A Photo Opportunity Without Any Opportunity

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I photographed a press event in Toronto yesterday that was poorly organized, with bad lighting, terrible staging, and a bad media team. It was run by the Prime Minister’s Office.

The media had to undergo security searches by both police and sniffer dogs. The audience simply walked in.

There were strict rules for journalists: where to stand, where not to go, and what not to shoot. Reporters were barred from asking questions or conducting interviews. The audience had free rein to move about and stand anywhere.

The event’s setup was chaotic. Three political VIPs, the Canadian Prime Minister and two European Union presidents, were seated on a low stage at one end of a cramped, narrow room. The audience had to stand because there were no chairs. Photographers were confined to a low riser behind the audience.

This arrangement meant the three seated leaders were barely visible to the photographers or TV cameras, and they were spaced too far apart to capture a group shot.
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Toronto Film Festival 2014

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(You may want to do yourself a favour and skip this absurdly long post.)

Each year I write about covering the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) hoping that it’ll be my last post on the subject. But each year, TIFF finds new ways to mess things up even more than the previous year.

The Good

First, the good things about the 2014 film festival:

• It’s over. :-)

 

• When picking up media accreditation, TIFF no longer gives photographers a shopping bag full of useless promotional material. Sadly though, photographers still don’t get the information they need to do their job – a full schedule with dates and times. More on this later.

 

• WiFi was added at one venue. Considering that the country’s largest ISP is the main sponsor of the event, it’s a wonder why it took so long. Sadly though, photographers still have to sit on the ground to work.
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Things you need to know about lists of things you need to know

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On the Web, in magazines and in newspapers, there are an infinite number of articles with titles like, “10 things you need to know about . . .”, “12 tops tips for . . .”, “24 best ideas for . . .”, ad nauseam.

In keeping with this silly trend, here are the top seven things you need to know about meaningless lists of things you need to know:

 

1. Magazine readership studies, going back to at least the 1990s, have shown that using numbers on cover blurbs increases readership. Using a non-round number such as “Top 12” rather than “Top 10” will increase readership even more. An odd non-round number is even more effective: “Top 11” will attract more attention than “Top 12.”

The next time you’re in a supermarket checkout line, look at all the magazine covers and note the numbers in their cover blurbs: “47 Ultimate Summer Fashion Tips”, “63 ways to boost your love life”, “21 foods you must avoid”, etc.
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Don’t Discount Yourself

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[Added December 2016: the company mentioned in this post seems to have gone out of business.]

A newspaper article in The Province reports on a new Vancouver-based company offering customers the chance to book last-minute photo sessions at discounted prices. The idea is simple: photographers are, in theory, willing to offer discounts to fill empty slots in their schedules, and the company acts as a middleman, connecting customers with these last-minute deals.

At first glance, this might seem like a win-win situation. The customer gets a discount, and the photographer fills an empty slot. However, a closer examination suggests that the real winner here might be the company itself. (For fun, check out who’s behind this business.)

While last-minute discounts might work for amateur photographers, part-time photographers with day jobs, and those who practice dump-and-run photography (more on this later), it’s a poor strategy for professionals. In fact, it’s similar to why discount platforms like Groupon can be bad for photographers.
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Avoid This Toronto Photo Contest

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The city of Toronto, the same city that bans parents from taking pictures of their kids taking part in any activity at a recreational centre or arena, has launched another of its photo rights grabs. By simply entering this contest, you’re giving the city all rights to your pictures for all eternity.

Rule 14 includes:

Entering the contest constitutes an agreement by the contestant to give a royalty-free, world-wide, perpetual, non-exclusive license to the City, and anyone it authorizes, to display, distribute, modify, crop reproduce, and create derivative works of the entries, in whole or in part, in any media now existing or subsequently developed including the Internet, for any City purpose including, but not limited to, advertising and promotion.

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Check Your Focus

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A photographer’s frame of mind matters a lot when pricing a photo assignment or negotiating with a potential customer. The photographer could be thinking along the lines of, “If I get this job, I’ll make $4,000,” or they might be thinking, “If I don’t get this job, I’ll make nothing.”

The former train of thought (being “promotion focused”) is about trying to maximize gains. The latter (being “prevention focused”) is about trying to minimize risk and prevent loss.

Neither type of focus is better than the other. We often switch from one to the other depending on the circumstances. But research has shown that when pricing or negotiating, being promotion focused tends to lead to better outcomes.
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Privacy and Model Releases

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A ridiculously long, meandering post but first, the disclaimer:

I’m not a lawyer and one look at my bank account will confirm that. You’d be foolish to take my advice without further thought. Although laws are written in black and white, they are anything but. No matter what the situation, there will always be a lawyer who will argue the opposite. Remember that civil laws can vary from province to province.

The short version of this post: Do you need a model release? Yes, no, maybe.

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Privacy laws and model releases go hand in hand. The federal government and most provinces have privacy laws.
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