Photography Tips Guide

Posts Tagged ‘Business’

Photography is a passion for many of us. Many of us are interested in wildlife photography, while some of us are interested in still photography. Seldom do we think of concerting this passion of us into a profession. The thought may have struck us many times but we never pursued it. The reasons can be many. We may have second thoughts of leaving our cushy jobs and going out on our own. Secondly we may not have enough ideas to how to go about it. We have tried to elaborate in brief about photography business.
For starting any business you need to have a proper business plan, which should include your objective, your choice of photography and even the revenues that you are expecting. Next you need to make your business a legal entity with a proper registration, bank accounts and insurance. Now you have done it all, so how do you go about getting customers. The best way to get customers is by getting in touch with people who are professionally associated with the business and have an existing network. They can be friends or acquaintances who are associated with photography. If you are interested in still photography you need to develop a studio where you can have your photo shoots done. If it is an outdoor shoot you need to pack your photography kits and move to the location where the shoot is scheduled to take place.
Setting up a photo studio at the first instance may be overkill. We suggest that you use the infrastructure of an existing studio by paying an hourly rate for the initial period of your business. When your revenue stream becomes constant then you can go about and set-up your own studio.
There is another very important aspect of photography business. If you have decided that photography is what you want to pursue as your profession, you need to have a tie-up with a professional photography lab to process your photographs. To get a true finish to a photograph it is very important that they are processed by hardened professionals.
Since you are new you may not be aware of how much you should price your services. Check out the current photography service rates for different genres and price your service accordingly. Try offering discounts for long shoots which will benefit your customers. It is imperative that you always add value to your customers when offering services. Suggest locations for outdoor shoots, dress for the models and give other ideas which will benefit your customers. Always use your creativity to give a product that your clients have never experienced before at a price which they will appreciate.
There are other points that you should keep in mind. Take assignments which you think you can handle within your bandwidth. Keep to your commitments as it is important in photography business. Your delay can cost your customers on their model fees, location hire charges, lights etc. As a photographer always try to use the best equipment which goes a long way in producing that perfect picture.

I remember back in the early 90s when my brother John called me up on the phone one day and explained that he had found a niche in digitally manipulated photography.  He said he was poised to make a good deal of money with it, but he couldn’t find any good help.  He knew that I had been into computers and thought maybe he could get me to work for him helping him digitally manipulate his photography.

John was a professional photographer doing mainly stock photography, and had discovered some new software called Adobe Photoshop.  John found that he could use Photoshop to fix problems with photos taken at an expensive photo shoot that would have had to been re-shot.  He also found that he could use the software to create photographs that just could not be shot in real life.  This was a great thing for his stock photography business.

At the time I had just had a business fail, and I was supporting my family as an injection molding press operator, earning near minimum wage working the graveyard shift.  John lived in San Francisco at the time and his studio was located where AT&T stadium is now. I was living in Stockton California, a good hour and a half commute each way.

Well John offered me $50.00 an hour to come work for him in his studio in S.F., and I asked him what time he wanted me to report for work in the morning!

For the next 5 years I worked for my brother doing digital manipulation for stock photography, digital retouching, and lots of digital art and photography for advertising agencies.  I remember one of my first projects was to put an egret’s wings onto a pig for a stock photo of flying pigs. 

Another time I brought my pet three-foot-long iguana to the studio and we photographed him. In those days we used film, and after developing the film we would use a drum scanner to digitize the photo, and then use either Photoshop or Live Picture to manipulate the photos.  We turned the iguana into a fire-breathing dragon.

One job we did for Mother Jones magazine involved replacing Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s head with Hillary Clinton’s head in a photo of Madame Chiang Kai-shek chatting with Eleanor Roosevelt in the rose garden at the White House.  We were later told that Hillary had it framed and put on her desk.  We also heard that she was at first confused because she did not recognize the outfit she was wearing in the photo.  Go figure.

We specialized in “conceptual” stock photography, producing images such as money trees, time flies – (a watch with wings),  an image of the earth in space but made of currency, dollar bills flying out the window, and that kind of thing.  We also did photo-shoots for fortune 500 companies and used digital techniques to produce advertising images.  John acquired an incredible reputation for producing the best stock photography of its kind, and all of the ad agencies knew him well. He was a huge success. He created a line of images he called “Animal Antics” using images of animals doing odd things like skateboarding and riding bikes.  The images were the basis for a highly successful line of greeting cards.

I finally grew tired of the commute and of sitting in front of a computer all day with an art-director telling me what to do. I went back to being an inventor, and John capitalized very well on his pioneering venture into digital stock photography, digital manipulation and funny pictures of animals.

Back then John was the first and for some-time the only stock photographer using digital manipulation to produce stock photos. There was no internet, and stock photography was pretty much limited to ad agencies with big budgets.

In those days he sold stock photography through Tony Stone Images, and The Stock Market.  Now Tony Stone is gone as is The Stock Market and Getty Images and number of other large stock agencies have replaced them.  Royalty free photography, widespread use of digital manipulation, and the internet are changing the face of the industry. Times have changed and John recently told me that the future of stock photography was online.

Mom and Pop business’s are going on the internet to find stock photos for their newsletters, advertising both online and hard copy, brochures, trade show booths, etc.  He feels the future of stock photography is online catering to the masses with low cost stock photography. There is a huge market for all types of photos for everything from photos for websites to pictures for brochures, to pictures for printed merchandise like cups and baseball caps.  Most people now searching for stock photos don’t even know what a stock photo is. They search for “pictures of pigs” or “shark pictures”.

To take advantage of this burgeoning new market for stock photos, today’s upcoming photographers (and the old ones too) need to get their work online where it can be found and purchased.

Once again John is on the leading edge of his field.  John has now launched a new website to address the blossoming online small business stock photo market.  Somewhere on his website there are photos of fire-breathing dragons in a world where pigs do indeed fly.

“Strategic alliances are becoming increasingly important”.  Can’t remember where I saw that quote, but it struck at the time, several years ago, as being an important one.  With every passing month it seems to me the truth in those words increases.  One way in which I am finding that quote to be prophetic is in my collaboration with other photographers. 

I have been shooting professionally for over 30 years.  The vast majority of that time it seemed as if photographers had an uneasy truce with each other.  It seemed that we all viewed each other as competition, not to be trusted on interacted with, except at the occasional ASMP or APA meeting.  For me, that has all changed.

Shooting stock video

As I write this I am coming off of a week of shooting with one of my peers, David Fischer.  Mostly we were shooting stock video.  It was very much a collaborative process.  I provided the video camera (a Panasonic HVX200 and an FS100 drive to record to) and the contract with Getty. 

David provided his experience as a commercial director. A friend of his provided us with the free use of a gyroscope to act as a steadicam for my camera.  In return I provided the gyro owner with information that will help him improve the gyro mounts for cameras.  We have, in effect, formed a strategic alliance that makes us all stronger and more efficient.

Gang shoots with other stock photographers

In the last four years I have done many group shoots.  The largest of these “gang shoots” was organized by photographer Jack Hollingsworth, in Austin, Texas, for a group of Blend Images owners and contributors.  I can’t remember exactly how many of us there were…something over a dozen…all of us sharing locations and models. 

It was great fun, very reasonable in cost (I believe it was about $1,500.00 each for a whole day of shooting) and has paid for itself many times over.  I have routinely shot with two or three other photographers, pooling expenses, casting, location scouting and ideas.  We have done gang shoots in Mexico, Argentina, Burma, Thailand, India and here in the U.S.  I haven’t had a bad experience yet!

I have found that the gang shoots are more fun too.  It can get pretty crazy and does have its challenges.  For a shoot in Buenos Aires four of us rented a nightclub.  We had the blaring music, smoke and light machines, and over thirty models.  It wasn’t just a stock shoot, it was a party too! 

Difficulties that we had to overcome included finding an equitable way for each of us to get a chance in the best spots, avoiding having other photographers and photo equipment in our shots, providing equal access to the best models and so forth. To make these kind of stock shoots work we need to submit the images to the same editor of a given agency to avoid any possible “similar” problems. 

We planned ahead to make sure we weren’t planning any overt overlapping and checked in with each other during the shoots. By staying flexible and open to what was happening, and communicating effectively, we made it all work and we all agreed it was one of the most fun shoots each of us has had.

Shooting motion and stills together

I also participated in a stock production, again in Buenos Aires, in which two of us shot stills while a third focused on footage.  In that case we rented an awesome Penthouse on the 43rd floor of the second tallest building in the city.  Again we had a great time, saved time and money by working together, and came away with great shots.  In the future I plan to do many more of these shoots that combine one person shooting motion and the other taking still pictures.

There are plenty of other ways to form strategic alliances that are mutually rewarding and can make shooting stock more rewarding in a number of ways. I will cover some of those ways in future articles.

There may too many amateur photographers who are low balling and taking a lot of business away from seasoned pros. Clients are doing more work themselves because of the high quality consumer digital cameras on the market. Just good enough rather than best quality work is getting more prevalent.
Has your photography studio gotten more or less work in the last few years. Because consumer and prosumer digital cameras have gotten up to 10-12 MP, more people than ever are becoming photographers and doing more of the work themselves rather than hiring pros to do weddings, head shots, product/tabletop work.
If you have seen a trend here, let us know of your experience. When just good enough is good enough and the margin between pro photographer sand amateurs is a narrowing gap.

How did it work out?