Annoying pop-ups

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Attention photographers. This is why you never use those silly, big flash brackets while standing in front of other photographers:

I’m standing in the second row – on a 20-inch riser – at a Toronto entertainment event. I’m shooting overtop a front row of standing photographers. 

Notice that you can’t see the front row of standing photographers nor can you see their cameras or flashes. Except . . .

Except that one guy, in the front row, using one those big flash brackets. In the front row. In every single picture.

The musicians are standing 17 feet away and they’re fully lit by two large front lights and two hair lights, all supplied by the event. These four large lights were specifically colour-balanced to match the existing eight overhead lights, (ISO 1000, f5.6 at 1/160). Why even use a flash?

News and entertainment events are not weddings. In these situations, big flash brackets serve no purpose other than to block other photographers.

 

How to find the right photographer

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It should be easy to find the right photographer for your business photography, right? After all, every city has many, many professional photographers.

Recently, I was reading a web site for photographers who are new to running a photo business. These amateur(?) photographers were apparently hired by various clients to shoot corporate work, advertisements, business marketing or editorial assignments. Yet these photographers didn’t know how to price their work or, in some cases, even how to do the assignment. Why would any business hire an amateur photographer?

How should a business find the right professional photographer?

The best way is by referral from another business or a colleague. If this isn’t possible then a search engine is your best friend (or enemy).
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Better than nothing?

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Earlier this week, British journal Occupational Environmental Medicine published an  article with the catchy title: “The psychosocial quality of work determines whether employment has benefits for mental health: results from a longitudinal national household panel survey”.

This Australian study looked at the relationship between the mental health of 7,155 people and the quality of their employment. The study suggests that a bad job may be worse than no job at all:

Overall, unemployed respondents had poorer mental health than those who were employed. However the mental health of those who were unemployed was comparable or superior to those in jobs of the poorest psychosocial quality.

The study concluded:

Work of poor psychosocial quality does not bestow the same mental health benefits as employment in jobs with high psychosocial quality.

Of course, most photographers already knew this.

This is why professional photographers don’t accept bad contracts or ridiculously low-paying jobs. It’s never wrong to turn down a bad deal. Bad deal => bitter photographer => stress and poor mental health.

Photographers, who love what they do, must respect their profession by charging proper fees. Doing anything less harms the photographer both financially and mentally.

 

Lower the bridge or raise the water?

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Having to lower your price is the penalty you pay for not having raised your value.

If a photographer can’t sell value then they may have no choice but to sell (low) price. Choosing to lower prices is a business strategy that will follow that business for a long time. For example, WalMart will always be associated with “cheap” and everyone knows cheap isn’t any good because good isn’t cheap.

Remember that value is in the eye of the client. Extra prints or fancy leather albums may have value to retail customers (e.g. weddings and family portraits) but they won’t have any value to commercial or corporate clients.

Part of the job for commercial photographers and corporate photographers is to understand what their business clients need, what has value to them.

Low prices might be okay if the photographer can compensate with a continuous high sales volume. But a high sales volume means a high work volume. To support a low-price business strategy, a photographer has no choice but to work more and more.

Makes no cents.

 

Two-handed catch

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A few days ago, I was watching a commercial photographer do his thing before the start of a company’s annual meeting. The photographer was shooting a group picture of the chairman, the CEO, the president and the entire board of directors.

The photographer had one camera, one lens, one tripod, one flash, one light stand, one sync cord and one power cord for the flash. Since the group photo was to take only a few minutes, why bring backup equipment? What could possibly go wrong?

Let’s see:

• His power cord failed. The cord was frayed and worked intermittently. It didn’t help that the cord was left loose to zig-zag across the hotel conference room floor where everyone was stepping on it. Hotel staff had to run and find another cord.

• His lens failed. Something apparently went wrong with the focusing. He borrowed a lens from me since I use the same brand of equipment.

• His sync cord malfunctioned. So with one hand, the photographer fired his camera (on a tripod) using a slow shutter speed and then, with his other hand, quickly reached over to manually pop the flash during the exposure.

His two-handed performance was certainly entertaining to watch.

 

One price fits no one

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One problem when a photographer charges a one-size-fits-all photo fee, (i.e., an hourly fee or a day rate), is that the photographer ends up providing a variety of services to their clients all for the same price. 

For example: an editorial customer may require the photographer to use one camera to cover a one-hour press conference. A corporate customer may need the photographer to bring four cases of equipment to produce several studio-quality executive portraits within an allotted one-hour period.

Those two assignments require different equipment, different skills and different talents. So why should both clients pay the same price (i.e., the same hourly fee or day rate)?

Charging by the hour can even penalize the customer.

For example: a certain photo might take one hour to shoot or it might take four hours. Either way, the benefits to the customer are the same. Charging by the hour would mean that the customer pays more for the “slower” photographer yet gains no additional benefits.

Pricing based on photography and usage may be confusing to some customers but it allows the photographer to customize the price to suit each customer’s exact needs.

 

A Small Discount

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At my favourite buffet restaurant, people under 12-years-old pay only half-price. Kids get the same quality of food and the same service but pay only half the price.

People under 12-years-old pay half-price for movie theatre admission. They sit in the same seats and watch the same movie but pay half the price.

At a hair salon, people under 12 years of age pay half-price for a haircut. They sit in the same stylist chair and get the same service but for half the price.

On Toronto public transit, people under 12 years of age pay one-quarter the price. They ride the same bus and travel to the same destination but pay a quarter of the price.

What’s going on here? Are the rest of us being over-charged?
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