SPECIAL SECTION: Paris Photography Workshop - Day 4

Your Hometown $700/day: Photography News from Paris

Special Paris Dispatch #4

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On-The-Ground Reports from the Ultimate

Travel Photography Workshop in Paris

Since you couldn’t be with us in Paris for our workshop, I asked David Morgan — a freelance writer and photographer — to fill you in on what we’ve learned. You’ll find his fourth report here below.

— Lori

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Dear Travel Writer,

We started today, our fourth day of the Ultimate Travel Photography Workshop in Paris, on the water. (If you missed the dispatches from the previous 3 days, please click here for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3.)

We took a boat ride up the Seine from the Musee d’Orsay, with views of Parisian buildings, sculpture gardens, ancient bridges, and especially notable was a view of Notre Dame Cathedral that you could only get from a boat…

…and we produced great shots. (Well, I should say the Workshop participants got some great shots. I continue to be surprised at how quickly they have learned to take sellable images, and the way they have learned to frame their shots is simply superb. I’ve never seen anything like it. I have been constantly in awe, and often jealous.)

After cruising along the Seine for a few minutes, we turned up the Canal St. Martin. We passed through the Paris marina, then entered a tunnel that took us under the city for two kilometers.

You might think there wouldn’t be much to see down there. It was surprising. Airshafts from a garden in the middle of the boulevard above cast fantastic light through the grates. Patterns played on the water. Vines hung down. Then our guide took out his clarinet for us and played a tune on the bow of the boat.

Many of our Workshop participants nailed a “money” shot of our clarinetist’s silhouette, backlit by rays filtering down an airshaft onto the water.

But the day didn’t end there. We also went to Luxembourg gardens, where sellable images were shot of men playing boules and chess…and children sailing toy boats in the pond and riding horses on the carousel. Others went to Notre Dame to capture gargoyles and flying buttresses.

These are typical images of Paris. Millions of tourists per year take pictures of exactly the same sorts of things. The photos our Ultimate Travel Photography Workshop participants took stand apart, however. That’s because, under the direction of our two expert professional photographers, Rich Wagner and Blair Howard, our participants have learned the difference between taking a “good” picture…and taking one that will sell.

My name is David Morgan. I’m your on-the-ground reporter for our Paris Workshop.

Tonight will be our farewell dinner. We’ll award cash prizes to some of our participants, newly “professional” photographers who we think have taken the best shots. And believe me, we haven’t been in agreement on many of them. Our Workshop participants have taken so many sellable photographs, the outcome of this contest has been particularly difficult for our panel to decide.

Not only that, but Adrian Leeds, host of our party, will offer to publish some of these photos in ParlerParis, giving our “new experts” their very first photo credit, and the beginning of a track record they can use to get their foot in the door with a travel magazine, stock agency…

…it’s the perfect way to launch a career that could include being sent to some exotic locale for an all-expenses-paid photo assignment…

Anything is possible now. We sure wish you could have been able to join us here, because when our Workshop participants go home, they’ll have all the knowledge they need to make their next trip very profitable.

They’ve also learned how they can make a great deal of money from photographing everyday things in their hometown, something you can do starting right now. That brings us to our tip for the day…

FREE PHOTO TIP #4: Capitalize on your $700/Day Hometown

Throughout our Ultimate Travel Photography Workshop in Paris this weekend, we’ve learned the secrets professional photographers use…secrets extremely easy to put into practice…to take images of Paris that are sure to sell.

We’ll use these same techniques to turn a profit when we go home. You, too, can start right now, from wherever it is that you live.

You see, Rich Wagner shared a secret with us: People love hometown photography. And they’ll pay a lot of money for it.

Rich sells photographs of his hometown in Connecticut for $400-$700 a piece. Who buys them? The very same people who live in the very same hometown. Sell just one photo per day, and you’ll make $2,000-$3,500 per 5-day week…

And that’s not counting any revenue from assignments you may be sent to do…or your monthly check from your stock agent that could amount to $10,000 or more (click here to read yesterday’s dispatch and find out how.)

If you think there’s too much competition for you to make it as a professional photographer, think again. Over 12,000 photographs are bought in the United States alone…each and every day. There’s plenty of potential sales to go around.

And you can do it from home. Once you have the knowledge to take sellable photos, it won’t much matter what you take pictures of, so long as they are taken in a sellable fashion…and so long as people in your hometown recognize it as something particular to their area.

Rich sells his photos from his own gallery. Someday you might want to own your own gallery, too, but you don’t have to worry about the cost of that right now. Put together a portfolio of your best images, and show them to people who sell art from their businesses. Galleries are one example. Personally, I got my start selling photographs from the walls of coffee houses and restaurants.

I didn’t know much about photography back then, and certainly not as much as I have learned in this Paris Workshop alone, but my photos sold like hotcakes. They sold so fast I had to raise the price to keep sales down – I couldn’t keep up with my orders. I soon found out that I could do less work for more money!

At one time I was making about $300 a day from one coffee shop alone, and that was my first public show, ever! If I had known then the secrets that I learned here in Paris, I could have easily doubled my profit.

That first show landed me a job taking photos for an interior designer’s portfolio. Two couples called me asking me to shoot their weddings. (Now THERE’s a profitable market!) And an author happened to enter the coffee house one day and bought several of my photos for her book. The publisher even flew down from New York to visit me in my hometown.

My story is not unique. With a little bit of insider knowledge – the kind that Rich and Blair have been sharing with us during our Workshop – and some persistence, you can do it, too.

I don’t do shows like that anymore. It’s a lot more work than you have to do to make money…once you’re established. (I will say, though, that it a great way to get established.)

The important thing to understand is that it doesn’t take much to start to be known in your area — that one show did it for me.

And Blair shared a strategy with us here in Paris that works just as well…and it is much easier and less expensive…

FREE PHOTO TIP #5: Your Hometown Newspaper

Blair’s strategy for a new photographer to build a repertoire is to publish your photos in your local newspaper.

Small papers might not be able to pay you, but you’ll still get a photo credit. One credit could be your “ticket to ride” to a lifestyle you never thought possible.

Maybe there’s a road under construction near your home, and it is taking longer than it should to be completed. Call the editor of the paper and spin your story idea. Then go take some pictures (in the way we’ve been teaching you), write a brief article, and submit it.

Once it’s printed (newspapers go to print much faster than books or magazines), repeat the process with another idea. Before you know it, you’ll have enough photo credits – not to mention article by-lines – to approach ANY editor with confidence.

Soon magazine editors could be sending you…expenses paid…to photograph the America’s Cup…the Cannes Film Festival…the Pushkar camel fair…wherever in the world you’ve wanted to go… and then paying you for your “work.”

This Ultimate Travel Photography Workshop in Paris has literally taken years off the learning curve for our participants. With simple, insider secrets like these, the seemingly unachievable dream of traveling the world for profit with no work to do but shoot a few pictures has suddenly become a reality.

Traditionally, professional photographers have had to work for years “recreating the wheel” to achieve the same successes that our participants are now able to achieve in a matter of days and weeks.

That’s because few pros are willing to share the secrets they learned the hard way.

Blair Howard and Rich Wagner are different, though. They know there’s plenty of work to go around, and they’re willing to give you the information you need to grab your share of it… and catapult you into the travel photographer’s life.

They’ve been putting their secrets into writing. And so now you can benefit from them — even if you couldn’t join us here in Paris. Turn Your Pictures into Cash: A Comprehensive Course in Taking and Selling Amazing Photographs provides the next-best thing to spending time with Blair and Rich in person.

To commence your new lifestyle as a well paid travel photographer, click here for all the details.

I’ll write you again tomorrow with more news about what we’ve learned here in Paris. Until then…

Sincerely Yours,

David Morgan
Writer and Photographer

[Editor’s Note: Learn more about opportunities to profit from your travels (and even from your own home) in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel.]