For Photographers

Give Yourself a Hand

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Ontario’s minimum wage will rise 31.6% from today’s $11.40/hour on January 1, 2019. How much of a raise are you going to give yourself at that time?

The average full-time, hourly-paid, Canadian employee makes $58,136/year, assuming a 40-hour week.

You should be earning the same $58,000 if you consider yourself average, *plus* enough to cover your overhead expenses. For example, if your annual overhead is $25,000, then you need to earn about $83,000 per year. Job expenses are not included in that sum.

Using the same example as above, if you do 100 jobs per year, then your average invoice should be at least $830 plus expenses. If you do 50 jobs per year, then your average invoice should be at least $1,660 plus job expenses. I said “at least” because (a) your fee should be based on the value of your work and not on time or a flat rate, and (b) employees get paid benefits and you don’t.
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Photoshop Plugins and Mac OS 10.11/10.12

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I updated a Mac computer from OS 10.10 to 10.11. Yes, 1-1/2 years behind the times. The reason for the update is because some new applications now require OS 10.11. But all Topaz and Nik (Google) plugins for Photoshop starting acting up after the update.

The reason why these plugins were acting weirdly is because Mac’s newer operating systems, starting with OS 10.11, have Apple’s System Integrity Protection (SIP). This security feature does what its name says by not allowing non-Apple files in certain directories.
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May The Photos Be With You

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In Canada, the month of May is National Hamburger Month, National Salad Month, National Vinegar Month and National Motorcycle Awareness Month. More than a dozen other causes also use May as their national awareness month.

Perhaps most important ;-) is that May is National Photography Month in Canada and several other countries, too. May is also Vision Health Month and National Smile Month (in the UK). Coincidence?

The purpose of National Photography Month is to encourage people to think about photography and how important it is to them. Can you imagine your life without photography?

There are a few things you can do to boost your photo awareness this month (and every other month, too):
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Splitting a Photographer

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Splitting Time

Sometimes a photographer might be asked to split up a work day into non-consecutive hours. This can happen with weddings, business conferences and other full-day events where the customer wants the photographer to cover only certain parts of the event. The customer usually expects the photographer not to charge for any downtime.

For example:

• A bride might want the photographer to cover her afternoon wedding ceremony from 1:00pm to 2:30pm and the evening dinner from 6:00pm to 10:00pm. The photographer would then have a 3-1/2 hour split in their day.

• A business conference organizer might want the photographer to cover the opening speeches from 9:00am to 10:30am, a keynote presentation from 1:00pm to 2:00pm and an evening reception from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. In this case, the photographer has two blocks of downtime.

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In the Twinkle of an Eye

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They may be the tiniest details in a portrait but they’re possibly the most important. Yet many photographers don’t understand catchlights.

You may not need catchlights in every portrait. The most famous portrait, the Mona Lisa, doesn’t have catchlights:

Unlike the Mona Lisa, many of Leonardo da Vinci’s other portraits have catchlights.

But catchlights are very important in a business portrait. Catchlights bring attention to the eyes which are the most important facial feature for conveying emotion.
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Perpetually Yours

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You expect the customer to stop using an image when the photo usage license expires. This means, for example, a photo licensed for one annual report can’t be reused in any other annual reports. Already-printed copies of that one annual report can still be distributed.

But what about photos licensed for online use?

You can licence a photo for a specific time period online and then have it removed after the license has ended. This is common practice for photos used on a company’s home page and for pictures used for advertising.

But often a corporate or editorial customer will want to leave a photo online after the licence has expired rather than deleting the web article, news story, or Tweet that contained the photo.
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I Do Declare

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This shouldn’t come as a surprise but, when you do your annual income tax, you have to declare all your business income. It doesn’t matter whether customers pay by cash, cheque or credit card. You have to report all of it.

Business income from customers in other countries must also be declared on your Canadian income tax.

Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) recently sent a federal court order to payment processor Square Canada to turn over information on its Canadian sellers who annually processed at least $20,000 in the past five years. The Globe and Mail reported that this is “part of an ongoing effort by the CRA to crack down on tax avoiders.”

This has been happening for many years in the US with Square, PayPal, and all other third-party electronic payment processors. Every electronic payment processor in the US has to report to the Internal Revenue Service anyone whose payment volume annually exceeds $20,000 and 200 transactions.

The CRA is concerned about self-employed people and those who get paid in cash.

Always keep proper invoices, receipts, and bank statements to prove your income and expenses.

 

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