Lonely Planet Images, opinions?

Jimbojack

Hello everyone,

I love to travel and photograph what I see, I try to do it for at least 2-4 months of every year. Over the years I've visited and photographed quite a few places.

So I have well over 100,000 pictures from many different countries (and growing), most of the photos are not that great but I think I've improved quite a bit in the last couple of years and I'm quite happy with the ones I've taken last year.

I've been thinking about doing something with them, so I stared to check out some travel oriented sites and lonely planet images is one of the more famous ones (I do use their guidebooks sometimes)

http://www.lonelyplanetimages.com/prospectivephotographers.html

They require a "application" CD/DVD with 500 images. I'm fairly confident I could send them a collection of 500, maybe from 30 different countries or so, and have a decent chance of being accepted.

Before I do that however, I'm trying to decide if I should go this route. One of the things they require is that you have to let them be the only agency that can sell the pictures submitted for the next 5 years. Another requirement is that you travel a lot and consistently keep submitting images to them (not a problem for me).

Anyone have any experience with them? What do you think I should do? Any comments/suggestions/experiences would be great, thank you in advance

Here are some of my pictures:

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=84739

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=85181

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=84059

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=83703

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=76528

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=75554

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=75467

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=69869

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=60280

mountainpz

Jimbojack wrote:

Hello everyone,

I love to travel and photograph what I see, I try to do it for at least 2-4 months of every year. Over the years I've visited and photographed quite a few places.

So I have well over 100,000 pictures from many different countries (and growing), most of the photos are not that great but I think I've improved quite a bit in the last couple of years and I'm quite happy with the ones I've taken last year.

I've been thinking about doing something with them, so I stared to check out some travel oriented sites and lonely planet images is one of the more famous ones (I do use their guidebooks sometimes)

http://www.lonelyplanetimages.com/prospectivephotographers.html

They require a "application" CD/DVD with 500 images. I'm fairly confident I could send them a collection of 500, maybe from 30 different countries or so, and have a decent chance of being accepted.

Before I do that however, I'm trying to decide if I should go this route. One of the things they require is that you have to let them be the only agency that can sell the pictures submitted for the next 5 years. Another requirement is that you travel a lot and consistently keep submitting images to them (not a problem for me).

Anyone have any experience with them? What do you think I should do? Any comments/suggestions/experiences would be great, thank you in advance

Here are some of my pictures:

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=84739

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=85181

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=84059

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=83703

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=76528

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=75554

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=75467

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=69869

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=60280

Just wondering if you ended up as a contributor for LPI and how that is working out for you...

Art Scott

I am wondering the same thing......your pix are great......but I had no advice, when originally posted as I have not used or tried to use them.....

So how is it working out??????

Jimbojack

Thanks, glad you liked my photos.

I ended up not joining, I read a few somewhat negative opinions and decided that I did not want them to have exclusive rights for my pictures for that long. I also read a bit about the rates, LP prefers to pay little money for shitty quality photos taken by the guidebook authors rather then paying more for better quality shots. For their guidebooks, I can understand that stance...

The original post is about 2 years old, in the meantime I have traveled quite a bit more and added to my collection. Right now I am finishing my 2 month trip to Central Asia, and have some fairly unique shots (I visited Northern Afghanistan last week, visited Kyrgyzstan 2 days before the revolution). When I get back I will work on my website a lot more and try to market my photos somehow.

I was able to license a couple of my images to people/companies who found them on my website. One of them was an Italian design company for example. I'm thinking of really redoing my site and promoting it myself.

We'll see how that works out.

Anybody have any suggestions? Any agencies that would be interested in these kind of photos?

Phillip

Art Scott wrote:

I am wondering the same thing......your pix are great......but I had no advice, when originally posted as I have not used or tried to use them.....

So how is it working out??????

Gary Peterson Photography

Hmmm with that many quality images....

Jimbojack wrote:

Thanks, glad you liked my photos.

I ended up not joining, I read a few somewhat negative opinions and decided that I did not want them to have exclusive rights for my pictures for that long. I also read a bit about the rates, LP prefers to pay little money for shitty quality photos taken by the guidebook authors rather then paying more for better quality shots. For their guidebooks, I can understand that stance...

The original post is about 2 years old, in the meantime I have traveled quite a bit more and added to my collection. Right now I am finishing my 2 month trip to Central Asia, and have some fairly unique shots (I visited Northern Afghanistan last week, visited Kyrgyzstan 2 days before the revolution). When I get back I will work on my website a lot more and try to market my photos somehow.

I was able to license a couple of my images to people/companies who found them on my website. One of them was an Italian design company for example. I'm thinking of really redoing my site and promoting it myself.

We'll see how that works out.

Anybody have any suggestions? Any agencies that would be interested in these kind of photos?

Phillip

Perhaps you should consider a small start up stock agency of your own...hire a web guru to trick out your Smugmug site...promote the heck out of it and reap the rewards yourself....