hiring a photographer

All the toppings

Way back in my teenage years, I worked part-time at a take-out pizza store. Customers would sometimes say, “Give me a large pizza with everything on it.”

When I’d reply, “Okay, that’ll be $26.00” (or whatever the price was), the customer would gasp and quickly change to, “Just make it pepperoni and mushrooms.”

Wants and needs can be quite different when a price tag is attached.

What do you need?

A corporate photography customer recently asked for some photos of their Toronto office. The pictures were to be used on their web site and printed in a brochure. The company sent a list describing the ten pictures they wanted.

I sent a quote for about $2,800.

The customer e-mailed back and was quite shocked at the price. Why is it so expensive?
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Business Balance

Before a company tries to save a few dollars on its corporate photography by buying cheap stock pictures or by hiring the lowest-priced commercial photographer, that business should remember this:

There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little more cheaply. The people who consider price alone are that person’s lawful prey.

It is unwise to pay too much but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It cannot be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.

– often attributed to 19th-century social critic John Ruskin, an advocate for economic reform and social change.

 

Usage and licensing fees

The fee for commercial photography is based on two things: production value (creative fee) and usage (licensing fee). Remember that production expenses are in addition to this.

One point of the previous post was to show how production value affects the creative fee. High-end camera gear, lots of lighting equipment and lots of time spent creating a picture will result in a very good photo and also a more expensive photo.

The second factor determining the overall fee is photo usage. This usage is a combination of four things: how many pictures will be used, how the photos will be used (media), where the images will be used (location) and when the pictures will be used (time).
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Sticker Shock

Hotel Client: What?! You want $1,500 just for some pictures of our chef?!

Photographer: What do you think the job is worth?

Client: Maybe $250.

Photographer: Okay, for $250, I’ll come by your hotel sometime in the next couple of weeks whenever I have some spare time. When I’m there, hand me your cell phone and I’ll take a few pictures with it. You pay me $250 and the job is done. How does that sound?

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Expected Value

Do you have a spare $800,000?

If yes, then HTT Technologies has a nice automobile just for you.

HTT (High-Tech Toys), in Quebec, has designed its 750-hp Pléthore LC750 supercar for a very exclusive audience. HTT has been quoted as saying that its target customer is the billionaire auto enthusiast. (By the way, the 390-km/hr Pléthore LC750 is cheap when compared to the 415-km/hr Bugatti Veyron Super Sport which is $2.5M).

If the price tag isn’t exclusive enough, the company says it will build only 99 cars. Exclusive design, exclusive price, exclusive production.

Sure, HTT could’ve designed a nice, average car. But that wouldn’t get all the free publicity that an $800,000 supercar gets. Plus, HTT has said that selling an average car would require a huge sales volume to earn back its investment.

Apparently, at $800,000 each, the company needs to sell only a handful of cars to break even on its initial investment. The company has said that it hopes to sell about six or seven cars per year.
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Identity Crisis

A recent Black Star blog post by Jim Pickerell gives advice to photographers who are trying to licence their stock pictures. He’s been involved in the stock photo business for over 40 years.

Pickerell writes that since there’s such an oversupply of stock images, photographers need to get their pictures seen by photo buyers. He then goes on to list some numbers and statistics.

The interesting takeaway from this article is for any business that’s thinking about using stock pictures for its marketing instead of commissioning its own original corporate photography or business photography.
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Annual Report photography

Annual reports contain a mix of corporate photography, editorial photography and maybe a tiny amount of advertising photography. Other than to publish a company’s financial numbers, an annual report has to show what the company does, how it does what it does and show its accomplishments from the past fiscal year.

As we move into the traditional season for annual reports (i.e. late winter / early spring), here are some suggestions for annual report photography.
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