The business side of photography
Did you know that it’s cheaper to buy a house than rent a hotel room?
A mid-range Toronto hotel room might be $160/night. That works out to $4,800 per month which is much higher than the average monthly mortgage payment on a house in Toronto. But since a customer needs a hotel room for only a short time, that $160 nightly room rental is 3,000 times cheaper than the average $480,000 house.
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If the pictures aren’t important then your company can hire the cheapest photographer it can find. After all, if the pictures don’t turn out, only a small amount of money was wasted. You can can hire another photographer to re-shoot the photos.
But when the pictures are important, when there’s a tight deadline, when the photos can’t be re-shot or when corporate image is at stake, then there’s risk involved. Why would you compound this risk by hiring the cheapest photographer?
Smart companies will always hire an experienced photographer who knows how to minimize risk.
Minimizing risk includes such things as being insured, having backup equipment, location scouting, anticipating potential problems and dealing with them before they become problems, understanding the flow of an event, exposure bracketing, frame bracketing, having digital backups, having alternative picture ideas, and knowing camera limitations and how to get beyond those limitations.
All of this extra time, equipment and experience costs money but they all help reduce risk to you and your company.
When reputation, credibility and money are at stake, can any business risk going cheap?
A political party in Alberta launched its provincial election campaign by unveiling its new bus. As is popular with most political campaigns, the bus was wrapped to look like a gigantic billboard. But no one bothered to properly proof the final layout.
A photo of the party’s female leader was placed in a rather unfortunate position over the rear wheels of the bus.
After a day of negative attention and being laughed at, the party says it will replace the $10,000 wrap. That’s an expensive do-over.
(Edit: a week later, the party is still being laughed at.)
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What’s the difference between advertising and public relations?
The short answer is:
Advertising is bought from a media outlet’s sales department.
Public relations is received free from a media outlet’s news department.
Guess which one has more credibility?
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How to save money on business portraits:
1. Go to a department store or grocery store photo studio and get their $29.95 special. While you’re there, you can also pick up some shampoo, socks, cereal or any other supplies that you need. Sure, this will take a couple hours out of your work day but who doesn’t like to skip work?
2. Have the lowest priced photographer on Craigslist come to your office to do the photos. Hopefully this $79 photographer will show up and won’t leave you stranded because they couldn’t get time off from their day job.
Freelance photographers usually get paid by cheque and, I suppose, occasionally by cash. Some photographers, including myself, also accept credit card payments through a PayPal account. In this case, the common setup is that the client accesses a web page on the photographer’s site to start the PayPal process.
PayPal just announced its new PayPal Here system that will allow a business to accept credit card payments using a smart phone. This is similar to the up-and-running, two-year-old Square system.
There are differences between PayPal Here and Square but there’s only one difference that matters to Canadian photographers: PayPal Here will be available in Canada and Square is not.
Square says that it’s looking into expanding outside the USA but it’s been saying that for two years. Perhaps the competition from PayPal will force Square to get moving. [Update October 24, 2012: Square just announced that it’s available in Canada.]
Apparently, the Square system is/was capable of being used for credit card fraud. The PayPal Here card reader is encrypted.
For professional photographers, accepting credit card payments on location could be a big help. Some business customers and government clients can pay on-the-spot with a corporate credit card. But not being able to accept credit cards on location means the photographer has to send an invoice and wait up to several months to get paid.
Update March 18, 2013: PayPal Here is still not available in Canada.
If you buy a cheap pair of shoes and they turn out to be uncomfortable, you stop wearing them. The money you paid for these shoes was wasted.
If you buy a more expensive pair of shoes and you enjoy wearing them, you’ll wear these shoes often. Over the life of the shoes, the additional money you paid, compared to the lower priced shoes, will be inconsequential becasue the value received is high.
Business portrait photography is a common offering from corporate photographers. Here in Toronto, business portraits can range from $50 to $1000. Even $2000 for a single portrait is not unheard of.
Why is there such a wide price range?
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