The business side of photography
Hotel Client: What?! You want $1,500 just for some pictures of our chef?!
Photographer: What do you think the job is worth?
Client: Maybe $250.
Photographer: Okay, for $250, I’ll come by your hotel sometime in the next couple of weeks whenever I have some spare time. When I’m there, hand me your cell phone and I’ll take a few pictures with it. You pay me $250 and the job is done. How does that sound?
The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has a few dozen videos to help professional photographers improve their business practices. Topics include negotiating, marketing, pricing, paperwork, licensing and copyright.
These videos were produced for American photographers and so there are a few legal and business issues that either don’t apply or are different here in Canada. However many of the concepts and principles are equally applicable to Canadian photographers.
When licensing pictures, commercial photographers must remember that there’s no such thing as “web use.” The Web is a medium, not a use. Photos used online can be editorial, advertising or anything in-between.
Many business clients use photos not only on their web site but also on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. A photographer has to decide whether such use is no longer editorial or public relations but rather a form of advertising. The common definition that only a “paid placement” is advertising may no longer apply.
For a corporate client, its own web site is usually considered marketing collateral and not advertising. All advertising is marketing but not all marketing is advertising.
But for a client such as a retailer, is its web site a form of advertising? What about that company’s Facebook or Twitter account?
Perhaps every use on the Web should be priced higher than similar use in print. This is not just for the larger and longer-lasting “circulation” of a web site but also for the increased shift towards advertising use.
Do you have a spare $800,000?
If yes, then HTT Technologies has a nice automobile just for you.
HTT (High-Tech Toys), in Quebec, has designed its 750-hp Pléthore LC750 supercar for a very exclusive audience. HTT has been quoted as saying that its target customer is the billionaire auto enthusiast. (The 390-km/hr Pléthore LC750 is cheap when compared to the 415-km/hr Bugatti Veyron Super Sport which is $2.5M).
If the price tag isn’t exclusive enough, the company says it will build only 99 cars. Exclusive design, exclusive price, exclusive production.
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When marketing its products or services, a business is usually told to focus on selling the benefits of those products or services. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. But this isn’t entirely accurate.
Human nature is such that people are motivated by the need for risk aversion. People will act more to avoid a loss than to gain a benefit. We fear loss more than we desire a benefit. This is known as the Prospect Theory.
From the New York Times:
…most of us find losses roughly twice as painful as we find gains pleasurable.
A professional photographer seeking new clients should frame their marketing more around loss avoidance and minimizing risk rather than just pointing out potential benefits. New clients are usually concerned with avoiding risk since they’ve never worked with that photographer before, (i.e. “Can we trust this photographer do the job properly?”).
Many photographers fail to understand that a client’s budget determines their work. In an ideal world, it would be the other way around. But sadly, the ideal world and the real world don’t often intersect.
Don’t confuse “work” with “effort” or “creativity”. The latter two should be independent of the client’s budget. Whether the budget is $1,000 or $10,000, the photographer has to put forth the same effort and creativity.
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When it comes to pricing their work, photographers need all the help they can get. fotoQuote and Blinkbid are two common software tools used.
An overlooked tool for editorial photographers is Editorial Photography Estimator. The free version is still available but not the commercial version which included data for advertising photography. A new edition of the commercial version was supposed to have been released in 2011.
It’s important to remember that the Editorial Photography Estimator (EPE) is from 2001 and its numbers are out-of-date. However, the underlying concepts are still valid. Editorial fees, for both assignment and stock, are based upon the circulation of the publication and that publication’s ad rates.
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