Misleading Intentions

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A new online stock agency called ImageBrief recently launched in Australia. What’s different about this stock agency is that a photo buyer posts a description of the picture(s) they want along with the price they’re willing to pay. Interested photographers can then post any of their stock pictures which meet the buyer’s description. The photo buyer chooses the “winning” picture(s) and pays the photographer. The stock agency gets a commission.

So far, so good.

Look at some of the photo buyers:

• A coffee shop/bakery was looking for a picture to market its store. Rather than hiring a photographer to produce authentic photography of the store’s own products, the shop bought a stock photo which featured another company’s coffee and someone else’s baked goods.

Is this misleading advertising by the coffee shop?

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A timely message

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Many people outside of the photo industry (and even some in the industry) are under the misconception that photography today is much cheaper than it was, say, ten to fifteen years ago. But the truth is that it’s far more expensive today, despite the miracle of reusable memory cards.

Cameras and lenses certainly get better as technology improves. But they’re much more expensive than in years gone by. Even if the purchase cost of an item goes down as technology advances, the product life cycle gets shorter which means more frequent updating. Computers and software also require frequent replacing.

Most folks are also surprised to learn that post-production can take as long, or longer, than the actual photography. Post-production includes, but isn’t limited to, image selection, raw format conversion, captioning, correcting for verticals, removing blemishes, cropping, resizing, and both global and local adjustments for colour, white balance, saturation, brightness, contrast and sharpness.

For many commercial assignments, a rule of thumb is two hours of post-production for each hour of photography.

Photography is not cheaper today. It’s just a lot better.

 

At Your Service

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Contrary to what some may think, professional photography is not a commodity business. Looking for the right photographer is not like shopping for a TV set where you decide on the make and model of TV and then search around to find the lowest price.

When a company is looking to hire a commercial photographer, it can expect to get a variety of photo quotes. For a common assignment like a business portrait, the prices may vary by a few hundred dollars. For a large project, photography quotes can vary by many thousands of dollars.

The difference in pricing reflects the photographers’ different experience, talents, production methods and overhead expenses.
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The Importance Of Press Releases

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A Columbia Journalism Review article by former New York Times reporter John Sullivan, titled True Enough, the second age of PR, talks about how public relations has become the dominant source of information for the media:

Some experts have argued that in the digital age, new forms of reporting will eventually fill the void left by traditional newsrooms. But few would argue that such a point has arrived, or is close to arriving.

“There is the overwhelming sense that the void that is created by the collapse of traditional journalism is not being filled by new media, but by public relations,” said John Nichols, a Nation correspondent and McChesney’s co-author.

Nichols said reporters usually make some calls and check facts. But the ability of government or private public relations to generate stories grows as reporters have less time to seek out stories on their own. That gives outside groups more power to set the agenda.

A previous post on this blog touched on this same topic.

For reporters, this should be a big concern. Although at many newspapers, this doesn’t appear to be an issue. More press releases means less work for a reporter and less expense for a publisher.

For businesses, this should be a happy wake-up call.
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Let’s Make It A Date

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Sometimes a potential customer will ask a photographer, “What day is good for you?” or “When are you available next month?”

The photographer should never answer, “Oh, any time is good for me” or “I’m open on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 15th, 20th, 21st, 25th and 28th of next month.”

Both of these answers suggest that the photographer is sitting around doing nothing. While this may very well be true, there’s no need to broadcast that business is slow. If a restaurant has no customers, something must be wrong with its food, right?
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About the About

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Most photographer web sites have an About Us page where the photographer writes something about their background. But this is often a waste of a web page.

First, potential clients don’t care about a photographer’s hobbies, where they went to school or what their dog’s name is. All of this is irrelevant to a customer who’s really looking for some indication that the photographer might be the answer to their photo needs.

Second, by talking only about themselves, the photographer leaves one person out of the conversation: the client.

Third, it’s just bad marketing. Every page on a photographer’s site should have some marketing value.
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Telling not selling

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Most photographers don’t want to be a salesperson selling photography. Many hate to advertise or promote themselves. Most don’t want to call attention to themselves by yelling, “Hire me!”

Photographers generally just want to go out, make some nice pictures and then have a cheque magically arrive in the mail. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. You must show loud confidence in your business. If you’re not confident about you then the customer won’t be confident about you.

In the previous post, I wrote about advertising, marketing and being remarkable. In that post, it was suggested that advertising isn’t always the best option when marketing a business. But other forms of marketing are possible and even required.

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