Photo business

Sadhu, a holy man having renounced the world, drinking a cup of tea, with plenty of time on his hands...
© Morten Svenningsen 2008

Man there’s lots of things to do in this business! Funny thing, the actual photography seems to be just the least of it. Looking back at the last months, I’ve spent time writing, developing ideas, posting on forums, making web-site, building links, submitting material, writing invoices (yes, it does happen), taking backup’s, trying to catch up on market news, photography trends etc., besides running the little family, doing the occasional cooking, cleaning, walking the dog etc. So far this month, I’ve taken 3 photos (one of which is the one leading this post). That’s it! Man, life as an independent pro photographer is a lot more than just taking pictures. If it’s not too late to make a new year resolution, I’ll hereby vow to take more time doing actual photography this year! Some of the ideas I want to pursue: Create multimedia, go in-depth with some photo projects, execute some of the shoots I already have in mind, create new and thought-provoking documentaries and get up in some of those awesome mountains they have around here. And still I’m (we’re) waiting for the release of a new 5D Mark II camera from Canon - and wondering how long it’s gonna take to earn something equivalent of the cost. Could do with a new laptop as well, and there’s also a couple of lenses I’d like to get my hands on. Let’s see, how many thousand dollars is that? 3,4,5,6,7,8? And that’s why I have to spend so much time not looking through the viewfinder with my finger on the shutter button. Just can’t do it all the time if you wanna stay in business. And that’s why I occasionally will have to take some weeks in front of the laptop in stead, I guess.

Time to market (news photos, democracy and the loot)

Old news: My friend and colleague, Nick, in a sharp situation during the peoples uprising, April 2006. That's a cloud of tear gas behind him, he's trying to escape by the way.

© Morten Svenningsen

I’ve been looking for a better way to get some of my newsworthy photos out on the market. News photography is just a little part of what I’m doing, but we do have an election coming up here – probably. Right now I just have my web-site to use for fast turn-around times. In itself fine, but I’m afraid it’s still not that well known among broadsheet photo editors around the globe. And they usually don’t have time to surf around on the net and contact photographers they don’t already have a working relationship with. So I’ll need to affiliate myself with one of the big photo agencies or portals. Just not interested in joining a news agency who expect me to run around and cover every little event in the region.

So I was quite happy to come home yesterday and see in my inbox a solution present itself. My usual photo agency, Alamy, informed me that they intend to implement a 24h turn-around time from upload to online in stead of the usual 3 weeks! That opens up new possibilities within my existing business infrastructure. It’s still not quite upload-and-see-it-in-the-papers-next-day, but should be good enough for second cycle use. If just PE’s will start looking to Alamy for their news photos...

And here in Nepal the constituent assembly election date has now been set to April 10. Two years after the peoples uprising (v2), eight years after the last 4-year term election and 18 years after the first peoples uprising. Talk about a long time-to-market. Two years would have been okay, I suppose, if they’d just come out and said that from the beginning in stead of repeatedly setting dates and then postponing them.

If only they were as quick as the thieves of this country... Sabina had her mobile phone stolen Monday night – Tuesday afternoon she saw in on sale in a “second-hand” shop. Now that’s what I call time-to-market! Unfortunately, before she could get hold of some muscles (me - the police is a joke around here), the guy had taken it off the shelf and then tried to tell us that he just sold it. Right!

But if you ever have your phone stolen in Kathmandu, just look around in the second-hand shops on Bag Bazar. And bring some muscles or any other means of persuasion!

New web site!

Here's the result of the last week's labour - and the last half year's speculations and preperations!

Finally: I have just finished the complete re-design of my web-site and it is being uploaded as I write this!

So what’s new?

First of all, the old site consisted mainly of photos. I realized that it wasn’t doing me very much good with the search engines, since they are all geared for text and not for photos. Even after keywording all my photos they still didn’t show up in any Google search. So in the new design I have a lot more text, carefully filled with good keywords, on the different pages. Is that gonna do me any good? Don’t know yet. I have never targeted the “internet masses” with my business. But listening to people like Dan Heller, I figured it was worth a try. Even if it doesn’t convert into a steady sales channel, I hope that it will at least boost my Google ranking which fell from a modest 3 to a meager 2 recently, after they regrouped their priorities. (The ironic thing is that I started getting more profitable hits after that event!)

Secondly, the navigation sucked on the old site. Everything was arranged in categories and sub-categories and it was getting increasingly difficult to keep it logical. Now everything is arranged so it never takes more than one click to go anywhere from the main page! It makes it a lot easier to see what the site contains.

I also changed the general layout of the site, from a heavy, serious black to a bright and light white, which is a lot more readable for text and still totally acceptable for viewing photos.

And another thing I’m very excited about is the Web 2.0 features I’ve now implemented. Or at least Web 1.5. You can subscribe to a newsletter and there is an area for user comments and debate. Not very revolutionary, but pretty neat for an amateur web designer like myself. It was implemented with something called Joomla, pretty advanced stuff and a bit over my head most of the time. But once you’ve gotten it to work, it does a great job! So at least now there is those options. Whether they’ll be used or not, that’s another matter. Time will tell...

What else? The photo essays are no longer buried in some sub-menu but brought right up on the front page. The design could be better but overall I’m pretty happy about it. Lots of white-space although it’s not always in the best places (imo). And a side benefit: I think it’s gonna be a lot simpler for me to update and maintain the whole thing.

So that’s about it. I just have one last request. I would really appreciate it if you would have a look at the whole thing and tell me what you think. Is there any mistakes that catches your eyes? Something that doesn’t work? Grammatical mistakes? Anything.

Send me an e-mail, write in the comments section, here or on the web-site. The address is, if you don’t already know it, http://www.msmediaservice.com

UPDATE 2009 : I have a new-new site on www.mortensvenningsen.com !!

Thanks!

Hi

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Another year, another million – I wish

Heating my hands. - Is this a good photo for stock sales? Who would be interested in buying it? It’s probably somewhere in the conceptual department... And do I really need that big copyright mark?

© Morten Svenningsen

New year is approaching and it’s cold here in Kathmandu. Nice in the daytime, but when the sun sets, the temperature drops 15 degrees in 15 minutes or so. Too quick for my body to adjust So I’m always shaking cold for an hour between 5 and 6. After that, no problem. We do have a little heater here, but it’s only good for warming the hands. Can’t heat up all the rooms which aren’t really isolated. So I’m generally dressing like I was stationed in an Arctic research station.

Anyway, the year is nearly over and it’s time for some re-evaluation, looking back and ahead. Think I’ll keep this one on the topic of my photo business. So excuse me for thinking out loud here, bit of rambling. But maybe some of you will actually find some answers to your own speculations. And as always, comments are welcome!

It’s pretty clear to me what I’m doing as a photojournalist, how I’m working, where my focus is and so on. As a stock shooter, hmm...

I haven’t had a single sale yet, so do I need to change anything?

Don’t think so. I’ve only had stock photos online for 3-4 months, about 3-400 of them. And only with one agency, Alamy. That amount, on average, would only make one or two sales in a year, as I read the numbers. So it’s not time to worry quite yet. But it’s always good to think about if there’s something that can be improved. But first I need to figure out, what’s my focus area? ‘Cause it’s good to know the market you’re in, what the customers need and so on.

And the answer: Nepal photos.

But that’s not really specific, is it? In my attempt to narrow it down, I came up with this list of possibilities:

• Travel, tourism, adventure, sightseeing, backpacking, luxury travel etc.
• Architecture, temples, statues, interiors, landmarks, monuments etc.
• Culture, festivals, artifacts, symbols etc.
• Religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, co-existence etc.
• Nature, landscapes, mountains etc.
• Animals, wildlife, insects, birds, butterflies, pets etc.
• People, children, teenagers, seniors, studio portraits, famous people, pretty people etc.
• Fashion, lifestyle, haircuts, costumes, ornaments etc.
• Food, dishes, fruits, vegetables, eating etc.
• Health, yoga, meditation etc.
• Business, small shops, global trading, hard labour etc.
• Product photos, cut-outs etc.
• Conceptuals, moods, emotions etc.
• “Traditional micro stock photos” (*), family/social/business situations, face expression with a very simple set-up and composition and on a white background, tra-la-la...

(*) Disclaimer: I don’t do micro-stock or royalty free photos, but I can still do some of their traditional motifs, can’t I?

That’s still a pretty long list. There’s other categories as well, but this is the ones I consider relevant to my photography work here in Nepal. Plus all the documentary stuff, of course. I can see some of the topics are more interesting than others, also from a business perspective. But honestly, I haven’t been able to pick one or two topics out. So I think I’ll just continue to be a generalist in the stock arena for now.

Even though I know, now is not a good time to be (or enter as) a stock photographer. The market is over-saturated with amateurs, some of them really good, by the way. The problem is that they are happy to give their photos away for next to nothing – hell, sometimes even less than that – since they don’t have to make a living of it. And that makes it really difficult for us who just want to get a fair price. But so far I’m having fun doing it – not all the time, but once in a while. Nice break from the serious documentary stuff. And I hope that in the new year, the market will work it out so that prices will better reflect the cost of doing photography.

Some of the other little things I’ve realized this year, when it comes to stock photos: Gotta get 100 variations. Commercial tend to pay higher per image, but requires model releases. Editorial probably makes up for it in numbers. Travel might be popular, but the ordinary stuff have already been done a thousand times over. Always be creative. Happy pics of beautiful people seem to do about a billion times better than sad ones. And it’s a lot of work. If you wanna be serious about it, it’s a full time job. You have to get up early, go out on location, shoot, walk, shoot, meet people, shoot, make arrangements and shoot some more. Then there’s all the post-processing. Very time-consuming. Editing, cropping, resizing, checking and cleaning up the details, captioning, keywording, archiving, submitting and managing all the photos. A full time job.

My conclusion: Honestly, it’s hardly worth it as a pro photographer. Customers must be laughing all the way to the bank, thinking about how much work+talent+gear they get access to for a few hundred dollars. But I’ll keep it up between assignments and my other documentary work. With time, it could still turn more profitable. And I still enjoy the hunt for that perfect shot. I just have to avoid thinking of it as pure work for now. ‘cause if I do the math and calculate the hourly rate, it becomes ridiculous.

What the neighbors are up to

Hazardous work.
© Morten Svenningsen

Sometimes I see construction workers walk around on small ledges without safety ropes. I see them throwing tools to each other, sometimes they catch them, sometimes they don’t. If somebody passes by underneath and gets a screwdriver in the head, it’ll break their skull. So just look out when walking around. And just don’t fall down when you’re up there on the ledge. Then everything is fine. Fair enough.

But this thing that the neighbors are doing today takes the prize as the most stupid thing that I’ve seen in a while. These 3 guys they hired to paint their house are walking around on a 45 degree slope with a 20 foot drop below. Sometimes there’s something they can hold on to. Sometimes not. They also carry paint buckets and paint brushes. Down below is a metal fence with 3 inch spikes pointing straight up!

I was just starring (and shooting some photos) for 5 minutes, one guy lost balance but grabbed the other-one’s arm. Regained balance, phew... He would probably have survived the fall. Probably.

That’s the way it works here. I think the ILO would call it exploitation or something. I call it stupid. The Nepalese call it work.

Without a safety net.
© Morten Svenningsen

Nobody really celebrates Christmas around here, but anyway: Merry Christmas everybody!

How we live

Oh yeah, I know that some of you are curious to see how we live. My dad posted some shots of their visit here earlier this year. Check it out if you want:

http://picasaweb.google.dk/Flemmingsv/Nepal

One photo a week

No posts here for a month and a half now. Sorry about that, I’ll try to post more often from now on. Even during the dry periods where nothing much apparently happens. But there’s always things happening inside my head. Well, maybe not this week, since I’ve been down with the flu. But my brain is now back on 90% power. One entry per week here should provide a more continuous feel for the local situation, I think. Often, it’s the little things that gives the best understanding, isn’t it?

Climate change on the horizon. This man in Nepalganj is using a more sustainable form of transport than us photographers, journalists and all the experts attending conferences in Bali and Hawaii.

© Morten Svenningsen

So, last week I was a few days in Nepalganj (a small town in the flatlands of Nepal, if you aren’t familiar with the local geography) doing a reportage for Save the Children. It was about the annual flooding and how it affects the local people there. This year it affected 336.534 people, according to some statistics the client brought. Man, where do they come up with those exact numbers?

Well, it’s a lot of people and it’ll probably just get worse over the years with the continuing population boom, global warming and all that. Of course, we’re now in the middle of the dry season here, so all I could do was to go around and take some photos of people showing how high the water was half a year ago. Damn! But, well, the client was happy...

But I’ve just been thinking about this climate change thing and what UN and all the other NGO’s are doing about it. Of course, we flew in from Kathmandu. Some of us from Europe. Meanwhile in Bali, thousands of delegates have been flying in to that big conference and next month they’ll all fly to Hawaii. That’s a lot of jet fuel burned straight into our atmosphere. Not to mention all the heated offices and 4WD vehicles they utilize here in Nepal. And what are they accomplishing? Here in Nepal, they do provide some relief, tents and rice and such, but more long-term improvements are happening really really slow. And with all their traveling around to meetings, their office generators and so on, I’ve got a feeling that the NGO’s are actually contributing more to the problem here than they’re mitigating it. Let’s at least say that one UN-staffer contributes about as much to the problem as a couple of typical Nepalese villages. That can’t be too far off!

I hope I’m wrong, God I do, but...

It wouldn’t be fair to publish the Nepalganj photos here yet, since the client hasn’t had a chance to run the story yet. So you’re just gonna have to make do with the one at the top of this entry. I don’t think they’ll use it.

Came in from the wilderness

I got back from the mountains about a week ago and there’s been lots of catching up to do. While I was gone, they postponed the CA election here in Kathmandu. Not a big surprise to anybody. Fuel prices have also gone up and the Maoists are still taking the impossible stand. It’s starting to smell like trouble in the streets again, isn’t it? Maybe I should just head back up to the peaceful mountains and find a good hibernation spot !

Oh, I didn't post any photo’s of my self on this blog so far. Maybe some of you are curious to see what I look like. So here’s one that Sabina took of me (finally one where I look relatively cool!):

Yours truly at an undisclosed spot in the Himalayas - Nice use of the harsh daylight, coming in from the side and enhancing the textures. Left-right, foreground-background balanced. Rule of thirds. By the book - it works!

© Sabina Bhetwal

(She's also got some of her photo's up on Flick here)