The business side of photography
Photographers use batteries and all batteries can leak. This means that sooner or later, many photographers will end up cursing at leaky batteries.
Contrary to popular belief, all batteries don’t leak acid. Lead-acid batteries leak acid because, well, that’s why they have “acid” in their name. But alkaline batteries leak . . . wait for it . . . an alkaline material called potassium hydroxide.
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Photographers need to catalogue their images. A catalogue is a visual list of your pictures that helps you organize, search and retrieve them.
There are a lot of photo editing software but very few for digital asset management (i.e. cataloging). There are many cloud-based cataloging solutions for larger businesses but the high cost of these pushes them out of reach of most photographers.
Media Pro, a popular cataloging application for many years, was discontinued in August 2018.
I started using Media Pro in 1998 when it was called iView Multimedia. Back then, the British software company gave it away as shareware. In the early 2000s, iView Multimedia changed its name to iView Media Pro and gave it a $60 price.
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If you thought your home office was small or ugly, here is someone’s “vintage” 42-square-foot home office before it gets renovated. It has no functioning lights or heat. But it does have lots of nails in a wall, a very sloping floor and a sewage pipe in the corner. I didn’t ask about the dark red stains on the floor.
A small financial consulting company last week sent me four business portraits they wanted fixed. Another photographer shot these portraits three months ago and I don’t know why he or she didn’t fix the photos.
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(With apologies to Charles Dickens)
It was the best of houses, it was the worst of houses, it was the age of beauty, it was the age of squalor, it was the epoch of style, it was the epoch of simplicity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of disrepair . . .
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Just wanted to point out that the Canadian government has posted its 2019 kilometric rates for car travel by government employees.
These rates are the bare minimum of what photographers should be charging for use of their vehicle.
Your situation may require you to charge more. For example, it costs me about 85¢/km to drive my car. This is much higher than the government’s 57¢/km (including tax) for Ontario.
Please check the date of this article because it contains information that may become out of date. Tax regulations, sales tax rules, copyright laws and privacy laws can change from time to time. Always check with proper government sources for up-to-date information.
You might someday have the need to photograph banknotes, coins or postage stamps. Do it wrong and you or your customer could get a visit from the RCMP or be on the receiving end of a lawsuit. Copying currency and stamps isn’t just about counterfeiting, it’s also a copyright issue.
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If you’re like me, you probably buy too much photo gear. Not so much cameras and lenses but things like bags, light modifiers and various accessories. Here are some of my purchases in 2018:
I’ve been meaning to get a half-decent cart for some time. A homemade dolly-style cart with a bright yellow mat ($55 in parts and plywood from Home Depot in 1985) has served me very well. An over-priced Tri-Kart 800 is something I regret buying about 18 years ago because it was of limited use to me. But many local TV crews use the Tri-Kart.
This year I bought a RocknRoller R12RT. It’s pretty good but it takes up extra space because it’s not small and it weighs 33 lb. Fully extended, the R12RT won’t fit in some elevators.
