Art Of Photography

Freelance writing or Photography, which will be your chosen career path. If you love to write it is a cinch to take the accompanying photographs, and if photography is your passion why not write about the things that you are photographing.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, therefore if you are writing an article it goes without saying that some photographs of the subject will add value to your article, and lets face it, you are not going to do any freelance writing for free. So the better the article the more money you make.

Adding photographs to your articles adds value, and therefore you should get paid accordingly. Both you and your client will want to be sure that your agreement is in writing and covers all of the contingencies.

A handshake deal will always cause you problems, either you or your client will remember something differently. Trust is a good thing, so trust in your contract or written agreement, not in yours or your clients memory or honesty.

Location, subject, theme, time span and especially dollars, all this should be set out in writing before you go buying your own ticket for the travel. Sending off an email advising the editor of your fees and conditions won’t do the job, you have to get an email from the client agreeing to your conditions, or offering his own conditions.

If it isn’t in the contract and your client doesn’t like the final outcome he may refuse to pay up simply because it wasn’t in your contract. As a freelance writer you are a self employed contractor, you are a businessman, so be business-like.

Business people get paid for what they do, so if you are going to travel, write about and photograph your subject you have to get paid for it. Freelance writing and photography can have residual benefits, your articles and photos can be sold over and over again, if you keep the copyright. Don’t give your copyright away, it may be worth something in the future.

To the uninitiated it may seem a waste of time and effort to take so many pics of the same subject. But it is better to have too many photos than to have the few that you take turn out to be useless and amateurish. Take lots of photos then you won’t have to go back to your location to re-shoot if something goes astray.

Use a digital camera. With a digital camera you can take as many photographs as you like, you can select the perfect picture when you get home, at your leisure, and discard the rest if you like. But why discard them when you can store them on a disc and keep them for the future.