To judge which wildlife photographs sell best you need to find a way to make your photograph stand out from the others in ways that the buyer appreciates. You need to look at the subject, the content of the photo, and its style.
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The Subject
Firm and correct information on what wildlife subjects sell best is not readily available. What is readily available is which photographs are offered for sale online.
The question then is how well does what is offered reflect what is sold and therefore what it is best to sell. This depends on the type of outlet you are looking at which ranges from a massive stock company to a fine wall art printer. You have to understand their business model and judge how close what they offer for sale is to what their customer buys.
There is at least one exception, Fine Art America publishes what they have sold on their website alongside what they offer for sale. Some information from their site is presented in the table below which also contains a bit of information from a few other print sellers to get you started in your research.
This is very preliminary and needs more research but it seems that big game is popular which makes it hard if you live in the northern hemisphere. Except in the USA where the bear is a popular subject. The zebra and birds stand out because of the higher percentage bought.
Surprisingly searching for “best subject for wildlife photographs” doesn’t give as many lists as normal but we came up with this top 10.
Elephants, Tigers, Monkeys, Giraffes, Lions, Orangutans, Bears, Leopards, Pandas, Meerkats, Penguins, and Wolves. This is somewhat different from the data in the table and shows why you should do your own research.
Uniqueness
Whether you look at the stock companies, the fine wall art suppliers or anywhere in between, a standard technical study of an animal is going to face severe competition from many other very similar photographs.
Photographs of animals not often photographed, animals unusual environments, or doing unusual things are more likely to be bought because there are fewer images with which they need to compete.
The photographer should therefore look for ways to make their photographs different. Just like the Migration Photographer in Tanzania waits at the river for the zebra to cross the crocodile infected water you should try and find a photographing spots.. Maybe it’s a drinking spot or a tree with lots of nests, or the dam where kingfisher hunt, or the puddle in the road where warthogs drink and spend time waiting to get the animal in an unusual place/pose.
Photographs that tell a story are also more attractive, especially with magazines and websites.
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Style
Finding the best style of wildlife photograph to sell is rather more subjective than finding the best subject. There is nowhere where the style is listed and can be evaluated.
However, It can be expected that fine art photographic print sellers have a good understanding of what style of photography is going to sell. Therefore examine the wall art they sell. You will find that fine wall art sites have a much higher proportion of striking views, angles, colors, and backgrounds.
Generally and especially in stock photography these are some of the ways you can make sure your photographs stand out from the masses and have a chance to be bought.