How My Rugby World Cup Countdown Clock Photo Almost Made Me Money

A couple of weeks ago, someone got in touch with me about a photo I took and posted on My Pictorial World, a small photo blog of mine.  His firm is working on a project so that they can cash in on the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which starts October 9.

As part of the project, they need photos of various items to do with the world cup and one of those items happened to be the RWC Countdown Clock, which is located in central Auckland. They did a Google image search and stumbled upon the photo I took which they seemed to like.

They got in touch with me about the photo and made me an offer (which was in the hundreds) for a copy for them to use on their publication. Unfortunately, the photo did not meet their requirements because they wanted one that was at least 300 dpi. I took the shot at 72 dpi, which is well below their requirements. They did ask for a copy of it to see if they could tweak it and make it work for them but they could only get it to 200 dpi.

This experience served as a lesson to take images at the best possible resolution. In the case of the countdown clock, I was limited because of the camera I had on me at the time (an old and simple point & shot).

From this and other experiences I have been through there are 3 tips that come to mind that may come in handy for people who take photos and upload them onto blogs/websites for the world to see. They are:

Take High Resolution Photos – make sure to take photos at the best possible resolution for the reasons above.

Watermark Images – besides branding your photos, a watermark protects your images from theft. If someone wants to use your photo, they would need to get in touch with you to make an arrangement for an ‘un-watermarked’ version. I use Adobe Photoshop for photo editing and watermarking.

Optimise For Search Engines – this is easy to do and could help photos rank well in for example Google Image Search. Search Engine Optimization: Your visual blueprint for effective Internet marketing by Kris Jones has a section on how to do just that.

You may end up in a situation similar to the one that I did and if it does happen, I hope you are in a position where you actually earn some money for your photos.