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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A corporate client in Toronto recently said that they’ve always used amateur photos taken by their employees and cheap stock pictures for their annual report. But this year, the company wanted something better so they hired a professional photographer (me).
I overheard the annual report designer telling the client that a professional photographer isn’t just about better quality equipment. It’s also about the fact that “a professional photographer knows what to shoot. They see things that you don’t even think about.”
The company’s 2014 annual report isn’t finished yet but the client is “extremely happy with the pictures” and “can’t wait to get them published.”
This post isn’t about me bragging about my photography. It’s about the proven fact that professional photos are more effective than amateur pictures when it comes to earning reader attention and communicating a message.
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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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Today in Toronto, it was about -8˚C. A normal winter day. My cameras worked just fine outdoors. My flashes worked as normal. After less than an hour outside, I reached into an inside coat pocket to retrieve my cell phone and my iPhone 5 said:
Of course, it probably meant to say that it needed to warm up. The phone was completely useless. Thank goodness it wasn’t an emergency.
It turns out that an iPhone doesn’t like to work below 0˚C. Not even this will help.
I know that cold weather affects all batteries and can freeze LCDs. But I don’t recall having any previous cell phone freeze on me. My digital cameras have never failed even at -20˚C. The iPhone seems to be my only electronic device that fails when the temperature is less than ideal.
Perhaps today’s smartphones are wimps or maybe they’re just turning us into wimps.
Let’s say you’re planning to have live music at your business conference or other corporate event. You might hire a soloist, a duo, a trio, a quartet or maybe even a symphony orchestra.
The music from each type of ensemble will sound different depending on the amount of musicians and instruments available. A soloist will never sound like a quartet, a duo will never sound like a symphony. It goes without saying that the bigger the production, the higher the price.
The exact same thing applies to photography.
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Let’s say a photographer owns the copyright to a photo. Without any other agreement in place, if that photo was published in a newspaper, would the photographer still own the copyright to that picture? Of course they would.
What if the photo was used in a book, on a billboard or on TV? Would the photographer still own the copyright? Yes they would. The medium in which the picture is used doesn’t affect copyright. Surely this is obvious.
So why do some folks think that a picture “found” on the Internet would have no copyright?
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PAS – Picture Avoidance Syndrome
In a 13-1/2 minute talk, portrait photographer Peter Hurley and psychologist Anna Rowley speak about PAS, which many of us may have. They suggest how someone can overcome their fear of being in front of a camera by changing their relationship with their physical appearance.
There’s often a divide between the way we see ourselves and the way the world sees us. This division can be magnified when a camera is pointed at us. When sitting for a business headshot or any other type of portrait, we may think of who we’re not rather than who we are.
Self-perception defines our level of self-worth which can affect how others see us, or at least how we think they see us, which can create a fear of being photographed. It starts with what, or who, we see in a mirror and how we respond to that mirror.
