For Photographers

Is Your Website Hurting Your Business?

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Ross Brothers Hardware (L) on Jasper Avenue at 98 Street in downtown Edmonton, Alberta, circa 1890 (Library and Archives Canada). The store was in operation until 1960 after which the hardware store and some of its neighbours were relocated to Fort Edmonton Park.

Today that downtown location of Jasper Avenue and (no longer existing) 98 Street is right across the street from the Edmonton Convention Centre which hosts all sorts of conventions and conferences.

What year is it, 2024? Web sites have been around for over 30 years. So why do some photographers not know how to make a decent web site?
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Creating A Photo Estimate

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In BMX cycling, if you want to nail your landing, you first have to nail your launch. These cyclists were competing in the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto, July 2015. This is another view-from-my-office photo.

If a photographer wants to successfully complete a job, they first have to successfully start the job with a well-written estimate.

(This post is for new photographers.)

A potential customer asks you for a price to photograph something. What do you do?
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Sales Strategies for Photographers

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Antone’s Department Store in Zebulon, North Carolina, November 1939. (Marion Post Wolcott/Farm Security Administration/US Library of Congress)

This same store today sells beauty supplies.

(This post is mostly for new photographers doing corporate or commercial photography rather than retail photography.)

Unlike a department store which sells hundreds or even thousands of products, a photographer basically sells one product – themselves – and that comes in a very limited supply. A retail store’s business model is based on volume. A store has an unlimited supply of products to sell to dozens or hundreds of customers each and every day. A store gets a steady stream of money from lots of small purchases.
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Low Prices: A Cautionary Tale

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This isn’t just a picture of nearly frozen waterfalls in Niagara Falls, February 2015. The photo shows science in action! Normally you don’t see clouds being created right in front of you because the point of creation is much higher in the atmosphere. But here, with the relatively warm mist from the falls, warm sunlight and ice cold air, clouds quickly formed at ground level (okay, at water level) and rose into the sky.

This is another view-from-my-office photo.

A photographer asked me to take at look his recent food photos (mostly photos of product packaging). His customer wasn’t happy with the pictures. The photographer wanted a second opinion before replying to his customer.
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Contractually Obligated

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Two tennis fans wait for the rain to stop during a Canadian Open tennis tournament in Toronto, 2017. All other spectators left their seats to find shelter inside the stadium. These two were prepared for a rainy day.

This is another view-from-my-office photo.

Yesterday I was exchanging e-mails with a photographer who shot a commercial job two months ago. The photography has been completed, the photos have been delivered, and the customer has paid. Two months ago.

His customer is using the photos in transit ads. The photographer asked if he should now charge more for this usage.
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Getting Paid

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If you don’t print your own money then you have to make money the old fashion way by having a job. But a job works only if you get paid. (National Film Board of Canada / Library and Archives Canada circa 1955-1956.)

There have been only three times when I had difficulty getting paid. All were in the mid-1980s when I was just starting out:

1)   My first corporate customer was a very small pharmaceutical company. The company wanted the photos shot on transparency film because the images were for a slide presentation. I asked if they also wanted prints. No, they did not want prints, only slides. The job was done and the slides were delivered. The customer refused to pay because I did not deliver prints.
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Saving For The Future

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This is another view-from-my-office photo from a Canadian Open men’s tennis tournament in Toronto, 2012.

How long should you save image files after they’ve been delivered to the customer?

A photographer should inform customers about their photo archiving policy. How long will you keep the photos? Can a customer depend on you, for years to come, to redeliver the photos? If you promise to archive photos but you lose them, can a customer sue you?
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