Canadian Readership Numbers

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A couple months ago, the Newspaper Audience Databank (NADbank) and the Print Measurement Bureau (PMB) released their Spring 2015 survey of readership numbers for its member newspapers and magazines.

If you need readership (not circulation) numbers of some Canadian newspapers and magazines to help with your photography pricing, then have a look at this list which uses 2014 data. Readership numbers are typically much higher than the corresponding print circulation numbers.

This is more for commercial photography that will appear in these publications and not so much for editorial. While many publications have “fixed” rates for editorial photography, some do have wiggle room to negotiate higher rates.

The days of pricing photography based on circulation still exist but it may be more accurate to price based on readership, especially since that’s how some publications charge their advertisers.

 

Pricing Photography for Social Media

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Photographers, in the old days, priced their photography based on its usage. Generally speaking, editorial had the lowest price, public relations and corporate had a mid-range price, and advertising had the highest price.

This worked quite well for 45 years or so. Then Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter came along.

The line between editorial, public relations, and advertising can be nearly invisible with social media. When a company publishes pictures on social media, is that editorial, public relations or advertising?

Every type of business communication is a form of marketing. At the very least, social media should be considered public relations rather than pure editorial even though it may use editorial photography.
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Let the Games Finally End

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Over the past 17 days, I drove 1,554 kilometres, ate 9 lunches and 14 dinners, paid $124.50 for parking and shot just over 7,000 pictures. I was covering the Pan Am Games in Toronto.

As expected, the Pan Am organizers, politicians and various Pan Am sponsors are claiming that the event was a runaway success and they’re now giddy with anticipation of hosting a Summer Olympics and even a World Expo. The Pan Am Games were a success only in that no disasters happened (not counting the billions of dollars spent).
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Talking a good picture

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Most portrait photography advice is technical such as what lens to use, how to position lights, what pose to use, etc. This is the easiest advice to offer but it’s also the least valuable.

You can do a good portrait with almost any lens in almost any type of light. The reason is that the content of a portrait always trumps the technical aspects of the photo.

Viewers don’t look at a portrait and say, “Wow, look at that lens choice!” or “I really like that 3:1 light ratio.” If a viewer notices the technique before the subject then the photographer has failed.

The most important factor in creating a good portrait is the ability to capture the moment when the subject’s character, personality or, to be overly dramatic, their soul, is reflected in their face.
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The Importance of Good Public Relations Photography

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The Globe and Mail took a look at some of the photographs that Canada’s top three political leaders use in their social media. The newspaper asked a neutral third party, a US photo editor and consultant, to review the pictures.

Without knowing the leaders, their political parties or any other backstory, photo consultant Mike Davis gave his opinions of the pictures.

Stephen Harper photos:

“It’s very linear, very simplistic, not at all dynamic or deep. … It’s all very similar, it’s very distant, very removed from the person. It kind of represents him as an entity who does official things, and that’s about all you get. … These are just official records of events.”

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Fade to Blacks

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Every Canadian news outlet today reported that Blacks, a 67-year-old Canadian retail chain of 59 photography stores, will shut down within two months.

[Update: It didn’t completely shut down. See end of post].

(To be accurate: In 1930, Eddie Black opened a Toronto radio and appliance store, “Eddie Black’s Limited,” which later sold a few cameras. In 1947, his sons opened a section in the store that sold guns, fishing tackle and cameras. The following year, in 1948, the sons took over the business and launched “Eddie Black’s Camera Store.”)

Today’s news stories repeatedly mentioned that the increased use of cell phone cameras has killed the photo store. The irony is that Blacks is owned by a cell phone company.
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Best Face Forward

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It’s often been reported (more examples here and here) that employers often check a job applicant’s background by viewing the applicant’s social media presence. I always thought these news articles were exaggerated.

While photographing an event today, a group of guests motioned me over. They wanted to talk about cameras and photography. The conversation turned to how they use photos at their jobs.

Their jobs: one person does the Canadian hiring for an international engineering company; another does the hiring for a technology company; the third does the hiring for a department of a major Canadian bank.
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