Advice

[Sam Millar]

Hey Guys

I was just wondering if any of you sell your photos to your subjects? For example I run a 'for fun' photography page on Facebook which is slowly becoming more serious by the week, I've got a huge amount of likes which is increasing daily which I never ever thought I would get and I'm getting into my photography more now.

Some of you may remember I posted a photo a few weeks back of a Truck, well I've been snapping the same truck and today I got probably my best shots (at all) of it. The advice i'm looking for is because I feel that I shouldn't post them on my photography page, i'm dying to show them off but I want to know whether the company would like a copy first, and after they're out in the open and have been seen by many, I feel this may deter them slightly from wanting a copy.

Am I being stupid, should I go ahead and post them on my page or approach the company first, not for permission but ask if they'd like a copy? It wasn't a pre-organized shoot or anything like that, I just happened to be passing and stopped by their depot.

If they want a copy, how can I valuate how much the image is worth?

Cheers.

http://www.facebook.com/SamMillarTransportPhotography

[Vrgl]

Hi Sam- So do I understand it - you have posted the truck photos on your Facebook page and have gotten "likes" but haven't sold any yet? You may want to check into "image rights" as they pertain to advertising in your country. I know some firms in the USA don't take kindly to having their emblems,logos, etc bartered about without the company's express permission, even if they are on a truck or billboard. So before you get into hot water check it out. As to price- don't have any idea-maybe someone else knows--mary

[Sam Millar]

Hi Sam- So do I understand it - you have posted the truck photos on your Facebook page and have gotten "likes" but haven't sold any yet? You may want to check into "image rights" as they pertain to advertising in your country. I know some firms in the USA don't take kindly to having their emblems,logos, etc bartered about without the company's express permission, even if they are on a truck or billboard. So before you get into hot water check it out. As to price- don't have any idea-maybe someone else knows--mary

Hi Mary,

Almost but not quite. The photos I've taken today are not online, but previous photos of this vehicle are and (i'm not sure if you're familiar with Facebook), the management of this company have liked previous photos, they have no problem with that.

The photos I took today on the other hand I believe are worthy of being sold to the company maybe for use in their office or such like, I want to post them to show them to my subscribers but I don't want to just yet incase it deters the company from purchasing them from me purely because they're out in the open and are no longer "new and unseen" as it were.

I'm rubbish at explaining things, sorry.

[shreds]

First off, I don't think you need to worry about image rights for shots taken from public places in the UK. It is probably different elsewhere.

My comment would be that a lot of the shots are simply 3/4 views of trucks from the roadside in different liveries. Try a few close ups and alternative angles or in the landscape. Why not approach the companies or owner drivers direct and ask to do a shoot with one of their vehicles. Give them a selection of the shots in exchange and your reputation will start to grow. You could charge them for enlargements to go on the boardroom wall. These could be of the order of £30-50 to start off with and ultimately may be able to push it further. Truckers do talk to each other so get a few cards made up to give out. Give a few framed enlarged pics away to transport cafes etc with contact details and you are likely to pick up commissions. Good luck but don't expect instant results. Just be persistent, get a good website running and stick at it developing contacts.

[Sam Millar]

First off, I don't think you need to worry about image rights for shots taken from public places in the UK. It is probably different elsewhere.

My comment would be that a lot of the shots are simply 3/4 views of trucks from the roadside in different liveries. Try a few close ups and alternative angles or in the landscape. Why not approach the companies or owner drivers direct and ask to do a shoot with one of their vehicles. Give them a selection of the shots in exchange and your reputation will start to grow. You could charge them for enlargements to go on the boardroom wall. These could be of the order of £30-50 to start off with and ultimately may be able to push it further. Truckers do talk to each other so get a few cards made up to give out. Give a few framed enlarged pics away to transport cafes etc with contact details and you are likely to pick up commissions. Good luck but don't expect instant results. Just be persistent, get a good website running and stick at it developing contacts.

Thanks, I'm a lorry driver myself just doing a bit of photography in my spare time. The shots you see on my Facebook page are limited to that angle because as you probably know it's illegal to actually trespass onto a Motorway or Dual Carriageway in the UK unless over a footbridge. The shots that I was referring to in my first post as being possibly my best yet are not on there, but I did upload one on my personal Facebook that I can show here. Let me know what you guys think.

[PhotoRob]

Greetings Sam from Tampa, Florida. Nice level shot of the truck, and you get a sense of movement. For me the rocks in the foreground compete with the main subject, and the stacked cones to the right should go. The fact the cab and the building 'touch' is unavoidable but for me it hurts the composition a bit. As for value, my thoughts are pictures of objects from common vantage points or angles are a harder sell because they don't grab the viewer. Best of luck!

[shreds]

Just a quick point, it is not 'trespass' on dual carriageways in the UK unless they specifically say no pedestrians.

In fact I don't think the offence is 'trespass' anyway as it is public land, it is more to do with contravention of the Road Traffic Acts, as trespass is only related to 'private' land and is a civil rather than a criminal offence.

The RTA motorway regulations do prevent pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds and certain other vehicles from using a motorway.

However, given the speeds on some dual carriageways, you might want to question your own sanity of standing alongside them. Bridges are much better.

I am not a lawyer though, so anyone with greater technical knowledge, please feel free to chip in.

I think you will find you are not the only lorry driver on here, stick around and you will begin to recognise who gets to far off places at unsociable hours!

PS. There are guides on uploading a picture to CiC, we probably don't get the best appreciation from a screenshot of the back of the camera. I would worry less about copyright infringement on here than on some of the public forums such as Flickr or Facebook, as we are all photographers and recognise the value of an individual's work.

Watermark it if you are really concerned, before posting. Then we can see some of your other shots and you will ultimately gain a lot from the constructive comments made here. Try it and see.

[jcuknz]

I'm not into trucks but I like anything to be big and bold in the frame even if I have to crop a little to achieve this.

It may be difficult to get a good sky for your shots but it would be worth taking some sky shots when there are nice blue skies with fleecey white clouds to replace the horrible white expanses as in this shot. It is fairly easy to magic wand select the sky and delete it and replace with a sky in the selected area ... better if you have an editor with layers so the sky is on the lower level and you delete the white area to reveal it.

The building behind the truck is nice and crisp ... which you don't want .. so either you shoot the shot with a large aperture to reduce the depth of field or else again bluirr it in editing. This can be a simple duplication of the shot, blurr it all and then remove the areas of the blurred image to reveal the sharp truck in a lowwer level. To some extent this can be done with the free download Paint dot Net which is a crude and unsatisfactory way covered the rocks with some road as I did here. Better would be to invest is a recent version of Adobe Elements or my preference Corel's Paint Shop Pro. With PSP any version from v.8 will do these things so you might be able to pick up a cheap older version.

I didn't get it quite right with my black line to suggest the crop but we always should have more space in front of things than behind them, trucks or stationary subjects.

It would be quite posssible to adjust the 'camera frame' so the LCD matches the cropped image .. I though I had better stop before going that far

I appreciate that perhaps you included the camera back as a 'frame' for the shot .. so if that is the case you need to shoot what you want the end product to be. One could of course with an editor fill the 'camera frame' with the shot. A simple enough task with PSP, not sure about PSE.[ adjusting the camera format to the shot format ]
There is also another free download called GIMP which some people here use and could advise you about.
In doing this exercise I used Paint, Paintdot Net, and ended up in PSP and got horribly confused in the process Paint drew the line for me nicely but after that P.N didn't work as well as I'd like so ended up with PSP for the other adjustments.

[Sam Millar]

Just a quick point, it is not 'trespass' on dual carriageways in the UK unless they specifically say no pedestrians.

In fact I don't think the offence is 'trespass' anyway as it is public land, it is more to do with contravention of the Road Traffic Acts, as trespass is only related to 'private' land and is a civil rather than a criminal offence.

But at the end of the day, you knew what I meant when I said trespass. "To enter land without permission" is technically the same thing as being in a place you shouldn't be as the law dictates. I wasn't actually uploading the picture from the camera to show you and that was it, I just didn't have the images on the PC at the time as I was out sleeping in a truck to deliver all of your goods....

I think you all completely misunderstood me here but never mind.

Any way, no reason to get into being picky, the photo is framed and now sold, they made an offer straight up and I was happy to accept.

[jcuknz]

Good for you on the sale and it is interesting that you now have detail in the sky so perhaps you are ahead of me in I just downloaded some plug-ins and one revealed the sky detail ... so however you go about it ... keep it up .... apart from the rocks you have presented the picture along the lines I and others suggested

It is funny how people attribute good and bad things to actions which we think are simply the logical and correct thing to do ... though in the end you will get better Image Quality if you get closer to what the final result will be in the camera ... I probably knew that earlier in my life but it came home with a vengence when I started digital with a 3.3Mp camera and a target of A3 prints for camera club display in competition with people who had not changed to digital at the time

PS ....And LOL the sold photo is not the photo you posted

[Sam Millar]

Good for you on the sale and it is interesting that you now have detail in the sky so perhaps you are ahead of me in I just downloaded some plug-ins and one revealed the sky detail ... so however you go about it ... keep it up .... apart from the rocks you have presented the picture along the lines I and others suggested

It is funny how people attribute good and bad things to actions which we think are simply the logical and correct thing to do ... though in the end you will get better Image Quality if you get closer to what the final result will be in the camera ... I probably knew that earlier in my life but it came home with a vengence when I started digital with a 3.3Mp camera and a target of A3 prints for camera club display in competition with people who had not changed to digital at the time

PS ....And LOL the sold photo is not the photo you posted

Yeah your right, I have my camera set on constant shoot, I prefer it that way so I hold the shutter and get about 4 shots as they present themselves.

Yeah the two pictures are almost identical, personally I thought the rocks were a nice touch and I used the RAW to bring the details of the sky back into the photo. The photo has attracted quite some interest and 3 people want a copy now, including the TRUCK company. Happy days