What’s for dinner?

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Over the past three weeks, I received four inquiries for corporate or commercial photography services.

One request was: “We need a photographer for a conference in Toronto. We don’t have all the details yet but we need your price asap.”

The second: “We are a construction company and we’re looking to have professional photographs taken of an upcoming project. Could you please provide a basic outline of your pricing and what it includes.”

The third: “We’re looking for a photographer for tomorrow from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM. What do you charge?”

The fourth request, to cover a corporate event, included only the date, time and location. When I phoned to ask for more information, the public relations person said she couldn’t give out any details, she didn’t know what pictures they wanted and she didn’t know how the pictures were going to be used. But she needed a quote as soon as possible.
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Should you adjust your set?

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The photo assignment has been completed and the finished pictures and invoice have been sent to the customer. But for whatever reason, the customer’s plans have changed and they now want to reduce the usage or even cancel usage altogether.

Should you, the photographer, reduce the original license fee and send a new invoice?

Perhaps the customer originally requested a five-year license for some business portraits but their plans changed and now they want only a one-year license. Maybe the customer initially wanted a license for sales brochures and web use but now they’ve decided to go web only. Or perhaps the work included a license for magazine advertising but the customer cancelled their advertising campaign.

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One lump or two?

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In the previous post, it was mentioned that some professional photographers will list their creative fee and licensing fee separately while others will combine the two fees into one number. Which method is better?

Combining the two fees:

• Some customers find a single fee easier to understand.

• The client doesn’t know how much each fee contributes to the total. This allows the photographer more wiggle room if they have to negotiate the creative or licensing fees.

• The client doesn’t know how much each fee contributes to the total. The photographer can benefit when relicensing the picture since the client doesn’t know what the original license fee was.

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Photography Fees Explained

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When estimating and pricing photography, commercial photographers base their price on the combination of a creative fee (also called a photography fee) and a licensing fee (also called a usage fee). Some photographers will list these two fees separately while others will combine the two into one number.

The creative or photography fee depends on the complexity of the assignment, the time involved, the photographer’s talent and experience, and the photographer’s business overhead.

The licensing or usage fee depends on how the client intends to use the finished photography.
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Sales tax for Canadian photographers

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For Canadian professional photographers (and other business owners), the federal government has published a brief GST/HST guide and a sales tax calculator. The calculator is titled “GST/HST calculator” but the results will also show provincial tax.

Current sales tax rates (these may change):

British Columbia: 5% GST and 7% PST

Alberta: 5% GST and 0% PST

Saskatchewan: 5% GST and 6% PST

Manitoba: 5% GST and 8% PST

Ontario: 13% HST

Quebec: 5% GST and 9.975% QST

New Brunswick: 15% HST

Nova Scotia: 15% HST

Prince Edward Island: 15% HST

Newfoundland and Labrador: 15% HST

Yukon: 5% GST and 0% PST

Northwest Territories: 5% GST and 0% PST

Nunavut: 5% GST and 0% PST

In British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec, the provinces which have both GST and a provincial sales tax, each tax is charged on the retail price only (i.e. there’s no tax on the other tax).

 

Please check the date of this article because it contains information that may become out of date. Tax regulations, sales tax rules, copyright laws and privacy laws can change from time to time. Always check with proper government sources for up-to-date information.

 

Importance of Business Portraits

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A company logo is very important to a business since it represents that business. Similarly a business portrait acts like a logo for that person. So why do some people use holiday snapshots or other amateur pictures for their business portrait?

An article written by personal branding expert Daniel Schawbel talks about the importance of having professionally produced portraits:

…get the best possible photo of yourself. For if logos are quintessential to commercial brands, photos are quintessential to personal ones. … pictures – when they display a lucky blend of originality, quality, artistic merit and manage to capture the essence of what you stand for – send a powerful message about you and your brand that colors the perception other parties will have of you across the board. Underestimate the importance of a portrait picture at your own peril.

…today even home-made pictures can have astounding quality and do the job for us – at least temporarily. If you ask me, however, I would never recommend trusting such a crucial piece of your personal brand to luck and my advice has consistently been to always engage the services of a professional photographer…

Here’s another article on the importance of business portraits.

 

What’s in a name?

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The Associated Press (AP) is launching its new entertainment picture agency. 

Just what the world needs, another picture agency cranking out more of the same, commodity, entertainment photos and producing even more celebrity worship. (Yes, I sometimes shoot the same entertainment pictures and I plead guilty as charged.)

The advantage of taking pictures of the famous is that they get published.

– US Photographer Elliott Erwitt

But that’s not the fun part.

AP is using the name “Invision Agency”.

Dictionaries define invision as: want of vision, without the power of seeing, lack of vision. It’s also a synonym for blindness. The word invision is related to the word invisible but it’s obsolete in the English language.

Did AP really mean to use the word envision?

 

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