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We are trying to develop a community where photographers can come and discuss nature, wildlife and pet photography related matters. We encourage you to enter the forums to share, make comments or ask questions about this interview or any other content of NWP.
This article is Copyright 2005, James Morrissey, and may not, in part or in whole, be reproduced in any electronic or printed medium without prior permission from the author. The images in this article are the property of Ron Reznick and have been licensed to James Morrissey and the NWP Photo Forum for the purpose of this interview.
Editor's Note: A link is at the end of the page if you wish to learn more about Ron Reznick and his work.
Part II: Ron is all Business.
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Tricolored Heron Display (c) Ron Reznick
JM: Are you saying that currently about 2/3 of your income is coming through photography.
RR: Yes.
JM: Do you recall when you were first published?
RR: Oh. My first purchased work was the surface art for a CD. It was a yellow jacket on a daisy, as I remember.
JM: How long did it take before you were being published regularly?
RR: A few years. It was probably late 2001, early 2002, after I got the D1.
JM: What percentages of your income come from different parts of your business?
RR: It depends on what time of year. If we are talking just photography, it splits between training, the literary (e-book and other written work) and actual commissioned jobs. Plus, I sell my art as well. We are talking about 4 basic categories. If we are looking at how the split between each category goes, typically (and is in flux) training (e-book and actual talking to individuals/groups) probably makes up 50% now. Then, commissioned work and sales 50% - split 30-70 depending on the time of year.
JM: Your commissioned work, what do you mean? Nature/wildlife or human subjects?
RR: Both. For example, I had a guy who wanted me to shoot a bunch of humming birds once. On another occasion, I have had people who wanted me to shoot modeling and ads. It depends on what someone wants - so long as I can do it.
If I can get it done, I will do it because they are paying for my time. If it is interesting to me or lucrative (any two of those is fine :)) - I will do it, so long as I am able to. I don't mind buying tools if I don't have what is required to get the job done. I don't mind training myself to do things if I have never done them before. It is business.
JM: For Joe Schmoe trying to get into this. What advice would you give about keys to success that were important for you to get your name out?
RR: You need to first define your market. Second, you need to figure out who is buying this stuff (this is any field, by the way). If you cannot define the market, you cannot enter it. So, find out who is buying the stuff and present yourself as an option for them. You will find though that sometimes they often don't want to be introduced to new things because they are inundated with material. The people who are doing the buying see way too much.
So, the trick is to find out who knows them - who works with the buyers on a regular basis - and introduce yourself to that person. You are basically networking. Market yourself to the friend of the person you are trying to get to if you cannot get to the person you are aiming at.
Have you ever heard of the Photographer's Market? Anyone who wants to get into the business needs to get a copy of that sucker. You need to figure out what are you good at. What do you want to do? Who buys that stuff?
JM: That is a very different way of doing things than the stock direction.
RR: The stock market has changed a lot. It has been conglomerating over the last several years. Corbis and Getty are the big markets now. That is it. Their contracts have been getting less and less advantageous to the photographer over the years as they have gained power. However, if you are really established, you will probably get a better contract than someone just getting into it.
JM: Do you feel that stock is a viable alternative?
RR: Some people have started their own. People who have a really good library will directly market their stuff or they will hire a rep.
JM: Have you gone that route?
RR: I have considered going into that area. My next target, business wise, is to shift over primarily to a market related sale of my work.This is something else that I wanted to do, but that I have not had the time for. This means that as soon as I finish my next project (to head up to Alaska to shoot some bears), I am going to shift out the training aspects for a while.
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Elephant Seal Baby (c) Ron Reznick
JM: What is it that you want to do?
RR: I have a pretty large number of high-quality shots. They are easily marketable in any venue. They may be marketable in stock, a coffee table book or whatever. I want to establish a long term relationship with a publisher in several different categories. (1) Technically-related material (e.g. training books and field guides); (2) combination Travel/Art/Training in Single Volumes, some split so that they can be serialized in magazine articles; (3) art books (coffee table books). I also want to establish a relationship with a rep who can market work to galleries, magazines, etc.
JM: Can you give an example?
RR: Last year in spring, during cherry blossom season, I went to Japan for two weeks and followed the cherry blossoms. At the same time, I did 50 temples and shrines, 4 castles plus the imperial palace in 8 cities in two weeks and planned it so that I was getting full bloom at each location. Do you see where the planning was going?
The trick was to guess right about what the weather was going to be like and hope that you hit it right. It is like Aspens. You know how they hit full color and start falling off? You have a 1 day window. The second thing to do is start at the right latitude.
Imagine planning a trip where you hit 50 temples/shrines, 4 castles in 8 cities in 2 weeks. The goal is to put together a book that would show (1) how to plan the trip, (2) how to execute the trip, (3) show the art in and of itself along with some historical and travel-interest discussions in the text and captions, and (4) how the photography was done. Then separate it in such a matter so that it can be split into articles. Something you can publish as articles as well as a book targeted to 4 separate markets.
The other thing would be coffee table books in different categories. So, the goal (Target A) for me is to find a publishing company that has magazine and book properties and a wide distribution. This means that I need to find one of the big publishers. I want to cut a deal with the guy who can do this. I have the material but have not had the time to do it...I am now going to make the time.
Target B: When you work with a publisher, you cannot attack them directly. They are inundated with people who want to be authors. You need to prove that you can do it first. So, these guys get inundated with guys who want to be authors, have no past history, etc. They give the author a contract that is not very good for the author. In order to get a decent contract, you have to show that you can do it. To prove you are a marketable entity - this means that you have to have a history. You need to self publish or bite the bullet and do one for peanuts in order to prove it.
Do you know what a literary agent is?
JM: Please explain it to me.
RR: A literary agent is someone who talks to the publisher’s representative and cuts a deal. With the big publishers, you need to have a literary agent unless you happen to know the publisher personally. There are also reps. The difference between a rep and an agent is that a rep deals with already existing work. An agent finds you new material. A stock agency is basically a representative. You have a field of existing material and they sell it for you. An agent gets you work.
JM: Do you have an agent?
RR: I have to get myself a new agent/rep. That is one of my primary objectives once I get back from Alaska.
JM: How will you do that?
RR: I will either contact several people that I already know and ask them who they think I should talk to OR I will go through the Photographer’s Market and cull and select. The idea is to find a single firm that has both reps and agents so you are working with one company – but this may not be possible. It has to be the right person.
JM: I was hoping to talk about your trainings and e-books. How do you feel that your e-books and your trainings/lens interviews are affecting your current career?
RR: I see where you are going with this. The Lens page, which needs to be completely re-written, by the way, was written in self defense. I was getting telephone calls and e-mails from so many people that I thought it was easier to just write this dissertation than answer the same questions over and over again. I get 150 e-mails a day out of which 120 need to be responded to. I spend too much time on e-mail.
With regards to the e-book. Over the course of more than a year, I had more than 200 people ask me to write something like this. So, I did it assuming that if just the people who asked me to write it purchased it, that I would break even - I was fine with that. I have done better than break-even though.
JM: Do you think it affects you in terms of your future goals – i.e. that you have been able to show that you can self-publish successfully?
RR: Yes! Smart segue. We talked about that for a moment. Publishers want you to be able to see that you have a history. In order to cut an advantageous deal, you must show that you can generate a profit. Either you generate your history on your own through self publishing, or you take it in the shorts, like my brother did, and write one on speculation and take a real low deal to prove yourself to the market.
I decided to prove, without marketing, without distribution, without advertising of any form, other than a little notice on my web page and word of mouth, that I could market well enough to make it interesting. Then, I maintain very detailed spreadsheets. I will then hand those to the literary agent who will hand them to the publisher showing marketability.
You need, in any business situation, to be able to analyze advantage within the marketplace, profitability and effective use of resources. Most publishers are in the business to make money. They don’t care about reputation other than they cannot put out a bunch of bad stuff. They are interested in making money for their stockholders or their owner.
They are looking for something that will take in money. They want to make the lions share of the profit. They have their own marketing teams, their own distribution networks, their own editors, their own printing facilities. So they can capture as much of the profit as they can. They still want to give as little as possible to the author.
For you to acquire a percentage higher than the 8% that you will typically get as a first time author (or what you are able to negotiate), you need to prove that it is a very viable product – or that YOU are a very viable product. My thinking here is that by showing them that, without marketing, distribution or any of the normal methods, I was able to achieve success -- in my opinion, that is a good way of proving marketability. This should allow me to deal from a position of strength – hopefully.
Right now, I am at the end of a 5 year plan and I am in the process of creating/executing a new one. I have several different plans going at any one time (and several sub plans). I am on schedule and the next one is about to start. The only way I can get from point A to point B is to make use of the material that I have generated during the last 5 year plan to prove that this is a viable business plan. It is virtually the same thing as trying to raise venture capital. It is the same game.
I have attempted to pursue artistic endeavors over 30 plus years of working life. I have been an artist in a lot of fields. You have to remember that engineering is an art. I have also been a musician. Ultimately, you have to figure out how to eat. It is cool to be a starving artist, but it is better to be an eating one. You have to figure out a way of marketing your art. If you are an engineer, pure research is cool but if you cannot market the research, you are wasting your time. You need to learn how to market your product, whatever that may be. You need to design something that people need.
JM: Or want…
RR: Yes. You are right. And you need to find a way of bringing it to the market in a way that is affordable to produce. Everyone has to find a way of winning in the business equation. You need for everyone to win – including the end user.
JM: What do you think that it takes to make it in the business? It seems that a theme that I regularly hear is that ‘the market has changed’ and that it is ‘harder to make it’ in nature and wildlife photography. What do you think the key is?
RR: Marketing. It has always been marketing. Even if you look at the guys who started 30 years ago, it has always been marketing. Either they did it themselves or they bought someone to do it for them. It is a cool lifestyle and it is a goal for many many people to be able to photograph professionally or retire to it [photography] because it is so cool.
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Mossy Tree (c) Ron Reznick
JM: Are there any mistakes that you feel can be avoided if you did it over again?
RR: Well, wait a second. Those mistakes are required. Either you live vicariously through someone else’s mistakes and learn from them or you make them yourself. However, that is what research is all about. Mistakes are about the best way to learn.
Just like anything else, if you are establishing a business or trying to turn a hobby into a business, the fact that it is a business means that someone needs to buy something. This means that you are trying to sell something that someone wants to buy. It is not just that the product is capable of being sold, it is also that you are going to SELL it. Knowing how to sell the product is key. If you don’t know how to sell something, you had better learn – or hire someone who knows how. You need to do enough research in the field to be competent in that field before you can evaluate if the people you are working with – or hiring – are going to be effective. This is critical.
Business and photographing are two different things. The amount of time you spend in office related stuff is greater than the time you spend photographically - if you want to make it successful.
JM: This is a gear question - and it is NOT a Nikon v Canon question. How has your field of work impacted your choice in gear i.e. digital v 6x4.5, etc.?
RR: If you are a landscape photographer, you can work with a larger format and get superb results. However, you cannot work with those tools in the same way and react in the field as rapidly as you can with 35mm gear. It has only recently been that we have had the ability to get tools that would allow the 35mm photographer to achieve results similar to that of larger format tools. The d2x and the 1ds are the only cameras that have really allowed us to do this. I like the 35mm-style bodies for speed of use and their flexibility. There are still reasons to shoot with a View-camera - but I wouldn't want to.
JM: The next question is an ethical question, how far do you think it is OK to go with post processing?
RR: Depends. I know that for myself, I am most intersted in portraying reality (or my view of reality). If it is for an art director, it is a different thing. You can see where I am going. If you are doing PJ, it has to be what you saw. If you are talking about a product shot or fine art, it really depends on 'who is in charge.' That is just business.
Let us say that in order to do a shoot within budget, the art director is saying ”I need you to process this material so it looks as if it was shot at 5:30 PM (and it was shot at 2:30 PM). Who is in charge? It is really up to the art director. If the business requires that you make alterations, you do whatever it takes to get the job done. That is part of being a pro. As I said earlier, art and business are two different animals.
JM: Were there any dark days that you thought about doing something else full time?
RR: No way. That normally happens when you are either not doing something that you want to do, or you have lost direction. Remember that I get bored real easily?
Ron Resnick is the author of an e-book "Digital Photography, Acquisition and Processing Techniques." If you would like to know more about his e-book or other work, please feel free to check out his website at: http://www.digital-images.net/.
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