Has anyone made money from photography?

[outcastjra]

If you have made any money from any of your photos, please share with a short success story.
I'm interested in taking this more serious.
Thanks to all

[jmcook]

Yeah right with all the Billion and a half photographer wan-bees with their prosumer cameras and camera-phones - you might make two pennies a photo if you have Fantastic one-in-a-million shots selling them to a stock photo warehouse - that is of course if those pics were not posted online anywhere and copied and then sent to that warehouse as someone else’s stock :-0... OH Wait I thought of another (sidebar) way to make bucks in the photo business – create a book on how to sell your photos and make money ... OH Waite and another thought – take your best shots that you spent hours and hours acquiring and then spend hours and hours photoshopping them to look great so that you can spend hours and hours driving and setting up at an an outside ‘Artizie’ show and then spend hours and hours sitting in the hot sun waiting for some thin-challenged homosapien with hotdog dripping cheap yellow Kraft mustard gloat over your photos thinking they might put that highly creative photo in their brat kids room who will only throw darts at it, but they think further, that really they can do the same 'creative work' with their camera-phones so why pay you the $20 for a 4x5 glossy that IF you sold it for that amount of cash you would probably lose money if you actually paid yourself for all your time – Good Luck & Hope that Helps
PS: OR (sorry one more thought); Spend $200K+ & four years+ of your life training by going to the Best photography school in the country for creative photography or photojournalism so you can come out & work as a 'Grunt' in a newspaper or news organization for $25K per year for 5 years then if you are Great 'gopher & 'suck enough butt' you may get sent to places that the Mortality rate is about one week, But you may get that 'award winning' shot - if you don't get 'shot' before you get the shot again

[rileypm]

I have been asked by friends and family to take their photographs. Some of them offered to pay but I didn't do it because I am in it for the fun. If I start making money, it becomes work. Work-Fun. It is a no brainer for me. I did sell a photo to a musician to be used as a CD cover. It was with great reluctance that I did it. I guess I just wanted bragging rights that I had "sold" a picture as well as the fact that the photo in question had already been taken for Fun.

[troron]

I have made money at art fairs with plaque mount landscapes.
But it is way too much work. I wont do that anymore.
I'm finding the best place to sell my stuff in on consignment in vacation Lodges around the southwest... national parks and such.

[sb_photos]

There's a magazine I subscribe to, generating a positive cash flow. They publish one of my articles with photos every couple years, and end up paying me more than the subscription costs. So that part of the transaction is profitable. Still haven't paid off my bag full of Canon goodies yet...

Stu

[christophertravels]

One of my photos was used in a children's book about Greece. Instead of money, they sent me two free copies of the book. I have one copy, and I donated one to a library. I'm not going to quit my day job.

[moxfactor]

Yeah right with all the Billion and a half photographer wan-bees with their prosumer cameras and camera-phones - you might make two pennies a photo if you have Fantastic one-in-a-million shots selling them to a stock photo warehouse - that is of course if those pics were not posted online anywhere and copied and then sent to that warehouse as someone else’s stock :-0... OH Wait I thought of another (sidebar) way to make bucks in the photo business – create a book on how to sell your photos and make money ... OH Waite and another thought – take your best shots that you spent hours and hours acquiring and then spend hours and hours photoshopping them to look great so that you can spend hours and hours driving and setting up at an an outside ‘Artizie’ show and then spend hours and hours sitting in the hot sun waiting for some thin-challenged homosapien with hotdog dripping cheap yellow Kraft mustard gloat over your photos thinking they might put that highly creative photo in their brat kids room who will only throw darts at it, but they think further, that really they can do the same 'creative work' with their camera-phones so why pay you the $20 for a 4x5 glossy that IF you sold it for that amount of cash you would probably lose money if you actually paid yourself for all your time – Good Luck & Hope that Helps
PS: OR (sorry one more thought); Spend $200K+ & four years+ of your life training by going to the Best photography school in the country for creative photography or photojournalism so you can come out & work as a 'Grunt' in a newspaper or news organization for $25K per year for 5 years then if you are Great 'gopher & 'suck enough butt' you may get sent to places that the Mortality rate is about one week, But you may get that 'award winning' shot - if you don't get 'shot' before you get the shot again

sounds like any decent graphics designer's story in HK about 10 years ago, when Photoshop/Illustrator dumbed down everything to a few button clicks. entry level jobs went from $12k to $6k HKD in 2 years. all the sh*tty ads were done by some friend's kids(there were tens of thousands of these returnees) who just came back from emigrating to Canada, and because they know how to use a computer to play games, they are automatically assumed to know Photoshop and therefore knows how to put pictures and words on a page with sparkly effects via free plug-ins.

[cits_4_pets]

Yes, I use to do assembly line mug shots of kids. (Lifetouch National School Studios)...no creativity allowed...lasted one school year, not my cup of tea.
Then did some freelance, lots of drive by shootings for a large real estate mag published twice a month. A few interiors with the lights but mostly just exteriors: drive by, jump out, compose and shoot. My Mazda pickup had dents in the cab's roof from me standing on it to shoot some homes on hills, or to avoid fences, distortion etc.
Non paying got Neil Young pix on the front cover of fanzines a few times. And other musicians in the Contra Costa Times. Those were back in the days of film.

Latest claim to fame was someone saw my Mailbox gallery here on Pbase and ask to use some for a benefit book. Of course I did not charge. Book benefits Postal Employee Relief Fund. They did misspell my last name. The book would make a great gift for postal carriers and it's for a good cause. Carried Away-True Stories from Letter Carriers Across America: Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carried-A ... 3595131981 Some pretty funny stories.

[viveksg]

Any more stories, people?

[keenimages]

I just bought a vacation house in Costa Rica with all the money I've made from my photo commerce site.

J/K!

[gillk]

I've been selling greeting cards with landscape and wildlife shots to a local resort - nothing grand but it does get the photos out of the computer !! I'm also going to try having a booth at a local community market this summer. B&H had a great video in one of their newsletters on how to go about setting up a booth - very helpful. Ask me in the fall whether it was worth all the work !!!
Gill

[amoxtli]

I have sold images for web sites such as insurance companies and real estate agents, for educational publications and to private individuals and also commercially to companies and institutions. I also give images to charity, most recently to raise funds for the San Diego State University Library and to the Maritime Museum of San Diego who will use one of my images for this years Christmas Card. I have been asked to contribute images to contests and for judging, but I am not into that at all.

I'm always surprised how people find images on my PBase site. Two examples are a man who contacted me because I had photographed the exact spot where he proposed to his wife and he wanted to give the photo to her for Christmas. Another time the owner of a local fishing boat contacted me because I had taken a photo of his boat and he somehow found it on my site. A print of that image is now aboard the boat.

[troron]

I have sold images for web sites such as insurance companies and real estate agents, for educational publications and to private individuals and also commercially to companies and institutions. I also give images to charity, most recently to raise funds for the San Diego State University Library and to the Maritime Museum of San Diego who will use one of my images for this years Christmas Card. I have been asked to contribute images to contests and for judging, but I am not into that at all.

I'm always surprised how people find images on my PBase site. Two examples are a man who contacted me because I had photographed the exact spot where he proposed to his wife and he wanted to give the photo to her for Christmas. Another time the owner of a local fishing boat contacted me because I had taken a photo of his boat and he somehow found it on my site. A print of that image is now aboard the boat.

I do lot of photography around southern Utah... that would be the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Zion National Park, Bryce National Park, and millions upon millions of acres of open land. If I get a good one I can show it to a few lodges who work with me and know me by first name (small town). They take them on consignment, and they sell them in one to four years. Almost always they are purchased by foreign tourists. My rule is a minimum $100 in my pocket over and above framing and consignment fees (some have sold at $1000+). So no I dont consider myself very special. But I do feel wonderful when I sell one because I know that person is not bull sh**ting me when they say they like it. Nothing proves it like buying it so that's why I do it.

[billrobinson]

I have 2500 on a stock sight and that generates about 1k a year. I suit myself about what I shoot and upload, since photography is pleasure and I have a day job!
I've also held 4 exhibitions. Sold work at three of them but have yet to break even on the outlay of printing and framing/blockmounting.
If you learn what type of images sell at stock agencies, it is possible to generate an income. But it needs to be treated as a business. That means continually heading out and capture images, uploading and then keywording and it's a numbers game. You need thousands of images in your portfolio. All really time consuming.
As I said, I have a day job already.

[sb_photos]

What? Make money? And ruin my amateur standing?
Actually I have had some income from my photos. I submit photos and articles to a magazine, which they pay for, but that just keeps me a little ahead of their subscription costs.
I was contacted by a small publisher who is republishing an expanded edition of an old book. He Googled his way to my stuff on PBase, and wanted to add in one or two of my photos. Not only that, it was by an author I’d heard of, and was a book I meant to buy back in the day. Big bucks? No, the order to B + H for the latest single digit Canon body and “L glass” will have to wait. It was being republished to support a charity which I would support, and others were just donating photos, so I will receive an autographed copy of the book. They were really crappy photos, copied slides from 1972, but they were from events covered in the book.
My daughter thinks I do good work, and should do weddings. NO, I say, because if I did weddings, I’d have to deal with BRIDES. She understood completely, since she will be a bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding this weekend. Besides, I do this for fun, and the last time I did a job for money, I don’t think I touched my gear again for several months.
Stu