New Gallery,comments please

Hi Guys,

I have created a new Gallery for all my photo's, both underwater and surface. Planing on starting a new site for it when I have finished. Would apreciate some feedback.

My Gallery

Regards

Gary

It is a great gallery, I really like many of the fish portraits. Thanks for sharing!

Luiz

Thanks for the comment Luis.

Was thinking of trying to sell some of my pics, haven't done anything like this before, only taken them to show friends and pop on my web site that doesn't get a lot of traffic. It's been a little project the wife has pushed and it's kept me busy but I'm not as confident has she seems to be. Am I waisting my time? I see the pics other have taken here and think I might be.

Regards

Gary

First of all I read an story from Eric's Sea Rover convention that no one is making a living selling UW photographs - even the real pros suppliment their income in other areas. So no you won't be a professional unless you run a dive shop with it and all the other stuff pros do. On land Getty sure has it all

You could bust your butt and sell pics at fairs or frame some of your stuff at local seafood restaurants etc. and grab a buck here and there. I traded some pics for an air card at a dive shop once. You can scrap and sell pics but it might be minimum wage at the end of it all. I think you have some great publishable pics. The turtle T03 especially and the other near it. The lion fish is very well done. I didn't look at all but the Int series for the most part was no where near as strong. If you can take technical pics on all your stuff with the samel technical quality as T03 with engaging composition then you are talking submissions to publications, Alex Mustard quality if you have seen his work on WP. I think you should cut down the large volume of stuff on your site and put only the best quality. Why have three turtle pics when T03 says it all. You can sell a pic or a story here or there if you work hard at it, nothing is impossible but shooting what you want and then selling it, is damn close to it.... even if your way better than yourself.

Pictures don't sell themselves - they need to be sold. The work of UW photography is not in taking the pix, but selling them. That is the bad news. The good news is that the world is image hungry and your images are good and will sell. If you work at it.

This means finding markets for them. There is a high demand for original art work in homes these days. And UW picture do appeal. But your print quality and marketing have to top notch. But this can be very rewarding (so I'm told - I don't sell prints) as you actually get to meet your customers and get money and praise simulataneously.

Try to think differently. Magazines already have many contributors. But if your images are good and add something new to what they already have then they will make space for you. There is no point saying I have a shot as good as that one in the magazine. Because the magazine already has that shot and also a relationship with the photographer who took it. You have to provide them with images that they don't already have.

Finally look for less obvious places to push your images. Newpapers, non-wildlife and non-diving magazines are actually under exploited by many UW photographers.

Alex

Nice shots. Alex is correct. 10 percent of the work is taking the pictures. 90 percent is marketing, and it's the hardest and most labor intensive.

Joe

Thanks for the rplies guys, gives me some things to think about. Alex will look into the non-typical areas, thanks for that tip. I guess I will never get anywhere unless I give it a try. The wife supports, or should I say, is pushing it, so why not.

Regards

Gary