Having just started this course I am now on lesson 7. The course is split into 16 lessons and can be spread over 2 years.
Lesson 1 An introduction to the course and the tutor – fairly straight forward.
Lesson 2 Critiquing magazines to find the market your images may be sutiable for.
Lesson 3 More market requirements
Lesson 4 Even more analysis of markets!
Lesson 5 Freelancing essentials – submissions, copyright information, business needs.
My first impreesions were that it was not critical enough about my images and ambitions. All this changed with lessons 5 as I had lost a little enthusiasm by this stage and felt I would never sell anything. Therefore I did not try hard enough to fulfil the task – to find a magazine that would be suitable for the images I submitted.
Must try to adhere to the brief in future lessons even though some I feel are way out of my league at the present time.
Lesson 6 Picture Agencies
Feedback fairly positive – I already have images in the Country Life picture library but I did look at other markets. Alamy, Getty and istock are all possible markets but the images are of a very high standard and I need to improve before submitting to these libraries.
Lesson 7 The Photo Press
For this assignment I looked at various Photographic magazines and chose one to submit an article to. I haven’t actually submited it to a magazine yet but the tutor saw know reason why it would not be accepted.
Lesson 8 The Travel Market
As I had skim read the lessons before going on my last holiday I was able to submitt suitable images for this market. The only critiism was thast I had not stated a definite market for them. Oops back to the drawing board yet again.
Lesson 9 and 10 Photo Story board.
For this I did a story board about a natural horsemanship workshop I attended as a spectator, it seemed to work well. The next assigment is an illustrated article that will be a bit more challenging.
Need to wrap up this course now, although I haven’t completed some parts due to not being interested in the subjects. I have learnt how to find markets and a bit about the business side of things, so not a complete waste of time. Have just sent in the next but last assigment – portraits, but all I do is animal ones so they had to suffice.
Up to date I have sold a few individual photos from events and been commissioned to photograph and write an article for the Horse Agility training days,
Now I can concentrate on the areas I love – horses and wildlife.
GML Images 