With this article Dan finishes his five part series on the steps you need to take to become a professional photographer. Today he talks about Finding Success and
explores what it takes to achieve success in a
very tough, competitive and rapidly changing industry. The previous articles include:
Part 1- Making the Jump,
Part 2- Getting the Gear and Expertise,
Part 3- Marketing and Self-Promotion and
Part 4- The Business of Photography.
Richard Levine’s keynote address at the PACA International Conference,
“The Impact of the iPad and the Future Use of Content,” raised a number
of critical issues for the stock photo industry.
A new piece of legislation, “Combating Online Infringement
and Counterfeits Act,” is now working its way through U.S. Senate
hearings. Now is the time for anyone interested in copyright protection
to contact their senators and congress men or women.
For the second consecutive year, PicScout has made Deloitte’s annual
Fast 50 list for Israel. With five-year revenue growth exceeding 600%,
PicScout ranked at 14 overall and in third place among Internet
companies.
Photographers are primarily right brain people. We’re creative. We focus on the
subjective, the random, the visual and the intuitive. We tend to focus
on the whole picture first, then focus on the details later. That’s why
we bought cameras and chose a career that revolves around creativity. Business, on the other hand, is analytical, sequential, verbal and
it focuses on the details. These are all left brain ways of thinking.
Often times these clash with what may come more naturally to us, and the
result is that we’re just not always the best business people.
Advertising growth is continuing to surprise analysts. ZenithOptimedia
has upgraded its forecast for global ad growth in 2010 from 3.5% to
4.8%. The forecast for 2011 is a continued growth of 4.6%. However, this
positive news comes somewhat qualified.
A2Z Keywording released new image tagging software, Keyword Perfect 2.0, which was initially developed for in-house keywording.
Marketing is where things start to get scary for some photographers.
After all, we’re passionate enough about our imagery to want to make
this our full or part time profession, and we’re certainly adept with
technology and digital imaging gear. However, this is where photography
starts enter the business realm, which, unfortunately, doesn’t always
come easy to some creative and artistic types. However, photographers are good at creative problem solving, right?
Well, marketing is the same thing. It’s solving a very simple creative problem that can easily be summed up in one sentence. “How can I convince clients to hire me?”
Creative Commons has released a Public Domain Mark, a label that
communicates the absence of copyright restrictions to the public and
allows works to be easily discovered online.