The business side of photography
9Here’s another example that cheap stock pictures can be too expensive, especially when it mangles a company’s reputation.
A US magazine called VegNews is all about being vegetarian or vegan. Rather than using custom food photography, the magazine decided to use cheap stock pictures because they were, uh, cheap.
The problem is that the food photos were not vegetarian or vegan. The magazine just passed them off as being so.
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What’s the definition of an optimist?
A freelance photographer with a mortgage.
What’s the definition of an optimist?
A freelancer who opens a savings account.
What’s the difference between a freelance photographer and a savings bond?
One of them eventually matures and earns money.
Today is World Intellectual Property Day, as declared by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Several countries held events to emphasize the importance of intellectual property rights. Nothing is happening here in Canada which is 15 years behind its (1996) WIPO obligations.
Some wedding photographers offer free prints to attract new customers. Others will offer lower prices. But if a wedding photographer really wants to stand out and increase their value to the soon-to-be bride and groom, then perhaps that photographer should also offer to perform the marriage ceremony.
Imagine the photographer’s sales pitch:
Our full-service Platinum wedding package includes engagement photos, albums for the couple and the parents. Plus, if you act now, you’ll get a free marriage ceremony!
To offer this service, a photographer just has to get ordained by a church and perhaps, purchase the lovely $6.99 certificate which “proves” they were ordained.
As a bonus, an ordained photographer may also perform funeral services. Imagine the business to be earned from:
Add some fun to your next funeral with our Heavenly FotoFuneral package. Free souvenir 8×10 glossy if you book today!
A Toronto model agency includes these terms for booking any of its talent:
• Models don’t work for free.
• Minimum one hour booking and the time is rounded up to the next full hour. Model gets paid for the full time booked and not necessarily the actual time for the shoot.
• Model gets paid for travel time and preparation time.
There’s a Canadian federal election coming in early May. One would think that if a party wants to run the country then surely it should be able to run a web site.
The Liberals have the slowest loading site of the bunch. Almost painful, but let’s be charitable and assume the site was just busy today. This site uses free WordPress blog software but it fails XHTML validation. The design is consistent and it uses the party’s traditional red–white colour scheme.
The two-year-old portrait of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is outdated. What does it suggest when the party couldn’t be bothered to get a new business portrait for something as important as a federal election? But again, to be charitable, let’s say the Liberals used an old picture just to save a few bucks.
The site has photo captions and credits on many of its pictures. The party has hired at least one experienced news photographer, but the site suffers from either non-existent or just plain bad photo editing.
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There are several e-mail scams aimed at photographers. Most start with the sender of the e-mail saying that they came upon the photographer’s web site and they love the pictures. The person will have some sort of urgent photo assignment in the photographer’s area and wants to hire the photographer right away. The person will offer to pay in full in advance.
If the photographer falls for this, the scammer will send a payment cheque for far too much money. When the honest photographer points out this “mistake,” the scammer will apologize and ask the photographer to refund the excess money as quickly as possible. The trusting photographer will be told to wire the money asap. The scammer’s original cheque will later bounce and the photographer will lose whatever money they sent to the scammer.
Another version of this scam is that after the scammer has sent a (fake) cheque, they will say the event has been cancelled and they need the money wired back to them as quickly as possible.
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