The business side of photography
If a photographer wants to gross $100,000 per year, all they have to do is:
Make $50/hour, forty hours per week, fifty weeks of the year.
Or, do just one $275/day newspaper job every day of the year.
Or, shoot just one $1,925 corporate assignment per week.
Or, just one $3,850 wedding every other week.
Or, complete just one $8,340 advertising job per month.
Or, shoot just one $100,000 international marketing campaign per year.
Easy right?
The Oriella PR Network just released its 2011 Digital Journalism Study. This annual survey looks at the impact of digital media on journalism. It also studies how journalists use social media in their research.
A key finding of this survey is that 62% of journalists depend on press releases and media handouts for story ideas. Press releases are the first stop for journalists looking for information. Press releases are viewed as more valuable and more trustworthy than blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter or any other type of social media.
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A graduate with a science degree asks, “Why does it work?”
A graduate with an engineering degree asks, “How does it work?”
A graduate with an mathematics degree asks, “How can we improve the work?”
A graduate with a sociology degree asks, “What are the benefits of the work?”
A graduate with a photojournalism degree asks, “Would you like fries with that?”
After graduating from photojournalism school, a Toronto photographer got a job at a low-paying newspaper which was going through a lot of cost-cutting.
The young news photographer was sent to his first out-of-town job but was booked into a very cheap hotel. When he called room service to get another towel, the hotel clerk replied, “You’ll have to wait. Someone else is using it.”
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This week’s “winner” of falling victim to cheap, online stock photography is the United States Postal Service (USPS). In early December 2010, the USPS began to issue three billion new postage stamps bearing a close-up photo of the face and crown of the Statue of Liberty. The photo was bought from an online stock agency.
One small problem, though. It wasn’t the Statue of Liberty in the photo. But rather, it was a picture of a fiberglass and styrofoam replica statue.
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A Toronto commercial photographer went to her family doctor. The photographer had celery stuck in her nose, a carrot in one ear and a banana in the other.
“What’s the matter with me?” she asked her doctor.
The doctor replied, “You’re not eating properly.”
The same photographer then went to an eye doctor. The receptionist asked what was the problem. The photographer complained, “I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes.”
The receptionist asked, “Have you ever seen a doctor?”
The photographer replied, “No, just spots.”
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Just before leaving on a big assignment to photograph a client’s overseas factory, a Toronto corporate photographer went to a drugstore to pick up a tube of ointment. The directions read: “Apply locally, twice a day.”
The photographer said to the pharmacist, “I can’t apply locally, I’m going overseas.”
Since the client was very low budget, the corporate photographer had no choice but to fly on a very cheap, small airline. During the overseas travel, the flight attendant asked the photographer if he would like dinner.
“What are my choices?” he asked.
“Yes or no.”
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Another example that using cheap stock pictures can be too expensive, especially when it mangles a company’s reputation.
A US magazine called VegNews is all about being vegetarian or vegan. Rather than using custom food photography, the magazine decided to use some cheap online stock pictures because they were, uh, cheap.
The problem is that the food photos were not vegetarian or vegan. The magazine just passed them off as being so.
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