The business side of photography
A commercial photographer sets their price by combining a creative (or photography) fee with a licensing (or usage) fee. Some photographers list these fees separately, while others combine them into one total.
The creative or photography fee depends on the assignment’s complexity, the time required, the photographer’s talent and experience, and their business overhead.
The licensing or usage fee depends on how the client plans to use the finished images.
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A company logo is very important to a business since it represents that business. Similarly a business portrait acts like a logo for that person. So why do some people use holiday snapshots or other amateur pictures for their business portrait?
An article written by personal branding expert Daniel Schawbel talks about the importance of having professionally produced portraits:
…get the best possible photo of yourself. For if logos are quintessential to commercial brands, photos are quintessential to personal ones. … pictures – when they display a lucky blend of originality, quality, artistic merit and manage to capture the essence of what you stand for – send a powerful message about you and your brand that colors the perception other parties will have of you across the board. Underestimate the importance of a portrait picture at your own peril.
…today even home-made pictures can have astounding quality and do the job for us – at least temporarily. If you ask me, however, I would never recommend trusting such a crucial piece of your personal brand to luck and my advice has consistently been to always engage the services of a professional photographer…
Here’s another article on the importance of business portraits.
The Associated Press (AP) is launching its new entertainment picture agency.
Just what the world needs, another picture agency cranking out more of the same, commodity, entertainment photos and producing even more celebrity worship. (Yes, I sometimes shoot the same entertainment pictures and I plead guilty as charged.)
The advantage of taking pictures of the famous is that they get published.
– US Photographer Elliott Erwitt
But that’s not the fun part.
AP is using the name “Invision Agency”.
Dictionaries define invision as: want of vision, without the power of seeing, lack of vision. It’s also a synonym for blindness. The word invision is related to the word invisible but it’s obsolete in the English language.
Did AP really mean to use the word envision?
A company recently hired a Toronto corporate photographer to do an executive portrait of its president.
While watching the photographer set up his camera equipment, the company’s communications manager asked, “Did you know that the sensor in your digital camera is just like a solar panel? Both convert light into electricity.”
The photographer answered, “That’s interesting information.”
As the photographer positioned his lights and made a few test flashes, the manager said, “The xenon gas in your flashes is also used in laser eye surgery.”
The photographer replied, “That’s interesting information.”
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When a car has a leaky tire, the problem is obvious and the solution is simple. The car owner could shop price to find the cheapest, reasonably competent “grease monkey” to make the repair. (Grease monkey is an uncomplimentary term for a low-end car mechanic.)
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Professional photographers are insured but amateurs are not. Why would you hire an amateur to do your corporate photography or commercial photography? How can your business afford such a risk?
Here’s one example, another example and another example that show why an insured photographer is important.
Professional photography is all about reducing customer risk. The risk of problems during the photo shoot, the risk of poor quality pictures, the risk of missing deadlines, the risk that the pictures won’t meet your needs and the risk of wasting your time and money.
Professional photographers are worth more than what they cost.
Did you know that it’s cheaper to buy a house than rent a hotel room?
A mid-range Toronto hotel room might be $160/night. That works out to $4,800 per month which is higher than the average monthly mortgage payment on a house in Toronto. But since a customer needs a hotel room for only a short time, that $160 nightly room rental is 3,000 times cheaper than the average $480,000 house.
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