Ludwig van Beethoven was a quirky dude who was known to defecate into the chamber pot beneath his piano while composing masterpieces of classical western music. But I digress.

The larger point I want to make is that back in the day, artists often relied on patrons to fund their endeavors. Beethoven had a number of patrons like Prince Rasumovsky from Russia. Johann Sebastian Bach had Count Kaiserling, who paid him handsomely for the Goldberg Variations.

That was then, and this is now. The historical patronage structure no longer exists to support artists en masse. Twentieth century funding outlets for photography projects like magazines have had their budgets slashed. So if you’re a famous photographer like Gerd Ludwig and you want to follow up to see how things are going in Chernobyl 30 years later, what do you do?

A cottage industry of “crowdfunding” has come of age to help creative artists (or almost anyone for that matter) pitch an idea online and solicit funding from family, friends and strangers. Kickstarter, Emphas.is and IndieGoGo are a few that we’ve profiled in our latest guide Crowdfunding Your Photography Project.

But more than just a survey of services, we interviewed eight different photographers who have used crowdfunding successfully and not so successfully to take their projects from inception to completion. And like all our other research, you can download Crowdfunding Your Photography Project for free.

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