Many photographers struggle with their pricing. This is normal. The best way for a photographer to establish their business is to understand how their business operates and, for that matter, how any (photography) business operates.
The photographer learns to price according to their location, their business plans and their market positioning. This takes time and effort and, yes, mistakes will be made along the way.
And then there are photographers who like to take shortcuts.
I got a phone call today from someone claiming to be an office manager. She said they needed some business portraits. She asked how much I charged, how the pictures would be shot, whether I use softboxes or umbrellas, what type of backgrounds are best, how the photos are selected, what amount of retouching I would do, and how the pictures would be delivered. After I answered all her questions, she suddenly hung up.
Having worked with many companies, from small to large, over the past 26 years, I knew immediately that everything about this phone call was wrong: the way the person spoke, the questions she asked, the television noises in the background and the gum she was chewing.
With the magic of Call Display and the Internet, I traced her phone number. It led to the web site of a Toronto wedding photographer.
I suspect she got a request to do some business portraits, for which she has no experience, and she made the fake phone call to me to figure out what to do and what to charge.
Her web site uses free web hosting and she uses a free e-mail service. Obviously, this person loves cheap and is not interested in investing in her business. Maybe she doesn’t expect her business to last very long.
As I browsed her site, several of the photos were really good. Too good.
Using Google Image search, it turned out that many of the photos on her site were stolen from photographers in the USA and UK.
Is this photographer too cheap and/or too lazy to shoot her own pictures or is she just trying to mislead potential customers?
Stealing other people’s work and passing it off as your own to promote your business is against the law, (see: Copyright Act, Competition Act).
Professional photography is not regulated in any way. It’s caveat emptor (let the buyer beware). So when looking to commission a photographer, please choose carefully.
There are many very good, professional photographers who can produce excellent work. Sadly there are also those who are just looking to make a quick buck with their camera.
A photography customer should never have to deal with fly-by-night photographers, those who use bait-and-switch tactics, or those who deliver substandard work.
If you’re about to spend many hundreds or thousands of dollars on professional photography, choose wisely. Not only do you get what you pay for, you can sometimes also get what you didn’t bargain for.
Added October 2013: Got another one. Someone emailed that his “medium sized company located in the downtown core of Toronto” needed 18 corporate headshots. That’s an odd way to describe your company and his email arrived at 11:10 PM on a Saturday. Alarm bell #1.
He wanted “a simple two light set up and a light grey background.” A customer would never say this. Alarm bell #2.
A quick Google search revealed that this guy seems to be a part-time wedding photographer. His domain name was registered two years ago. His photography business name and logo are virtually the same as a well-known US brand. His LinkedIn page lists what his day job is: he works for an online marketing business. A phone call to this company, which is not located in downtown Toronto, confirmed he worked there.
This guy’s web site has some very nice wedding pictures. But several of his wedding pictures and business photos are clearly from model test shoots. His gallery of “corporate photography” is just model headshots with office-like backgrounds digitally added – the lighting and focus don’t match.
Again, buyer beware.
Added December 2018: Yet another one. A person emailed on a Sunday night to say that she is “an executive assistant at a Toronto area company,” (which is an odd way to refer to your company), and her boss wanted pricing for business headshots to be done sometime in the upcoming year. She wrote that she had no other information whatsoever.
She asked if I could send all the information and pricing I have on business headshots as well as any photography tips. She included several smiley faces and exclamation points throughout her email.
There seems to be some amateurs pretending to be professional photographers. Buyer beware.
Added January 2019: Another lazy photographer. This one, in Brooklyn, New York, was too lazy to remove my name and other references from the full page of business information she stole, word-for-word, from my web site.
Again, buyer beware because you may not be getting what you’re paying for.
