Make Money With Your Digital Camera

Is digital camera your passion? Have you been clicking away happily at everything or anything? Have you been impressed with all your photos? Consider making your digital camera and hobby into a money making opportunity. Your passion can make money for you. Give Freelance Digital Photography or Stock Photography a shot! You need no expensive photography equipment, no special printers, no special photography training or diplomas for stock photography.

What is stock photography? Your photographs are bought by a company and stored in a database. These photographs are then licensed to publishers, advertising agencies, and other companies for their use. There are a lot of people out there willing to pay for your hobby like magazines, newspaper, book publishers. Websites , the travel industry ,stock photography sites and postcard printers.

All you do need is a-

• Digital camera (minimum of 4 mega pixels) with 3X zoom.

• Access to the internet.

• A Light box. (A homemade light box tutorial here)

That's it!

You upload your digital photos to stock photo sites and you will earn money whenever someone downloads your photo by paying royalty to you. You can submit your images to more than one stock agency site and will earn with the same photographs all your lifetime. You will be allowed to sell the same photo a 'number of times'. Yes, every time a person purchases, your royalty will earn money for you.

Tips to sell photos successfully:

1. Enrol in Stock Photo Sites:

Register in a stock photography site which will act as an agent to market and sell your photo. Sign-up in at least 3 stock sites and earn from many stock sites at the same time.

2. Master your Digital Camera:

Read and understand the user manual of your camera. Try different modes and techniques with your digital cameras. Many professional photographers use simple Point and Click cameras to shoot close-up, macro photos. Set your camera to shoot the highest quality and largest size photos.

3. Learn about selling your photos:

You should research what sells and take those kinds of pictures. Learn how to sell and where to sell. Make sure you're sending in quality photos. Photographs with people are the highest selling stock photos.

Tips before sending in your photos to photo stock sites:

• Do not provide exclusive rights to anyone.

• Refer to the Terms and Conditions of the photo stock agencies.

• Get a Model Release signed from people who pose for your photos ,which is a no-objection certificate for using the photos commercially.

• All your pictures will be watermarked so no one can steal.

• Make sure that your image is original and truly copyrighted by you.

Don’t be disappointed if you are rejected in your early days due to poor quality, blur or not having commercial value. Don’t quit! Don’t give up! Keep practising! You will be successful in stock photography in no time!

Good luck and start earning!

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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Top Stock Photography Sites

Your digital camera doesn't use film right? So, you can snap,click and shoot away as many pictures as you want till you get the right ones! In due course you will learn about lighting, backgrounds and staging your digital photos for better effect.

Few Pointers to be aware of before you submit your photos to photo stock sites:

• When you submit your application, you will have to submit a few sample images. Your photos will be gauged for quality.

• Shoot some sample images with bright light and preferably inside a photo light box.

• Always, always upload only the best images.

• Use relevant keywords. No matter how good your image is, if the keywords are bad, your image will not sell or be seen.

• Learn about the most in-demand image subjects and avoid wasting your time uploading the least requested photos.

The 5 top stock photography sites where you can exhibit your photography skill are:

1.Fotolia
Fotolia demand a minimum of 1600 x 1200 pixels for web use and 2272 x 1704 pixels or greater for print use. The ideal files should be at least 2000 x 3000 pixels.

2. Dreamstime

Dreamstime entail that the image be at least 3MP in size or more, it must in RGB JPG format only.

3. BigStockPhoto

They require you to take a Photographer Test after studying their Tutorial pages. If you pass you, then you can upload photos, which will be reviewed by the editors.

4. iStockPhoto

iStockPhoto stipulate that the images be in RGB JPG format and a large file. 300 dpi 5″ x 7″ is optimal. All files should be 1200 x 1600 pixels minimum - anything smaller will be automatically discarded.

5. ShutterStock

This site has a referral program that users can also earn from. Images must be at least 2.5 megapixel to be accepted. But new photographers’ minimum size is 4.0MP.

Two other great websites to consider are crestock.com and StockAndPrints.com.

When customers purchase and download your photos, you earn about 50% to 80%per photo as royalty.Payments are usually made via bank check, Paypal, and MoneyBookers.

Before submitting your photographs , improve their quality by using a good photo-editing program. You can crop. color, sharpen and so on, to tweak your images. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are good programs for editing photos. GIMP is also a really good free software, which is compactable with both Windows and Mac.

Remember that your digital camera is a money making machine.

Good luck to your creative skill in the world of stock photography and reap in the money!

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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Tutorials - Make Light Box At Home

Make your own Light Box at home! Take excellent professional photos!

How to Make A Inexpensive Light Tent by Jeffrey Bail.

Another Do-It-Yourself Light Box!

Beyond Megapixels: How to Make a Light Box and Macro Studio for Under $20


Tutorial - White Background For Photo Shooting Small Objects.




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Create An Online Photo Album

Are you feeling guilty about not sending your photos to family and friends scattered worldwide? Just relax! Keep everyone up to date on the events happening in your life! Is it possible? Yes. Create an online photo album! They are surely one of the easiest ways to share photos.

What is an online photo album? There are photo storage websites which let you to upload, arrange, store, edit, share, print, and create personalized gifts with your digital photos . You upload your digital photos to these websites ,arrange it as in albums and send the link of this online album via email to share it with whomever you want! You can upload photos even from cell phones, web cams, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and scanners.

Are the photos sharing services free? Many are free with strings attached as well! Creating your online album maybe free, but then you will receive regular promotional e-mail from them. They also request you to order prints or other products .

There are many online photo album web site services available and basically,they all do have the same features . They-

• Let you to organize, arrange, edit, sort ,categorize and tag your photos.
• Require you to register and offer password protection to limit access to your album.
• Permit you to send a link of your photo album via email to be shared and you'll never overload anyone's inbox with attachments.
• Offer you unlimited photo storage. They even allow multiple personal albums.
• Take high resolution prints of your photos.
• Turn your favourite photos into memorable gifts like personalized coffee cups, ornaments, mugs and also print greeting cards and calendars.
• Allow you to make fancy titles, captions, comment and map the location where your shots were taken as well.
• Let you to make all or just some photos private or only viewable by friends and family.

However, you do have to choose a dependable service, as you would not want to lose your cherished memories in case the website shuts down! The most popular sites are as follows:

Windows Live Spaces- is a photo storage service from MSN.
Picasa (http://picasa.google.com)-is a service from Google.
Flickr (www.flickr.com) -is a facility of Yahoo
Kodak EasyShare (www.kodak.com)- is a feature from the photography company, Kodak. You have to make a yearly purchase to keep your account active.
Snapfish (www.snapfish.com)- is an attribute of HP and you can also mail in film for processing and they will automatically put your photos online.
.Mac (www.apple.com/dotmac/): is for Apple Macintosh computer and the iPhoto and .Mac. are so easy to share photos .
Shutterfly(www.shutterfly.com) lets you share photos online.
SmugMug (www.smugmug.com) This is a popular photo hosting site despite being a pay site. The site features no spam or ads.

Share a Family Photo Site
A really great idea is to have one online photo album for the whole family to share. The concept of the family photo site is that the family can upload photos from various computers, various places and countries and view each other's images on line. Prints and other goodies can be ordered from any of the collections.

In conclusion, Online Photo Album is a terrific way to share the events happening in your life. It is somewhat like keeping a journal, and will be a cherished souvenir for future years as well.

If you still don’t have one, go about creating one straight away and keep in touch with your family and friends!

Copyright © 2008 Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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How To Resize And Send Digital Photos By Email

Want to send digital photos by email? Yes, but sending and receiving photos as attachments are so very slow! Yes, that’s why you need to resize the photos to make uploading and downloading the photos fast and quick. How’s that?

Let’s start this from the beginning. The pictures shot by the mega pixel cameras like 5 megabyte or more have high resolution and thus your image files will naturally be large. Therefore e-mailing high resolution images which are in large files will take a much longer time. But high resolution images give sharper and clearer prints. So, what are the options? If you don't need prints, then shoot at low resolution, say 600 x 800 pixels. Most cameras let you set the image size as well and since the image files are smaller you will be able to store more of them in the camera's memory. Another option is to shoot at high resolution, then reduce the file size of the photos you want to e-mail.

You can do this a few different ways-
With Windows XP, you can easily resize or shrink the image files and e-mail them.
1.Go to My Pictures folder, open the folder which has the pictures to be emailed.
2.Select one or more photos. If you want to select additional photos ,hold down the Ctrl key and click the photos in any order you want.
3. Click E-mail this file or E-mail this folder's files in the File and Folder Tasks pane.



Next the Send Pictures via E-Mail dialog box appears. You can choose either Make all my pictures smaller or the Keep the original sizes option. And click ok to continue.

Now,windows XP opens your default e-mail program, creates a new message window, and attaches your pictures to the e-mail message. Type in the recipient's e-mail address, your message and then send the mail. That’s it! Everything quite swift! Done!

If Microsoft Office Outlook is your default e-mail program it will open a new e-mail message with your photos attached. You can shrink the size of your pictures automatically by clicking on the Attachment Options button, then select the appropriate setting.

Many digital cameras now come with photo editing and you can easily reduce file size. Once you've reduced your photos to a handy size, just attach and send.

A handy tip is to copy the original file and save the copy at the smaller size. Or else, you may overwrite it and lose your original high resolution file.

Have fun sending email attachments!

Copyright © 2008-2010 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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Share Your Digital Photos

Have you just got back from your dream holiday? Did you see the Seven Wonders of the World? Did you welcome a new baby into your family? Was there a wedding or a family get-together? Then, you must have undoubtedly taken loads and loads of pictures. With digital cameras it is possible to do so! Now, what would you like to do with all the amassed pictures? Surely you would like to share them with your family and friends? Yes, most certainly, I do! If so, what are the best ways to share your digital pictures?

Well, you can take on any one of the four methods to share your digital photoswith your loved ones:

1. Print your photos

2. Email your photos

3. Upload your photos to a website

4. Store your photos on CD and DVD

1.Printing your Photos

From the time camera had come into existence, people have made prints from their film. With digital camera also you can make prints, but you need a color printer and some quality printing paper .There is no need for film processing anymore.

There are 3 options for printing digital images-

a. You can print it in your color printer at home - inkjet printers are good enough.

b. You can submit your photos to an nline photo print website and they will take prints and deliver them at your doorstep.

c. You can visit a local photo shop who will print the pictures for you.

2. Emailing the Photos

To share the photos you can email them too. But a 10 MB of email attachment will take a long time for you to upload and for the recipient to download. So you have to resize your photos and send them by email.

3. Uploading your Photos to a Website

A good alternative to emailing photos is to upload your photos to a website and then simply email the website link to your friends or family. By this, you avoid the problem of huge email attachments. You can also set up your own web site to host your own picture gallery!

4. Storing your Photos on CD and DVD

Finally, you can save your photos in your computer and then burn them onto CDs and DVDs by using a CD burning software. Since the cds can store 650 MB and dvds 4 GB you do manage to get an incredible amount of storage space for your photo collection. But then, you do need to have a CD player or DVD player to view the photos.

Now choose whichever option is convenient for you and share it with your family and friends! Happy Sharing! :)

Copyright © 2008 Laila Rajaratnam. All Rights Reserved

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