fraser_harding

Jim, I am possibly missing your point;

Because there is no record of how the RF licensee has used the image (remember they could have used it 50 different ways in 50 different countries), the RM library cannot offer the image as RM.

The whole point of RM is to keep track of the licenses so that maximum value can be provided to the licensee. If the RM licensee needs to know where the image has been used before, they can find out from the RM library.

The RF library has no way of recording this. So you can't put an image that has been RF'd into a RM database, as the explicit uses have not been recorded.

If an image has been offered as RF, but not licensed to anyone, it may be possible to sell it as RM.

If it has been sold under an "exclusive" license through an RM library, it can still be sold as RM in a territory, industry or time period not listed on any past or existing "exclusive" licenses (Depending of course on the level of exclusivity guaranteed by the license).

If the image has been offered as "exclusive" by an RF library, there is still no real way to know what it has been used for - what industry, territory, time period, or specific uses it has been put to.

Read the terms and conditions of the RM libraries - all the ones I have read require that the images have not been sold as RF previously.

They also require to know all prior rights licensed with regards to each image.

Imagine for example the "anywhere girl" scenario, Lots of companies liked the image, licensed it royalty free, and then used it for all sorts of diverse "below-the-line" and "above-the-line" marketing, in all sorts of territories, including web.

There is no formal record of how the image has been used, so no RM license can subsequently be applied either morally, or as determined by the contributor terms and conditions of the RM library.

By the by, I'm not sure what the advantage of selling RF images "Exclusively" is to the photographer, as the revenue generated this way is still a tenth of what it could be by licensing RM...

Assuming the image is valuable of course....

I came to photography the other way - started at school, did a degree, and began work assisting some top photographers in the US and UK. I worked for 5 years learning the busines before setting up my busines.

I strongly belive that if you want to learn the business, you should assist as many other photographers as possible; it teaches you about planning for erratic income (can you be busy for a month, and then quiet for three, and stay afloat?!), and it teaches you about being flexible and available for clients (you need to be able to take calls at any time of the day).

As mentioned in one of the other posts above, the technical stuff is pretty easy, the hard stuff is sales, accounting, client relationships, tax, insurance, affording equipment, production management, data management... the list goes on and on and on...

In my view, a professional photographer is someone who gets the shot no matter what - no excuses unless something completely cataclysmic happens....

So that means as well as a good eye, you need business skills, people skills, tenacity... at least two camera bodies, multiple lenses for any situation, reliable lights, extra batteries, double data backup straight outta the camera, a dedicated server for storing all your images (the data adds up pretty quickly nowadays), and a reliable off-site backup of that too..

You need to understand computer hardware, and digital workflow; procesing hundreds of images to a professional standard without fail, day in day out is much harder than doing a few each month...

You need to work out multiple channels for selling - in the same way that Coke sells out of vending machines and through convenience stores.. you need to know what is your niche - there are many and they often overlap: commercial and advertising, corporate, portrait, wedding, product, industrial, fashion, annual reports, illustrative, scientific, editorial, sports, documentary, reportage, photojournalism, books, movie stills, animal portraits, automotive, boats etc etc etc... the list is really as long as you want it to be, but you need to be able to say in one sentence what it is you are selling.

Also, within each of those categories, however you choose to dice it, there are rock stars, and there are people who struggle. You mention an "average" income of 30k... be aware that averages can be misleading - there are people that earn serious money in photography, literally millions in USD... so the "average" can be skewed quite high, and this is no small matter, bacause if you want to be a professional you will need a lot more than 30k worth of equipment and marketing.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that getting a picture is easy, therefore being a photographer must be easy. There is a kind of inverse square law, where the more defined the image that the client wants, the more difficult and more expensive it is.

Also, in business in general, there is a law that the lower the barriers to entry, the tougher the competition - photography at the entry level is tough, because so many people want to get in, they price unsustainably - and the wedding and portrait end of the market has perhaps the lowest barriers to entry of any business...

There are a lot of people out there who "work" as photographers to feed their habit, and comepletely undercut real professional photographers - so you also have to be skilled and tenacious and bold enough to be able to overcome this serious obstacle - when you have $100,000.00 tied up in Camera and computer equipment, you simply cannot compete purely on price with someone who only has a 6mp SLR.... but at the same time, they can't compete with you on quality, or reliability... many are the times I have had clients take the cheaper option, only to come back whan the cheaper option failed.

So.. I guess I am saying test the waters first, assist as many photographers as you can first, you will find out more in a few days working than you will ever learn from books.

Once you have a stable of photographers and are making an income, and you know the business (usually at least two years), then start to shoot jobs for people..

Remember, working under pressure as an engineer (which is something you know intimately) is completely different to working under pressure as a photographer (which is new to you, and every client and shooting situation is always hugely different)..

Keep in mind also that starting a business is unlikely to give you more time with your kids, and what time you do have will be dictated by your clients, not you...

But if you are filling a need for your clients either better, cheaper, more reliably, or faster than the comeptition, you will do well.

That's all I can think of for now....

This thread has contributed some confusing comments regarding the

difference between Royalty Free (RF) and Rights Managed (RM).

Either way, you are licensing the rights to reproduce images.

RF licenses are cheaper, because you are not restricting the uses, so you need to sell huge multiples of the RF license.

If you choose to sell your images via an RM license, the value in the licenses is that you are restricting the use to fewer licensees (by territory, industry, duration, media etc), and therefore protecting the uniqueness of the image.

Therefore if you sell an image as RF, you can never go back to selling it as RM. You also need to be very carefull about selling similars as RM, if there are already thousands of people reproducing 'almost the same' image... No RM library will allow you to sell a previously RF image or similar as RM, as they cannot guarantee to their licensee that the image hasen't been used by a competitor or has built up negative connotations.

You need to assess the intrinsic value of each and every image; based on its uniqueness, artistic merit, expense of aquiring, etc etc, some images need to be RM to cover their cost of aquisition, others can never be RM because they are already common and easily obtainable as RF.

These basics you MUST understand before choosing a site to help you sell images:

There are three main ways of selling images - Rights Managed, Royalty Free, and as Prints.

All three ways involve the real 'stuff' of selling images, which is copyright - your images are your Intellectual Property (IP);

If you sell prints, you are licensing the use of the print, not the right to reproduce the image.

If you sell Royalty Free (RF), you are generally selling multiple, uncontrolled licenses to reproduce the image as much as the licensee needs.

If you sell Rights Managed (RM), you are licensing the right to use the image in a very specific, controlled manner that gives the licensee reasonably protected use of the image.

So, if you sell using the RF model, the value of each license is reduced hugely because you need to sell a huge number of licenses to make any money (keep in mind that most micro stock libraries keep about 80% of the revenue generated by each image, so you could sell an image 1000 times and make $200.00).

RF suits low quality images that are easy to make, as the revenue generated is likely to be very low.

RM on the other hand suits higher quality images, that have cost more to make, or are 'rarer' in some way. By sellin RM, you are increasing the value of the image to the potential licensees, by restricting its 'exposure' (so you could sell an image once, and make anywhere between $500.00 - $20,000.00 for a single use), the value of the image being defined by the use it is put to - an image used in a small country church brochure is obviously worth much less than a full page ad in Vogue (which costs $80,000.00 for the space).

The trick of course is to make the most out of any given image considering its relative uniqueness, without pricing yourself outta the market....

You should only choose sites fore-armed with basic knowledge of what it is you are REALLY selling (What types of images and Licenses), and researching long and hard (by looking at websites, and learning how they value their images), so that you have an understanding of what value you are offering.

Fraser