The business of photography and retouching
When someone asks you to work for free, they want photography that’s good enough, pictures that are better than nothing, photos that are worth what they’re paying.
When someone hires you to work for pay, they want photography that’s good, pictures that are better than anything, photos that are worth what they’re paying.
“Corporate photography” is just a general name for photography used to help market a business. It isn’t just for big corporations. This type of photography can be used by any business, big or small, incorporated or not.
Corporate photography is not advertising photography. The latter type of photography is about selling a product or service. Corporate photography is for building and enhancing a company’s name or brand and it tends to be editorial photography.
The most common type of corporate photography is business portraits. Photography of business conferences and events, office interiors and exteriors, and employees on the job, are also common subject matter. Corporate photographers are also used to cover a company’s involvement with a community or charity event.
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If you need a deposit or a prepayment before the photography takes place, you simply ask the customer for it. Easy, right?
With retail customers, this is a straightforward process. But with some corporate customers, it might require slightly more paperwork.
Some companies can’t, or won’t, issue a prepayment based only on a photographer’s estimate or quote. They may need an invoice. An invoice is a legal request for payment, a quote is not.
How do you invoice a customer for work that hasn’t been done?
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“The customer is always right” is a well-known saying. But contrary to popular belief, it’s neither a law nor regulation of any kind.
That phrase seems to have gotten its start at least 112 years ago as part of a customer service policy of Marshall Field & Company, a Chicago department store.
A 1905 US newspaper published an article about Marshall Field & Company in which it seemingly quoted what Marshall Field taught his employees, namely that the customer is always right.
Harry Selfridge, a department store executive who worked for Marshall Field, moved to London in 1906 and soon opened his Selfridges & Company department store. He, too, used the phrase “the customer is always right.”
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Confucius was wrong when he said:
Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Running a photography business consists of short moments of photography broken up by long periods of business. But those moments of photography make it worthwhile.
While photographers do need to make money, the need to create pictures may be more important. It’s not always about money.
Making money is a job. Making good pictures is an accomplishment.
Internet scams that target photographers have been around for years. Over the past couple of years, there’s another scam involving credit cards.
A scammer, posing as a customer, will ask to hire a photographer for an upcoming event but only if the photographer accepts credit cards. If the photographer agrees to the work, the scammer will mention that they also need to pay another event supplier who doesn’t take credit cards.
The scammer will offer to send extra money to the photographer so the photographer can pay that other supplier. To tempt the photographer, the scammer will promise the photographer a couple hundred dollars extra for their trouble.
The scammer will use a stolen credit card to pay the photographer’s fee, the other supplier’s fee and the extra money for the photographer’s trouble. The unsuspecting photographer will be told to pay the other supplier immediately – it’s urgent!! – but only in cash through Western Union.
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The British Columbia Liberal Party recently hired a former photojournalist to photograph its leader, the current premier of that province. The party is heading towards a 2017 election.
The Wildrose Party of Alberta did the same thing a year ago by hiring (on a part-time basis) a freelance photojournalist.
Almost every photographer, hired by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to cover the Canadian Prime Minister, has been a working photojournalist.
In the first two cases, the photographers are paid by the provincial political party, not the taxpayers.
Political parties could save a lot of money by hiring the lowest-bidder-with-a-camera, by doing the photos themselves, or by not hiring a photographer at all. But these political parties know that they need authentic, story-telling photography to communicate their message. This is marketing 101.
(Added 2018: The Ontario Liberal party hired a freelance photojournalist to photograph the re-election campaign of the premier.)
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