Photo License Is Common Sense

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Got a phone call from a business, here in Toronto, looking to hire a photographer. The caller said that they’ve never hired a photographer before and admitted they weren’t sure “how it works.”

The company wanted executive portraits for its web site. Business portraits are the most common request that a corporate photographer gets. There are many uses for such pictures and smart businesses like to update their photos every couple of years or so.

I suggested the best way to do the photography, how the pictures could be delivered and then gave an approximate cost for the required usage. That last bit, about the price depending on the usage, caught the caller by surprise.

Aha! Licensing.

 

Here’s the deal about licensing:

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Advertise You not Them

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There are a lot of folks who have either an iPhone or a BlackBerry. I know a couple of photographers in Toronto who carry both: company-issued BlackBerry on one hip and personal iPhone on the other.

If you have one of these devices, and haven’t done this already, you may want to remove the third-party advertising from your e-mails. Unless, of course, you want to brag that you have a new toy. :-)

By default, e-mails sent from an iPhone end with “Sent from my iPhone”. Similarly, e-mails from a BlackBerry end with something like “Sent from my BlackBerry on the Rogers Wireless Network”.

Replace these with a promotion for your business.
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Half-full or half-empty

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If you weighed a 10-lb bag of potatoes and found that it weighed only 5 lbs, would you be concerned?

If a store clerk said that a 10-lb bag of potatoes weighs 10 lbs only if you buy it in the morning, would you be confused?

Let’s talk about camera flashes, in this case, the Nikon SB-800.

I was shooting a photo today with a Nikon D3 and an SB-800 flash manually set to 1/2-power. Deciding to add more flash, I upped the flash to full power. Surprise! The flash exposure remained the same. What’s going on and where’s my light?

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Corporate Journalism

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Is that phrase an oxymoron? Maybe the two words should be mutually exclusive?

How about the terms “business journalism” or “editorial business”? Perhaps “editorial marketing” might be more accurate?

This post is about how businesses can benefit from having editorial content and even outright journalism on their web sites. This is not to be confused with public relations or marketing. The benefits of quality and timely editorial content can equal and even surpass that of a company’s public relations or marketing efforts.

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Don’t be the Ass in Assignment

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Here are a few examples of self-proclaimed “professional” photographers in action. All of these happened over the past two weeks at various photo assignments.

• Them: My hard drive crashed! What should I do?
  Me: Do you have a backup?
  Them: No.

Over a week later, after this person lost the previous job’s photos and had to carry their iMac back to the store to get a new drive installed and then had to re-install all their software:

  Me: Do have a back up of your new hard drive?
  Them: No.

 

• Them: My camera battery died!
  Me: Don’t you carry a spare?
  Them: No, because I’ve never needed one before.
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Picture Yourself

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If you’re a business person, especially in a smaller company, then you should be aware of the value of the business portrait. Larger companies, for better or worse (and it’s mostly worse), tend to photograph only their C-level people.

Here’s a link to a UK marketing expert’s blog, with a post about the importance of a business portrait to your branding:

A few years ago, I hired a professional photographer to take my picture. It didn’t cost much (£200, I think) but I think it was the best marketing investment I have made.

‘Nuff said?

Six months ago, I got a call from a medium-sized, business management consulting company in Toronto. They wanted portraits of their top executives, mostly for use on their web site. I quoted about $2,000 for business portraits and they never called back. To this day, the “About Us” page on that company’s six-year-old web site is still empty except for a list of executive names. I guess they couldn’t find a cheap-enough photographer.

Point is, it’s penny-wise but pound-foolish to treat a rather important marketing tool as a cheap commodity. A good, and even unique, portrait is an important marketing investment. This is one of those things that are worth more than what they cost.

A business portrait can be a simple and quick head-and-shoulders headshot. It can also be two hours of photography resulting in a variety of images with various poses, locations and lighting styles, depending on you and your business. Talk to your photographer about the possibilities.

 

Canada Dry rights grab

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Canada Dry Motts is currently running a photo contest (“Art of Refreshment Photo Contest”) which seems to be only about getting free pictures for their advertising and marketing. You’d think that after all these years, with all the negative publicity other similar contests have garnered, companies would have learned by now.

This contest trades on the names of some famous artists who did ads for the beverage product over the past 50 years. Funny it doesn’t mention if any of these artists worked for free.

Canada Dry Motts is claiming all rights, exclusively, for all eternity, for every single photo entered in this contest. Even if a photo doesn’t win, the photographer has lost all rights to their submitted photo forever. Does that say “rights grab” and “we need free pictures to build up our library”?
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