UKC

My brother, who lives in Italy, just took an amazing shot of someone slacklining high above the sea, a flotilla of yachts bobbing behind.

I said he should sell it, but I have no idea if selling photos is still a thing for non-professionals.

With so many photos out there now, how do you go about getting attention from a publisher for fortune or glory?

I don't know. I should imagine the first sensible thing to do would be to "watermark" it.

Is the face of the person doing this visible?  Have they consented to being in a photo that is on sale?

T.

Is their consent necessary in Italy?  It wouldn't be in the UK.

It's a grey area.  Someone doing a thing in public, gets photographed, that gets used for personal display including, say, Flickr, or even reporting, then I don't think there's an issue. 

The water gets very murky when that photograph of an identifiable person is used commercially to generate revenue, particularly so when the identifiable person has not consented to their image being so used.

T.

Send to a news agency with a who what where why when would be the usual procedure. They'll syndicate it, someone might license it and pay the agency who will then give your brother 50% of their earnings. If it's used digitally - as most successful submissions are - he'll make about a tenner or less most likely - not kidding. Alternatively, he could repeat the process by sending it straight to a newspaper(s) be promised slightly more but good luck getting paid. 

South West News Service picture desk (don't be fooled by the name) are the best bet I find, their email address is easy to find. Honestly though, unless it's a world beating, highly newsworthy series of images, ideally accompanied by video, it probably isn't worth the bother. 

Sorry to sound cynical, but press photography is tough these days. Good luck!

In the UK, consent would be required for a commercial photo where someone is identifiable.  However, consent probably wouldn't be necessary for a non-commercial photo's of a similar nature.
In Italy, the same rules apply to commercial photo's, but consent would probably be required for any other photo's of identifiable people that are publicly published on places like Flickr.
The rules are even tighter in Spain, where in theory, you have to ask permission to take a photo of any person that could be identifiable regardless of the end use.  
 

I have sold hundreds of photos and prints and my advice is to not bother. 

If its world class then yes it would sell through a news agency or direct to a magazine, but you are unlikely to get enough for it to be worth the hassle of doing it for a single photo. 

Stick it on a slacking facebook page, or on Instagram, enjoy some likes and move on. 

Thanks all, super-helpful!

If the subject is identifiable then sticking it on a public forum without asking is bad manners. Just because you might embrace social doesn't mean the subject of your photo does.

"Social" is just a fact of modern life that you'd do well to bear in mind before doing something so ostentatiously showy-offy in a photogenic public location though innit. 

It's not like nodding off on the tube or something (in which case I would agree with you), it would be ludicrous for the person slacklining in the photo the OP is describing to claim that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy.

"a fact of modern life" for you, an unacceptable invasion of privacy for others...

For everyone I'm afraid.  You can't reasonably complain about an invasion of your privacy in a situation in which you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the first place.  There are grey areas to be sure, but grey areas invariably exist between extremes that are clearly black and white.

By the sound of it the photo the OP is describing might well have found its way into a newspaper or a magazine back in the day before the 'socials' were a thing, had they also been photographed back in the day before everyone carried a camera with them every moment of their waking lives.  Then as now the subject of the photo complaining that their privacy had been infringed would be like entering a boxing match and then complaining that the other guy punched them in the face.

He's slacklining in front of a flotilla of yachts not in a remote cove in the Outer Hebrides

Good for editorial use (for use in advertising he'll need a model release from the subject). He may get £20 for it. Agencies are rubbish. Agency or stock, he'll get peanuts.

My friend is setting up this website (it's not live yet) where you will be able to pay to sign up and then sell your photos / art at a price of your choosing. The customer pays a printing fee + your "artists fee" and can see the breakdown so they know what you're getting vs the printing cost.

It's not live yet but could be an option. It's a flat annual fee to sign-up for the artists.

https://artiprint.co.uk/

I made over£1000 from one photo, but I sold it to an agency that used it for a greetings card.

Nice, what photo?

https://imgcdn.ukc2.com/i/160396?fm=jpg&time=1559021811&dpr=1&s...