Sunset, the big travel magazine devoted to the American Southwest, contacted me today asking to buy this photo from the Burning Man festival. It will run in an article called “Amazing West” in their November issue. And they offered me the biggest fee I’ve ever received for a single image. Now that’s a nice way to start the day.
Burning Man
Sunset Magazine Comes Calling
How to Sell Photos to a Book Publisher
Since I so often kick myself for doing things wrong, today I’m going to celebrate doing it right.
Today I turned a publisher’s request for a single photo—with no offer of payment—into a 5-photo sale for hundreds of dollars. It’s a lesson for me, and maybe for you, in what to do right.
I was contacted by a Japanese travel book publisher, who wanted to use the image at left from my Burning Man Festival photos (caution, some nudity) in their “Dream Trips” guidebook, which will include a chapter on Burning Man as a tourist destination. (Of course, the notion of busloads of Japanese tourists arriving at Burning Man is pretty damn funny. If you’re not familiar with Burning Man, it’s the annual festival of “radical self-expression” held in the Nevada desert — a photographer’s dreamland of fantastic characters, art, and spectacle — but definitely not for the faint of heart.)
Anyway, this publisher offered no payment, only credit. (more…)
How to Take Better Photos at Burning Man (and Beyond!)
The annual Burning Man festival held in the Nevada desert is a photographer’s dream: A surreal landscape populated by bizarre machines, monstrous, mind-boggling art projects, and the world’s most outrageously costumed characters all trying to outdo each other with sheer creativity. Each year approximately 50,000 people attend this weeklong event, and for many photographers it is the annual pilgrimage not to be missed. (more…)
