The business side of photography
Over the past two months, I’ve had the experience of trying to sell some used photo equipment online.
Most professional photographers try to keep up with technology by upgrading whenever a new tool comes out. Many photo businesses have to stay current to remain competitive.
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I photographed a week-long tennis tournament last week for the event organizers. The media relations folks were, as always, fantastic. They were friendly, helpful and always available. They answered every question, sorted out every problem, had all necessary tournament information available and arranged every interview. They even handed out free pizza and beer at the end of each day. On very hot days, they’ve been known to hand out ice cream!
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I just finished post-processing 1,017 images. Many of those, but not all, will be used for marketing and public relations both in print and online. At this time, the client isn’t able to do any post-processing except to crop and resize the pictures.
Since the client doesn’t know which images will be used in the coming year, all these photos had to be processed now. About 2,300 images were originally shot and those were edited down to 1,017. Yes, I probably should’ve edited it down a lot more but I wanted the client to have a broad selection to cover all future possibilities.
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A couple of weeks ago, Editor & Publisher posted statistics from its sister company, Nielsen Online, showing the average time-on-site for the top 30 newspaper sites in the USA. These numbers compare June 2008 with June 2009. Go ahead and take a look.
Some news sites like NYTimes.com experienced a 50% drop, whereas the Boston Globe’s Boston.com enjoyed a 300% increase. With only four exceptions, all the news web sites had numbers far below the average time a reader spends with a daily newspaper. According to the 2008 Readership Institute Study, the average American newspaper reader spends 27 minutes with a paper.
What does this show, if anything?
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If you are an experienced photographer then you probably know all of this. But if you’re just starting out, here are some of the rules of professional photography (in no particular order):
There’s no such thing as a simple shoot.
The layout will change after the photo shoot is done.
The CEO always has a bad hair day.
Size of the group to be photographed varies inversely with size of the room.
The only time you need a reshoot is when there’s no time for one.
Gear always works at home. Gear always fails on location.
The chance of a piece of equipment breaking is proportional to its importance for the shoot.
The chance of a memory card failing is proportional to the importance of the images it holds.
Why do fax machines still exist?
I suspect it’s because of the non-stop flood of press releases sent everyday to newspapers and other publications. E-mailed releases exist but these risk being redirected into an editor’s junk folder or getting lost in the deluge of other e-mails that an editor receives each day.
For some (most?) publications, press releases are a blessing. They are a source of free content and who doesn’t love free?
Smart businesses, public relations agencies and other marketing companies should be taking advantage of the weak economy which is forcing all newspapers to cut back. Now is the time to produce quality, newsworthy and timely releases for their business or clients.
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With huge apologies to Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich who wrote the 1997 column later made famous by Baz Luhrmann.
If I were to address the graduating class from a photojournalism school here in Canada, it might go like this:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, autofocus would be it. The benefits of autofocus have been proven by photographers, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.
Enjoy the technology and power of your current camera model. There’s no need to always upgrade to the latest gear. Oh, never mind. You won’t fully appreciate the capabilities of your camera until it’s long obsolete. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at your photos from today and recall in a way you can’t grasp now, how much possibility lay in your hands and how amazing that camera really was.
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