Business Trends

Starting in the business of fine art photography is not easy. More than anything, there will be a lot of peaks and valleys ahead. In this column, we look at how to navigate some of these issues, find clients, seek gallery representation, and market your work. Thanks to my contributing photographers: Larry Angier, Michael Garlington, Laurie Klein, RJ Muna, and Brooke Shaden.

While branding might not be as sexy a topic as fashion or travel photography, it’s a critical element to making your photography business a success. Fortunately, we have a good group of educated and experienced photographers to help bring us up to date on what branding is, how to create it, mistakes to avoid, and why it’s so important to your business. Bottom line? Marketing your photography with a strong brand message will give you a competitive edge and get you paid what you are worth. I want to thank my patient contributors for sharing their knowledge and lessons with us: Casey Bevington, Matthew Dutile, Andrew Fingerman at PhotoShelter, Karen Hirsch, Giulio Sciorio, Beth Taubner at Mercurylab, and Daniel Waters at Get Pro Photo. They gave so many good ideas and tips that you will want to take notes!

At this moment there are 32,527,830 #travelphotography posts on Instagram. With so many travel images posted online, and available for free, our business concern is that clients may find a great deal of those photos “good enough” to use. All of which makes it harder and harder to get a paying job as a travel or landscape photographer these days.

When you fly commercial airlines these days, they always seem to make a point to say, "We know you have a choice in airlines, thank you for choosing us!" There are a lot of wedding photographers for prospective clients to choose from, but then again there is lots of business to go around. With the low-end wedding market taken over by "Cousin Jerry" with his...

Photographing wildlife in their natural habitat has always been both challenging and rewarding. Whether you develop a business selling the use of the images or leading workshop tours, this field requires a special combination of passion and patience. In this article, we look at how and where wildlife photos can be sold as well as prospects to pursue and pitfalls to avoid. Special thanks to our four contributors: Sean Crane; Barbara Fleming (Fleming Safari Company, LLC); Eric Horan (Lowcountry Photo Safaris); and Josh Patterson.

In this column we look at some of the business aspects of fine art photography: getting established, finding clients, looking for gallery representation, marketing techniques, and finding your style and direction. Special thanks to this month’s contributing photographers: Sean Bagshaw (Outdoor Exposure Photography, LLC), David Bowman, John Granata (John Granata Fine Art), Robin Hill, and Cheyenne L Rouse.

Although everyone loves travel photography, not everyone possesses the skills to turn that passion into a viable business. This month we spoke with six photographers working (and making money) in the travel photography business: Joe Becker, Todd Gustafson, Blaine Harrington, Jen Pollack Bianco, and David and Lina Stock.