Making money as a photographer can be a struggle, especially in Papua New Guinea. And a significant challenge to making an income out of your images can be simply, not knowing where to start.
EMTV Online decided to bring to you some tips that can help you in starting a successful photography business.
A Workable Plan
There is no boundary on what you can photograph. That means, there is no boundary on how much you can make or how far a photography business can go. Like all businesses, you can start by drawing up a simple plan for your photography business. Read more here for a sample photography business plan. In the plan, also devise ways or approaches to get clients for your business. Clients can be ordinary people, businesses, organisations
Photograph People
Photographing people or portrait photography, also known as portraiture in photography is a photograph of a person or group of people that captures the personality of the subject by using effective lighting, backdrops, and poses.
Here, the photographer can make money by taking photographs of couples, weddings, families, boudoir, maternity, birth, babies, fashion, events, headshots, music, sports, corporate portraits, team portraits and graduation portraits. Business can be easy and consistent if you can find the right clients.
Photograph Real Estates
Booming real estate business in Papua New Guinea’s major centres is an opportunity for photographers to earn an income by becoming real estate photographers by photographing interior and exterior shots for real estate agents to use in order to sell the house.
Ways To Sell Your Photography
What you will need to do before you even begin to sell your photography is; how do you actually go about selling it?
Direct Sales – If you can build a very loyal and close knit community of people in your town, college, or place of work, then you might be able to generate sales in this manner. Also, many local coffee shops, restaurants, print shops and bookshops will allow you to hang your work on their walls for a commission on sales. It benefits them in that they get free art to hang on their walls and you get to have a lot of eyes on your photographs.
Online Sales – Smugmug and Zenfolio are two examples of the platforms that one can sell their photos online. However, there are some other places like Etsy, Fine Art America and Redbubble which do not offer as many features and typically will take a larger percentage of your sale. Again while all of these places will allow you to host your photographs, offer shopping cart options, and even print and ship the photo to your client they will not promote it for you, thus you can go back to the first point above about needing a fan base to sell to. An easy way to build your fan base is on Facebook.
Create a Facebook page, have your best pictures on it after you have your water mark on them and invite friends to like your page. Eventually, you will have more fans, hence more opportunity to sell your photographs.
Pricing Your Photography
One of the hardest parts of being a photographer is determining how much to charge for your work. If you work from a reasonable starting point, it will not be as difficult as you think. The key is to have a written schedule of prices from which to work, for each and every proposal. This way, you don’t have to re-invent the wheel each time you are called on provide a proposal. It’s not always easy, especially when you face new types of photographic opportunities, but over time, repetition will make this process much smoother, quicker, and easier.
It is important to make sure you are covering your expenses, and meeting your income goals.
