Customer Reviews

Shooting & Selling Your Photos: The Complete Guide to Making Money with Your Photography

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great introduction to selling photography by one of the very best in the business. Jim Zuckerman is very diverse in his stock photography subject matter and that diversity shows through in the wide range of knowledge he shares in this book. The best coverage is on selling photography at art shows and advice on submitting article and calendar proposals to publishers. If you're specifically interested in stock agencies, I highly recommend Lee Frost's Photos That Sell (see my review on that book). Mr. Zuckerman's advice on stock libraries is a good introduction but Lee Frost devotes most of his book to the topic. The photography in the book is of course wonderful, but I would have liked to have seen the author share more information about which images were his best sellers, how many times each image has sold and where, and other details which Lee Frost shares in this book in many cases. However, this is very solid introduction to selling photography and I recommend it.

Jim Zuckerman's book provides a great coverage of all the steps involved with becoming a professional photographer. You'll learn what gear you need, potential markets and needs, presentation, etc. The book gives you a lot of ideas on how to get started as a pro. However, the book does have two drawbacks that prevent me from giving it 5 stars.

- It's very negative on digital, which I find suprising given the book's publication date. The reasons given for why film is better than digital are silly, in my opinion; stories include pictures mysteriously disappearing from cards and cards being corrupt. My advice: buy good gear and practice with it before you shoot it for real. I've used a DSLR for 6 months. I spent the money to buy a good camera body and a professional card, and it has worked well for me in conditions ranging from 80F to -20F, from high to low moisture. Digital is no different than film: practice, make sure everything works, learn your gear's limits... then use it.

- The book doesn't explain the photographs. One of the things I like in other photography books (including others by Jim Zuckerman) is that pictures have captions telling you the camera body, the lens, the film, the exposure length, the f stop, and so on. Sadly, this book doesn't share that information.

I found this book very informative. I don't really think its negative on digital in fact he writes with a pretty even hand on film and digital. My favorite part is the that not only does he show some photos that have sold at stock agencies, he goes onto to explain why they sold, and to compare to them to a similiar photo and explain why one sold and the other was rejected. It offers a lot of insight into the mind of stock photo buyers as well as some inside tips on getting in on the business.

Mr. Zuckerman gets right to the point and doesn't waste the readers time. All the important points are covered, as well as small details that other authors fail to mention and that the reader may not have even considered.

I appreciate the honesty of Mr. Zuckerman, who just tells it like it is, the good side of the business and the bad. If you seriously want to get into the photography business, you'll find this book a valuable resource.

This book is a great resource for those people who are interested in selling their own photos. It is well written and researched by a professional photographer who writes from his own personal experience. The advice he gives is straight-forward and honest, and he even will share a few "don'ts". I recommend this book to anyone who is thinking of turning professional themselves.

After taking several hundred photos on a recent trip to Mexico I decided that many of the shots were saleable. As I'd already shot my photos I now needed some information on selling them. That was the motivation for getting this title.

Zuckerman has some wonderful photos peppering this book. They are compelling and well reproduced. Put I really didn't find that it helped me understand how to sell my photos - especially as they're more geared toward the travel market. I just don't have an interest in setting up a display at an art fair, nor in making an internet site to sell my photos.

This is really more of a picture book, having more images than text. I admit I enjoy looking at the pictures, but for me it didn't take me where I wanted to go thus my 3 star rating. Mainly this book appears to be geared toward people who are much more into photography than I.

All in all, I think this is a good book for those wanting to actually sell photographs, not those who want to learn how to take a good photograph. The reader shold keep that in mind. Jim covers a lot of thoughts that are necessary to get published. If that's your goal, then this book will help you greatly.

Digital - While I would have liked to see more coverage, keep in mind that this book was published in 2003 and likely written in 2002. And Jim consistenly uses medium format cameras. At that time, digital had not progressed as far for those types of cameras, primarily from a cost/benefit perspective. If Jim were more of a 35mm user, I'm sure we would have seen more coverage.

Photo information - I would have liked more information on the photo locations and how the photos came to be taken. There is explanation on many, but I wish it was provided for more of the photos in the book.

Portfolio ideas - I liked his suggestions of potential shoot locations and ideas. It really got me thinking and I've made a long list of ideas to try in 2008.

I really liked this book, it has some information that I think I will be able to use in the future. This book has great pictures. I have an AS in photography, so I had an idea pretty much of what he was talking about. I learnt 35mm because digital was barely coming out.

After finding the book downplaying the significance of digital in an early chapter, I looked at the publication date of 2003. I was fearful it might be outdated, but found, for the most part, it wasn't. Mr. Zuckerman hit all of the areas that I thought would be important for someone like myself wondering if I should be trying to sell some of my photos. There seems to a lot of good information for a beginner like myself and I think most of his photographs are spectacular. However, I can't say that I feel any more confident about trying to sell my work after reading it. I feel something or things are missing from the book. Unfortunately, I don't know what they are. Of course, if I did, I'd most likely be trying to write the book.

This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to know how to make money with your Photography. The Author gives some very good ideas that doesn't cost alot of money to get started. I would recommend this book very much.