Lines of SightThe business side of photography

If nothing else, the Toronto Film festival serves as an example of how not to run an event. You might think that going into its 35th year, the film festival would know how to properly run a media event. But you’d be wrong.

Make no mistake, the primary function of the festival is for movie producers, actors and directors to get publicity for their projects, and for distributors to find buyers for their movies. To help do this, they need media exposure. The reason they come to Toronto is the huge media coverage. The film festival itself acknowledges the importance of this media coverage when it says the festival wouldn’t happen without media attendance.

Where to start?

• Film festival credential acceptance e-mails were not sent to all accepted media. Hate to think about journalists who were waiting to hear back before booking flights and hotels.

• The festival is implementing an e-mail RSVP system for red carpet photo access. But, the e-mail announcing the e-mail RSVP system wasn’t sent to all photographers. The festival starts tomorrow and it still hasn’t fixed this or responded to questions about it.

For some perspective, my employer’s wire service has over 3,000 subscribing publications, and my photo coverage depends on a single daily e-mail sent, with no confirmation of receipt, to a seemingly unreliable e-mail server.

• Press conference room is still too small. As the festival saw from problems several years ago when room occupancy exceeded fire regulations, the conference room needs to be, at least, doubled in size. The space is available, but the festival refuses to do anything. Maybe it can’t afford to rent extra chairs?

• Photographers’ area in the conference room? Ha! Photographers are an after-thought and they get stuck in a small area off to the side. Work area in the conference room to edit and send pictures? Forget it. Deadlines? Who cares.

Truth be told, the “press conferences” are packaged as cable TV shows and the reporters are used as the unwitting audience. This is why the festival doesn’t really want photographers in the room but it “compromises” by putting photographers in a small area off to the sides. Two years ago, the “compromise” was to throw photographers out after two minutes.

• Upon check-in at the film festival, each photographer gets a press kit in a bag. Everything, including the bag and the hundreds of pages of paper, is instantly disposable since it’s all useless. (Okay, the coupon for a free slice of pizza and the sample of microwave popcorn are worth keeping.)

Photographers need only two things in the press kit: a list of where and when each event takes place, and the names of who will be there. Guess what is not in the so-called press kit?

It’s obvious the festival has no idea what news photographers do and what they need to do that job.

The list of events is available in another room at the other end of the hotel, but there will be no printed list of people attending. Instead, the festival will e-mail a list of names each day. (Take a moment to re-read the earlier paragraphs about the festival’s e-mail system not working properly.)

Last year, the film festival did both paper lists of names as well as e-mailed lists. For many photographers, including myself, the e-mailed lists arrived after the events or not at all. Thank goodness for the paper lists.

• The festival (unintentionally?) provides several e-mail addresses for journalists to contact the press office. Some addresses are obviously from last year’s festival. So far, either no e-mail address works or none of the 600 paid employees bother to reply.

• As always, there are no work facilities for photographers at any movie venue. These venues have appropriate facilities since other events use them, but the film festival refuses.

• No Internet access except in one hotel meeting room (“media lounge”) which closes at 6 PM, eventhough events can run well-past 10 PM and the media works just as late.

• Isn’t the country’s largest Internet service provider the number one sponsor of the film festival? Why can’t Bell provide Internet access at all the venues? Aren’t the two main movie venues already wired with Bell Internet service?

One might think that if Bell was smart (ha!) or the film festival was smart (double ha!), they’d rent or even sell those USB Internet sticks, with a couple of gigabytes of bandwidth included, to the hundreds (thousand?) of journalists attending. These USB sticks could expire at the end of the festival unless the journalist wanted to extend it. Internet access anywhere, anytime you needed to file photos or stories? Foreign journalists saving a ton of money on data roaming charges? Nope, no one wants that.

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It’s painfully obvious that the film festival doesn’t consult with any media outlets or any photographers. It’s also obvious that it isn’t paying attention. Every major sports event knows how to run a press conference, how to position photographers and how to set up a functioning work room. Even political campaigns know how to do all this. But every year for 35 years, the film festival in Toronto struggles, and fails, to reinvent the wheel.

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If you’re planning to hold an event where media attendance and coverage is important, learn from the mistakes of the Toronto Film Festival. Consult with media outlets and consult with photographers. Understand what they need to do a good job and why that good job is important to you.

The smoother your event runs from a media standpoint, the higher the quality of coverage. Better quality coverage means better play in the next day’s papers.

Nothing more to say except that it’s from the What the Duck cartoon series.

There are many staff jobs available for editors and writers, but none for photographers. Well almost none: the only photo jobs are those for department store portrait studios, baby photographers and school photographers. These three are always looking for employees, which tends to indicate the quality of these jobs.

There’s a new business magazine about to start-up in Toronto. It has full-time paid job opportunities for editors, writers, designers and web people. What’s missing? Photographers.

Yes, the magazine is looking for photographers but these positions will be unpaid. The magazine does hint that it might consider some sort of honorarium for the photographers.

There’s a new online “city magazine” in Toronto. This business is looking for staff editors, writers, bloggers and designers. It’s also looking for photographers, but only photographers willing to work for free.

Let’s recap:

Editors, writers and designers walk in with the clothes on their back and they get paid for their work.

Photographers arrive with at least $20,000 worth of equipment and a car, and they don’t get paid for their work.

What’s wrong with this picture?

There are two ways to sell your products or services:

Option A: Make your customers smarter. Let them know how and why you do what you do. Educate them on what to look for and what to avoid. Help them know what’s possible, what questions to ask, and what to expect. Smart customers are informed customers, who, in turn, are good customers.

Option B: Make your customers dumber. Don’t let them know about your products or services. Don’t tell them about variables, options or warranties. Don’t give them choices. Dumb customers are helpless customers, who, in turn, are good customers because they will always run to you for help.

Option B is the easiest and that’s why many businesses do it. You could choose this option and be successful, but only until a competitor decides to take Option A. When this happens, Option B is no longer an option.

Everyone loves free because there’s no risk involved. If it’s free, I’ll take it! If it turns out to be useless, then throwing it out can be done without any hesitation or regret.

It’s free and priced to sell.

Free means you don’t have to make any judgments or decisions. Good photography? Lousy photography? Who cares, because it’s free! Free becomes the most important feature of the photography and not the quality of the work.

I wouldn’t buy anything that I have to pay for.

But viewers of the photography don’t care what it cost. They care only about the quality. So there’s a serious disconnect between a business that tries to get free or cheap photography, and its customers who want good photography.

I wouldn’t pay for anything unless it’s free.

People always assign a value to the things they buy. If something is acquired for free, they assign a value of $0. For example, if someone loses their $75 sunglasses, they’ll moan, “Oh no, I’ve lost my $75 sunglasses! Help me find them!”

But if they lose a free (or cheap) pair of sunglasses, that person will just say, “Don’t worry, I got them for free. It doesn’t matter.” The cheap sunglasses are disposable and not worth any effort.

For the photographer who does cheap or free photography: is your work disposable?

For the business that tries to get cheap or free pictures: is your business image disposable and not worth the effort?

You get paid to do what others can’t or won’t do. Maybe they don’t have the time, maybe they don’t have the tools or maybe they don’t have the know-how. In any case, if someone can do what you do, they won’t pay you to do the same.

This means that photographers should have better tools, better production values and/or better abilities and creativity than their competition and their customers. But often, this is not the case.

An amateur, and maybe even a customer, might own the same or better tools than a professional photographer. An amateur may have the same creativity and ability as a professional.

But amateurs always fail when it comes to experience and reliability. How many pro sports events has an amateur shot? How many royal tours? How many heads of state? How many CEOs and company presidents? How many business portraits? How many assignments in bad light? How many assignments that happen so fast that only a handful of pictures are possible? How many amateurs know how to handle themselves, and the situation around them, when events happen quickly or unpredictably?

The key selling point for any professional photographer is their experience and reliability. It takes, for example, ten years to earn (and learn) ten years of experience. There are no shortcuts.

Experience means that a professional is able to say, “Yes, I know what picture is needed here and I know what to do to get that picture.”

Professional photographers run their own business. Who would you choose to produce your corporate photography: a photographer who runs a business or an amateur whose day job is elsewhere?

If you would know the road ahead, ask someone who has traveled it. –– Chinese Proverb

Clients usually understand the value of experience and reliability after they’ve hired an amateur or cheap photographer. Always a costly lesson but also a valuable experience.

It’s now three days into Queen Elizabeth’s tour of Canada and (as expected) the photos are quite boring and even non-existent. Political conventions and campaigns usually have better photo planning. I don’t know why the same effort isn’t put into a royal tour. I suspect it’s because a royal tour is basically run by the police rather than a creative director or a marketing or public relations agency.

The purpose of a photo-op can be completely lost due to poor pre-planning. For example, what’s the point of doing a statue unveiling when the statue isn’t in the photo? Why have the talent stroll through a garden when the garden isn’t visible?

At an outdoor event at the Governor General’s residence, the photo riser was completely filled by just 5 TV cameras. But amazingly, that riser was supposed to hold all 22 video and still photographers. Photographers were left to shoot through, or over, three rows of standing people who were placed in front of them. Didn’t help when police decided they also had to stand directly in front of the photographers.

Here’s the Queen’s arrival by landau on Parliament Hill, shot from the photo riser:

If you’ve got a sharp eye, you might notice that (a) the photo position is rather far away and (b) there are a few people in the way.

Also, from other events:

• Queen meeting 10-year old girl: no picture due to bad position and people in the way.
• Queen and Afghanistan war vet: no picture due to bad position and people in the way.
• Queen with group of Mounties: no picture due to bad position and people in the way.
• Queen unveiling statue: Queen and statue too far apart, too many people in front and behind.
• Queen with honour guards: no picture, too many people and TV in the way.
• Queen inspecting troops: TV in the way.
• Queen’s red carpet arrival: no picture, too many people and TV in the way.
• Queen’s red carpet departure: no picture, too many people and TV in the way.

Point is, if you’re organizing a public relations or similar type of event that will have photo coverage, please please please be very sure you know what photographers need to make good photos. You must carefully examine the foreground, background, lighting and camera angle of the location of your photo-op. Great pictures don’t just happen by themselves.

Why spend the time and money for a mediocre photo-op? You need a strong picture to help guarantee that the photo will get published and that your message will be seen and understood. Pre-planning and pre-visualizing your photo-op is crucial.

Canadian magazine Dogs in Canada is involved in a rights-grabbing scam disguised as a “photo contest”. Sadly, Nikon is the contest sponsor. Contest Rule #4 states:

4. All entries become the property of Dogs in Canada; entry constitutes permission to use the photo(s) in any manner the Publisher chooses.

While sponsors of a photo contest might not be aware of, nor even care about, the contest rules, a sponsor such as Nikon should demand that any contest it sponsors not be a copyright grab or an excuse to get free photos. Nikon and any other photo manufacturer that gets involved with these types of “photo contests” should be very embarrassed and ashamed.

A sister publication, Cats in Canada, is also running the same scam. Its rules state:

5. Entries will not be returned, and become the property of Apex Publishing Ltd. Entry constitutes permission to use the photo(s) in any manner the Publisher chooses.

Thankfully, no photo manufacturer is sponsoring this mess.

Only amateurs are allowed to enter these contests because only amateurs are easily suckered.

Since Apex Publishing, which owns both magazines, is fully-versed in copyright issues, as evidenced by the copyright notices on its site and the multiple copyright statements on its Terms of Service page, there’s no excuse.