freelancing

Business Policies for Photographers

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It’s important for every professional photographer to have a written set of guidelines to help define how they run their business. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) has a blog post with a suggested list of policies.

Policies should be guidelines for your business and not carved-in-stone rules. We’ve all run into companies that hide behind policies that don’t always reflect the situation at hand. Your policies should help customers into your photography business and not push them away.

A company’s policies should also be reasonable and legal.

Some policies may be legally required (e.g. privacy policy) and some may be strongly encouraged (e.g. PCI compliance if you accept credit cards, and a refund policy).

Your business policies can be part of, or supplemental to, your Terms and Conditions. Either way, having a clear set of written policies is an absolute must for every photographer.

 

Don’t Discount Yourself

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[Added December 2016: the company mentioned in this post seems to have gone out of business.]

A newspaper article in The Province reports on a new Vancouver-based company offering customers the chance to book last-minute photo sessions at discounted prices. The idea is simple: photographers are, in theory, willing to offer discounts to fill empty slots in their schedules, and the company acts as a middleman, connecting customers with these last-minute deals.

At first glance, this might seem like a win-win situation. The customer gets a discount, and the photographer fills an empty slot. However, a closer examination suggests that the real winner here might be the company itself. (For fun, check out who’s behind this business.)

While last-minute discounts might work for amateur photographers, part-time photographers with day jobs, and those who practice dump-and-run photography (more on this later), it’s a poor strategy for professionals. In fact, it’s similar to why discount platforms like Groupon can be bad for photographers.
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Privacy and Model Releases

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A ridiculously long, meandering post but first, the disclaimer:

I’m not a lawyer and one look at my bank account will confirm that. You’d be foolish to take my advice without further thought. Although laws are written in black and white, they are anything but. No matter what the situation, there will always be a lawyer who will argue the opposite. Remember that civil laws can vary from province to province.

The short version of this post: Do you need a model release? Yes, no, maybe.

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Privacy laws and model releases go hand in hand. The federal government and most provinces have privacy laws.
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Bureaucratic Red Tape

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Some large companies have a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of policies, and a minimal amount of common sense. I shot four photo jobs at large companies over the past few weeks:

Emails

An editorial portrait of a telecom executive was needed by a magazine. To set up a date, that executive’s company required every e-mail between us to be cc’d to the following people: photo subject’s executive assistant, executive assistant’s assistant, director of national marketing and communications, communications senior manager, public relations senior manager, legal affairs, social media manager, an outside public relations and marketing agency, building management, and building security.

You can imagine how long the email chain was as everyone had to weigh in on everything.

Forms

Another corporate client had to add me to its vendor list. The company sent four documents for me to complete. One of these documents was five pages long. The completed documents had to be cc’d to three other people at two sister companies in two countries.
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Use You Clues

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When a customer is searching for a photographer, they don’t just look for pretty pictures on a web site and the lowest price. Instead, they’re looking for clues that a particular photographer is worth hiring at whatever price they might charge. The customer is looking for value which is quite different from low price.

Every professional photographer pretty much uses the same camera equipment, same computer and same software. Most photographers can, more or less, shoot the same pictures although this can vary by a huge margin. So how do you increase your value to the customer?

You have to offer something that customers can’t get from any other photographer. And what can’t they get from any other photographer?
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Transactional or Relational Photography?

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In general, there are two types of customer: transactional and relational. Although, most customers alternate between the two, depending on what they’re purchasing.

A transactional customer cares mostly about the current purchase and its price. For example, you probably have transaction-based interactions with gas stations, convenience stores, grocery stores, auto insurance agencies (at least here in Ontario), carpet cleaners, etc. You don’t really care which business you purchase from, you just want a good deal. Most customer interactions are transactional.

A relational customer, as the name suggests, is more interested in forming an ongoing business relationship. A purchase is based not so much on price but on previous experiences with that vendor. This type of customer wants low risk more than low price. For example, you may have a relationship with your dentist, doctor, favourite camera store, car dealership, hairstylist, etc. A relational customer is often a repeat customer and they tend to spend more.
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Peak Photography Experience

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The word “photography” sounds a lot like “psychology” doesn’t it? :-)

To help market their business, a photographer is often told to be different from other photographers. But most photographers misunderstand what this means.

It’s not about the photographer being different but rather it’s about the customer being different. This is to say that a photographer might be considered different if they can make the customer feel different (i.e. more satisfied).

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s Peak-End Theory says that we judge an experience not on the overall experience but rather on our memory of the peak moment(s) of that experience and how the experience ended.
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