Back in September I mentioned that I was approached by a woman representing J. Jill about one of my photos. It was a photo that I took in 2011. She attached the picture at the bottom of her email and asked, "Did you take this picture?"
I wrote back right away. I was delighted that someone cared to ask if it was mine.
She must have just seen it as she was looking for images on the Internet.
The woman, let's call her Brooke so I don't have to keep writing 'the woman', said they were considering the picture for their winter catalog. Would I be interested in licensing the image to them? They would be putting it in roughly 2.5 million catalogs (full page) and using it on their website.
She then asked what I would charge for that.
I wrote her back and said I had no idea, that I would look check into it and get back to her.
I appreciated her professionalism. She gave me the stats and that would help me know what to charge.
But I still didn't want to charge as much as I was seeing. But I gave her a number I was comfortable asking.
She wrote back and said, Okay. It's a deal.
A day later she said, what would your fee be in they made 96x40 posters of the image and put them in 250 stores. I said. Double it. She said that sounds fair.
I'm not going to tell you how much.
You will say it is too little.
But as you may know....I am a terrible business woman.
I am a girl, asking a boy...
opps...
wrong script...
I am pleased with the compensation.
So, I had to fill out forms and send an invoice. Brooke told me it would take a month before I would receive the check.
A week later she wrote and asked if I had a larger file. Tiff or Raw.
(I know they need to a big file to create a giant enlargement)
Yikes. No. I shoot in Jpeg.
So I found a website that would convert from jpeg to Tiff.
I sent it to her.
She said great.
But that was the last I heard.
And so I held my breath and hoped that I had not been 'catfished'.
(Catfished is when you are tricked into believing something or someone on the Internet)
On Monday the check from J. Jill came!! It was real.
I made my first commercial sale. I am so excited.
From what I understand they will be writing something on the picture and using it that way.
They have permission to use it from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31.
I can not wait to see it!
You will recognize the picture. I even did a tutorial for The Pioneer Woman on how to take a picture like this. Isn't that neat?
Here it is as I shot it out my back door.
(If you ever go looking for your hearts desire....)
This is the edited picture I sent them.
It looks crooked because of the snow drift. I will be interested to see what they do about that.
I just now saturated it...made it greener. I think I like it this way.
Fake green. ha.
A few things that amuse me about this whole situation.
1. It's blurry.
2. I didn't have to leave the house.
3.
I posted this on Pinterest in 2012 because at the time I was concerned with how easy Pinterest made it for people to steal images. They have changed it. I was yelled at by many young girls who disagreed with me. They felt it was their right to take it.
I was mad at them.
Serendipitous
So that's how the story goes...
Out of the blue
I sold a picture.
And it really happened.
It's been fun!
Donna Elsie
