The business side of photography
A very long post for photographers learning to negotiate photography fees.
“Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy a better quality of misery.” – anonymous
Three important points to remember when pricing photography:
1. Never give a price over the phone. When someone calls and asks, “How much do you charge to shoot this?” don’t give a price over the phone. You need time to get more information, figure out all the details and then determine the proper price.
Just the words alone, Annual Report, sound impressive and big league.
Most corporations are required by law to publish an annual report, and many reports are available online. But what about a small business that doesn’t have any investors or shareholders and isn’t required to do a yearly summary?
Annual reports are not just for the big corporations anymore.
It makes perfect marketing sense for the smaller business to get into the game.
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Many things can affect the performance of a business, such as: the quality of its products or services, the abilities of its employees, its marketing, its public and media relations, how it reacts to change and, sure, a bit of luck doesn’t hurt either.
The late Peter Drucker, author, political economist and management consultant, is credited with pioneering the most important social and management theories of the 20th century. A quick web search will turn up many of his famous quotes, including:
There are only two things in a business that make money: innovation and marketing. Everything else is cost.
Very off-topic but just for Valentine’s Day:
Although these will make little sense to non-photographers, here are some of the best photography pick-up lines:
Let me focus only on you.
Picture us together.
I’ve got you in my viewfinder.
Will you be my long-term project?
I Leica you.
Do you do it RAW?
True love can never be Photoshopped.
Let’s get together for a horizontal composition.
I’m not sure if this is an indication of anything but last month I received three similar photo requests. I wasn’t asked to shoot any photos but instead, the customers wanted me to fix pictures they had shot themselves:
• The first was to fix a group photo that an employee had taken. The people in the picture are now back in their respective hometowns so there’s no chance of a reshoot. The group picture was under-exposed, slightly out-of-focus, had red-eye and was poorly composed with some bad shadows. Photoshop can only do so much but the customer was happy with the results of the emergency retouch surgery. The picture will now have a happy life in a company newsletter.
• The second request was another do-it-yourself picture. But unfortunately this one was inoperable. I diagnosed a terminal case of the blurs. A photo may look okay on the camera’s tiny LCD screen but when viewed at a larger size, any and all imperfections become very obvious. I suspect the company already knew this and just wanted a second opinion.
• The third request was to pull out one person from a group photo and make it look like a business portrait of that person. This image was rushed into the operating room for some complicated photo surgery. It was touch-and-go and, sadly, a few body parts had to be amputated in the process. The photo, now reduced to a head-and-shoulders, is recovering and will be strong enough to appear in a Powerpoint presentation.
Everyone loves to take pictures and this is great for personal photos. But if your company is thinking about doing your own business photos, here are three suggestions:
(i) Don’t.
(ii) Take lots of pictures and hope one hits the target.
(iii) Know where the closest photo emergency room is located.
Q: What’s the difference between an Executive Portrait and a Business Portrait?
A: About $500. (It’s an old joke but sometimes it’s true. Read on.)
This is usually a head-and-shoulders photo against a plain background. Eye contact with the camera is important and a bit of a smile never hurts. A plain background, while not absolutely necessary, won’t distract the viewer. It’s also easy for any other photographer to duplicate a plain background in any future business portraits of other employees, should the need arise.
This type of portrait should never look like a passport picture, a driver’s license photo or a family snapshot. On the other hand, depending on the company, a business portrait doesn’t have to be a serious suit-and-tie picture.
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What’s the difference between a photographer and a photojournalist?
A photographer takes pictures of nouns whereas a photojournalist, or news photographer, takes pictures of verbs.
If you remember way back to grade school: a noun is a part of speech that’s used to name a person, place or thing. A verb expresses an action or state of being, and is the most important part of a sentence.
The average photographer usually takes pictures of animals, nature, architecture and still life. Nothing wrong with that but all nouns.
Photojournalists take pictures of people expressing or enacting such things as anger, joy, sadness, happiness, victory, protest, excitement and more. These are images of people engaged in some sort of physical or emotional state of being. Verbs.
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