pricing

How to Save Money When Hiring a Commercial Photographer

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Which is more important to your business: saving money or making money?

While everyone loves “free”, that usually isn’t even on the menu. For businesses that are considering hiring a photographer, here are a few suggestions that will help save money.

First, congratulations! Hiring a photographer to help with your business, corporate or commercial photography needs means that you know the value of having a professional photographer create original images for your web site, public relations or other marketing needs.

But what if your budget doesn’t quite match your plans?
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Cost of Digital Photography

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Who started this myth that digital photography is free or cheap?

Last week, two similar sounds passed by my ears:

(i) While chatting with a writer whom I haven’t seen in many years, he remarked that I must be happy with digital photography because it’s free.

(ii) After giving a quote to a potential client, he replied, “Why is it so expensive? You use a digital camera, right? It shouldn’t really cost anything.”

Photographers, feel free to make a loud and heavy moaning sound.

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Photo Estimates

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Another long post intended for new photographers. For those who hire photographers, this post will also outline the minimum of what to expect when doing business with a professional photographer.

This article offers some suggestions on how to properly prepare a photo estimate or quote for a client. Estimates aren’t usually used for editorial work for newspapers and magazines but should be used for almost all other clients.

 

Do yourself a favour and always have a paper trail right from the start. It can save you if you do or haunt you if you don’t. The “you” refers both to the photographer and the client.

Photographers: never give an estimate or price over the phone.

Clients: don’t think a verbal estimate is final because it isn’t.

In case you missed it, here it is again: do yourself a favour and always have a paper trail right from the start. It can save you if you do or haunt you if you don’t. The “you” refers both to the photographer and the client.
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Priceless

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There’s a joke that asks: “If price and worth mean the same thing, why do priceless and worthless mean the exact opposite?”

Price is set by the seller and worth, or value, is set by the buyer. Price is usually influenced by various market conditions and worth can be affected by marketing. The two are connected.

Ideally, a client wants high-value photography for free. On the other hand, a photographer wants their images to sell for a very high price. Does this mean that a photographer and their client are opposites?
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Paid Placements

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When photography is licensed for editorial use, public relations, or certain other uses, there will often be a licensing clause that states that the picture(s) may not be used for “paid placements.” A few folks have asked what this means.

“Paid placement” is simply any use that requires the company to pay a fee to have the photo(s) published. Paid placement includes, but is not limited to, advertising.

One could argue that all business communication is a form of advertising. But let’s look at three general types of photography usage.
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Photo License Is Common Sense

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Got a phone call from a business, here in Toronto, looking to hire a photographer. The caller said that they’ve never hired a photographer before and admitted they weren’t sure “how it works.”

The company wanted executive portraits for its web site. Business portraits are the most common request that a corporate photographer gets. There are many uses for such pictures and smart businesses like to update their photos every couple of years or so.

I suggested the best way to do the photography, how the pictures could be delivered and then gave an approximate cost for the required usage. That last bit, about the price depending on the usage, caught the caller by surprise.

Aha! Licensing.

 

Here’s the deal about licensing:

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Many Returns

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Over the past two months, I’ve had the experience of trying to sell some used photo equipment online.

Most professional photographers try to keep up with technology by upgrading whenever a new tool comes out. Many photo businesses have to stay current to remain competitive.
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