How to make money as a landscape photographer: bad advice | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Ah, pho­tog­ra­phy! It is unlike­ly that you will find anoth­er activ­i­ty that can earn so much mon­ey by doing almost noth­ing. Don’t believe? Then read our trans­la­tion of Andy Hutchin­son’s arti­cle on how to make a liv­ing as a third rate land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Pho­to: www.pxhere.com

Dis­claimer: Noth­ing in this arti­cle con­sti­tutes finan­cial advice and is for enter­tain­ment pur­pos­es only.

Did you miss the first wave of Insta­gram pop­u­lar­i­ty and start your YouTube chan­nel too late, while your Face­book page’s grad­u­al­ly dwin­dling audi­ence is con­cen­trat­ed exclu­sive­ly in Mur­man­sk?

How­ev­er, you think your land­scape shots are as good (or even bet­ter) than the work of all these famous pho­tog­ra­phers, and you just want your piece of the pie. How can you turn your land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy skills into real mon­ey?

There is good and bad news. The good news is that land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy can make mon­ey, the bad news is that there are some major hur­dles to over­come. Here is my guide to max­i­miz­ing your income.

Lightroom Presets

It’s sim­ple enough. Every­one is look­ing for a way to get a win­ning shot at a min­i­mal cost, turn­ing an ordi­nary pho­to into a real work of art. Light­room pre­sets will nev­er do this (they bare­ly make sense at all), but your poten­tial clients don’t know that!

So watch your hands. Down­load some­one else’s set of land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy pre­sets and tweak them a bit. Now give them pre­ten­tious names (eg “War­ships ablaze in Ori­on’s Belt”), export and make your own set. Before you put it all on Shopi­fy, don’t for­get to give the kit itself an ambi­tious pathet­ic name, such as “Autumn Mono­logue”.

Add a cou­ple of your shots, from those that are bet­ter than the rest (they may not have any­thing to do with pre­sets), and wait for the prof­it. Just sit back and watch all these use­less pho­tog­ra­phers line up and yell “Shut up and take my mon­ey!”

Pho­to: Andy Hutchin­son / andyhutchinson.com.au

Training courses

Of course, you would pre­fer to take pho­tos for your per­son­al exhi­bi­tion, but you have to pay the rent, right? This step towards finan­cial inde­pen­dence is famous among pho­tog­ra­phers. You offer train­ing to peo­ple who don’t know any­thing about pho­tog­ra­phy, and earn your dirty mon­ey from it. Every­thing is very sim­ple.

Just pro­mote your ser­vices on social media — offer half-day or full-day on loca­tion cours­es where pho­to noobs can learn all the secret skills like light, com­po­si­tion, rule of thirds, tripods and ” how to cap­ture the seren­i­ty of nature in all its glo­ry.

To give the impres­sion that your cours­es are very pop­u­lar, be sure to peri­od­i­cal­ly post on social media. net­works posts in the style of “I acci­den­tal­ly got a place for an inten­sive next week­end, hur­ry up before it is booked.”

Calendars

This is prac­ti­cal­ly the only way to make real mon­ey from land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. The pho­to cal­en­dar is the most impor­tant tool in our arse­nal of bad mon­ey-mak­ing tips for the third-rate land­scape painter, a guar­an­teed annu­al prof­it and a rare ray of light in this dark realm.

Just try to find 14 wor­thy snaps out of the tens of thou­sands you’ve tak­en over the past year and paste them into Snap­fish’s cal­en­dar tem­plate. Give it a suit­able, high­ly artis­tic name, such as “Mag­nif­i­cent Land­scapes of the Arti­choke Penin­su­la”, and the job is done.

Don’t for­get to put your cal­en­dar up for sale by July, because sell­ing it in Decem­ber is absolute­ly use­less — your poten­tial cus­tomers will still spend their mon­ey on com­peti­tors’ cal­en­dars.

Prints

Some­times peo­ple will write to you on Face­book, admir­ing your pho­tos and beg­ging for a print of a par­tic­u­lar shot. You enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly run to get the price at the print­er, write it to the impa­tient buy­er, and after that he will dis­ap­pear for­ev­er. This is because no one wants to pay more than a cou­ple of thou­sand rubles for a two-meter can­vas framed in sol­id oak, includ­ing ship­ping. And if your price exceeds this amount, the poten­tial client will sim­ply go and buy a no-name palm leaf print at the local DIY super­mar­ket.

So, if you want to make mon­ey from prints, you need to for­get about the fact that you are sell­ing “works of art” for­ev­er. Print the print on your home print­er, paste it into a sim­ple white frame for a hun­dred from the same DIY store and set the low­est price, five hun­dred rubles or so.

drains

How to get the least ben­e­fit with the most effort? Of course, upload your pic­tures to stock ser­vices. All you have to do is upload your pho­to, spend an hour care­ful­ly select­ing the right key­words, then add a title, cat­e­go­ry, loca­tion, descrip­tion, and mod­el release, and you’re done.

Now just repeat this process a few thou­sand times so that a few of the pho­tos pass the mod­er­a­tor’s check. Giv­en that you’ll be get­ting around $0.75 per license, it’s impor­tant to try to include as many pho­tos as pos­si­ble. If you put in enough effort, in a year you can earn your­self a cup of cap­puc­ci­no.

Pho­to: Stephen Leonar­di / petapixel.com

Copyright infringement

This is one of the most promis­ing ways to make mon­ey on our list. As with most areas of the pho­tog­ra­phy indus­try, cor­po­rate resellers will make more mon­ey than you, but that should­n’t stop you from this tru­ly lucra­tive pur­suit.

Sim­ply reg­is­ter on an agency site like Pixsy or Copy­track and add your pho­tos to their data­base. They will scour the Inter­net for resources that have used your pho­to, and when they find the intrud­er, they will imme­di­ate­ly warn you about it. Then all you need to do is to give the agency the go-ahead, and they will charge the vio­la­tor and seek finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion from him.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most copy­right infringe­ment cas­es hap­pen in Chi­na and no agency will try to get com­pen­sa­tion from a Chi­nese com­pa­ny as they have com­plete free­dom to steal what­ev­er they want, steal from any­one and use it in any way they want. deem nec­es­sary. In addi­tion, copy­rights do not apply to images that you have ever uploaded to the stock ser­vice. How­ev­er, you will still find a few unlucky fools who think that every­thing post­ed on the net is free, and you can sue them for what they are worth, or rather, how much your pic­tures are worth.

YouTube

If the suc­cess of famous pho­tog­ra­phers on YouTube proves any­thing, it’s that ago­niz­ing dis­com­fort in front of the cam­era is not a bar­ri­er to finan­cial free­dom at all. If you’re will­ing to film your­self tak­ing pic­tures and then spend an entire day edit­ing the video and then upload­ing it to YouTube, you might be able to attract some audi­ence. Take a few years to get over a hun­dred sub­scribers and one day Google will con­sid­er you wor­thy of adver­tis­ing on your chan­nel. Then just sit back and wait for the $10-$15 month­ly pay­ments to pay off all those end­less hours, days and weeks of effort.

Patreon

This is a real pho­tog­ra­pher’s dream, expressed in one word… Patre­on. Oh how we love you Patre­on. If enough peo­ple feel sor­ry for you enough to be will­ing to spend a few dol­lars, it’s pos­si­ble that you can eat at a cafe once a month with your donors’ mon­ey. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is about the same chance that no one will spend those dol­lars, and you will end up like that dirty gui­tarist who strums at the near­est mall with a cou­ple of coins and a torn but­ton in his dona­tion hat.

influencer

It’s pret­ty hard to become a true influ­encer these days. If you are not a spec­tac­u­lar young beau­ty, type in the social. net­works have so many sub­scribers that adver­tis­ers con­sid­er you a wor­thy option for coop­er­a­tion — a real prob­lem. But don’t despair!

There are “micro-influ­encers” these days. Micro-influ­encers are peo­ple who gained from 1,000 to 50,000 sub­scribers through blood and sweat. That’s right — with just 1,000 fol­low­ers on Insta­gram or 2,000 fol­low­ers on YouTube, you are offi­cial­ly clas­si­fied as a micro-influ­encer. This does not mean that you will be invit­ed to stay in a five-star hotel in the Caribbean or will be giv­en free busi­ness class seats at some fes­ti­val. How­ev­er, you can get a new set of ND fil­ters or a cheap Chi­nese knock­off Fit­bit smart­watch. Who does­n’t love cheap Chi­nese knock­offs?

Pho­to: Anas­tase Mara­gos / petapixel.com

Affiliate links

We’ve all seen them — that lit­tle list of blue links in the descrip­tion of a YouTube video, or the bul­let­ed lists in the “My Equip­ment” sec­tion of a pho­tog­ra­pher’s web­site. These are Ama­zon affil­i­ate links and if some­one clicks on that link and then buys some­thing, you get a per­cent­age! This is prac­ti­cal­ly free mon­ey — only a mad­man would refuse this!

For every suc­cess­ful sale at the behest of Jeff Bezos, you’ll earn an amaz­ing 4% off the price after tax­es and deduc­tions. So if some­one buys a cam­era for 2000 bucks with­in 24 hours of click­ing on your link, you get your 80 bucks. Not bad, huh? So quick­ly get your­self an account and shove a bunch of links to very expen­sive equip­ment that you “rec­om­mend”. Just don’t post this list on the “About me” page on your site, because no one but your mom has ever read it — it is advis­able to attach links some­where where you will have a lot of views.

Maybe write to a young biki­ni influ­encer, do a trav­el pho­to­shoot in a scenic loca­tion, and link to all the equip­ment that made those pho­tos pos­si­ble with links to your affil­i­ate Ama­zon account. Easy Mon­ey.

blogging

The key to mak­ing mon­ey blog­ging is to lie through your teeth. Peo­ple don’t want to hear the truth, they want to hear their own unful­filled dreams. Arti­cles that do well on pho­to­blogs tend to say that you can make a liv­ing from land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. So say some­thing like, “How I make $200,000 a year with land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy” or “How I make $50,000 with cal­en­dars” and then pull a bunch of made-up facts and fig­ures straight out of… The read­er won’t get a chance to ver­i­fy them. cred­i­bil­i­ty, and you’ll be able to get what’s owed to you with adsense and affil­i­ate links.

Easy Money

Being a third-rate land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er means putting up with lone­li­ness and menial work, but with dili­gence and per­se­ver­ance, you can earn a salary com­pa­ra­ble to that of a wait­er in a fast food restau­rant or a call cen­ter oper­a­tor.

Max­i­mize your avail­able streams of prof­it, nev­er miss an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make mon­ey on hid­den adver­tis­ing, and one day, maybe you will become a lit­tle suc­cess­ful.

Author’s note: it’s just a joke. I am gen­uine­ly proud to be a third-rate land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er, so please don’t offend me and leave angry com­ments just because some of my arti­cle sound­ed too true.

Opin­ions of the authors may not coin­cide with ideas of edi­to­r­i­al.