While there is no dearth of Indian photographers, most forums in India have failed to provide the kind of space required to accelerate careers. Most Indian photographers, with some luck, turn to international publishers like Getty and Corbis, while others content themselves with a corner on social media.
A tribe of photographers have set out on a venture in an attempt to change just that.
Dubbed RumbleArt, a start up by photographers, for photographers, the web portal helps create professional identities for rising photo amateurs.
What do they offer?
RumbleArt helps artists break targeted markets, and promote their artwork to a larger audience. "We are an India-based portal that strives to build an accessible and self-sustainable ecosphere for artists," Aditya Singh explains.
(Photo credit: Ana Clivet - Your Complementary Dream)
Among the services they offer are:
* A community driven web space to showcase and share photographs
* A market to showcase, share, and sell their artwork
* An offline presence in form of exhibitions and events
* Social networking exclusively for photographers, artists and art lovers
* Collaboration with various print studios and courier companies for doorstep delivery of high quality fine art print
* Art events, workshops and photography competition
RumbleArt essentially plays the role of being agents for the artists' creativity.
Apart from these services, to artists, RumbleArt also doubles as a thriving marketplace for art buyers. "For buyers, we offer a one-stop resource platform to source their commercial and personal wall art needs," Singh adds.
How does one contribute?
An aspiring artist simply has to register to part of the community. Created a little over a year ago, the website has already seen substantial traction. "We now have over a thousand photographers registered on the website and more than five thousand quality artworks," Singh shares with pride. "So we are quite thrilled about this, as the numbers exceeded our expectations when we started it. We have also been making modest amount of sales and working hard to find buyers for the great content available on the website."
(Photo credit: Komil Sharma - Bridge Across Troubled Waters)
RumbleArt Caravan: Producing free music videos
The portal is complemented with an offline extension called RumbleArt Caravan. "This is an offline initiative based on the philosophy of mutualism. We collaborate with all kinds of artists musicians, storytellers, photographers, cinematographers, editors and visualists to germinate evolving ideas into films and video art," explains Singh.
Through the Caravan initiative, artists collaborate with each other to help musicians produce videos at absolutely no cost. "We reach out to our existing audience of photographers who live in the Delhi NCR region to look for enthusiastic photographers willing to try their hand at videography and ready to volunteer to make a piece of art. The recorded data is then produced into music videos for the band," he elaborates.
Watch one such video here, produced by Rumble Art Caravan:
Cost involved?
None at all! "Anyone can signup on the website for free, upload their photographs and start selling their artwork," Singh says.
Additionally, all uploaded photographs are reviewed and the really good ones are featured in their Editor's Choice column or the Inspire feeds page.
So then how does one earn?
RumbleArt Caravan initiative is a completely not for profit endeavor. However the portal has a linear remuneration pricing policy, which means that the higher the number of sales an artist generates, the higher their remuneration slab can manoeuvre. From this, RumbleArt takes a modest commission of 20% on the remuneration generated by the photographer. Read more on that here
(Photo credit: Naman Verma - Every barrier becomes a wing to fly in the path to success)
Expansion plans
"We are still an experimental site, an amorphous lump that is being moulded by our continuing interactions with fine art photographers and artists," shares Singh.
They plan to add a hiring portal for photographers on the website soon. "Finding gigs to work on is the major monetary hurdle for photographers in India. We hope to make rumbleart.com the ultimate portal for artists to interact with the world," he adds in conclusion.
For more details visit, www.rumbleart.com
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