Have any of you - or anyone you know- ever worked with a company that pays you for shooting rolls of film and sending them in unprocessed? I am hoping that their proposal is serious, but have a skeptical streak that makes me afraid it is "too good to be true."

-- Ruth Quinlan (garnetlane@aol.com), October 19, 2001

Answers

Just heard a lady talk at the farmer's market that she sold a photograph for $400. Not sure what company she went through and I'm not sure if she sent in the film or the photograph. Sounded like she sent in pic's quite often. With all the free-lancing going on these days it wouldn't suprise me if was a real deal.

-- Stacey (stacey@lakesideinternet.com), October 19, 2001.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Any chance you have to buy your film from them? Or pay them for developing? Or both?? I hope this helps.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), October 19, 2001.

National geographic takes the raw film, but you have to be one of thier staff first. Stock houses keep 'stables' of artists with their own 'style' or catagories. You basically audition for them w/ a porfolio. Btw is it slide film? Three are a couple of film developers that will develop your film for free[fotofish?photofish?], but you loose all rights to it, & they can display/sell it anywhere!

-- bj pepper in C. MS. (pepper.pepper@excite.com), October 19, 2001.

Sounds too good to be true. A good website to look up info on photo info, including selling photos, is at http://photo.net.

-Chelsea

-- Chelsea (rmbehr@istar.ca), October 19, 2001.

You are asking about an odd deal. Can you tell us some more?

Some people have posted about selling photos for quite a bit of money, or selling as a regular with a certain publication.

I have a dear friend who is a monthly columnist for a state focussed, but New England offered, publication. Fairly wide distribution, in otherwords. At least for this mag. He makes pocket change on it.

He just had an article and pictures accepted to a national publication [after trying for a few years]. The grand total for one use pictures and total rights to article was $275.

Doing things like this can put a feather in your cap. But, the money is hard. And the rejection is harder.

-- pc (pcha@ludl.tds.net), October 19, 2001.

It may be a good deal. I know for a fact that there is a huge demand for "stock" photos. For example, hubby just brought home a photo manipulation software package that has what is called a "tapestry" setting - that's where the software automatically re-does a photo by "rebuilding" it out of thousands of tiny photos which are selected from the database for color and tone match. You have surely seen these types of pictures around - they look like somewhat grainy photos at a distance, but when you get up close you can see all the little pics that make it up.

The database has zillions of photos to choose from, and I'm sure that every software brand has there own unique database of phots, plus every newspaper, magazine, graphics, and ad agency has similar databases for there own use. So who knows, maybe this is just the most cost effective way of meeting this demand.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), October 20, 2001.

If you are talking about one of those ads in the classified, it certainly sounds too good to be true....

I have shot photos for newspapers for more than 21 years and have won state newspaper photography awards....but I haven't made a mint on photos yet.....(always hope! ha!)

anyway, I always go by that old saying, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. A company would be kind of dumb to pay for unprocessed film....

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), October 20, 2001.

I may be telling stories out of school, but I believe many of Countyside's cover photos come from a photo service.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), October 21, 2001.

Ruth,

This is a scam. You are supposed to sell an "emergency identification card" service to people in your community, take their photos, and then send the roll of film to this "company" for developing and making the ID cards. You'll find this an incredibly hard sell, as you are supposed to get $19 or $29 from each of your customers for this punk card they can get free lots of of other places.

The "company" offering this doesn't make their money making ID cards. They make their money off the sign up fees YOU pay to be their representative. Don't fall for it, please! You will be wasting your time and money.

Jim Erskine

-- Jim Erskine (mail@chirotoons.com), October 21, 2001.