A Losing Opportunity

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A well-known stock photo company is currently hiring for many positions including human resources, sales and marketing, numerous tech positions, product directors, business development, photo editors and photographers.

All of these jobs are salaried and come with “first-rate Apple gear, generous vacation plan, health benefits, solid compensation/bonuses and a company culture that values empowerment, passion, integrity, courage and transparency.”

In fact, the company states that their employees enjoy “Stellar medical, dental, and vision insurance”, “Generous vacations. Game rooms”, “Competitive pay”, “Tuition reimbursement. Holiday parties”, “Fully-stocked beverage fridges. Complimentary breakfast, lunch, and snacks”, and “Subsidized gym memberships and fitness plans.”
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Toronto Film Festival 2018 Review

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My annual, very, very long rant about the recent 2018 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) from a photographer’s point of view. If you’re not somehow involved with TIFF then it might be better to skip this post. I’m just trying to reach a certain audience. The reason is that each year, TIFF sends out a survey asking for journalists’ thoughts about the film festival but there are no questions for photographers. The film festival treats photographers as an afterthought and never bothers asking for their opinions.

 

TL;DR: This year, some things got better, some got worse and a few things sadly haven’t changed. TIFF has no real focus as it tries to be everything to everyone. Middle age is showing as TIFF just reiterates what it did the previous year. Final rant at the end of this post.
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Starting a Photo Business in Canada

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Are you thinking about starting a photo business in Canada and do you speak French? Then do yourself a favour and read En photo et en affaires written by Quebec City photographer Francis Vachon.

This is one of the very few Canadian books about starting and running a photography business. It covers starting a business, getting customers, pricing, licensing, contracts, taxes and copyright.

The book was written in Quebec but most of the information is applicable anywhere in Canada. But keep in mind that Quebec’s privacy laws are different from most other provinces. There might also be some small differences when it comes to contracts as this falls mostly under provincial laws.

 

Keeping Up With The Times

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September is the start of a new school year and every student will be getting new school portraits done. When is your company planning to get new pictures?

Every business needs to refresh the photos on their web site. Refreshing your web site shows that your company is still alive and it keeps customers interested. It also helps your site rank higher in web searches.

The second most popular search engine after Google is Google Images. This image search engine is used more than all other search engines combined excluding Google itself.

This means that people using Google Images are searching visually (because we process pictures much faster than text) and they will click on the best looking or most interesting pictures. Stock pictures are rarely interesting because stock pictures look like stock pictures. Of course, having no pictures means you’re invisible.
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Customer Photo Guidelines

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Another view-from-my-office photo taken during a tennis tournament, 11 August 2018. The approaching rain storm really did look like that. The sun (top-right-rear) was shining through the dark rain clouds.

British photographer Neil Turner wrote a post on his blog about customer expectations and customer-supplied photo guidelines.

Almost every commercial and PR client had a prepared guide that let you know what they wanted from a commissioned shoot and a few pointers of what they, or their end client, liked and didn’t like in their pictures. These ranged from really helpful pointers about what kind of clothing should be worn for portraits or whether or not images should have unfussy backgrounds through the obvious such as “images should be properly exposed” to the mildly bizarre “avoid any and all references to money”.

– Neil Turner

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Stop Being A Freelancer

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Photographers, stop calling yourself a freelance photographer. “Freelance” suggests temporary and, perhaps in the worst case, even fly-by-night.

Always refer to yourself as a professional photographer. It creates a much better image in a customer’s mind. For better or worse, titles are important in business.

So while “freelancer” may be more akin to how you see what you do, it might be selling you short. After all, your livelihood doesn’t depend on your own self-perception, but on how potential clients see you and your work.

– Suzan Bond

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