CELEBRITY FOCUS
Many newspapers like to feature well-known personalities doing something unusual. Virgin’s Richard Branson in a wedding dress is guaranteed to be newsworthy.
POSTCARDS
Changes in technology can affect markets in different and often unexpected ways. There’s no doubt, for example, that the development of quality camera phones has had an impact upon sales of postcards that no-one would have anticipated a decade ago. These days, many people on holiday prefer to text back a picture of themselves relaxing on the beach or living it up in a nightclub – rather than sending an anonymous ‘wish you were here’-type postcard.
That doesn’t mean the postcard market is dead, however. The sheer number of people going on holiday each year, and the number of times they do so, means that postcards are certain to be around for some time yet. Another reason they continue to sell is the picture quality, which is much better than most amateurs are able to achieve themselves. Usually the light is glorious, the composition attractive and the mood idyllic. If you’re looking to get into the postcard market, that is what you need to be shooting, too.
GO FOR IMPACT
If postcards are to sell they need to have impact on the stand, so look for ways of making your subject matter stand out.
The vast majority of postcards are bought by people on holiday, so you need to focus on the right places – coastal resorts, popular inland towns, scenic villages, attractive landscapes, and beautiful gardens and cities that are popular with tourists. You must also select the right view or subject. Postcard publishers are looking for ‘definitive’ shots of a particular area – pictures that portray its spirit and essence. At almost all locations, there are certain things that you need to include: particular views, well-known buildings or monuments and specific landmarks. By all means take other pictures of the place, but don’t expect them to sell for postcards. Paris, for example, has certain iconic views such as the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, and even much smaller towns will typically have a few key landmarks. Not surprisingly, they are by far the most popular postcard subjects.
Successful postcard pictures are often visual clichés that depict the kind of subject matter visitors associate most readily with the place. Think of London, for instance, and you might think of Big Ben, red buses, Nelson’s Column, beefeaters, the Tower of London, black taxi cabs – and, sure enough, those are the images on the most popular cards. It’s the same in Paris, where visitors typically go for shots of the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame and Frenchmen wearing berets and strings of onions. Such subjects and treatments may seem corny and stereotyped, but that really is what people buy – because they sum up what tourists think of the location.
That said, postcard companies are constantly looking for new approaches, and in recent years have come up with a range of different treatments in a bid to stand out from the crowd. A number of companies, for instance, now publish cut-out postcards, where the card is designed in the shape of the subject depicted in the original photograph: a card of Big Ben will be shaped like Big Ben, for example. This means that the main subject in each picture must be bold and obvious so that it lends itself to this cut-out treatment. Simple compositions with few other elements are required, especially elements that are obstructing the main subject and make a cut-out difficult. Traditional long views won’t work. But don’t just go for the obvious – they’re pretty well covered already. Think laterally and try to come up with more creative pictures. In London, for example, you will see postcards of a pint of beer (shaped like a pint of beer), a red telephone box (shaped like a telephone box), and so on.
BEACH SCENES
The time when most people send postcards is when they’re on vacation, and beach scenes are popular sellers – so make sure you shoot them.
Another thing you need to do is take your pictures at the right time. More often than not, that’s during summer, in bright sunlight, when you can feature attractive blue skies. The only exception to this rule are places like the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands, Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon, which are frequented all year round by people who are interested in more than getting a suntan.
How do you know what the key subjects and treatments are when you have never been to a location before? Just look at the postcards that are already on sale in the place. By definition, their subjects are the things you need to photograph – because they wouldn’t have been chosen for postcards if they weren’t. Your first port of call when shooting with the postcard market in mind is the collections of cards currently available. Study them carefully. Even better, become a postcard collector. The great thing about postcards is that they are relatively inexpensive to obtain.
As your collection grows, you will soon develop a sense for what kind of material gets published. You will also notice that the market is dominated by a relatively small number of businesses, whose names you can find printed on the backs of the cards or listed in The Freelance Photographer’s Market Handbook. If you have some material that you would like to send in, or shoot specifically, it’s a good idea to give your target companies a call first, to find out if they are interested. This isn’t a particularly glamorous area of publishing, so you won’t encounter too many people with king-size egos – they are usually approachable and happy to help.
The magic hour
Many urban locations – cities such as London, Newcastle, Paris and Sydney – look particularly striking when photographed at dusk, when the lights in the streets and buildings have been turned on but there is still some blue in the sky. Rural subjects are often at their most picturesque in the early morning. Whatever the subject, it is a waste of time shooting images when the conditions aren’t right. Pictures where the light is as flat as a pancake or the sky is washed out won’t get a second look, and aren’t worth submitting.
TRADITIONAL SUBJECTS
Some subjects have been photographed many times over, but postcard companies are always looking to refresh their ranges.
You will find that most are keen to see new material, particularly of locations where cards sell in large numbers. The competition can be fierce, so new cards are added regularly as those that are not selling well are dropped from the range
It’s a different story, though, in locations where the volume of sales is lower – such as villages with a small but steady tourist trade. Here the cards are likely to be updated relatively infrequently – sometimes only once every five or ten years – so the demand for new images is considerably less. If you want to earn a reasonable sum from postcard work, it makes sense to focus on the main tourist areas.
Once you