Photographers Direct is a web site where people or periodicals looking to buy images can ask photographers if they've got suitable images to use.
For example (hypothetically), an editor might ask
I need a wintery-looking photograph of Bugsworth Canal Basin from an unusual angle, showing the water, a bridge and some of the brickwork, but not one of the usual boring pictures you get of the Basin.
There isn't such a picture, of course. This is a hypothetical case. But if perchance you had such a picture, he might pay you well. (Assuming he wanted one in landscape format)
Photographers Direct makes its money by charging photographers a subscription (£217/yr) or commission (20%) on sales.
Yesterday on Photographers Direct someone pleaded for a photo of the Ponty Aqueduct:
I need a summery, high quality image of a walker crossing the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal, Wales, preferably with a boat in shot too. Needs to be dramatic, good light, sense of height and movement. For a front cover. As soon as you can please - deadline Wednesday! Many thanks...
Colour images ONLY
Format : Portrait (vertical)
Use : Editorial, cover, full page
Budget : UK£400
Notes on Budget : 107,000 print run magazine in UK only.
Lesson 1: Portrait (vertical) pictures are probably worth the most money, because they suit cover pictures.
Lesson 2: Portrait is in demand probably because magazine design itself is sclerotic.
Why do editors feel compelled to have full-page vertical format photos and streams of text on magazine covers? There's no reason a magazine needs a full pic and a bunch of teaser text on the cover. There's no reason it needs any text at all. The whole magazine world is ripe for reinvention.
Lesson 3: I need to start taking a lot more photos in portrait, because Granny Buttons is never going to change the magazine world. Not without starting her own magazine. And she won't get around to it, much as she'd like to.
Unless a publisher would like to persuade her.
[Thanks to Rob Hudson for inspiring this post]
