You may love capturing the most beautiful scenes on camera, but what do you do with all those photos? Do they just sit there and take up space on your hard drive, or are they placed inside folders and picture albums? No matter where these pictures are, get them all out, organize them, and turn your love for photography into cash; you deserve something. Besides, you should share those breath-taking photos with the world, and your talent should be rewarded.
Before I reveal how you can make money with your photo-taking abilities, going to help get you organized. Organization should be the first step in photography, because knowing where to find what you need will make the whole process much easier.
Let’s begin with all those photos you have scattered about: The images on your hard drive, in folders, in photo albums, in your digital camera and etc. Take all those pictures and place them in one pile in front of you. Next, separate each photo into similar groups (family, nature, animals, places, etc.). Once you have all your separated in groups, place each in sheet protectors, and then put the sheet protectors into a binder. As you place each sheet protector — with the — in your binder, still keep the pictures in related groups in the binder. To keep them in groups, lined paper and plastic tabs. Next, place a tab (with the group name) on each sheet of lined paper. Finally, place the lined paper with tab before that group of photos. Later, tell you why you should use lined paper.
Now, set your binder aside and focus on organizing the you have stored in your hard drive and digital camera. To organize the pictures on your hard drive and digital camera, burn them onto a CD-RW or CD-R using Nero 7. Following are step-by-step instructions you can follow to burn the onto CD using Nero 7. The instructions that follow are the way I burn my pictures using Nero 7. If you use a different software program for burning CDs, then check your program’s help manual for instructions.
1. Start Nero 7. Click “make data CD,” then open with Nero Burning Rom.
2. Drag and drop your picture files from the “my documents” folder (or whichever folder your are stored in) to Nero Burning Rom. Hold down CTRL to choose multiple files. To choose all files in that folder, click edit, then all.
3. After you have all the files you want to burn, click “burn” from the top of Nero Burning Rom.
4. Once you click “burn,” you will have to set the options to what you desire. (See glossary in the help menu for an explanation of each term.) Here’s what I use for my settings: Under the multisession tab, I select “multisession disc.” Under the ISO tab, I choose mode 1 for “data mode”; ISO 9660 + Joliet for “file system”; Level 1 for “file name length (ISO)”; ISO 9660 for “character set (ISO).”
Under “relax restrictions,” I usually check the following: “allow path depth of more than 8 directories,” “allow more than 255 characters in path” and “allow more than 64 characters for Joliet names.”
For the label tab, I select “automatic,” and in the field for “disc name,” I enter a name for my disc (e.g., family photos, animal photos or etc.).
Under the dates tab, I nothing for “volume creation,” but for “file dates,” I choose “use the date and time from the original file.”
Under the misc tab, the only thing I check is “cache files from disk and network,” but if you don’t want to cache your files, you can leave both tabs unchecked.
Finally, under the burn tab, for “action” I choose “write,” and for “writing” the “write speed” I choose is 48x, and for “write method” I select “Disc-at-once/96.” Next, I enter the number of duplicates I want to make, and then I check “BURN-Proof,” “use multiple recorders” and “do a virus check before burning.”
5. Hit burn and wait.
See, that so hard, was it. Now, since your pictures are all organized, finding what you need to make will be a much simpler task.
To turn your pictures into you will by finding magazines, newspapers, businesses and etc. that will buy your photos. Yes, writers make up the content for these publications, but artists make up the covers and photos. Furthermore, to be honest, the greater part of these publications pays more for pictures than they do for the written content. How do you find these markets for your photos? Begin with a few searches on Google. Search Google for keyword phrases such as we pay for photos, pic guidelines and sell your photos. When you enter the keyword phrases, place quotation marks around them to search for the exact phrase.
Aside from Googling search terms, another place to find a market for your is the current edition of “Writer’s Market.” “Writer’s Market” is not only for writers, but photographers can use this resource guide as well. The “Writer’s Market” specifies if the publication accepts photos, and most of the time it will also say how much pay is given for each photo. Updated more frequently than the print edition is the on the web edition of “Writer’s Market.” Therefore, in my opinion, I think the on the web edition is the best way to go. A yearly subscription to the edition of “Writer’s Market” is $29.99, a small price to pay for over 100 markets.
Remember when I stated to put lined paper in your binder; this is where it comes in play. On the lined paper, you will write the name of each market you find that will take in that group. Not only will you write the name of the market, but you will also list their Web site URL, the submission information, how much they pay and the rights they purchase. For example, on the lined paper separating the animals group, write down all the information specified above on the markets that accept animal photos. Then, for the family group, write down all the information on the markets that accept family related photos and so on. Finally, when you’re ready to submit your animal photos, using your tabs, you can flip to the animal group in your binder, the animal pictures you think are best, and then submit those photos to the markets listed on the lined paper in this group.
There are many other ways to sell your photos but you must build a portfolio first, and the techniques mentioned above are the ideal way to get started. After you have established your portfolio, refer to my article on marketing your pictures to discover the many other ways you can make money with your photos.Go ahead and start selling your photos using the system in this article today, and in no time your pic equipment should pay for itself!
There are generally four kinds of photography lenses that every wedding photographer should have in his or her gig bag:
- Wide-Angle Zoom
- Wide-to-Telephoto Zoom
- Image-Stabilized Telephoto Zoom
- Prime/Portrait Lenses
Wide-Angle Zoom
Wide-angle zoom lenses are one of the most important photography lenses that every wedding photographer should have, typically 17mm to 35mm in length with a fixed aperture of f/2.8. They provide a large depth of field, making it simple to have foreground and background in focus. They are an indispensable wedding photography equipment which allows versatility in confined areas such as a small banquet room or crowded dance floor. While shorter photography lenses allow you to capture more details, wide-angle zoom lenses allow you to capture more reactions and atmosphere to tell a richer story.
To elaborate further, wide-angle zoom photography lenses allow you to shoot a wider perspective of moments happening around the major subject, hence providing a bigger picture of the entire event. For example, wide-angle photos have the capability to tell “stories within a story”, allowing you to reveal more of the story behind the shot. This is essential for a good photojournalistic wedding photography. As events surrounding weddings are so time sensitive, good photography lenses will allow you to capture as many actions or emotions in the quickest time as possible.
When used in a venue such as the church or ballroom, wide-angle zoom photography lenses also magnify the grandeur and spaciousness of the area, which encapsulates the creative feel for a photojournalistic wedding photography.
However, you need to be selective of the scenes or actions using wide-angle photography lenses, as a caveat to shooting wide is that it creates some body distortion, particularly when a subject is photographed close-up. Generally, people tend to look heavier and shorter on the edges, while arms can look huge. The last thing you want is to have the bride cursing you for making her look like she has put on 10 pounds! To get around this problem, you should as far as possible avoid putting the bride and groom at the edges of the wide-angle distortion. In addition, wide-angle photography lenses might also introduce distracting or unwanted elements into the frame, which would otherwise ruin a picture perfect moment.
Wide-to-Telephoto Zoom
Wide-to-telephoto lenses are the single most important photography lenses that a wedding photographer cannot do without. They should ideally be lenses that cover somewhere around the 20-70mm focal length range with an aperture of f/2.8. This ideal range lets you get wide enough to take a group photograph and close enough to capture facial emotions in your candid shots or a three-quarter portrait of a couple without the undesirable effects of wide-angle perspective distortion. They also double as good lenses for portraits. Given just this lens, you would be able to capture most of the shots needed for a wedding decently well.
Image-Stabilized Telephoto Zoom
Image-stabilized telephoto zoom lenses are also essential items in your wedding photography equipment checklist. The 70-200mm focal length is an important range for wedding ceremony photos. It allows you to give your subjects more space in situations where you don’t want to get in the way. As you will often be photographing down the aisle from the back of the church, image-stabilized telephoto zoom lenses will come in very handy. 200mm is long enough to be able to take 3/4 length images of the bride and groom exchanging their vows while staying at a reasonable distance away from the action and 70mm is wide enough to take in the bridesmaids or groomsmen as a group without switching photography lenses.
A good point to note is that when using such photography lenses, nice blurred background can be achieved with maximum wide apertures of f/2.8 and long focal lengths of 200mm or 300mm, whether you are using a full-frame or a small sensor body. This allows you to isolate the subject from its background, and to focus attention on the image as the main subject you want to portray. Such photography lenses are especially useful for shots where you are unable to get in close and for intimate and private moments, where you want to be an unobserved stranger at a distance. Some examples include a stolen glance, a mischievous grin, a kiss – the details that are effectively conveyed by the emotions. Image-stabilized telephoto zoom photography lenses hence play an important role in capturing such moments.
These image-stabilized telephoto zoom photography lenses aren’t only good for blurry backgrounds or shooting events from a distance. They could also be used to photograph stunning facial close-ups from creative angles above or below the subject that don’t exhibit the normal distortions of large chins or shrinking heads that come from wider photography lenses.
Yet another advantage of such photography lenses is that you can use the small-sensor camera’s 1.5x crop factor to your favour. The 200/2.8 long end of the standard zoom effectively becomes 300/2.8, a lens that would cost $4000 for a full-frame camera. The effective 300mm length allows for more creative photo angles than shorter photography lenses, such as tightly cropped images of the groom’s hands lifting the bride’s veil or the bride and groom’s hands while they put rings on each others fingers.
The obvious disadvantage of image-stabilized telephoto zooms is that in many cases, long photography lenses tend to disconnect the subject from the main scene and there might be little to no context as to why the subject may have had expressed how they were feeling, the whereabouts of the subject and who else was there.
When using a small-sensor camera as your primary or backup body, the other disadvantage of image-stabilized telephoto zoom lenses is that neither Nikon, Canon or Sony make an f/2.8 lens that gives you an effective 70-200mm focal length. Hence, you would have to pay the high price and carry the weight of photography lenses designed for a full-frame camera.
Canon’s Image-Stabilization, Nikon’s Vibration-Reduction and Sony’s SteadyShot INSIDE systems are indispensable in allowing you to hand-hold these large and heavy long photography lenses, especially in low light situations. Every wedding photographer should ensure that the image-stablization and vibration-reduction features are available on their long lenses. You might also want to consider using a tripod to ensure continuous, accurate subject placement and sharp photos. Such telephoto zoom photography lenses are huge investments and if you have a budget constraint or an amateur just starting out, you might want to consider rental instead.
Prime Lenses
Prime lenses are essentially photography lenses with fixed focal lengths, as opposed to zoom lenses, which have variable focal lengths of say 24-70mm or 17-55mm. Prime lenses generally have a better optical quality than zoom photography lenses, and usually come with wider maximum apertures such as f/2.8 or f/1.8.
Good prime lenses are must-have photography lenses for any wedding photographer, as they are excellent for taking good portraits. Although you will be adequately equipped for a wedding shoot with the three zoom lenses in your lens kit as discussed above, it is worth including two to three fast prime lenses in your bag as well. These photography lenses are compact, light, and fairly inexpensive and would probably be needed in about 10 to 20% of a wedding shoot.
Faster prime photography lenses are ideal in situations where f/2.8 aperture is not enough to get the motion-stopping shutter speed or shallow depth of field desired, whether for artistic or technical reasons. For example, an image that requires a 1/20th of a second shutter speed at f/2.8 will only require 1/60th of a second at f/1.8, forming a distinction between a sharp image and a blurry one. Many professional wedding photographers actually include prime lenses in their gig bags as an economical backup to their zoom lenses. Not many people could afford to purchase an additional 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto lens as a backup and you also want to prevent a frantic situation whereby your photography lens fails on you during a crucial moment.
There are many prime lenses available on the market but most photographers would include a 28/1.8, 50/1.8, and 85/1.8 in their prime photography lenses kit to be used on a full-frame body. The 28mm is wide enough to cover most ceremony locations and confined spaces, the 50mm is good for small groups or a priest blessing a couple, and the 85mm is long enough for ceremony vows and exchange of rings. A wedding can be successfully photographed with just these three photography lenses.