Is freelance photography dead?
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine a few weeks ago. He used to be a freelance photojournalist, and regularly sold his photos to newspapers.
I recently captured some newsworthy photographs and decided, what they hey, why not try and sell them? After all, to be considered a "pro" you need to get paid. It was worth a shot i figured.
So i sent some of the photos to various news editors and photo desks, and instructed them to contact me if they wanted to use my photographs. I figured if they felt the photos newsworthy, they would offer me a fair price.
Nobody ever contacted me, but they did indeed use my photos. Full credit was given to me, and to be honest, i'm just happy my photos got published.
It seems every news agency has a gimmick to get people to send in free images ("iReport" from CNN, "Its Your story" from CityNews and so on).
It makes me wonder, in this day and age when everybody has at least one camera on them (cell phones, pocket digicams etc) is there any place for a professional freelance photographer?
I recently captured some newsworthy photographs and decided, what they hey, why not try and sell them? After all, to be considered a "pro" you need to get paid. It was worth a shot i figured.
So i sent some of the photos to various news editors and photo desks, and instructed them to contact me if they wanted to use my photographs. I figured if they felt the photos newsworthy, they would offer me a fair price.
Nobody ever contacted me, but they did indeed use my photos. Full credit was given to me, and to be honest, i'm just happy my photos got published.
It seems every news agency has a gimmick to get people to send in free images ("iReport" from CNN, "Its Your story" from CityNews and so on).
It makes me wonder, in this day and age when everybody has at least one camera on them (cell phones, pocket digicams etc) is there any place for a professional freelance photographer?