For Photographers

Toronto Film Festival 2014

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(You may want to do yourself a favour and skip this absurdly long post.)

Each year I write about covering the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) hoping that it’ll be my last post on the subject. But each year, TIFF finds new ways to mess things up even more than the previous year.

The Good

First, the good things about the 2014 film festival:

• It’s over. :-)

 

• When picking up media accreditation, TIFF no longer gives photographers a shopping bag full of useless promotional material. Sadly though, photographers still don’t get the information they need to do their job – a full schedule with dates and times. More on this later.

 

• WiFi was added at one venue. Considering that the country’s largest ISP is the main sponsor of the event, it’s a wonder why it took so long. Sadly though, photographers still have to sit on the ground to work.
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Things you need to know about lists of things you need to know

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On the Web, in magazines and in newspapers, there are an infinite number of articles with titles like, “10 things you need to know about . . .”, “12 tops tips for . . .”, “24 best ideas for . . .”, ad nauseam.

In keeping with this silly trend, here are the top seven things you need to know about meaningless lists of things you need to know:

 

1. Magazine readership studies, going back to at least the 1990s, have shown that using numbers on cover blurbs increases readership. Using a non-round number such as “Top 12” rather than “Top 10” will increase readership even more. An odd non-round number is even more effective: “Top 11” will attract more attention than “Top 12.”

The next time you’re in a supermarket checkout line, look at all the magazine covers and note the numbers in their cover blurbs: “47 Ultimate Summer Fashion Tips”, “63 ways to boost your love life”, “21 foods you must avoid”, etc.
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Don’t discount yourself

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(Sorry, another long post)

A newspaper article in The Province reports on a new Vancouver-based company that offers customers the chance to save money by booking a last-minute photo session.

The theory is that consumers can save money by booking last minute because photographers will discount their services in order to fill any spare time in their schedule. This company acts as a middleman between the last-minute customer and the not-busy photographer.

At first glance, this might sound like a win-win situation. But a closer look may suggest that it’s a win only for the company behind this. (For fun, check to see who is seemingly behind this).

A last-minute sell-off might be okay for amateur photographers, part-time photographers who have a day job, or those who like to do dump-and-run photography (more on this later). But if you’re a real photographer then this may be a bad idea for you. It’s somewhat similar to why discount sites like Groupon are bad for photographers.
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Avoid this Toronto photo contest

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The city of Toronto, the same city that bans parents from taking pictures of their kids taking part in any activity at a recreational centre or arena, has launched another of its photo rights grabs. By simply entering this contest, you’re giving the city all rights to your pictures for all eternity.

Rule 14 includes:

Entering the contest constitutes an agreement by the contestant to give a royalty-free, world-wide, perpetual, non-exclusive license to the City, and anyone it authorizes, to display, distribute, modify, crop reproduce, and create derivative works of the entries, in whole or in part, in any media now existing or subsequently developed including the Internet, for any City purpose including, but not limited to, advertising and promotion.

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Check your focus

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When pricing a photo assignment or negotiating with a potential customer, the photographer’s frame of mind matters a lot. The photographer could be thinking along the lines of “If I get this job, I’ll make $4,000,” or they might be thinking, “If I don’t get this job, I’ll make nothing.”

The former train of thought (being “promotion focused”) is about trying to maximize gains. The latter (being “prevention focused”) is about trying to minimize risk and prevent loss.

Overall, neither type of focus is better than the other and we often switch from one to the other depending on the circumstances. But research has shown that when pricing or negotiating, being promotion focused tends to lead to better outcomes (e.g. earn more when selling or pay less when buying).
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Privacy and Model Releases

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A ridiculously long, meandering post but first, the disclaimer:

I’m not a lawyer and one look at my bank account will confirm that. You’d be foolish to take my advice without further thought. Although laws are written in black and white, they are anything but. No matter what the situation, there will always be a lawyer who will argue the opposite. Remember that civil laws can vary from province to province.

The short version of this post: Do you need a model release? Yes, no, maybe.

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Privacy laws and model releases go hand in hand. The federal government and most provinces have privacy laws.
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Bureaucratic Red Tape

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From shooting assignments at four large companies over the past three weeks:

• For an editorial portrait of an executive, that executive’s telecom company required every e-mail to be cc’d to the following people:

– the photo subject’s executive assistant

– the executive assistant’s assistant

– the director of national marketing and communications

– the communications senior manager

– the public relations senior manager

– legal affairs

– the social media manager

– an outside public relations and marketing agency

– building management

– building security

 

• Another corporate client had to add me to its vendor list. To do this, the company sent four documents for me to complete. One of these documents was five pages long. The documents were then sent to three people at two sister companies in two countries.
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