The business side of photography
Earlier this week, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab announced their development of an imaging system that can capture the equivalent of half a trillion pictures per second:
We have built an imaging solution that allows us to visualize propagation of light. The effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionths of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second.
Last week, an interesting psychology paper was published, titled “The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest”. Written by Francesca Gino of Harvard University and Dan Ariely of Duke University, the paper’s abstract includes:
Creativity is a common aspiration for individuals, organizations, and societies. Here, however, we test whether creativity increases dishonesty. We propose that a creative personality and a creative mindset promote individuals’ ability to justify their behavior, which, in turn, leads to unethical behavior.
In 5 studies, we show that participants with creative personalities tended to cheat more than less creative individuals and that dispositional creativity is a better predictor of unethical behavior than intelligence (…)
The results provide evidence for an association between creativity and dishonesty, thus highlighting a dark side of creativity.
The full, 47-page study can be downloaded from Harvard (note: PDF file) but I doubt you’d want to do that. It’s a long and technical read.
Harvard Business School has a short review of the paper that’s much easier to read.
From time to time, potential customers and photo students will ask, “What’s the day rate for a corporate photographer in Toronto?”, “What does the average Toronto commercial photographer charge?” or “What’s the standard hourly fee for business photography?”
The answer to all of those questions is the same: no such fee exists. There is no day rate, no half-day rate and no hourly fee.
It would be like calling a restaurant to ask, “What’s the going rate for a dinner?”
Does anyone ever ask a dentist, “What’s your hourly charge?”
Can you ask a shoe store clerk, “What’s the standard price for a pair of shoes?”
Professional photographers base their fee on how the pictures will be used, what’s involved in producing those pictures and the photographer’s talent, experience and overhead costs.
Since every job is different, there’s no one-size-fits-all price, no going rate, no standard hourly fee.
Most companies use photography on their web sites, social media sites, corporate blogs, printed brochures and marketing materials, in-house publications, trade show displays and probably in several other ways. As such, it’s very important that companies have a policy regarding the handling and storage of these photographs.
• By law, almost every picture is copyrighted. Permission to reproduce such photos needs to be in writing. Does a business have written permission for every picture it uses? Where are these written permissions kept?
• Professional photography is licensed for use and rarely, if ever, sold outright. Where does a company keep copies of these licenses and how are they tracked?
A photography article describes some tools that can be used to help get colour-correct photos. One such tool is the use of proper illumination for viewing prints.
I went to the website of a Florida-based company that was mentioned in that article and was deciding whether to purchase several of its $90 lamps. But before sending off a few hundred dollars, I looked at its About Us page. It was very obvious that something wasn’t right.
The About Us page yells, “Nice to meet you!” and then brags, “The truth is we’re a small company made up of real people – no drones here!” And right next to this statement, there’s a cheap, stock picture of anonymous people. (Available here, here and here).
If a company misrepresents its identity, can you trust what it says about its products?
Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything.
I don’t mean to pick on this one company because there are many other businesses, from small to international, that use cheap, anonymous, stock pictures for their business image. But it’s been proven that stock pictures push customers away; it makes them hide their wallets.
When a company uses stock pictures, it’s counterproductive. It fools no one but themselves.
High-maintenance customers can be difficult to deal with. They can also damage a photographer’s business with their time-consuming and stress-inducing behaviour. You know you’re dealing with a bad customer when:
10. An abundance of e-mails pour in and each one is marked URGENT!!!
9. They expect the photographer to work for free in exchange for a credit line and they want unlimited use of all the photos.
8. They talk down to the photographer: “Can we work faster?”, “Are we sure that’s the best camera angle?”, “Did we check to make sure everyone’s in focus?” and they demand to see the LCD review of every picture.
7. At a publicity event, they expect the photographer to help set up the product displays, hand out brochures, and wear a t-shirt and baseball hat emblazoned with their company logo.
6. After a company party, they scold the photographer for not getting a picture of the CEO’s wife’s sister’s family who were sitting somewhere in the ballroom.
5. They expect everyone in the photos to look like magazine cover models. Otherwise it’s the photographer’s fault and they shouldn’t have to pay.
4. After being promised free, next-day, rush delivery, they still call two hours later demanding to know why the photos are so late.
3. They change their mind every day: “We want a photo of our factory” . . . “We’ve decided on a group shot of our sales department” . . . “It’s a photo of our sales department in front of the factory and make it look like a Vanity Fair cover.”
2. They try to negotiate a lower price after the job is done.
1. They’re late to pay.
The previous post, directed towards business customers, was also indirectly aimed at photographers. It was pointing out that most customers don’t hire photographers for their pictures! Or to rephrase that: purely providing perfect pictures doesn’t please the paying people.
Some photographers will stress over whether to move a light a few inches this way or that way. They will agonize over precise white balance. They’ll suffer great pain if every pixel isn’t razor sharp or if the depth of field isn’t just right. But in most cases, customers don’t notice or even care about these things.
This is not to say a photographer can be sloppy in their work but that customers have different priorities.
For many customers, it’s more important that a photographer shows up on time, dresses and behaves appropriately, completes the photography efficiently and competently, and returns their calls or e-mails promptly.
A photographer’s business practices are more important than their photography skills. Yes, the photographer must be at least competent in their work. But good business practices can trump great photo skills. As the cliché says, running a photography business is 90% business and 10% photography.
Remember your three R’s: responsible, reliable, respectable.
