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    Anyone sold a photo before?

    I've just been contacted by the tap dancer of a swing band I saw in Bristol over the weekend. She saw some photos on my Flickr stream and is enquiring about my terms for letting them use one or two for promotional purposes.

    I've never sold a photo before, but wondered if any OTFers have done - how much should I ask for? The photos she's seen are the first four currently on my Flickr profile (here). I don't want to totally take the piss obviously, but I also don't want to undersell myself and ask for a tenner each one, then find out afterwards that I could have got a thousand quid per photo, or something.

    Any advice?!

    #2
    Anyone sold a photo before?

    No advice, but I've seen your photos and they're very good.

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      #3
      Anyone sold a photo before?

      Ta. Would you like to buy any?

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        #4
        Anyone sold a photo before?

        I'll give you a tenner for the one of the tap dancer.

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          #5
          Anyone sold a photo before?

          If you're about selling your work, there's a pm and an email to your hegs address waiting for you, Sam.

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            #6
            Anyone sold a photo before?

            Standard photo agency stuff is to find out what size image they're going to use, and the print runs, and stuff, and they have long, complex price lists.

            I don't know, though, what you charge for something as small scale as a local tap dancer. But when we sell images for, say, use in brochures by local government, at A4 size we charge something around £180-£250, I think, although frankly we often just make up a number that seems about right.

            The key thing is to not short-change yourself but also to not scare the customer away by pricing yourself out of the market. Rough guess for your stuff, £40-£80, probably, per image. Maybe a bit more if they're going to be used at poster size.

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              #7
              Anyone sold a photo before?

              Yeah, £40 is what I was thinking - the band are from south Wales but they gig regularly in London and have been in France playing as well, so it's a little bit bigger than 'local'. I shall probably suggest that price to her - it's a bit of pocket money to me if nothing else.

              This interesting though, I never thought I'd actually get offered cash for my images. Never mind have an email saying 'what's your going rate?' or words to that effect.

              Comrade - thanks, I've had the email and I'll be responding a little later...

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                #8
                Anyone sold a photo before?

                Sell them the rights to use the images, by the way, but retain the copyright yourself and the right to re-use the images yourself. i.e. don't sell the image itself, just give them usage permission.

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                  #9
                  Anyone sold a photo before?

                  Absolutely. The key thing is managing the rights to the use of your images, and sorting out some sort of license or basic terms for its use. Corporations are absolute cunts about wanting to nick all rights to reuse your work so they can make money in perpetuity for its reuse.

                  Advice here:
                  http://media.gn.apc.org/c-basics.html

                  and here:
                  http://media.gn.apc.org/feesguide/photo.html

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                    #10
                    Anyone sold a photo before?

                    Sam, out of curiosity, what kind of camera do you use?

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                      #11
                      Anyone sold a photo before?

                      Although for a jazz band I'd sell them in perpetuity rights for use of the images in any and all print publicity, but restrict them from resale and use in broadcast media .

                      Generally, E10 is right. Make sure you defnie the terms of use of the image if you sell to someone like the BBC. If you don't they'll just shove it in their archive and use it across hundreds of progammes when you should be getting a fee for each BBC program or series it's used in.

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                        #12
                        Anyone sold a photo before?

                        Thanks chaps. I've just got off the phone with my best mate, who's in a couple of bands on a smaller scale but knows people who are in much, much bigger ones (one of his teachers was signed to Acid Jazz Records, and so on), and he reckons £40 is about right as well.

                        And yes, rights and so on. I'm familiar with those (and since starting this thread I've changed the rights issued on the four photos in question on my Flickr stream to 'All Rights Reserved' from my normal Flickr default Creative Commons licence). Thanks for the advice.

                        Femme Folle - a Fujifilm S9600. Here she is.

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                          #13
                          Anyone sold a photo before?

                          Yes lots, but in Canada/US and quite a while back so I can't give you much help with prices.

                          However, first find exactly what they want to use it for. Second, find a reasonable professional price (LLR's sounds not far off the mark). If that makes their hair curl, negotiate something lower if you want but invoice the entire amount and deduct the difference. Make sure it's clear to them that you're doing them a favour, if word gets around your doing stuff on the cheap you'll have everyone banging on your door wanting the same. I'm not sure exactly how it works in the UK but here you sell an image for one time use only. In other words if they want it for a poster, fine. But if they want to use it again in six months for something else they have to pay again. If you're giving them prints mark the back with your name address phone number and copyright. Prints have a habit of moving around, and if it does a buyer will know where they have to send the money. I get the odd cheque every now and then for a print I might have made twenty years ago that someone's stumbled upon.

                          Scooped by E10

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                            #14
                            Anyone sold a photo before?

                            Well I've emailed her, said £40 per image for use in perpetuity (not counting broadcast etc., as LLR suggested). Now if they want to use them, is it me who sorts the printing out, or do I email them the files and let them do that? Or is that up to us to agree?

                            As you may have noticed I've never even considered this before.

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                              #15
                              Anyone sold a photo before?

                              That's usually your responsibilty. It also allows you to maintain quality control.

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                                #16
                                Anyone sold a photo before?

                                Right-oh. Does it come out of the charge I'm making them for use of the image then?

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                                  #17
                                  Anyone sold a photo before?

                                  I would have charged it separately. The photo is your intellectual property that they're leasing, in essence. The print is a tangible item they're purchasing, it's usually a good idea to keep them distinct.

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                                    #18
                                    Anyone sold a photo before?

                                    Thanks AdC (and indeed everyone else). I shall bear it in mind.

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                                      #19
                                      Anyone sold a photo before?

                                      You've already had plenty of good advice, clearly, but a good idea would have been to check out agencies like Corbis and Getty and see what their rates are for comparable commercial uses.

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                                        #20
                                        Anyone sold a photo before?

                                        Do photographers ever sign up to agencies (or whatever the photography equivalent of a record label would be) and let them deal with all the pricing/licensing/litigation side of things? I mean, it may not be the most cost-effective way for a 'small' photographer to operate, but it would presumably make life easier for a (semi-)professional one?

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                                          #21
                                          Anyone sold a photo before?

                                          evilC wrote:
                                          Do photographers ever sign up to agencies (or whatever the photography equivalent of a record label would be) and let them deal with all the pricing/licensing/litigation side of things? I mean, it may not be the most cost-effective way for a 'small' photographer to operate, but it would presumably make life easier for a (semi-)professional one?
                                          Yep, Clive. Pro and semi-pro photographers put their images with people like Corbis or Getty, although you tend to get a small cut (about 30-40%), they will tend to be able to make far more sales. As a company we put ours with Science Photo Library, and although we make far less out of each sale, SPL tends to make far more sales of particular images than we ever can.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            Anyone sold a photo before?

                                            Sam - who were the band? And were they any good? I'm a swing dancer, so always keen to know about UK-based swing bands. (You're not a swing dancer yourself, by any chance, are you?)

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                                              #23
                                              Anyone sold a photo before?

                                              Top Shelf Jazz, Thom (hence the titles of the photos). And yes, they were very good indeed, and very funny. I shall certainly be taking her up on the offer of free tickets to future gigs.

                                              I'm not a swing dancer, no. While we're here, are you the Thom Gibbs who had an article published in WSC a month or two ago? And if so, are you the same Thom Gibbs I had a fiction writing course with in my last year at uni in 2006?

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