For Customers

Giving Away The Store

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Do you expect to get the entire pizza when you buy a single slice?

Would you ask the waiter for the rest of the bottle after you’ve bought one glass of wine?

Do you stay and watch every movie at the cineplex when you’ve bought a ticket?

Some customers hire a photographer and then expect (or demand) every picture that was shot.

The Customer

Why might a customer ask for every picture?

— Another photographer once gave the customer every picture and now that customer (incorrectly) thinks this is the normal practice.

— The customer thinks the photographer didn’t choose the best images and they’re worried that they’re missing out on something (i.e. FOMO).

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Door-to-door Energy Scams

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(This post has nothing to do with photography).

If you received an e-mail saying you just won a million dollars, would you believe it? If an e-mail said your bank account or credit card was compromised and you needed to “click here” to verify your information, would you do it?

Someone came to my front door today saying he was with the “Ontario Energy Safety Board”. He was here to do a furnace safety inspection. Of course, he was lying. There’s no such thing as the Ontario Energy Safety Board. The company name he used was meant to be confused with real Ontario Energy Board.

Now that warmer weather has begun, many homeowners will be receiving similar knocks on their front door. This will go on for many months. Sadly, all levels of Canadian government have refused to fix the problem of door-to-door scams. We have Do Not Call and CASL but we don’t have “Do not knock” like Australia.
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Print it or lose it

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As you might know, the most archival storage medium is paper. It’s also the most common and the cheapest. (Yes, rock is more archival but paper is easier to carry around.)

Yet we still digitize almost everything in the belief that this will preserve that information. But as file formats, storage formats, software and hardware become obsolete, this information may be lost.

Vinton “Vint” Cerf, recognized as a founder of the Internet and currently vice-president of Google, this week stated:

In our zeal to get excited about digitizing, we digitize photographs thinking it’s going to make them last longer, and we might turn out to be wrong.
(…)
We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it. We digitize things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artifacts that we digitized. If there are photos you really care about, print them out.

In 2013, the Photo Marketing Association launched its Print it or Lose it campaign to encourage consumers to print their valuable photos rather than risk accidental loss of those digital images.

 

Is Your Business Ready For Its Close-Up?

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Why spend $0 on ad photography when you’re spending tens of thousands of dollars for a full-page newspaper ad?

Why would a national company use an amateur cellphone snapshot when its brand image at stake?

The Globe and Mail today published an ad supplement about franchising. The online version isn’t quite the same as the print version but it does have many of the same photos. The back cover of the print version has a full-page ad for a large pet care company. The amateur point-and-shoot photo missed the purpose of the business. It also missed everything needed in good photography.
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Professional Value

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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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Go Pro

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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).

The annual report designer told 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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Cheap Stock Pictures Fail Yet Again

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The National Post this week pointed out that the cheap stock pictures used by the Department of 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.

This National Post article is years behind the times. The federal government’s practice of using stock pictures from foreign photographers has been going on for a long time. The Canadian government avoids Canadian photographers and buys cheaper work from abroad.
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