{"id":347,"date":"2018-01-02T21:17:38","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T02:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prophotoguide.com\/?p=347"},"modified":"2018-01-02T21:17:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T02:17:38","slug":"a-photo-is-worth-a-thousand-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prophotoguide.com\/a-photo-is-worth-a-thousand-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"A Photo is Worth a Thousand… Dollars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you imagine selling just one photo for $1650?<\/p>\n

I certainly didn’t, until it happened.<\/p>\n

Here’s one reason that sharing your work on a searchable photo-sharing site might be a good idea.<\/p>\n

This grainy, 12 Megapixel photo from my first, entry-level DSLR wasn’t even shot in RAW.\u00a0 It was just a hand-held photo taken while on a vacation to Italy.<\/p>\n

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I shared it on my\u00a0Flickr<\/a>\u00a0account in 2009, as I did for basically all my photos around that time.\u00a0I tagged it with terms like “Italy” and “Piazza San Marco”, the location where it was taken. I also included some feeling tags, like “Lonely” and “Mysterious”.<\/p>\n

Even now, nearly a decade later, the photo has only received around 5000 views.\u00a0 But submitting it to a public site that allows for search helped give me a sale opportunity I might not have had otherwise.<\/p>\n

In 2012, three years after the photo was originally posted, I was contacted by the publishing company Grove Atlantic.\u00a0 They had found my photo on Flickr using search terms like “Italy” and “Venice”.\u00a0 Turns out, they were looking for cover pictures for a mystery novel set in Venice! The mood and feel of the photo was exactly what the author was looking for!<\/p>\n

Then, they asked me THE question that no creative likes to answer…<\/span><\/p>\n

“How much?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Honestly, even after shooting professionally for over 8 years, I still dread answering this question.\u00a0 All these weird fears and questions of self-worth come into your mind.\u00a0The same ol’ mental game:<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to give away my work for too little. But I don’t want to ask for too much and scare them away…” (Repeat)<\/p>\n

There are specific ways that I personally deal with this mental hurdle – which I’ll save for another post.<\/p>\n

But, in this case, I hadn’t even considered this picture as “my work”. It was just one of my random personal vacation photos, and not one of my best, in my opinion.<\/p>\n

So how would I find a reference point for how much to ask for?<\/p>\n

Enter Getty Images<\/a>, a well-known stock photography site.\u00a0 I searched for “Piazza San Marco” and found royalty-free<\/strong>\u00a0image usage to cost around $600. Wow.\u00a0 I wouldn’t buy a photo at that price, personally.\u00a0 But then again, I’m not an international book publishing company.<\/p>\n

However, after a bit more searching, I found that the license I needed to use for a project like this would NOT be Royalty-Free, but rather, a “Rights Managed”<\/strong> license.<\/p>\n

Rights Managed licenses are for limited use in a particular publishing format (Publication, Web) for a limited reproduction quantity (Limited to 50,000 copies), and for a limited time period (3-Year License).<\/p>\n

I used a Rights Managed License Calculator<\/a> for a specific photo on Getty to see how they would price an image for the specific use and time period specified by Grove Atlantic.<\/p>\n

The calculator gave me a number over $2000 for a single license!\u00a0 I still couldn’t bring myself to ask for that much for a vacation photo though, so I chickened out and asked for $1650, totally expecting them to say no.<\/p>\n

But they said yes!<\/p>\n

Anyway, you can see the finished result on New York Times Bestselling Author Donna Leon’s Novel:\u00a0 The Jewels of Paradise<\/a><\/p>\n

I also got a free copy of the novel.\u00a0 Still haven’t gotten around to reading it though…<\/p>\n

Moral of the story?<\/p>\n