to start.

DO try to pick 5-10 of your best images…

… and concentrate on the ones best-suited to the magazine and its readership. If you’re photographing a car restoration project, the readers might tolerate 1 or 2 ‘arty’ shots, but mostly they’ll want to see that the door decal (for example) has been positioned exactly the right distance from the sill. And if you’re submitting a manipulated landscape shot to Digital Camera or PhotoPlus, say, then it won’t hurt to include the ‘original’ shot too and maybe a couple of different variations, so that the editor can see how it might form an interesting story. This is an important point. You might be used to thinking of photographs as single, static images, but magazines are actually about ‘stories’.

DO consider the mechanics of magazine reproduction…

… as full-page photos often need space for headlines or other information and pictures used across a double-page spread need space for the ‘gutter’ in the middle. While you might not submit pictures with this kind of space initially, it wouldn’t hurt to shoot variations with this in mind.

DON’T stop at supplying images either…

… why not write the words too? You may be surprised to learn that pitching articles is a much easier route into magazines than photography alone. Many special-interest magazines are happy to run complete features from contributors and obviously, you get paid more! However, before you spend hours or days working feverishly at your computer to produce a literary masterpiece, it’s worth emailing an outline of the feature, along with a small selection of images.

DO think about seasonality…

… as an important factor to consider is the ‘lead-time’ magazines work to. This means anything seasonal has to be supplied well in advance. There’s no point sending autumnal shots into a photographic magazine in October, for example, because they’ll usually be required back in July or August.

DON’T be too pushy…

… when you’re approaching editors, as you need to be aware that they work in a hectic environment. Phone calls aren’t necessarily the best approach because the editor will often be in an open-plan office, juggling a big stack of mail on an overflowing desk and with a phone already wedged under one ear. Email or letter is often the best first approach – with a link to or example of the best and most relevant images, of course. If you submit by post, send a CD including high-resolution images. Also include a shot of yourself, a caption document and a thumbnail sheet. If your submission is already complete and ready to use, it may increase the chances of getting published.

DO make sure that all the materials you send have your name and contact information on them…

… including covering letters, contact sheets, prints and CDs. These can easily become separated in a busy office – the editor might keep a covering letter, say, but pass a CD over to the art editor to take a look.

Common mistakes

OK, so you’ve sent in your submission and you want to know what’s happening. An editor might consider a quick phone call after a couple of weeks reasonable, but most would prefer an email and none will like being harassed – that’s probably the quickest way to get this and any future submission thrown out.

If you intend to send your pictures elsewhere, you need to make that clear. You must not send the same work to competing titles at the same time. Magazines don’t necessarily check with you that it’s OK to use your work. They assume that what you’ve sent them is being offered to them exclusively. If two magazines use the same image at the same time, you’ll be unpopular.

Don’t send magazines shots identical to those they’ve already used either! You may have seen a dozen images by now of old wooden jetties on mirror-like lakes at dawn, but that doesn’t mean you should send more. Editors want something that’s both relevant and new.

What will you be paid?

Many specialist newsstand magazines pay by the page, so the proportion of the page taken up by your photo determines your fee. If you were submitting both words and pictures you could get anywhere from £60-200 per page, depending on the magazine. Clearly, you’re not going to get rich quick with fees like this on offer, but if you build-up a relationship with several different magazines, given time the returns can be surprisingly high.

If you do have work accepted then you need to know the ‘rights’ the magazine is buying from you. It’s common for magazines to insist on full rights in perpetuity. This means they can re-use the image in reprints, digests, foreign editions and so on. You still own the picture, but they’ve bought the right to use it. The terms vary between publishers and it’s important that you’re absolutely clear what you’re selling.

Whichever route you take there are no guarantees of success, and initially you’ll probably find that most submissions are rejected. However, if you learn from your mistakes and keep trying, eventually you’ll see your work in print. Once you’ve achieved your first sales, it’s surprising how easy it is to repeat your success.

You have a growing collection of images you’re sure could sell. You’ve tried local door knocking and it’s fallen on deaf ears. You’re bored with prints too; everyone looking and no one buying. You dream of recognition and escaping the payroll. Selling your photos through stock agencies could be the answer. Many of the UK’s top photographers – David Noton, Charlie Waite, Joe Cornish – are businessmen extraordinaire and have used libraries to climb the ladder. So what’s stopping you? UK landscape photographer David Clapp shows you how to play the stock market and what to expect along the road to success.

Getting contracts with subject-specific stock agencies and learning to diversify, that’s the key to financial gain

1. How a stock library sells your shots

Traditional stock agencies sell images from contributing photographers to an ever-fluctuating client base. All of them are now internet-based, selling images either from digital cameras or scanned transparencies. Whether their use is for magazines, newspapers, websites or digital mediums, the images are sold based upon five main criteria:

LICENCE
– Rights managed (one-off commercial use), editorial (reportage in newspapers) or royalty free (many uses for the same image) Depending on this licence, the following criteria may apply:

USE
– Magazine, book, calendar, website banner etc.

SIZE
– Quarter page, A4, A3, billboard or digital dimensions.

DISTRIBUTION
– How many copies are to be made, UK or worldwide?

DURATION
– Is the image to be used once or for a period of time?

Agencies like to specialise, supplying subject-specific work – such as wildlife, architecture, travel, regional – to regular clients. Most try to create a market niche, promoting a database of stylised and consistent quality imagery. Other agencies pride themselves on the opposite, catering for all styles and subject matter. This approach has been questionable in times past, as some agencies disregarded quality on their quest for volume, lowering their prices simply to up the sales. But it’s this situation that created a blueprint for another type of agency – ‘micro stock’.

Micro stock libraries like to stack it high and sell it cheap. They stay afloat like linked rafts, selling low-cost imagery by spreading the same stock through a chain of multiple agencies. Looking for an acceptable image to spice up the village fete flyer? Who would want to pay £70 when they can pay 70p? Although a photographer makes little on the sale of an individual image, the agency can sell the same images many, many times.

Agencies offer photographers 2 forms of contracts: exclusive and non-exclusive. Each has its place and photographers can hold both types of contracts with multiple agencies. Usually the photographer is still able to market any image held by the agency directly, which keeps sales potential unrestricted.

Images managed under an exclusive contract can’t be placed with any other agencies, but those same images can usually be sold by the photographer directly (you’ll need to check the small print – sometimes only ‘non-commercial’ promotional use is allowed). Images managed under a non-exclusive contract can be placed with other agencies, as long as they also operate a non-exclusive contract. These images command lower prices, but can be placed with many agencies to compensate for this reduced earning potential. The photographer is also free to market these images directly.

Most stock libraries ask for a minimum period of 5 years, to help them nurture the photographer’s potential. Good relations and good sales can only flourish from mutual commitment.

2. What sells?

Buyers love everything from straightforward nondescript landscapes to lifestyle and workplace interaction – but it has to say something and be pitched to the right client base. Getting contracts with subject-specific agencies and learning to diversify, that’s the key to financial gain. Produce pictures that can be put to a whole range of uses, no matter what the subject. Think outside the box, too, as ‘conceptual’ shots are popular for illustrating dry news stories and business magazines. Shoot every orientation (portrait, landscape, square, panoramic), and think about front covers as these can yield high profits – although leaving space for text and titles feels strange at first. Fill memory cards full of variety, process every usable image and then put those images with the right agencies.

3. How to think ‘stock’

Get into the right mindset when you intend to make money from your pictures:

WRING EVERY POSSIBILITY OUT OF A LOCATION

– shoot for calendars, tourism, magazines, websites.

ADAPT YOUR SHOOTING STYLE TO SUIT CLIENT DEMAND
– learn to spot interaction, contradiction, juxtaposition, anything thought-provoking that may sell within and outside your specialisation.

SHOOT ALL DAY

– sticking to the ‘golden hours’ shows a lack of business sense.

UP AT DAWN, COLLAPSE AT DUSK

– stock photography requires well thought out and flexible plans, but above all a relentless disposition and punishing self-discipline.

4. Know your rights!

It’s vital that, as a potential contributor, you understand that images are sold with different usage rights which have an effect on their monetary value.

RIGHTS MANAGED
Images sold in this way are sold to a client with certain restrictions. The buyer is buying a licence to use the image, depending on intended use, medium, size, length of licence and distribution (regional, national or worldwide). The more flexibility required by the buyer, the more expensive the cost. An A4 magazine cover sold for national distribution for 1 month will command a much higher fee than the same size image positioned inside that publication. Yet a smaller image required for an entire year inside a worldwide publication can command an even higher price. The buyer is also getting assurance that the image will not be published within the same period by one of its competitors; the rights are carefully managed. A purchase history can also be requested.

ROYALTY FREE
These images are sold with far fewer restrictions. The buyer is able to use the image for multiple uses. If a company requires an image for both digital and paper media, it may be far cheaper to license a royalty free image than a rights managed image. Should their needs change, the buyer doesn’t have to license the image again.

5. Keep it legal

When shooting images on private property or pictures that contain people as their main subject (or even pets) a ‘release’ is required. It’s a signed document that states the model or property owner agrees the images can be used by the photographer for commercial gain (either with or without restrictions agreed between the two parties). Agencies require any releases to be submitted with restricted images, so buyers can be made aware that they’re free to use them without being be sued by an angry property owner or model.

So what happens to images that don’t have licenses? Are they of any use? You photograph a celebrity leaving a boutique, or a spectacular interior to a historical building, can these be sold commercially? Yes, they can, as ‘editorial’ imagery. Shots of building interiors can be used, so as long as there were no obvious signs stating ‘no photography’ when the images were taken. Exterior shots can generally be used without requiring a release as long as the image wasn’t taken while you were standing on private property.

6. Adding detail

It’s your responsibility to embed descriptions, contact info and keywords so that the agency can slide your submission into their database trouble free. The agency will usually supply the photographer with guidelines. Some also supply a Photoshop template if their requirements are more specific. Image data can be input using a specialist program like Adobe Bridge, or just using Photoshop’s File Info template (found in the File menu). Bridge is far more intuitive, as data can be input on batch.

First provide a detailed description of the image identifying the subject, the context and location: ‘Light reflecting on maram grass, a colourful sunrise across the sand dunes at Bamburgh Castle, on the beach near Budle Bay, Northumberland, England, UK.’ This description is packed full of information.

In terms of keywords, more is better. Agencies will remove inappropriate ones and also add their own to fit in with the ‘collections’ that your work matches. The main concern is that generalised keywords like ‘landscape’, ‘flower’ and ‘rock’ will be of little use to them, but may be useful in categorising your own archive. Where is the landscape? What is the Latin name of the flower? Is the rock sandstone or granite? Add conditions (stormy, still, calm) and feelings too.

7. Focus on quality

If you decide to start working towards selling your work through stock libraries, you may need to consider the quality of the equipment in your kit bag. Most professionals buy flagship digital cameras as a way of protecting their future sales. It’s not because they demand the absolute best, but because they require the largest file size possible to maximise sales potential. You could already have a camera that an agency would accept, but all too often it’s poor lenses, careless photographic technique and shoddy post processing that get a contract turned down.

LENSES
Ensure you use the best glass you can afford. This doesn’t mean spend £1000′s on premium glass. You may be surprised to learn that there are plenty of ‘alternative lenses’, decades older and often far superior that can be adapted to fit your system. Do your research. Using older Contax, Olympus and Nikkor primes could be the answer on a budget.

TECHNIQUE
Make sure your pictures are pin sharp. Using a solid tripod at every opportunity or shooting with image stabilisation will help greatly. Agencies check all shots at 100% so you’ll kick yourself if that jaw-dropping sunset is better appreciated as just a sharpened web JPEG.

PROCESSING
Learn to pull the best from your imagery with competent processing. Agencies are rarely interested in shots that display obvious computer tampering; excessive HDR, soft focusing effects, over-saturation and poor cloning will all usually confine your work to your home hard drives. It’s important that you’re ruthless when choosing images in the first place, too.

EDIT IMAGES WITHOUT EMOTION
Stock photography is about developing a sharp sense of business acumen. It’s crucial that you learn to wear different ‘hats’ and develop a detachment from your artistry. This is business. Become a visionary behind the camera and an unbearable critic at the computer. Edit your work by detaching yourself from the memory; no one else can feel how special your life may have felt at the point you pressed the shutter release. To an editor it’s just another image that must tick certain criteria or it will not sell – that’s all that counts, it’s nothing personal. Discussing why images were rejected will only help refine your skills, so see your failures in a different light.

8. Can you hit the required file size?

Most consumer DSLRs produce TIFF files that fall short of the 8-bit 50MB 300 dpi limit agencies require. For instance, after processing even a Canon EOS 5D image as a 16-bit TIFF, you end up with a 72MB file. Once converted to 8-bit the image is just 36MB. (You can find out this information for your own camera by opening the file in Photoshop and clicking on Image >Image Size). However, by increasing the file size using Photoshop it’s possible to ‘up-res’ an image without degrading it. Check a stock library’s submission guidelines to ensure they accept interpolated images first though.

Selling your photos can be hugely satisfying. However, being able to shoot what you want to shoot and still make cash is, for most people, just a dream. Many photographers end up drifting into a career taking pictures of subjects they’re not passionate about to simply pay the bills. There are, however, other possibilities, and selling beautifully crafted prints direct to the public is one way to artfully combine your passion and business skills, as well as get immediate feedback from your customers!

Sell your photos to the public – Ed’s top tips for success

Shoot what your passionate about

“I’m very fortunate to have found a niche for my work – it enables me to make a living and gives me an independence that I truly value. I only shoot what I have a passion for, which is the landscape, and I hope this passion is reflected in my work. I’m really not interested in portraiture, weddings or studio work and believe that if you stick with what you’re good at you’re far more likely to succeed.”

Start at craft fairs

“I have a stall in Bath from which I sell my work on Saturdays during the year and every day for the five weeks leading up to Christmas. The stall has consent from the council, which isn’t cheap, so it’s a good idea to try art or craft fairs first to assess people’s reaction to your work – the public can be a fickle lot.”

Always think about the presentation

“People will not buy your work if it’s not presented well, and you need to spend a lot of time and effort on getting it right. You also need to think about your pricing – you’ve got to cover all your costs and make a profit.”

Find a printer you can trust

“Modern printing technologies produce superb archival prints on a variety of surfaces, such as fine-art papers and canvases, so give the public a choice. Never show work you’re not happy with. You’re only as good as your weakest link, so if you’re not printing your own images, find a good printer and build a strong working relationship.”

Avoid large retail shows at the start

“In addition to the street stall, I have a range of greeting cards that I wholesale around the country and a few galleries hold my work. I’ve exhibited at large retail shows, such as Grand Designs and Country Living, but the outlays are huge and I don’t recommend this for a beginner. Online sales are also important but this area is very competitive – there are some fine photographers out there and thousands of web galleries.

Give the public what they want

“My best-selling image is Winter Wood, which is very simple but very effective. My favourite image is Misty Pines, sadly not one of my best sellers but it’s one that gives me great pleasure.”

To see more of Ed’s photographs visit www.fineartphotographs.co.uk