# Selling my first pictures



## amayax (Mar 17, 2017)

A few days ago I took pictures at a small local botanic garden I was visiting, an employee there happened to see the pictures afterwards and loved them a lot. She said that she would love to see if she could get the marketing departement to talk with me about buying a few of the pictures, to use on post cards, advertisements, their website, you name it, which of course makes me feel very proud already.

To me, this is the first time doing something like that, and I would love to hear from you what you ask per photo if someone wants to use it for their own marketing, so I got some baseline ideas. when it comes to prices and/or fees, I got no clue about things at all.


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## nikonja01 (Mar 17, 2017)

The easiest would be for you to call local photographer and ask them to quote you the price for similar project.

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## KmH (Mar 17, 2017)

American Society of Media Photographers - Homepage

What country are you in?

Pricing will depend on what and how many media types they want to use your photos on.
For print media how many in the print run matters too.
For online use the size of use online for each photo also affects the price.
The geographic area of their use could also be a factor.

Many US commercial photographers use pricing software to sort out the permutations.
One popular application is fotoQuote Pro.


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## limr (Mar 17, 2017)

This^^ is good information.

Remember that in this case, you're not selling an image but rather you are selling _your permission_ to someone else to use your image. You can limit that permission: by how long they are able to use it, what kinds of prints they can make, if they are allowed to alter it, how big the online image will be, where they are able to use it (how big a region).

If there is a marketing department, chances are, they might already have a licensing agreement in place when they deal with photographers, so you might not have to decide all this on your own. In this case, your job would be to *read that agreement very carefully* before you sign anything, decide if their terms are acceptable, haggle over price or terms if you need to (here's where your pricing research will come in handy - to see if they are paying you a fair market price), and then sign or not sign.


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## loonatic45414 (Mar 17, 2017)

I would keep in mind that they are just pictures. Took you less than an hour and they're easily reproducible by almost anyone with a camera.

If you came up to me wanting me to sign some legal agreement for a number of copies over a certain length of time, I'd probably laugh and just go take some pictures myself.

Keep in mind that the admission price you paid (if any) may just be as purely a visitor and may not provide you commercial rights to create images for sale.  Maybe I should have a talk with them.

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## KmH (Mar 17, 2017)

What country we are in has a lot to do with the legal aspects of making and using photographs.

You may be right in that the marketing department (if they have one) may not be as interested as the employee that talked to the OP thought they might.
No doubt if the botanical garden can get the photos for fractions of a penny on the dollar of what they are actually worth they may find that easier than making their own photos.

At the minimum here in the US, any photographer contemplating selling usage rights to photos should first register their copyrights with the US Copyright Office, even though copyright ownership is established at the moment the photo image file is written to the memory card in the camera.


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## table1349 (Mar 17, 2017)

loonatic45414 said:


> I would keep in mind that they are just pictures. Took you less than an hour and they're easily reproducible by almost anyone with a camera.
> 
> If you came up to me wanting me to sign some legal agreement for a number of copies over a certain length of time, I'd probably laugh and just go take some pictures myself.
> 
> ...


If that were the case they would have done it.  But then there are lots of fauxtographers that have never spent a day in the business.


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## loonatic45414 (Mar 17, 2017)

I just thought of the possibilities. Especially in checking what rights are conferred to anyone with the price of admission before attempting to sell the photos.  After all, they spent a lot of time, money and effort to maintain the gardens. They essentially created it.


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