Let’s face it, all of us are feeling the crunch these days and many photographers who had a very steady stream of clients and projects have seen these dwindle over the past year or so. The decline is probably due to a number of factors, including the economic downturn, and several industry-specific trends including the availability of quality Prosumer cameras, the low pricing of royalty free microstock images, and the proliferation of super-low-cost photographers on sites such as CraigsList. All this makes for slim pickings. Many clients are shooting projects “in-house” and sourcing generic royalty free images because they, too, are feeling the crunch.

I spoke with a handful of professional photographers to find out what strategies they’ve employed over the past year to generate new business and found some interesting ideas.  Besides taking advantage of the ability to market and license their work using LicenseStream to generate passive income and expose their work to a greater audience,  many photographers are using the enforced downtime to get more creative about how they market their work.

This slow period has been welcome relief for some photographers who needed a break from tough daily schedules that don’t allow much time for personal growth in order to develop new artistic styles, create new bodies of work, or to learn about new photographic tools and acquire new techniques in a digital age. Some have decided to travel, exploring new views on the world that they can bring back and market. For example, one couple who had planned a trip to Africa took an extra step in their preparations: they contacted some private doctors and non-profit organizations to see how they might help support documenting success stories, and raise awareness for these doctors who were performing surgeries to fix facial abnormalities and other health related issues in underprivileged villages. This outreach resulted in work that helped support a trip they were going to take anyway and created a new area of business.

Other photographers have found it pays to participate in local farmers’ markets, in gallery exhibitions, or to develop fine art products.  One photographer talked about the success he had achieved in marketing his love of architecture, details, and natural patterns. He offered single-day rate for shooting photos of a particular location, say a winery or a beautiful hotel, and then offered to create for the location’s owners a coffee table book or a series of framed prints and the ability to use the images for promotional marketing materials as one complete package.

In addition to creating new niche markets and products, photographers need to look at reducing expenses. Consider sharing workspace costs, equipment, and combining different talents to collaborate on projects and expand networking circles. And let’s face it, not all of us are the best at running our business or going out and getting new clients. Hiring a business consultant and perhaps photo representative might be the best idea yet.

In addition, it may help to visit a few of our past LicenseStream blogs, including those on Using LicenseStream to Power Your Niche Photography Business, Using HTML to

Market Your Content,  Licensing Fundamentals: 20 Dos of SEO Practices, and Licensing Fundamentals: 10 Don'ts of SEO Practices.  

Oh, and don’t forget to say a few prayers, burn some incense, and avoid black cats. It can’t hurt.

With powerful off-the-shelf consumer applications like Photoshop, almost anyone can take an image, crop it, alter, recolor or make a photo composite without too much effort. The question arises, how much “photoshopping” needs to be done for an image to be considered an original work of art?  

 All visual artists at one time or another have probably created art “borrowed” from copyrighted source material. The sample below shows how quickly the face of Mona Lisa and be flipped, altered, recolored and placed into a new background in a matter of minutes. The resulting altered image is pretty believable but is it a “new” original work of art? I don’t think so. If I had created the original portrait of Mona Lisa and came across the “Bearded Lady” version I would likely sue the infringing party for stealing my work.        

Mona Lisa (original) 

Bearded Lady (altered version)

I created this for my personal use but had I chosen to alter an original work in copyright and made the resulting “new” art more visible to the general public, even post it to my Facebook page, I could be accused of copyright infringement. Chances are the copyright police wouldn’t come knocking on my door for creating the new derivative work, but it would not be an original work of art.  

When an artist creates a work of art, the copyright comes into existence automatically and provides the owner with a number of exclusive rights. No registration is required, though it may be necessary to protect some remedies if the artist ever plans to sue for infringement. By the way, registering your content using ImageSpan's LicenseStream does just that because it establishes provenance (history of ownership) of the content.

To qualify as a derivative work, the creation must use a substantial amount of the prior work’s expression. How much? Enough so that the average person would conclude that it had been based on or adapted from the prior work. It’s a common sense thing. Merely borrowing the ideas expressed by the prior work (creating a work “inspired by” it) would not create a derivative work. Ideas are not copyrightable, and a work is not derivative unless it has been substantially copied from a prior work. 

How Different is Different?

For a derivative work to be copyrightable, it must be "different enough" from the original work that it can be considered a new work in its own right. Making minor changes, or adding little of substance to a preexisting work will not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes.   

Artists who create collages know they involve combining multiple elements to create a new whole. The important thing to remember is that the changes must be significant. Minor alterations to a single other work might not be "different enough." Unfortunately, the law is rather vague on this point. There's no clear definition of how much is enough, either in terms of a percentage, or square inches.   

Derivative work can only include copyrighted material if it is created by the owner of the copyright for the original material, or with that owner's permission. Making a collage that includes photos from National Geographic, clippings from advertisements, or a famous Picasso painting is illegal unless you have obtained permission from whoever owns the copyright on those works.  

An example we can all relate to...

Most if not everyone has seen the famous pre-election HOPE poster from street artist Shepard Fairey with the red, white and blue illustration of President Obama. What you may not know is that Fairey is now in a legal copyright dispute over the poster with the Associated Press for using photographer Mannie Garcia‘s photograph of Obama as a reference image without getting permission or substantially changing it. One might argue that the new art form is so different from the original photograph that it should be considered original. When art works its way into media -- even for a political statement -- and gains enough exposure to raise the prospect of commercial gain, the issue of ethics and ownership comes to the forefront.  

An interesting note in this case is that the Garcia photo is now more famous and valuable than it ever would have been prior to the creation of Fairey’s Obama poster.  

Also of interest: Fairey found Garcia’s photograph for the illustration on Google Images. In fact, a recent survey shows that more than 60 percent of all images are found via Web searches. With LicenseStream, users can publish their work directly to Google.  

The Last Word

Protect yourself by creating original art that is not swiped from someone else’s portfolio or body of work. Protect your own intellectual property by registering it on LicenseStream where you can also benefit from our tracking capabilities. Our tracking services will alert you to instances where your work may have been misappropriated, and will let you resolve these situations by selecting among several automated responses. Responses may range from a request to license your work, include a photo credit, provide a link back to your site, or even a request to remove it.     

LicenseStream’s Tracker offers another benefit: it enables you to see where your images are being used. This intelligence may uncover new markets for your work, enabling you to forge new marketing strategies and make more effective business decisions.