Licensing and Pricing. What is licensing? I license the use of my images to you, so that my work can contribute to the success of your article, advertisement, book, brochure, presentation or web site. I do not "sell" the image itself. Rather, you are permitted to use the image for a purpose or series of purposes, for an agreed-upon fee. This is what is known as "rights-managed" photography. The negotiation of the rights and fees is between you and me.
Your project may use one or more than one of my images. I extend discounted prices for projects that use several of our images. I do not have a minimum fee per image, but I do have a minimum "project fee" which I am happy to discuss with you.
In order for me to quote a fee, I need to know the following about how you will use photography in your project. The more specific you can be the more quickly and accurately I can quote a fee. In general, the fewer rights you require the lower the cost.
- What type of project is it: editorial, advertising, commercial, internet/electronic?
- Does your project require exclusivity, perhaps within your industry?
- For printed projects, how large is the circulation / print run? Do you require reprint rights?
- In what countries will the product be distributed, i.e., do you need domestic or international rights?
- In what languages will the product be distributed?
Digital Image Delivery. I now deliver virtually all of my images to clients digitally as full-resolution downloads from my website.
For photographs shot with digital camera (since 2002), I provide the image in its maximum resolution. The RAW file can be made available for you upon request.
For photographs shot on color slide (transparency) film, I provide digital images as
- 5400 x 3600 pixels (e.g., 18" x 12" at 300dpi) minimum; up to 7200 x 4800 pixels (e.g., 24" x 16" at 300dpi) available upon request.
- 56 megabyte RGB TIFF files (filesize may be smaller due to lossless compression). If you prefer, files can be delivered as high quality (visually lossless) JPEG files, usually 5-10 MB in size.
- Color space: Adobe RGB (1998), gamma 2.2.
- Scanner optical resolution: 4000 ppi
- Nominal output size: 18 inches x 12 inches at 300dpi.
- Color / density corrected by the photographer.
- You will want to unsharp mask and perhaps fine tune colors for your particular printing requirements.
Larger files or CMYK scans are available for images you decide to use in your project.
Image Search. Over 35,000 of our images can be found in my online database. You can search by keyword, common or scientific (latin) name and view the images in small thumbnails or larger versions with complete caption and keywording data. My online search is perhaps the best one on the internet, particularly among natural history photographers, and it is now mimicked in style (but not substance) by stock agencies and other photographers. Google tends to rank my subjects highly in its results, a testament to the facile design of my website search. I can prepare a customized digital lightbox for you via a private web page of images if you identify the subject(s) you are interested in considering. This takes me just a few minutes.
Editorial Use Editorial use accounts for about 80% of my sales. I almost always respond to inquiries about my subjects within a day, and often within a hour. For clients with whom I have spoken or have developed a rapport, I can prepare a "private" web page for you within a few minutes that displays large views of my entire coverage of a particular subject, e.g., all of my photographs of blue whales.
Commercial and Advertising. Interested in using photography to sell your product? Most all of my images involve water and/or animal life in some way. I price my work as rights-managed photography. For commercial and advertising use I have had our best luck fulfilling client needs for the following themes:
- whales -- graceful, huge, imposing, magnificent, nurturing, curious
- dolphins -- curious, playful, fast, vulnerable
- water -- light, patterns, blue, expansiveness, abstract, background
- man in the ocean -- daring, intrepid, exciting, stranger in a strange land