Your Guide to Getting Into Fine Art & Stock Photography: Part II

In my previous post, we looked at some of the key points you should consider as you think about new ways to market your work as a photographer.

In this post, we will go a bit more in depth and talk about how to flesh out some of the ideas we have already discussed. While the other post focused on ideas to help you get started, this post will give you some resources to help you begin creating an online presence for your work.

PORTFOLIO WEBSITES

Before you begin sending your work to agencies and galleries, having a simple, straightforward website will be extremely helpful. Try to avoid anything too complicated - keep it simple, because you want your photography to be the focus of the website, not the web design. Minimalist design templates are your friend!

Here are a few popular platforms that offer customizable, minimalist themes:

Format

Cargo Collective

Wordpress

While your inclination may be to express your individuality through fancy fonts or wild colors on your website - try to refrain. Less is truly more, and you need a professional website, not something that looks like a page from a scrapbook. Creative directors and gallery owners will often pass you over if you have a "cheesy" website (really, trust me).

INSTAGRAM

At the time of writing this post (early 2016), there has been an enormous shift to Instagram as a dynamic platform for photographers both to share their work, and also to attract potential clients. While Facebook is still useful and I do encourage you to create a Facebook page for your photography if you have not already, you may find that Instagram will provide you with more traffic. Instagram's hash-tagging (#) makes it easier for people to browse by their interests, which means that, if someone lands on your Instagram account through a hashtag that is related to your photography, chances are they are really interested in the kind of work you do.

Another great feature of Instagram is re-posting, which can also send a lot of people your way. For example, if you post a photo taken with your preferred brand of camera, and you post an image on Instagram and hashtag that company (#canon #nikon #sony....whichever!) and one of those companies reposts your image on their Instagram account, you are potentially looking at hundreds, maybe even thousands, of new people with their eyes on your work.

If you are new to Instagram and it seems overwhelming, don't worry. Find photographers whose work you admire, and look at how they use hashtags, and how they interact with their followers. There is no set formula on how you should or shouldn't use Instagram, but the only way to find out what works best for you is to jump right in and start posting and exploring!

FLICKR

Though it may not be the newest or most trendy platform, Flickr still brings me clients, after all these years. The great thing about Flickr is its SEO capabilities, which allows search engines to show your images in the image search results.

Flickr is also an easy way form someone to quickly browse your work. Instead of having to click through pages upon pages, everything displays on one page on Flickr - all someone has to do is quickly scroll through to get an overview of your work.

A popular trend among photographers of all backgrounds is blogging. This has been a popular topic for a few years now, but we're at a point where it seems like everyone, and I mean everyone, who is "popular" in the photography world has a blog, right? 

What can blogging do for the rest of us, though, who do not have gigantic followings?

What is blogging, besides just having your work on yet another platform?

For starters, having a blog is a great way to show the "how" and "why" of your work - how you make it, and why you make it. While these points may not seem that important on first glance, they're actually extremely important in the realm of fine art photography, and in some instances, stock photography. In many situations, if you are submitting proposals to a gallery, or applying to be licensed with a stock photo site, you will be asked to submit an artist statement. There is definitely an art to the artist statement, and writing about your work through your blog is great practice for writing artist statements.

Not only that, writing about your work regularly can help you develop a better understanding of what motivates you, and what you would like to accomplish with your photography.

Now that we have talked about social media and how to begin to prepare your online presence, in the next post, we will look at ways to find potential clients and where you should send your work.