The business side of photography
Two days ago, the Victoria News, in British Columbia, published this:
The page was taken down the next day, just minutes after news radio station CKNW asked the newspaper for comment.
It’s bad enough to lay off news photographers, which many newspapers are doing these days. In fact, the Victoria News laid off its very experienced staff photographer last year. But it’s sheer stupidity when a large, international, for-profit company asks people to work for free.
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Was the federal “Department of Canadian Heritage” named ironically?
The National Post this week pointed out that the cheap stock pictures used by Canadian Heritage are from a foreign-owned picture agency and were shot by foreign photographers.
Why does this federal agency use foreign photos to promote Canadian culture? It suggested that Canadian photographers are too expensive.
Unfortunately, the National Post article is many years behind the times. The federal government’s practice of using cheap stock pictures from foreign photographers has been going on for a long time. That’s correct: the Canadian government avoids Canadian photographers and buys cheaper work from abroad.
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The city of Toronto, the same city that bans parents from taking pictures of their kids taking part in any activity at a recreational centre or arena, has launched another of its photo rights grabs. By simply entering this contest, you’re giving the city all rights to your pictures for all eternity.
Rule 14 includes:
Entering the contest constitutes an agreement by the contestant to give a royalty-free, world-wide, perpetual, non-exclusive license to the City, and anyone it authorizes, to display, distribute, modify, crop reproduce, and create derivative works of the entries, in whole or in part, in any media now existing or subsequently developed including the Internet, for any City purpose including, but not limited to, advertising and promotion.
Here in Ontario, we’re in the early days of a provincial election and the three parties are on the campaign trail.
This post could’ve been about the fact that the Conservatives don’t even have a business portrait of its leader and that several of its candidates also don’t have headshots. No portrait = invisible.
Or this post could’ve been about the NDP which had to cut-and-paste its candidate headshots onto a matching background since the party couldn’t figure out how to organize consistent portraits in the first place. [Edit May 13: It appears that the NDP’s first attempt at cut-and-paste using the high-school blue background was so bad that they did all of them over again.]
Or the post could’ve been about the media handout pictures from the three parties. These photos have no captions, no IDs, no information whatsoever. They are useless as media handouts.
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If you made products for digital cameras, what kind of camera would you show on your web site to help market your products?
If you’re Eye-Fi, which makes WiFi-enabled memory cards, you would use an old film camera from last century. [Sorry, the link has gone dead. Screengrab below]. And to make it worse, you would state “The power of WiFi for the camera you love.”
Two corporate photographers were talking shop. The first photographer said that he recently charged $6,500 to produce 14 studio portraits for a company’s annual report. The second photographer replied, “They should’ve called me. I would’ve done it for $2,000.”
And there’s the problem.
The second photographer said he would’ve been happy to do the same work for less money. If this photographer was smart, he should’ve asked, “What did you do to earn that fee?”
Of course, the ideal situation is to figure out how to do the same work and be paid more. What would a photographer have to add in order to earn more?
Some photographers forget that it’s not supposed to be a race to the bottom. Photographers compete mostly with themselves. It’s not about charging less than another photographer but rather it’s about figuring out how to deliver more to the customer.
When the choice is between (a) doing the same work and getting paid more, or (b) doing the same work and getting paid less, it’s surprising how many photographers will choose less.
Fifteen years ago, almost to the day, scientist and later president of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam gave a speech about his visions for India. His speech included:
If we are not free, no one will respect us.
(With apologies for misusing this quote), professional photographers should remember the opposite:
“No one will respect us if we are free.”
Two months ago, a friend and fellow photographer contacted one of his regular clients here in Toronto about a (then) upcoming assignment in Europe. The client was thrilled the photographer was available to go. But after consulting head office, the client found out that they didn’t have a budget to send a photographer. Instead, they were going to hire a local freelancer in Europe.
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