Ninety-nine percent chance

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There’s a ninety-nine percent chance that the next potential customer who phones will ask, “How much?”

So how are you going to respond? Just hem and haw? Mumble something like, “It depends”?

Ideally a price should not be given over the phone. It’s always better to use e-mail. When you give a price over the phone, the customer will remember only the price and nothing else you said.

A customer asks “how much” usually because they don’t know what else to ask. While price may be important to them, the true reason they call is that they’re trying to figure out if you’re the right photographer for them. Do you understand their needs? Can you do the work properly? Do they feel reassured by you?

When that inevitable question is asked, you have to be ready without missing a beat. The way to do this is to have a prepared script or checklist which includes a number of questions for the customer, for example:
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Quotable Stress

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A photographer wrote to say:

“I don’t know why sending out job quotes still stresses me out too much after all these years. I tie too much emotion to my business at times.”

She went on to say that she wanted to learn to separate her business from her emotions because, she said, it’s not personal, it’s just business.

 

If you view your photography as art then perhaps you should also view your business as an art. And art tends to be emotional.

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Cut out the middleman

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If you’re a photographer who shoots corporate events like conferences and conventions, you may have noticed there are some online businesses that offer to connect you with customers. How nice of them.

Right now, one such European company is sending emails to photographers in Toronto, and apparently also in many other cities around the world, claiming that it has a customer with an urgent need for photo services in the photographer’s area.

If you ignore this email because of its generic nature or because it looks like spam, you’ll get more similar emails in the following weeks and months. The emails have a fake “unsubscribe” link that does nothing.

All these emails claim that this company has yet another customer with an immediate need for photography in your area. Of course, there is no customer. The oddly worded emails are often the same with maybe the name or date of the unidentified event changed.
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Working with news photographers at your event

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If you’re planning a corporate event or any other type of event that you hope will attract the news media, then you may need some tips on how to work with the news or press photographers who will attend.

While the six media relations tips provided in that linked article may sound obvious, many companies, both big and small, can get it very wrong. It was no secret that Canada’s previous federal Conservative government was horrendously bad at running press conferences and photo ops.

“Photojournalists are not there to make your client look bad or good. We are there to represent the truth to the best of our ability and strive to maintain objectivity at all costs,” advised [Amber] Bracken [President of the News Photographers Association of Canada]. “At the same time, we also strive to capture the world beautifully, your client included.”

You need non-partisan press photographers to cover your event or photo opportunity so your company might earn the media blessing. Editorial photography published by news outlets is the most credible type of information. People trust what they see in a newspaper or magazine.

Similarly, most public relations photography and press release photography should also be editorial in nature and contain human interest. The best way to achieve this is to hire a photographer who has a journalism background and who has worked for a news publication.

 

Licensing fees for photography

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There are usually three components to a commercial or corporate photographer’s price: production expenses, photo fee (or creative fee) and licensing fee (or usage fee).

The first item, production expenses, refers to all expenses directly related to the job at hand. It doesn’t include your cost of doing business. It should be straightforward as to how to determine and charge for production expenses.

Photographers often charge a markup on some of these expenses but some clients ask for receipts and will refuse to pay any markup.

One important expense is your own equipment. Some photographers charge each client a rental fee for using their own photo equipment. Other photographers put the cost of their own equipment into their cost of doing business and wrap that into their photo fee. I’m not sure which method is better but remember that the cost of your own equipment must be recouped.
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Creating memorable photos for marketing

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Researchers at MIT recently published a study and online demo about trying to understand and predict image memorability. The study used 60,000 images and a few thousand participants.

A goal of this research was “[u]nderstanding why certain things are memorable…” so that it might someday be possible to create better images thereby “allowing people to consume information more efficiently.” (If you’re a photographer, please stop laughing at this.)

Researchers found that the most memorable pictures usually included – wait for it – faces or other human body parts. The least memorable pictures were those of generic scenes, especially landscapes and other types of nature. The researchers called their results a “trend.” Most photographers know that this “trend” has been around for almost 180 years.
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Yet another Toronto photo rights grab

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The City of Toronto is desperate for free pictures. The city is running yet another photo-rights grab disguised as a photo contest.

The city is asking people to send in winter pictures taken in city parks, ravines and recreation centres. The latter case, taking pictures inside recreation centres, violates the city’s own code of conduct for recreation centres.

In public parks, the city’s parks people are known for harassing photographers who have “big cameras” but no photo permit. Toronto even says that news photographers need prior city permission before shooting in a public park. Yet now, Toronto has a contest asking people to do what the city tries to ban.

Just like all previous Toronto photo contests, the rules say that Toronto gets:
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