rant

Next-day photo delivery

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“And we need the pictures delivered the next day!!!”

Sometimes an event such as a business conference will want finished pictures delivered the day after the event. Certainly it’s no problem to deliver a handful of images the same or following day if the event needs them for a press release or its social media. But when a day-long event expects hundreds of pictures to be delivered the next day, or even the next morning, then there’s going to be a problem.

Let’s do some simple arithmetic. If you’re expecting 100 finished pictures and the photographer spends a minimal five minutes per image then that’s 500 minutes, just over eight hours, of non-stop work. If you’re expecting 200 or 300 photos then that can easily amount to at least two or three days of work.
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The (F)utility of Low Prices

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Photographers, how much would you charge to deliver 24 business headshots, 12 full-length environmental portraits and 4 environmental group shots?

Well, a Toronto photographer quoted $800 for this recent corporate job. This works out to $20 per delivered picture. The corporate client turned down this quote because even they knew the low price was ridiculous.

Photographers who try to discount or lowball their way into a job only hurt themselves. It’s been shown that customers are not fooled by bottom-end prices. So why do some photographers keep doing it?
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Through the looking glasses

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It’s amazing how many business portrait photographers don’t know how to properly photograph someone who’s wearing eyeglasses. Photographers like myself, who wear prescription eyeglasses, might be more sensitive about this than photographers who don’t wear glasses.

Creating a good business portrait of a subject wearing eyeglasses is not difficult to do. The photographer has to pay attention to the position of the glasses and the lighting. The subject’s eyes are the highlight of the photo and should always be unobstructed.

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Cut out the middleman

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If you’re a photographer who shoots corporate events like conferences and conventions, you may have noticed there are some online businesses that offer to connect you with customers. How nice of them.

Right now, one such European company is sending emails to photographers in Toronto, and apparently also in many other cities around the world, claiming that it has a customer with an urgent need for photo services in the photographer’s area.

If you ignore this email because of its generic nature or because it looks like spam, you’ll get more similar emails in the following weeks and months. The emails have a fake “unsubscribe” link that does nothing.

All these emails claim that this company has yet another customer with an immediate need for photography in your area. Of course, there is no customer. The oddly worded emails are often the same with maybe the name or date of the unidentified event changed.
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Yet another Toronto photo rights grab

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The City of Toronto is desperate for free pictures. The city is running yet another photo-rights grab disguised as a photo contest.

The city is asking people to send in winter pictures taken in city parks, ravines and recreation centres. The latter case, taking pictures inside recreation centres, violates the city’s own code of conduct for recreation centres.

In public parks, the city’s parks people are known for harassing photographers who have “big cameras” but no photo permit. Toronto even says that news photographers need prior city permission before shooting in a public park. Yet now, Toronto has a contest asking people to do what the city tries to ban.

Just like all previous Toronto photo contests, the rules say that Toronto gets:
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Working on Spec

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Working or shooting on spec (speculation) means the photographer does all the work first, and pays all expenses themselves, in the hope that the client will like the finished work and will then pay some sort of fee. Even then, there’s rarely any contract covering the work.

Why would any photographer agree to be exploited like this?

When a potential client asks a photographer to work on spec, it shows that the client doesn’t value the photographer’s time or expertise.

Toronto ad agency Zulu Alpha Kilo (which phonetically spells out its CEO’s first name) this week published a video about working on spec. While not aimed at photographers, it certainly still applies.

 

Another Toronto photo contest to avoid

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A year ago, the City of Toronto ran a photo-rights-grabbing effort disguised as a photo contest. The city is now running another photo contest. Let’s take a look.

The good news is that this contest has a big statement about copyright. It says the photographer will “retain full rights and ownership of their photos.” If any use is required beyond the contest, the city will negotiate with the photographer. Perfect.

And now the bad news. The rules state that every picture submitted to the contest becomes public record. Public record => almost public domain => photographer loses some rights and ownership of their photos.

The prizes are very minimal. Who wants to win lunch with Toronto’s General Manager of Transportation Services? Who wants a City of Toronto certificate? Prizes also include a magazine subscription (a $22 value), a gift certificate that can be used to buy a magazine subscription and a t-shirt, and your name on a vanity street sign.

Certainly this contest is aimed at amateurs. But why take advantage of them like this?

Why not have prizes like: no property taxes for a year, no utility bills for a year, one-year TTC transit passes, a year’s free parking at any city-owned parking lot.

 

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