Your Own Archive

Very often, when starting their own photography business, photographers make the mistake of concentrating too much on jobs from clients. Surely, it is good to have a good, constant and satisfied clientele but a photographer should also have a good and diversified picture archive he can always fall back on, when business is not so good.

 

Many times I get calls from people asking me if I have pictures of xyz in stock, because they have time constrain and cannot pull off a photo shoot. Then it is good if you can present a picture that comes close to what is needed.

The clear advantage of this is that you can put a price tag on your work, you can license the picture out for a certain period of time and after that the picture is still yours. And you can still license it out to somebody else later.

What you just have to do is always have a sense of what is happening around you. And what picture themes are in high demand.

 For the last couple of years it has been telecommunications. Happy people with phones can be seen on posters, banners and billboards.

For 2010 photographers should have lots of football pictures for their archives. The more unique the image is the better.

 

You will also find out that it will be far more fun putting together your own shoots. Because you will be using model, make up artist, location and outfits handpicked by you, naturally the outcome will be better.

 

The pictures I am showing you here this week was part of the outcome of an extensive photo shoot in the palms. Our aim was to get lifestyle pictures showcasing the modern Nigerian with considerable spending power.

 

We photographed the whole day and got a good number of pictures for our archive.

 

The only disadvantage is that the payment for this kind of project will not come immediately. But depending on how aggressively you market your work it will surely come. You will be surprised that there are many instances where clients would rather go with our works. It saves them a lot of time and stress. And admit it, don’t you sometimes think that your images are better than what we see on a daily basis out there?

Na dann, gut Licht!

 

Your Yetunde