Topic of conversation

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Why do people shop at dollar stores? Is it for the customer service, the wonderful store ambience or the quality of the products? It’s only because of the prices.

Why do people buy coffee at Starbucks? Is it for the customer service, the wonderful store ambience or the quality of the products? It’s certainly not because of the prices.

Consumers choose to shop at a particular store for a variety of reasons and price is not often the primary motivator. Instead, customers search for the best value for their money. Value is always in the eye of the buyer, not the seller.
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Terms of endearment

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A common practice of professional photographers is to condition their work upon a set of Terms and Conditions. This is not new or unusual. Virtually all businesses have some sort of terms and conditions that govern their customer transactions.

For some businesses, their terms and conditions might be very simple: “Cash only. No refunds.”
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Reach for the top

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That Sears, Walmart and some grocery stores have portrait studios should be of no concern to commercial photographers. The fact that these stores do family portraits for as little as $7.99 and business portraits for $29.95 is meaningless.

Don’t worry about it.

These cheap photo stores are not your competition, unless you’re trying to do $7.99 children’s portraits and $29.95 business portraits.

Don’t worry that some other professional photographer charges $35/hour or that they give away all pictures and copyrights for $199. Unless you’re racing to run your business into the ground, this photographer is not your competition.

Your competition is the photographer who charges more than you because they have what you want.

Always compete up not down.

–Added April 2013: Sears and Walmart portrait studios shut down.

 

Split Decision

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Commercial photographers are sometimes asked if two (or more) customers split the cost of the photography licensing fee, can they both use the pictures?

For example, when a photographer is hired by a hotel to produce pictures of some newly decorated rooms, can the interior designer also use the pictures if the designer splits the cost of the photography with the hotel?

The answer is “no”.
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Fauxtographer

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If a professional photographer was featured on national TV, you might think the publicity would boost that photographer’s business. Well, not in this case.

In 2009, the BBC ran a news story about a commercial photographer and his business practices, or should we say, his lack of business practices.

This publicity caused the “fauxtographer” to take down his web site and disappear. Good riddance. Such scammers make all professional photographers look bad.
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All the toppings

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Way back in my teenage years, I worked part-time at a take-out pizza store. Customers would sometimes say, “Give me a large pizza with everything on it.”

When I’d reply, “Okay, that’ll be $26.00” (or whatever the price was), the customer would gasp and quickly change to, “Just make it pepperoni and mushrooms.”

Wants and needs can be quite different when a price tag is attached.

What do you need?

A corporate photography customer recently asked for some photos of their Toronto office. The pictures were to be used on their web site and printed in a brochure. The company sent a list describing the ten pictures they wanted.

I sent a quote for about $2,800.

The customer e-mailed back and was quite shocked at the price. Why is it so expensive?
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Filling in the blanks

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Corporate photographers and commercial photographers often produce pictures of buildings, factories and retail locations.

Customers will sometimes request the digital removal of objects such as poles, road signs, overhead wires, fire hydrants, bus stops, etc., from exterior photos.

What’s funny about such requests is the customer assumes that once an object is erased, whatever was behind that object will automatically become visible. But as every photographer knows, when something is digitally removed from a photo, it just leaves a blank spot in the picture.
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