Assignment 5 Project: Marketing your work ....... Exercise: Develop a publishing plan

This for me felt quite alien. I don't sell my images, I don't promote my images and this was never the reason behind undertaking a photography course. What I wanted and still want to do, is improve my photography, understand a little more about the history, how to analyse certain areas and all the other practical, theoretical and educational aspects of working towards a degree. Making this a career move or attempting to make money out of it has never been a goal. That may alter but until now I had never considered how to market work or how to price it. Research into current prices and charges can be found here on a previous post.

Exercise: Develop a publishing plan.

First of all I had to identify my market, I considered the following:

• tourist information websites
• tourist information leaflets
• individual group websites
• Local newspapers
• Medway Council

Areas if potential clients identified I undertook research to make sure they would possibly be interested in my work.

http://events.kentonline.co.uk/events does carry images of places to visit/upcoming events they would possibly not actually require images until next year but a potential lead to enquire how they obtain images and what they pay.

http://www.rochesterdickensfestival.org.uk/ appear to have their own photographer and get sent links to flickr sets so unlikely to want to pay for images

Other groups, I may come into contact with on the day.

Local newspapers tend to have their own in-house/freelance photographers.

http://www.medway.gov.uk/leisureandculture/events.aspx produce webpages and brochures to promote the event so another potential lead. Looking into this lead further I discovered the correct department to speak to was the Marketing/Communications team.

http://www.medway.gov.uk/councilanddemocracy/communications.aspx

On ringing the number on the website I spoke to a very helpful person who provided me with some basic information. The council does hire photographers for their publications and depending on the type of work they want carried out will influence the price they pay. Starting rates tend to begin at £75 for half a day for maybe a few shots for the local newspaper to up to £500 for half a day for more specific posed/artistic/creative shots although they confided that this sum of money hadn't been paid out for a long time and historically once, maybe twice, a year.

The council likes the highest resolution images possible but when I asked what this would be I didn't get a specific reply but was advised I could send the highest res I had on a disc or if I had an online gallery they could download from this would also be acceptable and if they wanted a higher res image they would contact me to send. I explained my situation, being a student and this being part of my coursework and that I had never sold my work before. Despite this the gentleman was still interested for me to send him copies of my work and gave me his contact details saying that they did occasionally use "ad hoc" images and would credit the originator in these instances. This was interesting to discover and the fact that he was so helpful and open to viewing my photographs has given me more confidence to possibly approach other potential clients should I cover an event again.

This has opened up my internal debate as to whether or note I should have a basic website set up to showcase some of my imagery as my flickr has "everything" on there so does not present a coherent picture of the type of photographer I want to be, or want to present to potential clients. Something to consider.

I created this web gallery as part of DPP so it may get updated to fit my purpose

http://jfocaphotography.weebly.com/index.html