yes Lisa. My people and life style images do sell in FAA like any other images ie- landscape or conceptual images. I have sold some posters/prints of portraits in zazzle too when i was uploading there earlier.

IN my opinion, it depends, but why does someone wants to hang a photo of strangers on their wall, unless its an image like the girl with the eyes from NG. I have asked the question on FAA and the general answer is no. But you never know what sells as art. If you check the recent sales page, I dont see a lot of people lifestyle images. But then again, I can see how a hotel chain might be interested. For 30 dollar you cant go wrong anyway.

^^ remember that you can choose your settings as to whether someone arriving at 'your' FAA port can see photos or galleries. I have mine set to 'galleries' as after I put up the original set, I might add to each gallery as and when.
Mind you, I'm not exactly successful over there.  (My own fault.)

@Lisa ~
Once you're a member, you can see what's selling on the 'recent sales' page.
However, a proportion of these are not directly sold via the site, but presumably the artists have their portfolios elsewhere and use FAA for fulfilment. One evidence for that is that some images which sell have no keywords aren't don't seem to be searchable on the site.
Other evidence is more subjective, e.g. there's one particular image which sells a lot. I have a couple of the same subject in there, and there are a very few others by other people. Mine sell on iS and Alamy (different pics, same subject) but they haven't even been looked at on FAA, and the pic that sells is 'very strange'. That's purely subjective, though I've showed the small number available to several people (without indicating my personal interest) and ask which they like best and they never pick the multiple-seller. That is totally subjective, but in fact a friend indicated exactly the same re one of their images vs a FAA seller.

Thanks very much for the answers.  Sounds like I would be best off to search back over my port and select out the non-people stuff to upload first. 

Although, Gemmy, I am glad that people shots do sell for you some of the time.  Sounds like a different mindset is required for shooting fine art than stock. Which isn't news, of course, but it will require me to dig a bit deeper...

@JoAnn, I am relieved to hear there is a watermark.  I had vaguely remembered a discussion about that here awhile back, but maybe it was just about it not being very strong.  Thanks for clarifying

If you do decide to set things up at FAA, they advise you to make your default choices before uploading things (or you can upload one image and use that to make the settings and say "Save as Default"). Make sure you check the box that says to use a watermark and ignore the blurb that buyers won't like it as much.

Once your defaults are set, all your uploads will use those settings. And there is no FTP for uploads, so it's good that we don't want to upload our entire portfolios there

I do allow for the 100% zoom, but that's a choice too.

Ow and dont under price yourself. Make sure that at least the artwork is more expensive than the exorbitant shipping costs.

I think its shockingly big, I am selling this size for 7.50 euro on my own website

http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/go-ussr-semmick-photo.jpg

We don't have many people photos there and it's not surprising that we're selling other themes instead.

But to the question about who would want to have a picture of someone in the wall, I think that it's plausible that decorators may want images of people for the decoration of an office or store. Imagine a place were physical therapy or massages are done, it easy to imagine images of happy seniors or beauty photos.

FAA even has a designer's program so they are there and I'm sure they aren't working exclusively in decorating people's homes.

I think its shockingly big, I am selling this size for 7.50 euro on my own website

http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/go-ussr-semmick-photo.jpg

BTW - Really cool photo!

That's right. 

Lisa. I was looking the peoples images which i have sold in FAA and zazzle and i see that i sold my 80 years old grand mom's closeup portrait, smiling with traditional India cloth sari and vermilion on forehead (which is symbolic to married Hindu woman). I had sold this image twice in both outlet before i removed from the galleries.
The other images i sold are also of Indian tribal people. Man plowing farm with bulls, females making handicrafts, family celebrating festival together, mother helping her young baby to brush his teeth lol and likewise. I was also also amazed when sold them as print or cards but now i guess where they can be used. Like here in India, i do see images of woman making handicrafts hanging in the offices/shops selling or dealing handicraft products. My aunt is a dental surgeon and she has a print of image on the wall of her clinic showing a mother with her baby holding tooth brush (which inspired me to take similar shot). And likewise other people and lifestyle images can also be  used as fineart i hues and as i do sell similar images so probably people must be looking some fineart elements in them. Interesting thing is almost all of my Indian images have been  by people outside India lol

Quote from: gemmy12 on November 23, 2013, 21:17

Lisa. I was looking the peoples images which i have sold in FAA and zazzle and i see that i sold my 80 years old grand mom's closeup portrait, smiling with traditional India cloth sari and vermilion on forehead (which is symbolic to married Hindu woman). I had sold this image twice in both outlet before i removed from the galleries.
The other images i sold are also of Indian tribal people. Man plowing farm with bulls, females making handicrafts, family celebrating festival together, mother helping her young baby to brush his teeth lol and likewise. I was also also amazed when sold them as print or cards but now i guess where they can be used. Like here in India, i do see images of woman making handicrafts hanging in the offices/shops selling or dealing handicraft products. My aunt is a dental surgeon and she has a print of image on the wall of her clinic showing a mother with her baby holding tooth brush (which inspired me to take similar shot). And likewise other people and lifestyle images can also be  used as fineart i hues and as i do sell similar images so probably people must be looking some fineart elements in them. Interesting thing is almost all of my Indian images have been  by people outside India lol

Really good info Gemmy!  I'm glad your Indian photos are doing so well.  There must be a particular market for them.  I am sure they are also very excellent. 

I will consider what people shots I have that might be desirable as art.  I'm going to guess it won't be the white background stuff...

Lisa. I never sold isolated stuffs in pod sites but thats probably my own case. If i remember correctly then Steve's (Steve heap) isolated cat is doing well in both stock and FAA. So basically you never know anyways what ever you try i wish you good luck Lisa.

I'm going to guess it won't be the white background stuff...

Why not? Not all white background images would be adequate but there are many that have a chance at selling. Again, I'm talking about professional spaces. For example, many of the large supermarkets in Portugal have in their decorations  images of food isolated in white all around the shop. The same happens in the para-pharmacies with people images.

Sure most of them are printed in acrylic to be lit from behind but I cannot see why another store wouldn't want to have a real print hung in the walls. That actually happens with higher-end smaller shops.

At this moment high-end and gourmet is frequently symbolized by black or dark furniture and decoration and dim lights. But this may turn around and brightly and fresh spaces become the fashion. Then they would need vibrant images.

As I said not all isolated in white images are suitable, but many are. It's just a question of testing. To be honest the offer of these images is so small in FAA that even if there was a market they wouldn't have anything to offer.

NOTE: In isolated images the watermark is a bigger issue and that worries me, but to be honest if someone wants an image for free all they have to do is to use google's image search, even with a heavy watermark on it, and it takes seconds to find a high-res copy available...

But, in the end, the people who steal it won't buy it and the people who buy it won't steal it, so it probably doesn't really make any difference.

Yeah, I agree with that. But its still a feeling of being naked seeing those images sit there like that for everyone to grab.

All your images will be on the internet at 1000px longest side and the watermark is tiny. The reasoning is that a watermark puts off art buyers, and they wont do anything about the 1000px image because its an art site and in general they dont care if their images are downloadable at that size. It seems that it is only a concern to people who also sell stock. They dont care about stock. They forget they also sell postcards and 1000px for postcard is plenty. Even for a small canvas. Anyhoo, the owner of the site made it clear to me that he doesnt care.

PS: FAA's SEO is really good, so your images will be on top of the google search, therefore most likely will be stolen.

I've found quite a few of my photos on blogs where they either have the FAA watermark or are cropped right above the FAA watermark. I actually found one where they cropped out the FAA watermark to where you can still see a small portion of the top of the watermark letters.

Since the majority of stock sales are smaller sizes this is a problem. Google grabs the full 1,000 megpixel size source file and makes it readily available for stealing. This bypasses any FAA security such as disabling right-click.

Unfortunately, with the Royalty Free stock licensing the FAA thefts compound the stealing problem because we have no idea which is a legit purchase or a theft. If my direct sales ever do well enough to go solo I may offer a simplified hybrid RF/RM license limits usage to one company or project so I can track thefts.

Quote from: Gunter Nezhoda on November 24, 2013, 02:17

It takes a lot of self promoting over there if you want good numbers, but worth it to put the time in.
It's important to be displayed in the right groups
http://fineartamerica.com/groups/q-collection.html


and participate in the FAA forum to be seen.


This one is new and promising:
http://qthecollection.com/qtalk/index.php


If you are active over there your sales will be much higher than if you just upload.





~Gunter Nezhoda
Portfolio   Facebook    Gunter Nezhoda Photography

Q is a group you created, the label Q means nothing, its not a recognised quality label, its nothing. You are picking images yourself, you are the curator of that group and when I look at your work, I dont think you are qualified to say what is quality and what isnt.  The forum you linked to is probably your own forum, and only has 111 comments. Hardly a number that screams global exposure. I will get slated over this, but I just want to give balance to your comment for people who might think that the label Q has any merits. It doesnt.

well said Ron.

Well to be fair, the deal at FAA is that your search ranking can be improved based on participation in groups and forums, being 'featured' in groups, and being 'liked' by other photographers.  Supposedly.

FAA does nothing to make any of this actually happen - it all has to be driven by users like Gunter, starting and managing groups, and deciding what to feature.

I strongly suspect that search ranking is in reality based 98% on previous sales and 2% on all those other "participation" factors, but I don't know that, and of course FAA won't say.

FAA - Fine Art America


POD - Print on Demand

Seems like anything can sell on FAA, people have different tastes.

Sorry to digress from the topic. I'm curious, do you sell the same photos on FAA that you sell on the micro sites? Would you consider that a problem if buyers see they can get the same photo on another site for a few cents?

Sorry to digress from the topic. I'm curious, do you sell the same photos on FAA that you sell on the micro sites? Would you consider that a problem if buyers see they can get the same photo on another site for a few cents?

I have some overlap of my more 'pictorial' images.
Sure, they can get the same image cheaper off iS, but then they'd have to find someone to make the prints, mounts, frames whatever. Someone did SM on iS years ago to show me a photo of a huge print they'd made and had in their dining room of one of my photos. I can't imagine what the resolution must have been like, it was an enormous print and it was the second photo I had accepted on iS, from a 350D, which prints fine at SuperA3, but the photo showed it as much larger than that - took up most of the shorter wall of a dining room!
Why would it be a particular problem? Most consumer products are available at various prices in the market. If they want to shop around, buy a digital file and get it printed, they can. If they want the convenience and a money-back guarantee, they've got it.

Sorry to digress from the topic. I'm curious, do you sell the same photos on FAA that you sell on the micro sites? Would you consider that a problem if buyers see they can get the same photo on another site for a few cents?

I do, but I also make them a little more artsy for FAA:


stock - [size=78%]http://fineartamerica.com/featured/vu-meter-input-output-gunter-nezhoda.html[/size]


fine art - [size=78%]http://fineartamerica.com/featured/playback-recording-vu-meters-grunge-gunter-nezhoda.html[/size]

stock - [size=78%]http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-bird-of-paradise-gunter-nezhoda.html[/size]


fine art - [/size][size=78%]http://fineartamerica.com/featured/bird-of-paradise-gunter-nezhoda.html[/size]