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.

In a video interview by journalist Stanley Leary, Thompson offers some advice for photographers who are trying to transition from photojournalism to corporate photography.

“It’s about how you do the job, not the job you do.”

Video here on Vimeo.

Amateur photographer: Has a day job. Produces pictures to please themselves. Nothing at stake, nothing to lose. Worth what they cost.

An amateur practices until they get it right. A professional practices until they can’t get it wrong.

An amateur might know how to fix mistakes. A professional knows how to avoid them.

A professional photographer has to be good all the time. An amateur has to be good only once-in-a-while.

• there were no captions, no names, and no IPTC data. You have to guess who the people are in the pictures and what/where/when is happening.

• photos were overexposed by about two stops and had far too much contrast. (Pictures were shot on an amateur camera using an auto-exposure mode).

• pictures were out-of-focus.

• the original 30MB images had been upsampled to 500MB (why?), which might account for some of the out-of-focus. Who needs 36″ x 54″ @ 300 ppi images?

• image size at least 20 times too big, file size about 13 times too big. Waste of download time and bandwidth, waste of editing time and computer resources.

If you’re going to produce media handout photos, make sure they’re media-friendly and that they meet all technical requirements. It’s not a guessing game.

When it comes to media handouts, every professional photographer knows what numbers they have to hit for tonal range, image size and file size. Every experienced photographer also knows what types of images that have to produce to meet aesthetic standards, (hint: having the film director out-of-focus and partially hidden behind an grossly overexposed camera is a waste of time).

If you want to get publicity so that you can make a strong impression on the public, then make it easy for the press to use your handout images. Make the pictures too good not to use, rather than too difficult to even mess with.

If a customer needs a package to be delivered from point A to point B, they don’t care whether the courier* is talented enough to ride an odd-looking bicycle or not. The only value to the customer is the ability to deliver the package on time. The customer won’t pay more for a fancy set of wheels or any extra cycling skills because these have no value to the customer.

No matter how talented you think you are or how many awards you may have won, it’s the customer who determines the value of your photography. The customer’s perception is your reality. Unwanted value isn’t any value at all.

If customers aren’t buying what a photographer is selling, then that photographer needs to change the way they talk about their services. Somehow, the photographer has to increase the perceived value of their work. The best path for this starts with the photographer understanding their clients’ marketing needs.

(Unfortunately) no business ever says, “Let’s spend some money on photography today!” Instead, that company has to realize it has a problem and that photography is the answer.

The photographer’s own marketing job is to sell problems. Make potential clients aware that they have a problem.

And then…

The photographer has to be the solution.

For example:

There’s no point for a photographer to say, “I do great business pictures, hire me!”, if no clients are asking, “Hey, we need business photography, who should we hire?” The photographer is the answer to a question no one is asking.

But if the photographer points out:

• Not getting attention? A photograph with a print ad increases readership of that ad by 300%;

• Not standing out? Lack of credibility? No sociability with customers? Using real employee pictures on a web site makes a stronger first impression and can triple business credibility compared to using stock pictures of anonymous people;

• Low online sales? Good product photography on a web site can quadruple sales compared to low-quality pictures or no pictures at all. Bigger pictures sell more product;

• Keep reader interest and enhance brand image? Lifestyle pictures are best for creating an attitude, supporting a brand and creating interest, but not necessarily for selling product,

then perhaps a business will realize they have a problem which needs a photographic answer.

Sell problems first and then be the solution to that problem.

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*The person in the photo isn’t a courier but a commuter in downtown Toronto.

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

One type of photography I do is shooting sports events for corporate sponsors. The sponsors usually want good action pictures with their logo visible in the photo. These pictures are often used in corporate literature, web sites and media handouts.

Readers want to see an interesting photo. Editors want a newsworthy picture. Sponsors want to see their logo as part of that interesting, newsworthy photograph.

These pictures don’t happen by chance. An experienced sports photographer knows where to position themselves to best align a logo with the game action. This means knowing the sport involved, knowing how the game will unfold and knowing how the players will move about the playing field.

When a company needs pictures from a sponsored sports event, it’s far better to hire an experienced sports photographer than any other type of photographer.

A good sports picture which “just happens” to have a corporate logo visible will always trump a logo picture which just happens to have some sports activity visible. The former will have more than a sporting chance at capturing the attention of editors and viewers. The latter is a just waste of time and money.

A house is priced on the subjective value of its location, the quality of design and workmanship that went into the house and the cost to build.

A car is priced on the subjective value of its brand, the quality of design and workmanship that went into the car and the cost to build.

But yet, some people expect photographers to price their services by the hour or by the picture, rather than by the value of the photography plus the quality of workmanship and the cost of production.

When some businesses try to find a corporate photographer, why do they shop price first, value second? The only products sold by weight or volume are commodities like fruit, vegetables and gasoline. Almost everything else is sold by value.

A can of Campbell’s vegetable soup is 99¢ and the No Frills store “no name” brand of vegetable soup is 63¢. Which would you buy? After tasting the thin, watery no name brand, you either go back to the higher-priced soup because it has more value, (better taste, more enjoyable), or you lower your standards and stay with the cheaper product to save money.

Same with photography. A business has to decide whether to lower its standards and use cheap photography, or go with higher-priced professional photography for more value.