Go Flickr!
Sent to you by norrafi via Google Reader:
A while ago I was contacted by the people of the American magazine Popular Photography for licensing a picture of Maya for their back to school issue. About a week later they got back to me and said they wanted to use it on the cover. And now it's out:
Since I've showed the cover on Twitter/Facebook, I got many questions about how I got my picture on that cover. The answer is Flickr. For those of you who don't know, Flickr is a photo sharing site where you can upload, store, organise and share your pictures with the rest of the world. They have a free account that is already pretty impressive in features but the Pro account (25USD/year) lets you upload a virtually unlimited amount of pics (even in high res) and offers other advantages.
But Flickr is more than just a photo sharing site, it has a pretty strong social media side that's in constant development. You can post your pictures in groups, participate in discussions, …
When I started putting up my pictures on Flickr a few years ago, it seemed like a good way to show my work, get feedback and connect with other people. I also started sharing setups, lighting info and referred people interested in the EXIF info of my pics to Flickr. A nice side effect I noticed was that my Flickr photos generated a bit of extra traffic to my site. Flickr is also a great source of inspiration. Sure, there's a lot of crappy pics but there's also a huge amount of amazing creative work to be found. I often browse Flickr to get some new ideas.
Apparently I'm not the only one who browses Flickr. Two years ago I did a wedding for people who searched Flickr with "wedding photographer Belgium". These days more and more photo editors search Flickr like they do stock photo libraries because there's such a vast amount of good pictures. I already licensed some pictures for use in corporate brochures through Flickr and now there's that cover of Popular Photography.
I could write a very long article about this subject (and might just do that when I have more time) but I'd like to leave you with a few words of advice: Seeing my picture on a cover is certainly a nice ego boost. It's also great to see my own daughter on the cover and it would be nice for her to show that magazine to her grandkids one day. But don't give away your pictures!!! Kudos to Popular Photography for offering me a very reasonable deal right away but many would just offer you a photo credit.
Big thanks to Chris who let me know the issue was out and even dug up his scanner from the basement to send me the cover and even mail me a hard copy of the magazine.
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to Confessions of a Photographer » Blog using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment