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September 11, 2008
[ YOU TOO CAN BE A PRO ]
IF YOU HAVE EVER DREAMED OF TURNING YOUR HOBBY INTO A BUSINESS, but thought that it was too late or too hard, consider the story of Queenslander, Amanda Rohde.
In 2003 Amanda owned a simple 3 megapixel point-and-shoot camera that she barely knew how to use. Now, in this last year, she has made enough money from her photography business to support herself and take on her husband as her business manager. And, as a photographer, she is completely self-taught.
Five years ago, at the age of 23, Amanda discovered the stock photo service, www.istockphoto.com, which sells royalty-free photos to designers, publishers, advertisers and so on. (A similar service, which Imaging has used, is www.fotolia.com) These on-line image libraries work on the basis of micro-charges for image use, so that images may be downloaded and reproduced for a flat payment of just a few dollars. The contributors are paid a percentage of the fee collected which varies, depending on size, resolution and popularity of a picture.
Amanda took one look at istockphoto examples and decided that she could do that. Her only real experience with photography to that point was doing Photoshop image retouching for professionals.
So, with her little point-and-shoot, she took some photos, went through the enrolment procedure for istockphoto, and sent off her samples. From that point she hasn’t looked back. Right now she has over 10,000 photos on istockphoto and the annual paid download of her pictures is approaching 140,000.
Amanda says, with a straight face, that when her pictures were rejected because of “motion blur” she had no idea what it meant. She says that she googled every fault that caused a rejection and, one by one, she eliminated the faults and over-compensated. Her images are technically meticulous, beautifully lit, composed and sharply focussed, front to back.
These stock photo libraries rely on cliché images for their busine
ss and Amanda says that the big sellers are attractive young women, wearing headsets and smiling a huge smile of the “I’m just here to help” style. And generally speaking the best selling photos are those against a stark white background into which the designer can place the editorial or advertising text.
These days she uses a Canon 1Ds MkII, the camera of choice of many professionals. And she has a studio set up in her house. Some models, whose pictures sell well, she pays and with some she trades photos for their folios in return for their service.
One of her favourite models is her mother – or, at least, her mother’s hands. After a lifetime of dedication to the garden her hands are worn and strong and, according to Amanda, beautiful. They appear in many of her photos.
iStockphoto grades its contributors according to the number of images held in stock and the demand for the pictures. Amanda is a Black Diamond member, and that is as high as it gets.
Her technical mastery of the medium is impressive, but the sheer volume of images is a product of a remarkable imagination. Remember, these are not commissioned photos – every one is an invention, the product of constant observation and analysis of advertising, publishing and photographic representation of ideas and concepts.
You can see Amanda Rohde’s istockphoto portfolio at http://tinyurl.com/5s5kw4 (She goes by the cybernym Hidesy).
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Posted by terry at September 11, 2008 12:27 AM
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