A couple of a years ago, I heard about Picfair, an online marketplace for amateur and professional photographers to sell directly to buyers.
Its UK-based creators decided to launch Picfair to enable photographers to retain control over the prices of their images, set up in response to a ‘$6 billion professional industry controlled by agencies and middlemen, who fix the prices and take, on average, 74% of the fees’.
Now, I am no professional photographer, but I decided to upload a couple of my favorite photos from my travels when it was launched. I didn’t really think about it at the time and haven’t used Picfair since, until I received an email from them earlier this week congratulating me for having one of my photographs (below) licensed to appear on the Rough Guides website in an article entitled ‘The best photography on Picfair: Romance‘.
I took the photograph of a couple looking out over the Bosphorus, the strait of water connecting the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara in Istanbul, Turkey in March 2011. In my mind, this stranger couple is blissfully happy.
Sadly, and rather stupidly, I had priced the photo for 1 pathetic British Pound (the equivalent of $1.52). But, hey – I felt a momentary sense of pride, and that’s priceless right?
Whether you’re new to photography or a pro, I encourage you to check out Picfair. You’re probably not going to make a living from it – the average photo sells for around $7 – but you might be able to make a little extra cash with photos you’d usually only post on Facebook.
