Here are 3 ways that your photography can help you in a recession, or anytime you want to have just a little bit extra.

1. Sell your images as stock.
You can either sign with a stock agency or you can sell your images on your own. If you decide to sign with a stock agency (after all, they do provide the needed exposure for you), you will need to make sure that your images are up to par. Since you are beginning, you would want to target the microstock agencies until you get the hang of things before moving on to the big stock agencies.

Your images will need to be well focused, well lit, and be saleable. To help you stand out, you’ll want to think of non-traditional ways to express ideas, thoughts, and feelings through a picture.

Here’s a short list of some microstock agencies you can sign up for to start.

iStockPhoto
Shutterstock
Fotolia

iStockPhoto is the top microstock agency right now. Shutterstock is the next one. From personal experience, Shutterstock is slightly easier to get in and to get photos accepted. iStockPhoto is very stringent on their requirement. Fotolia is a growing agency and it is easier to get accepted into.

2. Find jobs with insurance companies that need someone to take pictures of their insured equipment.
Major insurance companies need to keep an eye on the equipment they insure to prevent fraudulent claims and whatnot. For this they need photographers from all over who have an internet connection to take pictures, fill out a report, and send it back to them to add to their database.

You can do this when you have the extra time to get some extra money.

You can check out the Easy Photography Biz page for how to get this going.

3. Set up shop.
People are always buying shirts and other small gifts. You can get in there and set up your own shop of shirts and other small gifts with your photography and designs on there. There are several sites that allow you to upload your pictures and create your own products which you then can place in their marketplace. When someone makes a purchase, you get a cut of the sale. There is no inventory for you to worry about as those sites do the fulfillment as well.

The 2 most popular of these sites are:

Zazzle
CafePress

Now, you can certainly buy a lightbox, but making your own lightbox will yield you similar results and for a whole lot less money! Although the DIY ones are not as foldable or storeable as the commercial lightboxes.

The materials you need to make your own lightbox are foamboard, packaging tape, and a utility knife.

To make a 20 x 30 x 30 inch lightbox, you will need 5 sheets of at least 1/4″ foamboard sized 20 x 30 inches. What you do is tape it together into the shape of a box with one open side. With the utility knife you cut the 2 sides that are sticking up so you get a box with one open side.

For lights, you can get the clamp lights they sell at Home Depot and such. You will be clamping the lights onto the sides of the lightbox and turning the light towards the inside of the box.

You will be able to put whatever kind of background you like inside this box for you to photograph your products on.

For lights, make sure you get the daylight balanced bulbs. If you are somewhat technical, the specification should be between 5500 to 6500K for the temperature of the bulb.

For a more detailed tutorial with pictures, you can go here.

After you open the image to which you want to add the copyright watermark, you’ll want to choose the Type tool.

text tool

Now choose a location where you want your copyright statement to be and type in your statement (you can do ‘© 2008 your name’ or ‘all rights reserved’ or anything else you want to type). To get the copyright symbol, either insert symbol or if you are using a Windows keyboard on a Windows machine, you can use the keyboard shortcut of Alt+0169. Make sure you are using the numpad for the keyboard shortcut.

copyright statement

Once you are happy with the placement of your copyright statement, change the fill of the layer to 0%. Your text will disappear from sight at this point.

0% fill

Now, right click the layer and choose ‘Blending Options . . . .’ Check the ‘Bevel and Emboss’ option and now you should be able to see your new copyright watermark statement.

bevel and emboss

You can change the settings around in the options of the bevel and emboss for different styles of the copyright watermark.

copyright watermark result