Picture's worth

[Beswad]

If you photograph something important by accident e.g. celebrities, an accident etc. Can you sell it to the national papers? If so how much can you hope to get from it?

[Hippy]

It doesn't have to be by accident, but if you do, and you were in a public place, and what you photographed could be seen by a reasonable person from that public place (if the celeb or whatever was not in the public place) then you should not have a problem.

 

If you were getting changed at the gym and you "accidentally" snapped the celeb naked or in a possibly unflattering pose on your picture phone etc. then your options are severly limited, as this is definitely an invasion of privacy, probably against the rules of gym membership, and to publish such shots would be asking for legal action impossible to defend.

 

How much for your legal photos is more difficult. Put simply, the price of a thing is as much as anyone is prepared to pay. So if your celeb snap is obviously worth something to the picture editor of, say, the Daily Mirror, and he/she gives you a ball park fiigure of �250, you might just mention that you have been speaking to the Daily Mail, and they put a slightly higher price on it as they are running a story about the celeb anyway and thought your pic fitted in rather well. It's all bluff and counter bluff. Remeber, however, the picture will only have a value for a short time, possibly only a few hours.

 

[El D]

personally I would not try and sell a picture of an accident. Im not a vulture

[spainlads]

I bought a brand new camera in August and less than 2 hours later witnessed an armed incident in the street. I went round to the local paper who paid me �50 for the pictures. Not bad for a couple of minutes work :)

www.tarantulasweb.com/derek/ and click on 'Armed police in Manchester'.

[SimonMorton]

I try to sell every single picture that I take, but generally to no avail.

[ll_billym]

If I had a picture of Prince William snogging anyone on a secluded beach I would hold out at �500,000.

[TTFresh]

I would not sell a photograph of someone else as I feel it sinks a little too low.  It not only fuels the celebrity culture that we all seem to crave but if someone had an embarrassing photo of me I would be very grateful if they kept it out of the public domain (should i be famous).  Earn your money, it's a lot more satisfying and saves any moral dilemmas. Oh, and in answer to your question - yes they'll buy anything and the money depends on "Who" doing "what".

[Gee Bee]

An old boss of mine used to go out at lunchtime to photograph points of interest......we used to work opposite a bank and it was once robbed and my boss managed to get a photo of one the captives smashing a window and calling out for help after the robbers had gone.He phoned up several daily papers and there was literally an auction in our workplace. the first bid was �150 by the end he'd got �2000 for the picture.