The business side of photography
A photographer wrote to say:
“I don’t know why sending out job quotes still stresses me out too much after all these years. I tie too much emotion to my business at times.”
She went on to say that she wanted to learn to separate her business from her emotions because, she said, it’s not personal, it’s just business.
If you view your photography as art then perhaps you should also view your business as an art. And art tends to be emotional.
There are usually three components to a commercial or corporate photographer’s price: production expenses, photo fee (or creative fee) and licensing fee (or usage fee).
The first item, production expenses, refers to all expenses directly related to the job at hand. It doesn’t include your cost of doing business. It should be straightforward as to how to determine and charge for production expenses.
Photographers often charge a markup on some of these expenses but some clients ask for receipts and will refuse to pay any markup.
One important expense is your own equipment. Some photographers charge each client a rental fee for using their own photo equipment. Other photographers put the cost of their own equipment into their cost of doing business and wrap that into their photo fee. I’m not sure which method is better but remember that the cost of your own equipment must be recouped.
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1) How much would you pay me to take a photo of you?
2) How much would I have to pay you to model for a photo?
Are your two answers the same? Shouldn’t they be the same since the outcome – a photo of you – is the same?
I bet your answer to the second question is much higher than the first.
The first question was about me, the second question was about you. Everyone values their own time more than someone else’s. This applies not only to individuals but also to businesses.
A photographer has to understand that many corporate clients tend to value their time more than their money. These clients know that any money spent on photography will be earned back but any time that might be wasted (on a photo project) is gone forever.
This means that marketing low price is the wrong approach for a corporate photographer. Instead the photographer should be showing that they value the client’s time as much as the client does. How will the photographer save the client time and effort?
For many corporate clients, it’s about the results. This means that a photographer gets paid for bringing value, not low price, to the client. It’s not usually about price unless the photographer makes it about price.
And when a photographer makes it about price, they shoot themselves in the wallet.
What every photographer knows, and seemingly few clients understand, is that every photo can be shot in many, many different ways and each can have a very different cost.
When looking to hire a photographer, a few clients will initially refuse to reveal the exact details of their photo project. Some other clients may not know the details or they haven’t fully decided what they want. Nevertheless, the photographer is expected to give a price for a job they know little about.
When you’re trying to figure out and price a photo job that doesn’t have complete information, the advice often given is that you should ask the client for their budget and use that as a guideline. But if you ask, “What’s your budget for this project,” the client may answer with something like:
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A couple months ago, the Newspaper Audience Databank (NADbank) and the Print Measurement Bureau (PMB) released their Spring 2015 survey of readership numbers for its member newspapers and magazines.
If you need readership (not circulation) numbers of some Canadian newspapers and magazines to help with your photography pricing, then have a look at this list which uses 2014 data. Readership numbers are typically much higher than the corresponding print circulation numbers.
This is more for commercial photography that will appear in these publications and not so much for editorial. While many publications have “fixed” rates for editorial photography, some do have wiggle room to negotiate higher rates.
The days of pricing photography based on circulation still exist but it may be more accurate to price based on readership especially since that’s how some publications charge their advertisers.
In the old days, photographers priced their photography based on its type of usage. Generally speaking, editorial has the lowest price, public relations and corporate have a mid-range price and advertising has the highest price.
This worked quite well for 45 years or so. Then someone invented Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
With social media, the line between editorial, corporate and advertising can be nearly invisible. When a company publishes pictures on Facebook et al., is that editorial, public relations or advertising?
Every type of business communication is a form of marketing. At the very least, social media should be considered public relations rather than pure editorial even though it may use an editorial style of photography.
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If you were at a pizza store and you bought one slice, would you expect to get the entire pizza? If you were at a bar and you paid for one glass of wine, would you then ask for the entire bottle? If you purchased one ticket to the cineplex, do you demand to stay and watch every movie that’s playing?
Strangely enough, when some customers hire a photographer, they expect (or demand) to get every picture that was shot.
Why might a customer ask for every picture?
• Sometime in the past, another photographer once gave the customer every picture and now the customer (incorrectly) thinks that this is the normal practice.
• The customer thinks the photographer didn’t choose the best images and they’re worried that they’re missing out on something (i.e. FOMO).
