Ways To Start Your Own Digital Photographic Business! (Part Four)

Want to make money with digital photography? Want your own Photographic Business? Its not just wedding photography, read on to find out other ways to make money and start your own business in the exciting world of Photography! Here is a list of the fifth 10, with an outline of the type of business that can be made.Your own digital, photography based, home business could start here…* TEMPORARY TATTOOS. People love tattoos, kids love them, but after a while they lose their novelty. That’s where temporary tattoos are king! You can remove them, or they wear off. Apart from a personalised service, tattoos of loved ones, pets etc, how about a mobile service? Track meets, races, football, fairs, carnivals, markets. Add it to cartoons as well, with the right media, a camera and a printer you are in business.* LIGHT SWITCH COVERS. You have seen the plastic light switch covers in hardware stores. Well how about making your own, either a cut out print on its own, or behind the plastic bought cover. Business premises, households, gifts, souvenirs. Advertise in electrical outlets.* FAKE HEADLINES. We have all seen the newspapers (genuine), that were printed on the day people were born. How about copying, (not exactly don’t want to get sued) front pages of newspapers,trade press, magazines? Offer a front page spread of someone’s story on their favourite rag “Cindy Taylor Is 11 Today!” “George Trent Catches Worlds Biggest Fish!” You get the idea, have some humorous fake news stories to fill out the page.* MIRRORS. Stickers or transparency film work well to liven up ordinary mirrors, can be bought ready to go, made quite cheaply, or picked up for pennies at sales, or markets. A mirror covered with a theme, or personalised as a gift stands out. You can’t buy them. Cat lovers, fishing nuts, sports, you decide.* PHOTOMONTAGE. You can make great unique works of art here, with many images of a famous place, or any theme you like. Make it big, sell as a poster,or frame it. Keep it on your memory,as you may need lots of copies!* SUNCATCHERS. Suncatchers, or even dreamcatchers made from transparency film are great selling items. And you can let your imagination go wild on the dreamcatchers. Light landscapes work well on the suncatchers, when they are illuminated by the sun and cast colourful images around the walls. Good for advertising, or themed ones, how about coffee shops?* KEYCHAINS. Personalised keychains, or corporate ones can be made quite inexpensively with oven shrink film. How about hand carwash places as advertising media? Car hire firms, taxi companies, couriers? There are a lot of keys out there, don’t forget the housing market estate agents, rental properties!* STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY. This is a broad subject that includes libraries and agencies. Basically you lodge your best photographic efforts with them and they try to sell it for you with their, hopefully, strong contact base in the publishing industry. For their trouble they take a percentage. This was an area where your work had to be mostly large format and on slides. And technically perfect. A lot has changed with the digital photographic revolution and the arrival of the internet. Most things are digital now and the subject matter is endless, the internet wants pictures of everything. It is still a crowded market though. Why not start your own? Or just have your own website, selling your particular area of interest.* BOOKMARKS. Lots of places to sell these, bookshops have become coffee shops, or is it the other way around? Either way the bookstore owner or coffee purveyor would love the customers to be using their bookmarks.* AMATEUR SPORTS. You have to be careful here, with the privacy laws that exist, for example in swimming pools. But I am sure if you introduced yourself as a budding sports photographer who would make available prints, or downloads for any rising star at a competitive price, you would be welcomed. Especially if you looked the part and acted in a professional manner at all times.This is just to get your creative juices going and your brain storming with ideas! The internet has opened up a never ending need for images, of anything and everything. Stock photography has changed, gone are the highly professional, large format shots of models and beaches, that had to be technically perfect, well they are not gone, but they are not the only opportunities for aspiring photographers who want to make a living with their hobby, their passion. Images that you wouldn’t believe started life as a photograph end up everywhere these days and the ability to transform these images is available to everyone, and in the comfort of their own home.Don’t forget a lot of well known high street businesses started life on a kitchen table, why not yours?

Recycled Maps in a Digital Age

As we immerse ourselves into a digital age, with satellite navigation systems in our cars, and GPS mobile phone tracking in the palm of our hands, how much time do we have until paper maps and atlases become obsolete, in favour of their digital version?From an environmental standpoint, digital maps may be a positive change, with a reduction in paper when printed maps are not longer required, lessening the strain on our diminishing forests. Will, however, the fascination of atlases in particular be lost in future generations? World maps filled with mystical discovery of far flung places, filling our minds with adventure, and appreciation at the sheer size of our planet. Will school children’s fascination with fantasy ‘pirate’ treasure maps, be lost as paper maps cease to exist for future generations?We are taught to read maps from a young age, which are appreciated, and understood by the majority of the worlds’ population, regardless of language.Historically, modern paper maps became increasingly popular, and accurate, around the 16th to 18th century, however, with the introduction of GIS (Geographic information systems) in the 1970s and 1980s, cartography (the art and science of making maps) has changed forever. Our earth, our countries, our cities and roads, are mapped, stored, and analyzed in digital format.We could hold into our paper maps, giving us reason to rediscover our past world at a later time, although it is expected that many outdated maps will be banished to landfill over the coming decades. Perhaps a better way to preserve our paper maps while we still have an abundant of them, might be to create a product which contains their existing material, but is upcycled into an attractive artistic piece to admire.Such ideas include making art pieces from unwanted atlases, drink coasters from discarded maps from a favourite holiday destination, using recycled maps to make an origami bowl, a recycled map bunting to decorate your room, how about a wintery Christmas map wreath, or revamping an old desk or furniture piece with decoupaged recycled atlases.What is the beauty of using old maps in craft projects? They tell a story, serve as an attractive piece of art, and from an environmental point of view, reusing paper maps for decorative purposes, gives Mother Nature the nod!One does wonder if we will also lose our sense of direction in our digital future, when paper maps are gone?