February 2010  Photographers Resource - Monthly   Edition 74

Out and About in February

• Editorial

• Photographic Feature - Setting Your Prices

• Photographers Diary

Well it's now February and we are heading towards spring. February is the month of Snowdrops, where these little white plants peak their heads through the woodland floor, and in gardens of course. Scotland has a Snowdrop Festival which runs from 1st of February through to the 15th March. It is a joint project between Visit Scotland, National Trust of Scotland, Scotland's Gardens Scheme and gardens around Scotland who get together and create a guide and website listing all the places you can visit to see these magical beauties. Take a look at the Scottish Snowdrop Festival website for details on where to go. In England many gardens and woodland floors will have swathes of their tiny little heads popping up through the leaf litter or grass giving great photo opportunities and a challenge on how to get close to them, particularly when they are so low on the ground. Take a look at our list Where to Photograph Snowdrops for a few places you can get to see them, there are some places that only open at this point in the year so that you can see their carpet of snowdrops. In Somerset there is Snowdrop Valley,   at Wheddon Cross on Exmoor where there are organised woodland walks and tours put on.

The 3D articles are delayed yet again, this time due to a combination of weather and availability, but we hope to have them in the next edition.

Its great getting out in the winter months and we have visited a lot of places, perhaps more than we should have. Amongst these was a visit to the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum and we have updated the location guide on this, plus added a gallery. As you will see from the gallery pictures popular places like this photographed out of season not only allow you to get pictures other won't but they also allow you to get photographs with very few people, if any, in. As you can guess I have a number of other places I plan to visit each week over the next few weeks, while most people are tucked up indoors missing all these great opportunities.

Another place I visited last week was Woollaton Hall and Park in Nottingham. This has live steam in their Industrial Museum once a month, usually the last Sunday, in addition to a very interesting Natural History Museum in a large mansion house surrounded by parkland with Fallow and Red Deer. The Red Deer were so tame that we got so close that our shadows was presenting a problem in the photos. We saw a large range of wildlife and at this time of year many birds and animals are hungry and therefore tempted to come closer to you than they normally would. In this case we got within feet of Grey Squirrels and a very large number of birds including Nuthatches. All of which we could photograph.

Setting Your Prices

Whether you intend to make a living from your photography or not it is a good idea to create yourself a rate card for what you think your photography is worth. Those who intend to create an income from their photography will definitely need to create some form of rate card so that they can price up jobs accordingly. In our article Setting Your Rate Card,  we take a look at how you might go about this. Looking in detail at what you should consider, making sure all your costs are covered, how you work out what others are charging for a comparable service so that you do not either price yourself out of the market or not get any work because you are too cheap. It can work both ways.

Even if you do not intend to make photography a business it is still worth having some idea of what you might charge if you were asked to do something. I have come across many times where photographers have been asked to do a wedding or portraits of friends and family, or a few odd shots for a local business, and not knowing what to charge. Having some idea of what is the going rate, and being for armed with an idea of what you would like to charge will help with these unexpected requests, or move away from people expecting you to do it either for nothing or at least on the cheap. The article Suggested Minimum Rates for Photographers,  tries to simplify this for you, breaking down into sections different prices for different types of work. A guide to help you out.

Photography as you will be aware is an expensive hobby, with equipment going out of date and most of us having a wish list beyond what we can justify. Very many people now make their photography pay for itself perhaps using their holiday shots to fund the following years holiday or doing occasional commissioned work, or perhaps a number of magazine articles. We have articles including:-

• Getting Photos in Magazines,  How to get your work published profitably. Over 8,000 magazines all looking for articles and photographs in the UK alone.

• Creating illustrated articles, the advantage of providing text as well as photos or working with others that do. 

• An Income from Calendars

• Stock Photography and Micro Stock the licensing of rights to the reproduction of your photos for specific uses for a fee.

Plus others you will find in the Photography Income  section.

If you are thinking about turning your photography skills into a business then you may also find our Photography Business    section of help.

The March diary is now in the 'next month' slot with February moved to in the 'this month'. Both months have a lot of opportunities for everyone.  Some highlights that are of particular interest are:-

Silver Ball Hurling at St Ives in Cornwall on the 8th February. The Silver Hurling ball is the size of an orange, made from apple-wood and coated with silver. It flies through the village streets of St Ives on Feast Monday in February (on the Sunday nearest to Feb 3rd). At one time the games was played by the men of the village, today it is played by the children.

The 14th February of course is the day of love, Valentines Day, but this year it is also the day when the city of Birmingham celebrates this years Chinese New Year with dragon dances, martial arts displays, acrobats and fire crackers. 2010 is the year of the Tiger. There are many events taking place all over the UK where there are strong Chinese communities, like Birmingham and London.

Pancake Day is on the 16th and various traditional activities are taking place such as the Olney Pancake Race in Buckinghamshire where competitors dress in traditional costume and race with their pancake down the High Street. Or you could watch the Shrovetide Fair and Pancake Races in Lichfield Staffordshire. Also on this day another traditional English custom is the Atherstone Ball Game. A game played with water-filled ball decorated with local football team's colours. The game lasts 2 hours from kick off at 3pm. Its played in the streets, all shops in vicinity are boarded up and closed. It originates from the reign of King John as a contest between men from Warwickshire and Leicestershire, who competed for a bag of gold.

There have been a number of updates for all the Nikon DSLR range and all Nikon software. We have once again updated our Nikon Firmware and Software Versions page to keep you all up to date. There are far more changes in both software upgrades and firmware this time than usual and its a good idea to do all of this at one time as some programs only work with the firmware update from the same time period.

Setting Your Rate Card 

Suggested Minimum Rates for Photographers 

Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, Sussex