There is no doubt as to the vast array of information that is available on the forum if you do a little digging. Even if it is not on the forum somebody normally knows where else to look. There are good posts from KennyG on T&Cs and another on setting customer expectations.
Terms and Conditions - it is all about money.
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/...ad.php?t=60342
Standards and expectations
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/...ad.php?t=55367
There seems to be however a reluctance to discuss how to obtain more for your photos or how to break in to a chosen market and I can understand why there would be a reluctance to give others the benefit of the hard yards that have been done by others. Nonetheless I was wondering if this wasn’t counter to the desired effect.
If I’m Joe Nobody and I’m trying to break in to a market, I will get lots of advice on why giving my work away won’t help me out. People will tell me to put together a portfolio and that the quality of my work will get me the orders, contacts and the coveted press pass eventually. With 20 Joe’s knocking on the press room door saying the same thing, one of them is going to do something to differentiate themselves from the others and price is a very good way of doing it.
I will no doubt get lambasted for saying it is exactly what I did to get established. I worked for a budget race series for no cash, but in exchange I got the “rights” (we are not talking Bernie Eccelstone style rights) to market all of the teams and drivers as well as getting a named photo credit when every one of the images was used by the organiser. Bottom line was, a photographer wasn’t in their budget so paying for one wasn’t going to happen. I may not have been paid directly but what it did do was give me an opening in to an area of the photography market that was otherwise closed. In short I found a way of breaking the catch 22 problem I found myself in.
It was initially a one race deal that expanded and I finally “resigned” from the arrangement when the balance of the deal was in favour of the organiser and there was no longer a symbiotic exchange even having taken in to account the opportunity I was given. The experience was invaluable and the next series I worked for initially offered me the same deal but I was in a position to say “No thanks I think my work is worth X to your series because ….”
While all of this was going on I was an avid reader of anything to do with how to charge a commercial rate for my images, what the market rate was, example contracts, release forms, stock image deals, agency agreements etc etc, all in the pursuit of how to get paid more for my images. I could find no end of people who would tell me that giving work away was a bad thing, but all but one established Tog would not say anything about how to approach the market and get more for your work.
So I guess my question goes something like this … As Emerson Fitipaldi took the time, according the Roberto Moreno to help him understand the construct of a sponsorship deal so that Roberto could move forward in the sport, should we do the same? By not offering advice beyond “charge what you think it is worth and don’t give it away” are we helping our industry or closing ranks in the hope that it will all go away.
I turned up at an event recently where I wasn’t known at all. One of the media companies for whom I work occasionally had asked if I could cover the event at the last minute. It wasn’t what I normally cover, but work is work. I’d never come across such a closed group of Togs. I was asked 20 questions as to who I was working for and told by a couple of people “Don’t bother XYZ they are my client”. I took my photos, filled the requests of the media company and was left wondering if these guys knew they why they weren’t getting the call and I was.
There is a thread running about Mums (I’m English – Moms to our American colleagues) With Cameras under cutting the established market. If these Mums and Dads with Cameras knew how to market what they do so that they could charge more, assuming their work represented the higher value, I think they would. If they knew that they could get (say) 4 times the amount would they say no?
There will always be a market for “cheap” photography. How many times have you been asked “You want how much for a photo?” when all they think you do is snap away and forget that you make your living doing this, run a web site, maintain a pile of expensive equipment and stood there all day for the right moment to capture the one photo they wanted. As one of the signatures on POTN says – Buy a camera and you are a photographer. Buy violin and you own a violin. There is nothing that can be done about people who do not see the value in what you do.
To help those talking to people who can see the value however; if you were offered the chance to offer up your top 3 tips for getting more for your images, what would you say? Me, I go with ….
a) Understand the needs of the client. There is no point in taking a photo and hoping you can sell it. Understand what people want. There is a market for low cost prints, some people don’t care about backgrounds and the framing, they just want a photo, but they are only going to want one so there is no point revisiting this market time and time again. If you turn up at an international event and snap away you are going to have a bunch of very stiff competition for your shot, plus the press association will no doubt have someone working for them at the event covering the publications that didn’t send their own Tog. So before you take off to the nearest event and snap away, what are you going to do that is different? At this sort of level giving it away isn’t going to getting you noticed.
b) Editors put together the frame work of the magazine months in advance of actually sending it to print. Contact them early (minimum 6 weeks type early) and offer your services. A phone call can go a long way. You will get a lot of people say “No thanks” so be ready for this and have a strategy to take a negative and make it a positive – Perhaps …. “Sorry I couldn’t help you this time around and it is good to hear that you are working with Whoever, I won’t bombard you with images but the ones I take will be on my web site at …..”. You might just get lucky with the killer shot they want, race tracks are big places for one Tog to cover.
c) Learn to write a short story. I found that 200 words of print sold a photo must faster than a photo alone and you made more money!! It also opened more doors than you might imagine. I covered an event and supplied the editor with the images they wanted and then sold the same images to the other side of the world, but this time with a 500 word general interest article to go with them. However, don’t try this between publications in the same geographic location as one guy I met did and got told to ‘depart with all haste” by both publications.
I can imagine with the cross section of opinions that make POTN the interesting venue that it is, that there will be folks that will wonder if I’ve been taking stupid pills to make such a suggestion. So before the ritual stoning begins let me explain the value I found in NUJ web site for UK deals. This site has a wonderful set of rates on it for UK based publications of all types. It is fairly difficult for an editor to argue about the proposed fee for an image when you explain that you charge in line with NUJ rates which maybe the Union he belongs to.
This seems all very collective bargaining of me which isn’t my intention, just a thought about offering solid advice on how to promote your work or deal with buyers so as to give people an alternative to selling it cheap because they have no other reference to work from.
Now is a good time to start the stoning
