Category Archives: Business of Nature Photography

Once you have a good collection of photographic images that you think are “worth something”, many photographers decide that it’s time for all that expensive equipment to start paying for itself. Few hobbies in the world attract so many people who want to make money with their efforts than photography.

If you are ready to turn your photography hobby into a business, we have several series of articles to help you get started. You will learn what it takes to become a pro, what the market looks like, how to store and inventory your images, what a publisher or photo buyer is looking for and how to help them get your best images, how to network and promote your photography business, and more.

Letter to Those Desiring a Career in Nature and Travel Photography

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Posted on March 4, 2013 by Lorelle VanFossen

On a regular basis I get emails and comments from students attracted to the photography bug. To them, photography represents the exotic, exciting, and adventurous. While there are some aspects that involve travel, adventure, and excitement, for the most part photography as a hobby is fun. Photography as a business is hard work and boring.

A couple years ago I created the following form letter in response to the quantity of requests for advice and help with a photography career in travel and nature. I’m updating it but I thought you might enjoy the older version for posterity.

Brent VanFossen balances his long camera lens on roof of car while photographing big game animals from the road. Photography Lorelle VanFossen. Dreams of a nature and travel photography career is a good dream, but one that requires an education first.

I know I sound old, but I wish I’d had the photography, art, and business training I needed before I first hit the road with my camera. Traveling costs money, but it also presents a lot of opportunities I could have turned into income which would have allowed me to spend more time exploring and expanding my art and skills rather than taking any job I could to pay for the next trip. No matter how you look at it, photography is expensive.

School is boring. Go Anyway.

School really doesn’t teach you what you need to know to succeed in life. Still, you have to have the piece of paper that says, “This is proof I know how to complete things. I know how to suffer and make it through it.” There is no photography career you can take on without that piece of paper if you wish to do more than run your own business. Even then, a fine art or graphic arts degree is a minimum. A business degree is a requirement.

Lorelle sites in the grasses as spotter for eagles, British Columbia, Canada.

I recommend that you triple your educational activities outside of the traditional classroom. Honestly. Do not play all the time, throw away the television, and sign up for every class you can at the local college or training schools or wherever on photography, art, business, public relations, contracts, negotiation, sales training, advertising – take any class you can. All will apply to a photography career. Go to school until 3 or 4 in the afternoon, then head right out for one to two classes a night elsewhere. Learn to manage your time. Learn everything. Learn how to take notes and how to flex your memory so you don’t have to take notes. Ace everything.

If you spend two to four years immersed in classes and education, you will emerge ready for the next 50 years of a photography career. If you do not, you will spend more time learning and studying, losing deals rather than winning them, than out and about with the camera.

Make a plan

Photography is not about the camera. It’s not about taking the pictures. It’s about selling them.

It’s about understanding the marketplace and trends to be taking the pictures you can sell three years before the style is in fashion because you were paying attention with how the market was moving and there, before everyone else, to respond to the shifts in the purchasing power. It’s about negotiating business contracts for publishing books, videos, CDs, from simply selling an image then leveraging it to sell it again and again. It’s about know how to negotiate with an airline company that wants to put your photograph on the tail of several of their airplanes. It’s about negotiating with a movie company that wants to use your image on their marketing and promotional campaign.

Duane Hansen hides in camo in the trees behind his camera. It’s about learning how accounting works and how the tax system works in your country and outside. Because I travel and work all over the world, I have to know what the tax rules and laws are in the various states within the United States (income tax, no income tax, sales tax, no sales tax, property tax, earned income taxes, investment taxes – will they tax money I earn outside of the state or only within the state) as well as the tax rules for living outside of the country and how to pay taxes on money earned outside and within…and the list is long.

I’ve never been good with basic numbers, even though I can program a spreadsheet, database, or computer. I had to take a lot of classes later in life to figure out how to estimate jobs for photo assignments and work with the stock photography industry. Do you know how to write a release form and ask for someone to sign it before you photograph them or their property? Do you know the laws pertaining to the photography of public areas, public parks, national parks, and private property? Do you know how to determine value for insurance when traveling with the camera gear, and deal with insurance companies after losing or having the gear stolen? When I work with big companies or magazines on photo projects, they use a language all of their own. I had to learn all that.

Traveling is fun. Travel and Learn to Travel at Home.

Taking pictures is fun. Selling and making a living to pay for the travel and the gear sucks. If you don’t know how to do that, the traveling sucks and the taking pictures just gets you pictures – pictures that you can’t show to anyone because no one cares or wants them. Any twit with a cell phone now has a camera and they are more interested in their pictures than yours.

Travel far but learn to travel near. What you call home, a familiar community, it boring to you. What you call boring is exotic to others.

If you live in Hawaii, you may take it for granted. For those that don’t live in Hawaii, it is a far away place of mystery and fantasy.

What is special about where you live? Pretend to be a tourist and treat your community like a tourist haven, somewhere exotic that people would flock to see. Identify the unique qualities and photograph it as if you were photographing for National Geographic, Traveler, or any travel and nature magazine or website you respect.

Travel, even in your own neighborhood, teaches you how to see things as someone else sees. It teaches you how to frame, plan, and capture images that define a location, a community, a people.

Set Goals and Self-Assignments. Practice Gets You to Carnegie Hall.

Set self-assignments. Set personal and professional goals. Make a plan for pushing your craft to its limits.

Photograph subjects you would not normally choose to capture. If you are interested in only nature photography, spend time aiming your camera at man-made objects and find your art in them. If you are a people photographer, push yourself to photograph inanimate objects and nature.

Get out a calendar and set deadlines for yourself. Places, subjects, people, whatever it takes to push your art beyond its current state.

If you are not pushing your abilities, you are staying static, keeping your expertise at a level that anyone can achieve. Go deeper and further with each task, honing your skills and strengthening your art form.

If I Could Do It All Over Again…

If I could do it all over again, that is what I would do. I would immerse myself in 4-6 years of fine arts, graphic arts, business, advertising, marketing, and entrepreneurial classes. I’ve got the business degree, but it isn’t enough. I was working while going to school and my mind wasn’t in the game as much as it should have been. Learn from me.

Duane Hansen in the mud photographing tulips closeup, Skagit Valley, Washington. I’ve learned from the best in the business that they stayed in school and went to night school to get the training they really needed because they sat down at 16 years old and made a plan for their lives. They went where serendipity took them, but only because they had the training and education to recognize an opportunity when it stood in their face and followed their heart along with the money trail.

That’s my little bit of advice. Over the years, thousands of people have taken my classes and workshops. They have talked to me about how they gave up school and everything to hit the road and photograph. Some worked for 30 or 40 years then gave up everything for photography. Either way, without a plan, without the education to make it happen, they wasted years of their lives flailing around. They are not photographers but wannabes. They are mechanics, doctors, lawyers, dentists, writers, hair stylists, and whatever job they fell into, not photographers. They didn’t take the time nor had the plan to learn what it takes to be a photographer. Art Wolfe did. Galen Rowell did. George Lepp did. Frans Lanting did. Look at the ones with dozens of books and you will find someone who made a plan and learned what it took to implement that plan, and grabbed the best opportunities (not the loser opportunities) because they knew what they wanted. They have the papers that say “I know how to complete things.”

Good luck and know that EVERYONE feels the same as you at your age. If we didn’t, the world would be broken. It’s natural.

Lorelle

Wedding Photographers Need a Permit to Photograph in US National Parks

Posted on June 19, 2006 by Lorelle VanFossen

According to USAToday, Washington Post, among others, the US National Park Service will break a long running tradition and will be charging for wedding photographer in their national parks. Permits will be required as well.

The new policy took effect on May 15 of this year and requires professional photographers to pay $50 to $250 to photograph wedding groups. The size of the group influences the price. This new permit and fee policy is not required in every park within the National Park System. For now, it seems that only the most popular parks will impose the fee, including parks within Washington, D.C., the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the Statue of Liberty, Alaska’s Denali National Park, Texas’ Big Bend National Park, and Yellowstone National Park.

Currently, the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Department of Agriculture charges fees for photography and film usage in some of their areas. These government agencies along with the National Park Service are hurting under the drastic budget cuts over the past 10 years, including the continued government policy to put all the monies earned by the park system into a big lump sum to the government, which hands back a drop from the original park bucket.

How does this impact the non-wedding professional photographer, especially the nature and travel photographer? It is another effort to encroach upon our rights as photographers to photograph in public access areas.

The excuse given for these permits is the additional financial and environmental impact on the park service from photographers using their area. They claim that photographers and filmographers damage the area and increase traffic and garbage. While this may be true for movie, television, and large group photography, it isn’t true for the one or two people with camera equipment photographing a scenic, wandering wildlife, or closeup of tree bark.

The distinction between permit and permission is narrowing. Yet, if you look closely, it is determined by the use of props and models. It’s the “props” issue that effects most nature photographers, as they seldom use people in their images.

A tripod can be claimed as a prop, as can a reflector, diffusor, or off-camera flash on a monopod or tripod. Equipment outside of what you can hold in your hand can be interpreted as “professional”. Though, big lenses are also misinterpreted as “professional”, even when used without a tripod. When inconsistent rules and regulations about photography permits are issued, park rangers have been known to equate “professional” with “permits” instead of “props and models” as the determining factor.

According to the North American Nature Photography Association:

We have spoken to a knowledgeable official of the National Park Service and are pleased to report the following:

*THE RULES ARE NOT BEING CHANGED CONCERNING STILL PHOTOGRAPHY.*

Federal legislation (Public Law 106-206), which has been on the books for several years, provides that the Park Service cannot require a permit or assess a fee for still photography if the photography takes place where members of the public are generally allowed and the photography does not involve models or props which are not a part of the site’s natural or cultural resources or administrative facilities.

The Park Service is not proposing to require permits for this kind of still photography and, indeed, the Park Service could not legally do so because it would be in violation of the federal statute…

…So go out to the National Parks and shoot. So long as you are shooting the landscape and the local wildlife at times at which and from places where members of the public are generally allowed, fees and permits cannot be imposed.

For many years in our camera bags we have carried worn copy of the National Parks and Wildlife Service Photography Policy and a copy of the letter from the National Park Service (Anthony J. Bonanno) to NANPA advising us of our rights for photographing in National Parks. We’ve never had to pull these out as proof that we can photograph without a permit, but we never know when that time will come. We recommend you do the same.

In addition, we also recommend that you fire off a few emails to the US National Park service letting them know how you feel about your rights as a photographer, pro or not, being infringed.

What Can You Photograph and What Can You Publish

Posted on April 8, 2006 by Lorelle VanFossen

James Stephens’s post, “Where and What You Can Photograph – Aspects of the Law”, points to some really good articles discussing the legal issues and rights of where you can photograph, what you can photograph, and what images can be published. They are:

Stephans sums it up really well on what your rights as a photographer are:

You can take photos any place that’s open to the public. You can even be on private property and still legally take pictures. You might be trespassing of course, but that’s another issue.
You can take any photo that does not intrude upon or invade the privacy of a person (if that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy).
You can publish virtually anything if it doesn’t cast someone in an unfavorable light, or reveal private facts about them.

The USA Today article brings up a really good point. While it seems that everything and anything made today has to have a camera built-into it, including cell phones, cars, handheld computers, laptops, and more, the issue of where and when you can take pictures is going to get serious.

A blogger I know shot a picture in an office building. One of the tenants had boxes of medical records sitting around in an unlocked office, visible from the hall. He published a picture of the boxes, which started a little brouhaha: He didn’t have permission from the building’s landlord, someone said, so he wasn’t allowed to take or publish the photos.

That turns out not to be the case.

What I discovered is that a lot of people have ideas â€” often very clear ones â€” of what is legal and what isn’t, based on anything from common sense to wishful thinking to “I always heardâ€¦”

Other than that, if you’re feeling nosy or just want to shoot unobtrusively, check this puppy out.

Trouble is, they aren’t always right. If you’ve got a digital camera and like to shoot in public, it pays to know the real deal.

Using CSS to Create a Photo Gallery

Posted on March 20, 2006 by Lorelle VanFossen

I have quite a few examples in my CSS Experiments on showcasing your photographs, as a single image or in a gallery format, and I found a very simple, easy-to-understand explanation of how to use CSS to create a photo gallery from Web Reference.

With this article I hope to show you how to produce a professional quality photograph gallery using nothing more than an unordered list of photographs and a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). I will take you through the styling one step at a time and end up converting an unordered list of photographs into a professional photograph gallery. Each step will be thoroughly explained and will have an example page showing the effect of the additional styling so that you can see what to expect.

The technique presented puts the images in a HTML list and then uses CSS basics and the hover style to create a photo gallery so when you move your mouse over the thumbnail, the enlarged version of the image will appear in the showcase.

This is a great technique which worked on only a few browsers when I first started experimenting with it, but with most people upgraded to newer Internet browsers, and so many people switching to Firefox, this technique will work across most browsers now.

Enjoy!

CD Storage for Images Now Not a Good Idea

Posted on January 23, 2006 by Lorelle VanFossen

If you have been storing your digital photographic images on CDs, think again. There is new news from Computer World that says CDs aren’t good for archival storage.

The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data “shifting” on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam.

“Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a life span of around two years,” Gerecke said. “Some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years.”

The biggest problem, if you continue to use CDs or DVDs as a storage medium, is that it is really difficult to tell the difference between low and high quality discs. Check with manufacturer’s websites for specific information about the quality and durability of their discs.

This is even more confusing and frustrating for photographers determined to develop consistent and secure storage and backups for our photographs in digital form. Hard drives also have a short life, as do flash drives and many other storage mediums. The only format that has consistently proved long-term and fairly safe are magnetic tape drives. While they don’t last forever, they can last, according to the article, with a “life span of 30 to 100 years, depending on their quality.”

The article sums up the future of digital storage this way:

But he’s quick to point out that no storage medium lasts forever and, consequently, consumers and business alike need to have a plan for migrating to new storage technologies.

Professional and amateur photographers are going to have to make a plan to migrate over several different kinds of mediums before a more permanent medium is found. This means increased expenses and time consuming effort every few years that needs to be incorporated into your plan and budgets. Let’s hope they come up with something more stable soon.

I will do some research on what techniques and hardware are available for quality magnetic tape storage and report on it soon.

Can You Present a Program Worthy of a Standing Ovation

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Lorelle VanFossen

Okay, I’m about to brag. I just wanted to warn you.

As a long time public speaker and public figure, I’ve been honored to receive a lot of standing ovations. There is nothing like the first couple of times when people suddenly jump to their feet, hands clapping or waving over their heads, and shouts and hoots filling the room. It’s stunning. Overwhelming. And can either crush a fragile ego or boost it up. Either way, it is an honor and a joy when it happens.

But it doesn’t happen to everyone. And it doesn’t happen every time. I’ve also presented programs and walked out wondering why the clapping was fairly luke warm. Instead of quitting, I just suck it up and examine what happened and how to make it better, working constantly to improve my overall performance.

In a simple and clear explanation, Guy Kawasaki offers tips on how to get a standing ovation to help others learn what it takes to make that standing ovation thrill be theirs. Here is one highlight:

Practice and speak all the time. This is a â€œduhism,â€ but nonetheless relevant. My theory is that it takes giving a speech at least twenty times to get decent at it. You can give it nineteen times to your dog if you like, but it takes practice and repetition. There is no shortcut to Carnegie Hall. As Jascha Heifitz said, â€œIf I don’t practice one day, I know it. If I don’t practice two days, my critics know it. If I don’t practice three days, everyone knows it.â€ Read this article to learn what Steve Jobs does.

It’s taken me twenty years to get to this point. I hope it takes you less. Part of the reason why it took me so long is that no one explained the art of giving a speech to me, and I was too dumb to do the research. And now, twenty years later, I love speaking. My goal, every time I get up to the podium, is to get a standing ovation. I don’t succeed very often, but sometimes I do. More importantly, I hope that I’m standing and clapping in the audience of your speech soon.

If you are teaching or doing any public speaking, whether on your travel adventures, photography, or whatever, this should be required reading. If you are selling your writing or photography, or blogging about these subjects, I would also include this in a required reading list, if you seriously want to impress your audience, even virtually.

Photoblogs

Posted on November 6, 2005 by Lorelle VanFossen

Photoblogs are blogs dedicated to photography, but not usually a discussion of photography tips and techniques, but a showcase of photographers’ photography. An online gallery of photographs.

You can find a lot of photoblogs at Photoblogs.org sorted by popularity, language, and more. Also check out The Photoblogs Blog for more information on how this works and how you can get listed.

Got Meme? How to Attract Clients and Customers Attention

Posted on September 24, 2005 by Lorelle VanFossen

Effective marketing memes focus on a specific clientele and a solution, or better yet a common client problem. For example, “I help independent professionals attract more clients,” identifies a market and a client problem. It also invites the follow up question “How?” FedEx grew their now billion dollar business with the meme, “When it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight.”

Whether you use a meme in the elevator, on your business card or in your mailings, it should help your prospects know whether you are talking to them and define you as someone who can help them solve a problem, and prompt prospects to ask if your products and services could help them, too.
Got Meme? How to Attract Your Clients’ and Customers’ Attention from SCORE

This short and to the point article looks at helping you develop a “meme” which is a key phrase used in networking, marketing and advertising to help people remember and understand what you do and why. We cover the specific steps in how to do this in our article on Casting Your Net-work – Ten Words or Less What Do You Do.

If you are serious about building up your business and spreading the word about what you do and what you have to offer, you can’t bypass this important step: Explain what you do, why you do it, how you do it, and who you do it for in ten words or less.

Book Industry Choosing Green

Posted on September 16, 2005 by Lorelle VanFossen

Forest of trees, photograph by Brent VanFossen In a surprising bit of news, USATODAY.com reports authors are insisting on “Green” printing methods for books. It says “a small and growing number of authors are asking publishers to print their books on environmentally friendly paper.”

Authors are not only pushing their publishers and having it written in the contract to use recycled materials for publishing books, but many musicians like U2 and Bonnie Raitt are insisting on packaging their CDs in recycled materials.

According to the article, “Less than 5% of U.S. books are printed that way, says Tyson Miller of the Green Press Initiative, a group working to interest publishers and authors.”

Slides and Transparencies: Sleeve It

Posted on September 13, 2005 by Lorelle VanFossen

light table filled with slides, photograph by Lorelle VanFossen While a lot of professional photographers are going digital, don’t forget to take care of your original slide images when you send them off for publishing. Photo buyers are still accepting original images.

Protect your images by enclosing them in individual plastic sleeves. These crystal clear, archival plastic sleeves slide over your transparencies and protect them from fingerprints, scratches and dirt. Even with the sleeves on the slides, they insert easily into slide pages, giving double protection.

We recommend sliding the sleeves on from side to side and inserting the slide into the slide page top to bottom. This gives a tighter seal and better protection and allows for easy removal of the slides from the pages, grasping the top of the sleeve and pulling the slide out with the sleeve. Editors and photo buyers can view the slide without any problems, removing the sleeve only when they prepare the slide for scanning.

Our favorites come from The Kimac Company, (203) 453-4690. You can also buy TransView Slide Sleeves from Light Impressions and Clearbags from Impact Images. There are hundreds of differences sizes to accommodate a wide range of film and prints.

Costing about a nickel each, take this inexpensive extra step to protect your precious images.

10 Simple Ways to Lower Your Computer Support Bills

Posted on September 12, 2005 by Lorelle VanFossen

I adore the Small Business Administration (SBA) and SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) informational services. Here is a great example of the help they provide from SCORE.

10 Simple Ways to Lower Your Computer Support Bills by Joshua Feinberg is an article offering 10 tips for what to do BEFORE you call for technical support on your computer equipment. Technical support can cost you money, and this is a great way to save money.

It begins with the easiest thing to do:

1. When in doubt, reboot.

Before you consider an issue a real computer support problem and call your computer consultant, always reboot first.

It doesn’t get easier than that.

Before the next computer glitch, or after, this is a great article full of tips worthy of saving before you confront your computer problems.

From My Kitchen Tabletop to Your Computer Laptop

Posted on September 10, 2005 by Lorelle VanFossen

In a fascinating article on SCORE, veteran catalog guru, Lillian Vernon, shares her insights about the move From My Kitchen Tabletop to Your Computer Laptop, covering the history of the Lillian Vernon Corporation and catalog from a small kitchen business to a worldwide company with millions of dollars in sales online every year.

When I founded Lillian Vernon Corporation on my yellow Formica kitchen table in 1951, I couldn’t have imagined selling to customers linked by little boxes called “laptops” to a “tabletop” of mine that is actually a big box called a server, located in cyberspace rather than physical space.

Back then, a visit was a friend stopping by for coffee, the number of hits told us if the New York Yankees would make it to the World Series and a web was spun by a spider. The only thing launched in the 1950s was a rocket in a Buck Rogers serial, and a site was something for sore eyes. User friendly? Well, in those days, we didn’t even talk like that in mixed company!

So, you could imagine my hesitation when, four and a half decades later, in 1995, we took our first steps into what is now called “e-commerce,” or selling electronically. That year, realizing that e-commerce would play an important role in the future of catalog retailing, we set up an online shop through America Online, where we thought our customers were most comfortable.

The following year, we unveiled our own online catalog, featuring 200 of our best-selling items, at our new address on the Internet: www.lillianvernon.com. And in December 1998, we completely redesigned the site, expanding our online offerings to more than 400 products in nine categories. In doing so, we enhanced our customers’ ability to shop with computers.

The article not only addresses the history of her evolution as a company from home business to modern tech corporation, she talks about how she had to “go with the flow of technological change” as a benefit for her customers. From mail order to telephone orders to fax order to online Internet orders, Lillian Vernon has seen as lot of technological growth and had plenty of opportunity to shy away from the changes. She didn’t, and she speaks candidly about what she’s learned from the process.

We’ve all come a long way with our online exposure especially businesses. It helps to step back for a moment to look at how far we’ve come and the lessons we’ve learned along the way. Lillian Vernon took a simple idea, bringing things people wanted that were hard to find but helpful to their lifestyle to their door rather than the customer coming to the store. The online world makes this easier, but it all starts with that appointment with your kitchen table to plan it all out.

Writer’s Digests 101 Best Websites for Writers

Posted on September 8, 2005 by Lorelle VanFossen

Writer’s Digest is one of the best all-around magazines for writers. It covers a wide variety of topics and writing genre, helping the writer not only to write better, but find the markets they need to sell their work.

Each year, Writer’s Digest puts out their “Best of” series and their 101 Best Websites for Writers is a great resource for writers on finding agents, writing groups, writing resources, getting published, book marketing and promotion, finding editors, book reviews, literary sites, and all the information, tips, advice, and recommendations you need as a writer, no matter what your genre.

This Writers Digest list is not just for writers. Photographers and photographers who want to write need to visit this list and explore these resources.

10 Ways To Make Your Web Site Work Harder For You

Posted on September 6, 2005 by Lorelle VanFossen

SCORE offers a great article on 10 Ways To Make Your Web Site Work Harder For You. It is must read for website administrators and owners. I especially love the tip “Focus the Home Page and Product Pages on Your Customers’ Interests, Not Yours”. That’s a really good reminder.

Tips include:

Make Sure Your Site Looks Professional
Don’t Use the Name of Your Company as the Web Page Title – Unless it is descriptive
Don’t Let Your Home Page Be a Flash Presentation
Focus the Home Page and Product Pages on Your Customers’ Interests, Not Yours
Avoid a Cluttered Look
Minimize Graphic Sizes to Make Sure Your Pages Load Quickly
Be Sure You’ve Included Important Supporting Information
Be Sure It’s Easy to Place an Order
Be Sure Your Contact Information is Easy to Find
Share Links With Other Businesses in Your Community

While these seem simple, they are core tips to use when you are considering a web presence. Keep it simple, keep it clean, and keep it connected to the rest of the world, putting the needs of the reader first.

Taking Your Camera on the Road

with Lorelle and Brent VanFossen