As with many things in life, the rules of photography are made to be broken. So go ahead and take pictures any way you think is interesting, but always try and remember one thing - tell a story with your camera. This should help you to come back with potentially saleable pictures. A catalog picture "clone" rarely tells your story.
Just as the sun is about to set you have arrived in a new country after a long flight across several time zones, and you're jet lagged. That doesn't stop you from shooting around the aircraft as soon as you get off the plane, if you're at a smaller airport where passengers are bussed or walk to the arrival concourse. I do this even with a splitting headache as I know the shots will not show my headache. Then you get to your hotel and sleep. You're going to need to build up your stamina -- after all this is not a holiday!
MAPS ARE USEFUL
The next morning get hold of a good map which has a scale on it; some maps don't and are worse than useless. Make a list of locations and things to be covered in conjunction with the map so you know where the sun will be should it be out. Plan some interiors if it is raining, although tropical torrential rain pictures are good to take. (Better yet get a map and do much of your planning before you leave, in preparation. You can always revise your basic schedule once you're on-scene and discover additional things you want to check out and cover.)
If you find yourself in a downpour, use a plastic bag over your camera and keep it simple by starting with a new film and just one lens. If the camera does get wet, go back to the hotel, open it up as much as possible, then blast a hairdryer onto it. I rescued three camera bodies this way in Brunei when I got caught out by a seemingly wonderful sunny day which changed to sheets of rain in minutes!
Get to your first location and start by shooting overview pictures (establishing shots) which show the setting. Then gradually work into the subject, shooting a variety of pictures, ending up with close-ups of objects and/or people doing things. Your resultant photos can then be put together afterwards as a progressive story should a photo buyer want to do that, or each picture can stand on its own, which is more normal.
As you go through your stay in a place, laboriously ticking off your list of locations completed, all the work and effort that you put into planning and taking the photos will eventually mean that your photos are far more valuable than your equipment. Never lose sight of this fact. Your future income depends on it, so guard your exposed rolls of film above all other material possessions. When you've shot 150 films over six weeks you'll understand just what this means!
Jeremy Hoare is a freelance travel photographer residing in London, England. Phone/Fax: +44 20 7722 2065. Email: jeremyhoare@hotmail.com. Web: www.travelwriters.com/jeremyhoare
Welcome
to AvailableStockPhotos.com. Here's where you'll
find information about travel photography, travel photography how-to, and selling pictures.
On the Go
Travel photography can be very tiring, especially in severe climates, hot or cold. You can end up doing a lot of walking, as it's the best way to see a place. I usually follow my own advice about not shooting during the middle of the day, but sometimes this is not possible, because of limited time.
Summer in Rome, Italy is stiflingly hot, and it's where I currently am, house-sitting for friends who escaped to a cooler climate. With my partner and a friend, I walked round the main visitor sites in a couple of days as the city is so compact. One day was very flat light and so offered little opportunity for scenic work, while the other had a brilliant azure sky that gave possibilities. On both days I carried the cameras and did shoot a little, but I used the opportunity mainly to work out what was the best time of day to shoot at various sites, and what lenses would make the angles look good.
Our wanderings also gave me ample time to see what other photographers had come up with, by looking at the numerous postcards for sale. Some were fine pictures which had been taken from vantage points not accessible without knowing the right people, so I discounted these, while many were good because they simply had been taken at the right time of day, something I could easily do.
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"Maybe those photographers are laughing all the way say to the bank..."
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There were also a large number of fairly mediocre pictures, but maybe those photographers are laughing all the way to the bank! Although it is very easy to be judgmental about quality, buyers have endorsed them by purchasing them, so maybe they are right.
Having made my plans on paper, I can now organize a schedule that will accommodate all that I want to shoot, at (most importantly) the right time of day. This will make it fairly easy with the right weather, brilliant sunshine for daylight and the 'magic hour' around twilight for others, my personal favorite.
I should end up with a good set of Rome pictures. They might look similar to
the work of others already in the marketplace, but they will be mine and I know that new images are always in fashion however hackneyed the subject. I re-shoot Piccadilly Circus in London most years because I live in the city, because of changing fashions with clothing and cars, and the updated photos always find a home.
As I carried the cameras on my two days of just looking in Rome, I did actually shoot a number of pictures that seemed right at the time, in spite of it being in the middle of the day. One of the great rules about photography is that really there are no rules; if it works for you then it's right!
Jeremy Hoar is a freelance travel photographer residing in London, England. Phone/Fax: +44 20 7722 2065. E-mail: jeremyhoare@hotmail.com. Web: www.travelwriters.com/jeremyhoare.
Travel photographers will find profitable information in the newsletter, TravelWriter Marketletter, produced by Robert Scott Milne. For info: reiko@travel/writerml.com . Ask for a sample to be sent to you.
Business
Notepad
Search Engine Optimization for Flash
It used to be that if you used flash in the pogramming of your website, you wouldn’t get many visits from customers who were using a search engine to find you. . A major misconception has been that Flash-based applications are SEO-unfriendly and can't be indexed by search engines such as Google. That is the myth Flash expert Todd Perkins has dispelled in his new Adobe Developer Library book, Search ... Full
Story
The cost of travel overseas is always
prohibitive for the stock photographer just starting out.
One way to skirt around this problem is to become a home based
travel agent. Make money from home as an independent travel
agent and see the world at a discount! Get details from this
informative eBook.
Travelwriter Marketletter
for writers and photojournalists.
Travelwriter Marketletter is a monthly publication available online
( http://www.travelwriterml.com ) and in hard copy format. Travelwriter Marketletter is in its 28th year in business.
If you're a travel writer, or photographer TM tells you about new markets, payscales, editors, specs and trips for writers.
If you're in travel PR, TM tells you which publications are likely targets.
If you're a travel editor, TM tells you about trips, and about your competitors. Ask to see a free sample. http://www.travelwriterml.com
A travel photographer has to deal a lot with people, day in and day out, and anyone who finds this difficult will be at a disadvantage. During the course of my work I have even had to speak in public on several occasions, and now know that it goes with the job.
It was therefore no surprise when the UK professional organization I am a member of, the British Guild of Travel Writers, asked me to give a lecture to members on how I go about the business of being a travel photographer. I researched what they specifically expected me to talk about, then put something together. As the event was to be in the evening and run about ninety minutes, I knew the forty people or so who would turn up would get bored with hearing only me and my perspective, so I inveigled the assistance of two other people whom I've known professionally for several years.
I gave my talk a very relevant name, "Addicted to Light." This is factual as I cannot be anywhere without analyzing the light, but it can also a burden in some ways. I used slides to illustrate points I wanted to make, which at least gave people something hopefully useful to look at.
My first guest speaker was Kim Hearn, manager of The Flight Collection, a major aviation stock library with images ranging from early flight up to today. She talked about how today's travel pictures are different to those of only a few years ago. Now a more documentary approach is used in all forms of travel photography. Kim also showed that it is possible to rescue borderline-usable pictures with Photoshop today, which was not possible only a few years ago. Only, of course, if the image is worth spending time on; in other words basically if it has sales potential.
My second guest speaker, Maz Siddiqi, is manager of a key London branch of a leading UK photographic retail consumer chain, Jessops, who is passionate about photography. He has photographed rock bands in the past and his enthusiasm is unbounded. He talked about digital and the future for travel photographers in a very lucid, easy-going way, and was asked more questions than either Kim or myself during the Q&A session near the end, a telling demonstration of how travel professionals are concerned about the nature of their picture acquisition role in the future.
I rounded off the evening with a brief slide show, images from a recent two week trip driving from Minneapolis across South Dakota, into Wyoming and Montana then back. Timed to a music track, I showed 35 pictures in 5 minutes.
Afterwards people said they had learnt a great deal about how and what to shoot when traveling, and while most of these people are primarily writers they are all asked by their markets to provide pictures with their articles.
For me, although I find public speaking no longer difficult, it still was not easy to put into words what I do by second nature when out shooting. But in fact I learnt myself, from my own analysis of how I operate; all I have to do now is put it fully into practice and take better pictures!
Happy shooting!
Jeremy Hoare is a freelance travel photographer residing in London, England. Phone/Fax: +44 20 7722 2065. E-mail: jeremyhoare@hotmail.com.
Of
Interest
Marketing Tips
DEADLINES are a necessary bind to photographers.
Here at PhotoSource International we request photo editors to send us their listings as far in advance as possible. However, photobuyers, because of the nature of the publishing world, often need pictures "now".
If you see an "immediate" deadline listed in the PHOTOLETTER or PHOTODAILY, and you can supply the specific picture(s), use a light box and send a selection to the photobuyer. He or she may be able to extend the deadline a few days to be able to consider your picture.
LISTINGS: Are they aimed to give you leads for self-assignment, -- to go out and TAKE the pictures needed? Yes, if the deadline allows and if you want to add that kind of picture to your stock files.
However, in this industry, photo editors share a common bond: a definite tendency to decide on the picture needed at the last moment.
Thus the short deadlines that are a hazard of the ... Full
Story
COST OF TRAVEL OVERSEAS is always prohibitive for the stock photographer
just starting out. One way to skirt around this problem is to become a
Travel Agent.
OLD-TYME FLIX -- National Geographic snaps up BBC Photography series, “Genius of Photography”. Outright Distribution has sold BBC2 documentary series to National Geographic Channels International (NGCI) as part of a raft of other post-MipTV sales. Produced by Wall to Wall, the series offered a comprehensive history of photography and was originally produced for BBC2 and BBC4.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/2009/05/nat_geo_snaps_up_bbc_photography_series.html
SIGHT UNSEEN. -- Visually impaired photographers display mind-boggling shots. Twelve visually impaired artists, a few of whom are totally blind, recently showed some amazing images as part of an exhibit called Sight Unseen at the University of California at Riverside.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10238900-1.html?tag=mncol
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. -- "Free software for your Mac that helps you organize, share, and enjoy your photos based on the people who are in them." But the terms of service provide: In order for Blue Lava to make the Service available to you, you hereby grant Blue Lava a royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide right and license....
http://www.photoattorney.com/2009/05/sharing-love-and-your-photos.html
