Outdoor and Nature Photography is a Business. Consider Taking a Look at Yours.

What is your return on investment from your photo shoots? Do you track your sales and calculate which photo shoot locations were the most profitable?

Many outdoor photographers don’t calculate anything, instead photographing whatever catches their fancy. In fact, we all work this way to some degree. Pick a location, grab the gear, and head off.

That’s what is exciting! An exploratory adventure where discoveries await our cameras around every corner. For me, this process is the soul of my very being. The eraser that slowly removes from my conscious, the chains of an all to complicated world.

Count me in everyday! My bag is packed, cards formatted, batteries charged, let’s go! Forget all the other of life’s baloney!

If only it was that easy we would all be doing just that. But most of us need to make a living one way or another and the first choice is from our photography.

BUSINESS OWNERS NEED TO BE BUSINESS PEOPLE

Photographers whose products are images for license are business people in the photography business. They create a product for sale. They have an office, possibly a business license, take all the maximum tax deductions allowed, and hope to be profitable.

To many photographers are lousy business people and fail at one important ingredient: market analysis. In hindsight, I was once one of them.

Like all savvy business people, photographers should explore the markets for their products and establish who the customers are. Most photographers don’t, instead relying on the creation of beautiful photography and the notion of “shoot it and they will come.”

Consider a recent MBA graduate looking for a business to start up. In this market would they be wise to start a stock photo agency? There is no way of knowing, but an educated guess would lead you to think that after some analysis they would keep looking at other opportunities. Why do so many photographers ignore the business plan?

There is a glut of stock photography out there with not enough demand to sustain the suppliers. Treat your photography like a business is the first step to improving the bottom line.

THE BUSINESS MINDED PHOTOGRAPHER WOULD CONSIDER:

• Doing market research and then building a product for that market. In outdoor photography we should shoot for two reasons, our own satisfaction AND for someone else; the client. This should really read “for the client AND our own satisfaction.”

• If you are shooting for yourself then you can go anywhere, any time, and shoot whatever captures your eye. But if you were going to shoot to sell then you really are shooting for someone else and the subjects you need to capture are the subjects clients seek. Market research will give you a better idea.

• So where should you go shoot? Most certainly an area of personal interest! Dig deep for ideas. If wildflowers are your forte go ahead and head for Southern California’s spring wildflower explosion, but before that do research on the effect of global warming on native populations and seek to photograph those effects as well. Or possibly closer to home, research the effects a new residential area will have on a rare flower endemic to the area. The story next year may be on the affects of urban sprawl on nature populations. Since you anticipated this your work now will have a market.

• Most photographers want to capture the images that they have seen published. If you see a shot you gotta have, add the shot to your wish list but don’t go out of your way to go get it immediately. Depending on the image and the story it illustrates in one major magazine, it is unlikely that another major magazine will have a story on the same subject anytime soon unless it is extremely newsworthy.  This means the marketability may not be there quite yet.

• Subscribe to your favorite nature magazines but also the ones that cover adventure travel, the environment, and local issues. Monitor what they are covering and begin planning your shoots around the most common themes.

• Once you return from a shoot and calculate the costs of the travel and expenses, creating a spreadsheet and post those costs with a unique date such as: 20100303. Then add that date in your keywords for all images from the shoot. Once each image sells  look up that date and add the sale fee to the spreadsheet and watch them accumulate. This will over the long show you which shoots were most profitable. (Of course there are more sophisticated ways to track sales and use what works for you.)

Look at the big picture. Continue to create the stunning landscape and wildlife imagery, but also plan to cover less glamorous, but more marketable and newsworthy imagery. An example could be green themes like shooting the wind mills around Palm Springs next time you go to Joshua Tree NP.

Keep an open mind as you explore and photograph your favorite locations. All subjects are marketable and your research will tell you what and where you should be shooting.

If you have a strategy or plan you are welcome to share it with our readers.

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