Travel Photography – maximize your earnings – Part 2

Wow – who would have thought that processing 2000 images would take so long! It is an interesting question in psychology that although I earn a reasonable amount from photography, in my mind I am not “working” when I process images and so it sometimes takes me some time to process them all. However, I think that is an important approach as well – if you just plow on through your images, you will become jaded and start to pass over images that are worth a second look. So take your time and make sure you get the best out of each image.

How do I approach such a project – start at the beginning! It is sometimes tempting to work on an image that you think is going to be really good, and that is fine, but I generally work from the start of the vacation through to the end, and then think about keywording. My criteria for processing an image is two fold – do I think it is a nice artistic image in its own right (because we are artists at heart) and secondly I also process those images that purely have some commercial rationale but may not be great photographs. Both types are worthwhile to me – there is some effort in keywording the “artistic” ones, but even though it may not be very saleable, it will probably sell from time to time.

Artistic – but will it sell?

I use Lightroom as my main processing engine, and my approach is almost mechanical now.
Set the white balance (although that is rarely off), crop to a nice composition, and then click Auto for the develop settings. I find that this gets the exposure settings right more often than not, and I just need to make some small changes to those. I always add some clarity and vibrance to finish the shot. The latest version of Lightroom CC has added three really useful commands – Merge to HDR, Merge to Panorama, and now a haze reduction tool. I find the panorama one very effective as you end up with a stitched panorama that you can still edit as though it was a raw file. HDR gives you very natural looking HDR shots that are again ready for editing using the normal tools in Lightroom. Finally, haze reduction seems to work very well on increasing the contrast in the hazy areas of a photo without overdoing the foreground. What will they think of next!

Natural HDR shot of Windmills

Stitched Panorama from Lightroom

So where am I now? I started with over 2100 images from Spain and London, and have almost finished Spain. I ended up with 384 images that I think are worth keywording. I generally drop just a few if I can’t think of any keywords that really describe an image – remember that no image will sell unless a buyer can search with a concept in their mind and find your image. But for an 10 day vacation that number of images sounds about right.

As this is travel photography, think about the use that people will make of your images. Some images are just illustrative of the architecture of a place and those can be keyworded generically and just sell for any commercial or editorial purpose.

Generic Spain shot

Others are very specifically about a place and would more likely be used in an editorial travel article about the city or the particular building. Remember that the responsibility to decide if a property release is needed belongs to the publisher, not you, and so there is no issue in properly describing and keywording a shot but making it clear that no releases are available. This image is from the Alhambra Palace in Granada and I will sell it as RM on Alamy, Corbis and Zoonar only:

Detail from Alhambra Palace, Granada

I also look for details in the various hotel rooms we stayed in. Here are a couple of shots that I think are both artistic and will probably sell:

Old woodworking tools

Dried flowers in vase

Don’t forget the textures as well. This was taken on a tripod to get maximum sharpness:

Textured old wood

Finally, look for shots that aren’t ideal and work on them. Here is an interesting shot from the beach in Marbella:

Itinerant seller of sunglasses in Marbella

Interesting that both ladies have the same tattoo just above the waist…

But the background is cluttered and the message of people selling counterfeit goods on the beach is lost. So remove the distractions and end up with a better image as a result.

Cleaned up and ready for sale

Next step is to finish the processing and think about keywording! See the next installment in Part 3 of Travel Photography.

Happy Travels!