How to Survive as a Freelance Photographer

Some ideas from the Magnum Photos Professional Practice course in London
 
Photographers came from as far as Venezuela and Brazil, just for this weekend and it wasn’t a disappointment.  I came away with lots of ideas of how to get more work as a freelance photographer.  Much of it I had heard before but discussing it in the context of a photography business and being able to ask questions made things much clearer.
 
So here are a few suggestions that may seem obvious and you will have heard them before but having heard them from both ‘business professionals’ and photography business professionals I think they are worth a try.
 
Some ideas from Mark McGuinness a coach and trainer for creative people.
Social media networking – yes twitter / flickr / facebook etc.  are well worth doing, particularly as I asked several photographers at the event and they all found the idea of doing this sort of stuff utterly tedious – me to. But if photographers don’t like doing it and business advisors of all sorts reckon it is a good idea then as a photographer it must be worth a go. 
 
Blogging also gets people to your  site and puts you up the google rankings  but do it on your own web site not a third party blogging site. I was recommended to follow Copyblogger as a good example of how to blog.
 
Get lots of links coming in to your web site.  Yes I know we all know this but do you do it. I am certainly going to spend some time working on this.
 
Zoe Whishaw  17 years at Getty spoke about Stock Photography
 
The chances of you making a living from stock photography are very small but it should be a part of the mix of income streams for your business. It amazed me that of the 35 people on the magnum course only 4 were selling via stock agencies.  What! They have images laying around and they are not selling them?
 
Zoe spoke about commercial rather than editorial stock .  They should have: humour, authentic body language, believable emotions make you smile, glow inside shock you or create feeling of nostalgia.  People need to look real rather than staged and perfect.  Photos need to be: timeless, and have global relevance, unbranded, conceptual and above all model released.
 
These were just two of the eight speakers there was much more to the weekend.  I’m going to put some of this in to practice and see if it makes a difference.
 
Magnum Photos