Reply To: looking for some honesty. :-D

[JCFindley]

Hmmm, I started to type out a detailed critique but the no shit sherlock statement pretty much put an end to that.

In your defense, while peacocks and leaves don’t hire togs, I do make a living selling images without people that nobody pays me to shoot but people buy after the fact.  Just because no one is paying you to do it does not mean there is not money to be made.

That said, to do that you really need to find subjects or places that are not overly shot. There is nothing wrong with leaves with water droplets or a bee on a flower and they sell every day. The problem is that there are millions of them on the net and even if you shoot the very best bee on a flower ever done you still have to compete with tens of thousands of other similar images. 1. That makes it hard to stand out and be seen and you must be seen to sell. 2. If you can get seen they still have to pick yours among a sea of similar images.  3. If they have a DSLR they will simply produce a similar image themselves. The concept applies to a LOT of over shot subject matter. Bald Eagles for instance. It takes some skill and patience to get a good eagle shot but there are a lot of people that do it leading to market saturation. Flowers, sunsets, butterflies, The Brooklyn or Golden Gate Bridges, etc etc etc ALL fall into this overly saturated market.

If you want to actually make money selling “fine art” photography, whatever that is, you will either need to market your butt off or find subjects or places that simply are not overly shot. What the folks above are saying is that your choice of subjects are basically what everyone starts with. Nothing wrong with that at all but if you do want to sell well you have to find a way to shoot something different.