Sold Out

I was looking at a website that offers what looked very interesting workshops. It looked very interesting, so I clicked on the workshop link. Here is what was on the page word for word:

Current workshops are sold out but keep an eye on this page for news of overseas workshops.
Better still, subscribe to my Newsletter to be the first to hear of new events and to receive priority booking status for new workshops and tours.


And that's it. What do you mean?

  1. No list of the current workshops
  2. No list of the previous workshops
  3. No list of the future workshops

I won't try this guy again. If he can't be organized enough on his website, how is he going to deal with the customers and the actual workshops? How many potential clients is he turning away?

· 2008/08/21 08:02 · Syv Ritch

Is The Sky Falling?

If you follow the photography business news, the sky is falling:

  • All staff photographers have been laid off. Every week, a media organization is laying off their staff photographers.
  • All stock photographers are out of business because of RF1) photos.
  • All stock photographers are out of business because of the stock photo agencies have lowered their prices to less than a penny How low can it go?.
  • All professional photographers are out of business because of all the “free” photos from Flickr.

Getty Images makes regular surveys of their buyers, and they have found that 40% of their iStockPhoto customers are brand new customers, that have never purchased photos previously!

What happened is that by having cheap photos, they have expanded the market! Great now, what's that got to do with me? Me, I am a small independent photographer.

Last week, I received a phone call from a construction company to photograph a major equipment move. They started buying photos online and last year spent almost $1,000 on stock photography. They had to rent a major mobile crane for 3 days at the price of over $10,000 per day, a few bulldozers, and a 25 construction crew for a total bill of over $90,000.

Because of their change in attitude, they decided to document and photograph the job. They have done many time this type of job, and never once used a photographer.

The sky is falling! Not really, but the sky is moving to a new position with a different light. It's up to us to adapt.

1) RF = Rights Free
· 2008/08/20 06:51 · Syv Ritch

Selling Photos on eBay

Did you know that you can sell your photos on eBay? As of 15-aug-2008, there were only 1891 photo prints on sale, directly from the photographer.

Home > Buy > Art > Direct from the Artist > Photographs > Search results: 1,891 matches found. eBay breaks it down by category.

Subject Number of Photos for Sale
Nudes 488
Landscape 265
Floral, Gardens 182
Architecture, Cityscape 83
Seascape 78
Animals 74
Abstract 66
Birds 58
Still Life 50
Celebrities, Musicians 35
Religious, Spiritual 27
Music, Instruments 24
Travel, Transportation 21
Famous Places 19
Figures, Portraits 19
Historic, Vintage 19
Pinups 16
Insects 13
Sports 11
Western 10
Military, Political 8
Ethnic 5
Movies 4
Food, Wine 3
Events, Festivals 2
Children, Infants 1
Holidays 1
Not Specified 287

  • I noticed some people selling photos with the “Buy Now” button for $1.95 but shipping: $6.95. I must be missing something!
  • “Black and Whites” are the vast majority.
  • The 1891 matches do not include the stores. Many photographers have their own store.

How Low Can It Go?

Florida based photo agency http://prphotos.com is giving 50% commissions to their photographers! Great, that's a decent commission. But a commission of what? They charge LESS THAN A PENNY PER PHOTO.

Check: Rates

Package Cost Number Of Images Cost Per Photo
Web 50 $50 Per Month 100 Images $.50 Per Image
Web 100 $100 Per Month 500 Images $.20 Per Image
Web 250 $250 Per Month 5,000 Images $.05 Per Image
Web 500 $500 Per Month 20,000 Images $.025 Per Image
Web Unlimited $1000 Per Month Unlimited Under A Penny Per Image
Fansite $99 Per Year All Photos Of 1 Celebrity Pennies Per Image

The 50% commission rate is at this link: Photographer Contract.

Can you take a photo and make 4 tenth of a penny per photo? On top of that, you have have to buy your own equipment, track the celebrities yourself, go there, pay for your own gas,…

To make a living at it, you will need to make at least 500,000 photos per year! That's 2 Canon 1DMk3 per year + the lenses or a little bit cheaper 2 Nikon D3. You can't even use cheaper cameras, the shutter would only last 3 month.

  1. The sickest part of the situation is that they have over a million photos! Who is dumb enough to supply them with these photos?
  2. PRPhotos have their own servers, and they need to pay for the bandwidth every month or they immediately go out of business.
  3. PRPhotos has a staff of 5 employees. How can they pay their salaries?

What am I missing?

· 2008/08/18 07:39 · Syv Ritch

Appointment with the Vet

I just got this phone call:

Me – Syv Ritch speaking.
Her – I'd like to make an appointment with Dr Jared…
Me – Sorry, but you must have the wrong number [at which point she interrupted me]
Her – I know you are very busy, but I need an appointment with Dr Jared, it's for my cat.
Me – Sorry, but you must have the wrong number, this is not a vet place.


I hanged up. Less than a minute later, she calls backs, I can see her name and number from the caller id.

Me – Syv Ritch speaking.
Her – I must have my appointment with Dr Jared…
Me – Sorry, but you still have the wrong number [again, she interrupts me]
Her – I must have my appointment with Dr Jared, it's for my cat. [so I decided to be mischievous]
Me – OK, we have an empty spot on Sunday morning at 7:30am
Her – Thank you very much

I hang up. That woman never listened to anything I said, unless it was what she wanted to hear. An appointment on a Sunday @ 7:30am! Anything wrong with that?

Are you listening to what your customers are saying?

Spitting In The Soup

In 2004, the Detroit Big 3 automakers1) more commonly known as the domestics, spent $24 billion2) in advertising in the “mainstream media”. The same “mainstream media” has been panning the US cars manufacturers, and swooning over the imports3) and how much better they were. 3 years later, in 2007, the same Big 3 only spent $15 billion dollars in advertising in the “mainstream media”. On top of that, newspapers took a $131 million4) hit in the first quarter of 2008 as dealers have pulled back on full and half-page ads because of slow sales and limited cash flow.

And now, you have the mainstream media loosing money left, right and center, laying off staff5), including photographers.

The reporters claimed “freedom of the press”. They could have reported:

  1. Quality of the domestics have significantly improved according to JD Powers & Associates.
  2. Buick6) has higher customer satisfaction than Toyota both in 2006 and 2007…


There are many more stories, reports and photos that they could have made, ethically, and still supporting the companies that are paying their salaries.

Don't spit in the soup, you'll have to eat it.

– My mom

  • Are you supporting your customers? or
  • Are you undermining your customers?

1) General Motors, Ford & Chrysler
2) , 4) in the US
3) Europeans, Japanese and Koreans
6) from General Motors

Pricing Don't Explain

$800 for this photo? You must be crazy. It took 2 minutes to take that photo!

Do I have to justify my prices? I could have gone into:

  1. I literally risked my life to get that photo. 3 minutes after I made that photo, a steel beam fell were I was standing. Luckily, I had moved away.
  2. It took me a month of phone calls and emails to get the authorization to get access.


I don't have to justify my prices. When people ask for a breakdown or a justification of prices, it's to nickel and dime to lower the price. After asking a few questions, she was going to use my photo for promotion at a whole bunch of conferences. Just making the print on acrylic for the conference displays was going to cost her over $3,000.

Her – Oh! [pause]
Her – I'll have to get back to you.


So far, she has not called back, but it will only take 3 weeks to make the acrylic prints and the conference is in November 2008. Will she find something else? Or maybe…

Lightroom 2

Everybody, and their dog1) has a review or announcement about Adobe's Lightroom 2. It's supposed to be the best thing since slice bread, it will even reduce global warming.

Since this blog is about “the business of being a photographer”, Lightroom has a new interesting feature2): It will show you the tags already used in the other photos in the current catalog. This will help me in being more consistent with keywords.

My experience has been that buyers do not browse for photos, but search by tag, then browse the photos. Good tags will immediately increase the value of your photos. Photo buyers will be able to find your stock photos better. Photo buyers will only buy your photos, if they can find them. They will be able to better match their photo needs and your photos. Hopefully, you will have more sales.

Lightroom supports hierarchical keywords by using the “|”, the vertical bar. Dog|German Shepard and Dog|Doberman will belong to the Dog category.

→ Read more...

1) My dog will publish his own review when he is finished gnawing on his pig's ear
2) It could have been there in previous versions, but I didn't notice it
· 2008/08/13 06:57 · Syv Ritch

The Squeeze

She has looked at your photos, asked many questions and still no sale. She needs these photos, and she knows that she just needs to click on the “Buy Now” button and still no sale. Why? Where's the urgency? Why should I do to make them buy?

  • Should I discount?
  • Should I make bigger website?
  • Should spam the whole world with gazillion emails?


What is she waiting for?

  1. An incentive
  2. Clear instructions
  3. Some kind of urgency


You need to give her a reason to buy by:

  1. Special promotion such as buy two get the third one for free.
  2. Discounts, if we can reschedule to my slow time.
  3. Shoot fee waived, she only pays for the prints.
  4. Free DVD of the shoot with low res JPEGs…
· 2008/08/12 07:14 · Syv Ritch

A Sucker's Born Everyday

On 6-Jul-2008, Lewis Hamilton won the Formula 1, UK Grand Prix in is Mercedes/McLaren. Will you earn more money if you buy a Mercedes or a McLaren? Will it make you a better driver?

Kyle Busch is leading the Nascar 20081) in his Toyota sponsored by the M&M candies. Nobody believes that, since they are driving a Toyota Camry and that Kyle Busch won last weekend, it will make them a better driver.

When was the last time you asked a carpenter what's the brand of his hammer or his drills and circular saws? Does it make a difference?

Nikon is selling a lot of Nikon D60 because people believe that since great photographers use the Nikon D3, their photos will be as good as theirs. Nikon is not the only one, Canon does the same thing with their 1DMKIII and the Rebel series. Photographers are “suckers” for the so-called technical information. Who cares if the photo was made on a Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax,… at 26mm, 1/180s, f:5.6. This subject, at that time with this light, this angle and this perspective will never happen again. This is meaningless, unless you actually get explanations of what were his options and why the photographer did it that way.

People expect that since they bought the same camera as Moose Peterson, they will have the same photos. What about pressing on the button? What about being at the right place at the right time? What about knowing about the subject you are photographing? What about the thousands of hours spent learning?…

1) as of 29-July-2008

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