Business Trends

You may have seen rumors recently about Adobe stealing content from creators and using it to train their stable of applications and/or for other reasons. To address these unsubstantiated claims, Adobe sent a notification via the Creative Cloud dashboard that explains Adobe that does NOT steal your images to train Firefly, their robust AI engine, or for any other purpose.

For the New Year, I talked with a handful of working photographers willing to share their tips and techniques on building a photography business. We discussed portfolios, new media marketing tools, how often they market to their clients, and their recommendations for starting (or restarting!) your photography business in today’s marketplace. As you read their responses, please note that though they are in different fields of photography—consumer and commercial—there are remarkable similarities in their business building techniques. Also, check out the online references section at the end of this column. Online marketing is already big and will be even bigger in 2012! In the interest of form and continuity, all online marketing references for each photographer are listed in this reference section.

Since technologies of database management (direct mail) and Internet marketing (websites) have cut into the advertising agencies’ “lock” on buying media space as the only way to sell products and services, the industry has scrambled to reinvent itself. As a result, photographers have felt an impact on their advertising photography businesses.

Fine art photography sales is the one area so many photographers would like to explore because it has the ultimate advantage of showing your most personal work--and getting paid for it! Photography has always...

Running a photography business is stressful to start with, but add the emotional connection between partners or spouses and you have the potential for greatness or tragedy. So, how do you successfully work with your spouse or life-partner? How do you decide to divide up the daily business duties and responsibilities? For those who are successful, what advice can they offer to...