Do i need a contract for photos in advertisments?

hello everyone,
recently I have been shooting product photos for a company without any kind of written contract. Its a very small company and so far I have done 1 product photo shoot. Today they contacted me about doing another at the start of January. Everything so far has been verbal, over the phone and over email. The agreement has been, that I do these photos and give them the images on a CD or over FTP and I get free merchandise. I have been told that these photos will be used for web advertising.

But with the new assigment that i got today, I was told that the photos need to be 300 DPI which leds me to beleive that these photos will be printed(i am correct, right?) so do you think i need any kind of written contract?

keep in mind that i am only 18 and have just gotten into product/adveristing photography over the past month(kinda by accident)

my hope is to get more photography jobs and contacts through this work so i dont wanta screw up

thanks

If you're getting paid or something in trade always use a contract and spell out every detail.
Good Business practice

so even its not for $ and just for free product/merchanise i should still get some kind of written deal. how would I do that? because i have small product shoots every month or so, i dont wanta ask them for some kind of contract every time they want photos.

Number 1, you made a mistake by taking products for images. Lets say they are giving you $100 (retail price) worth of their product. That means they are probably paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 for your services.

Number 2, you started by shooting at a cheap price, now or soon, you will want money instead of products. They won't want to pay the mark up you will be charging compared to what they were paying you in product.

To remedy this situation you should ask them for a meeting before the next shoot. Explain that you have already made a deal for the upcoming shoot and intend on standing by it. However, you would like to continue to work with these guys and think it would be in everyones best interest to sit down and work out a contract. Make the contract good for a 1 year period with an escape clause for either party.
Tell them that while the products for services was fine for a shoot or two, you are hoping for more than that in terms of times you will work for them. So instead of paying you in product, how about we set a pay scale and you get paid by check or cash.

IndyJeff wrote in post #2406184
Number 1, you made a mistake by taking products for images. Lets say they are giving you $100 (retail price) worth of their product. That means they are probably paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 for your services.

Number 2, you started by shooting at a cheap price, now or soon, you will want money instead of products. They won't want to pay the mark up you will be charging compared to what they were paying you in product.

To remedy this situation you should ask them for a meeting before the next shoot. Explain that you have already made a deal for the upcoming shoot and intend on standing by it. However, you would like to continue to work with these guys and think it would be in everyones best interest to sit down and work out a contract. Make the contract good for a 1 year period with an escape clause for either party.
Tell them that while the products for services was fine for a shoot or two, you are hoping for more than that in terms of times you will work for them. So instead of paying you in product, how about we set a pay scale and you get paid by check or cash.

thanks jeff,
I was offered the products for the 1st shoot. I am pretty sure that if I had asked for money, they would have found someone else(which they could easily do). the 1st actual product photo shoot with PP editing only took about 2.5 hours.

i didnt mention this before; but they got me a connection to another adveristing photo shoot which was a much larger deal. I already did that photoshoot and everything went perfect. I got another contact out of it as well!


i will try to get paid once I talk to them again on Monday. I dont think a 1 year contract would work because they dont need photos for that long a period of time. over the next 2 months they are going to need the most photos i think.

my hope/plan is for all of this grunt work to get me a real paying photo job that I can manage along with college work. ( is that a realistic plan?)

Seriously re-read IndyJeffs comment. You have already started to fall into a common trap that is VERY hard to come out of.

It is all based on confidence in yourself and your degree of compentence. If for no other reason you deserve "An honest days pay for an honest days work". Period. Also you migt look up the meaning of CYA.

I always liked the KMA one, too. While you're at it, google WFH (work for hire) too. From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Work_for_hire

ok thanks everyone! i will do some reading now


EDIT: i would like to ad that the reason why i didnt ask for $ at the start was because i wasnt 100% confident that I would be able to do the job well. I felt that if I had gotten paid and did a bad job, they would never call me back again. but after the 1st job, i am now sure that I can complete the job well.