The business side of photography
On a sports photography forum, photographers were discussing the best ways to handle the thousands of pictures they each shoot during a game.
On a wedding photographers forum, one person said he usually shoots over 3,000 pictures per wedding. Another said he often does 5,000 pictures.
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Here’s another example of corporate stupidity caused by the shortsighted desire to save a buck.
Earlier today, I was looking through the 2010 annual report from Ontario’s Toronto-based Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). The 2011 annual report is not yet available.
The annual report contains one business portrait of its chairman and one of its president. All the other executives, managers and employees shown in the other photos are fake. None of those people work for this agency. The offices shown in those pictures are also fake.
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Here’s an example of what happens when an organization cuts corners and goes cheap. The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants is promoting its Toronto cricket tournament which benefits school cricket teams. Good for them.
But by looking at the promotional poster for the event, it’s painfully obvious that the organizers didn’t bother to hire a professional photographer or designer. Is this poster supposed to be taken seriously or is it meant as a joke?
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Another example to show that it’s not wise to put all your eggs in one basket (or all your digital files on one hard drive):
According to a CBC story, a lawyer in British Columbia is suing Apple Canada after his backup hard drive, an Apple Time Capsule, failed after three years of use. All of his data were lost.
The hard drive included pictures of the birth of his first child.
A sad fact of our digital lives is that all digital storage is inherently unstable. Hard drives will fail. Discs will become unreadable.
There’s a reason why most professional photographers back up their work at least in triplicate. A backup for the backup of the backup. There’s a reason why most top-end cameras allow for duplicate recording of pictures as they’re being shot.
Photographs are very valuable, especially irreplaceable family pictures. So why not spend a few cents and make extra backups? Blank CDs and DVDs are about 40¢ each and external hard drives might run 25¢ per gigabyte. It’s cheap insurance.
When, not if, your basket falls to the ground, will you lose all your eggs?
Media accreditation information for the upcoming 2012 World Football Challenge was sent out a few days ago. In this case, “football” means soccer.
One of the rules stated: “Media who are approved for credentials should not wear apparel supporting any of the competing teams.”
Normally, one would assume that this rule is so obvious, it need not be said. But the fact that this professional sports event had to actually mention a dress code means a problem exists.
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Want more proof that business portraits are important?
A 2012 eye tracking study showed that the number one thing viewers look at on a LinkedIn page is the person’s profile photo. And there’s no reason why this behaviour might be any different on other social networking sites.
This study [link to PDF], produced by a LinkedIn competitor, examined how professional job recruiters viewed online resumés. The first thing recruiters always noticed was the profile portrait and it held their attention for about 19% of the total time spent on page.
This can be bad news or good news.
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Just a short list of a few resources for learning to price commercial photography. I’m not vouching for any of these. A photographer would be foolish to base their business practices on numbers from someone else’s web site. Use these for informational purposes and to help understand the underlying principles.
• The News Photographers Association of Canada Cost of Doing Business Calculator (CODB) is a good place to start. You may be quite surprised at what your CODB is.
• The Canadian Association of Professional Image Creators has a PDF listing suggested minimum usage fees (i.e. licensing fees only). Main page > Useful Resources > Resources > Reproduction Fee Schedule. The site has other useful information.
