So here's the thing. In the UK we just had an election. The party which got in has expressed its intention to censor fetish material on the internet. For the last 13 years, I've made my living photographing and filming elegant fetish fashion and bondage. There is a possibility that significant sections of my work may be censored, and that my severely impact my profit margin and my ability to pay the bills.
I recently moved from the hectic South East to a much lovelier but much poorer part of the country. If my fetish photography business collapses, I'm not going to be able to walk into any sort of high-tech or high-paid job. I need to diversify, and my second love has always been landscape photography. (My first love of all is landscape PLUS fetish photography, which is why poor models have been shivering in satin ballgowns and silver handcuffs above the Arctic Circle on my shoots).
I believe I have identified a gap in the market. There's not much landscape photography around of my local area, despite its beauty and moderate but definite tourist foot-fall. You can't buy prints or postcards of local landmarks. I couldn't buy my mother a jigsaw with a pretty picture from the local area for her birthday.
So in my copious(!!!) free time, I've been hiking out to the hills and desperately trying to get my eye back in for landscape photography, get fitter, and carry a camera with me everywhere I go. I'm trying to be out at sunset somewhere beautiful every day I can, even after a full day at the fetish photography day job.
I've got some ideas for kit- I've just invested in a 5-series Gitzo and an Arca Swiss head to replace my heavy, wobbly, crappy 25 year old Manfrotto (I don't use tripods for the day job, I have to move because the model is tied up).
I've got a GH4, a Canon 7D, a RED Scarlet, a Hasselblad H3D-ii and a sack of lenses suitable for people photography and a few which will certainly do to get some practice. The GH4 is great in every single respect except ultimate image quality. I've never really loved anything I've shot with the 7D. The Hassy is a great studio camera but too heavy, not waterproof (it rains here. Often. A lot.) and investing in Hasseblad wide-angle and telephoto lenses would be a big commitment with no guarantee of sales as yet, just a hope that if I shoot some good stuff I'll manage to sell some of it somehow.
I really need to start building up a portfolio of actual saleable work. I need some stock before I start trying to get stuff printed or mounted or take samples around to local shops, etc.. I have Alain Briot's excellent book of essays which I'm using as the jumping off point for my business case. I suck as a salesman but I have a mate who has just retired who I might be able to get involved at some level.
All of which is a long lead up to the question... does anyone have any advice for me? Especially anyone who actually makes money from their landscape photography?
Am I wasting my time shooting stuff on anything other than the Hassy, for example?
What do you make money from? What's the determining factor in what sells best? How important is ultimate technical quality and resolution? Reading the forums and magazines one is tempted to believe that technical quality is of almost total importance for selling landscape work, is that your experience? Or are your best sellers all shot on a 5D Mark II or similar?
Do you sell direct to the public? To companies which then produce products (books, calendars, postcards, etc.)? To magazines, or stock libraries?
Any words of wisdom gratefully received!
Cheers, Hywel