Photography: Jofre Ferrer

Not everyone who picks up a camera and enjoys taking pictures wants to be a professional photographer. Many are happy with their day jobs and like the fact that they can spend the weekends shooting whatever they want. Unlike a professional, they don’t have to think about satisfying a client or pleasing a buyer, and they don’t have to be concerned about deadlines and commissions. If they were being paid for their photography, they might enjoy it less.

But almost every enthusiast has thought about getting paid to do what they currently pay to do at some time or another, especially when they feel they have as much talent, skills and techniques as the pros. Ability and camera skills though aren’t enough. You’re not ready to become a professional until you also have  these elements of professional knowledge figured out:

1. You Know the Legal Stuff

Every industry has its own legal requirements. Doctors have to know what they can and can’t prescribe before they dole out the painkillers. Café owners have to understand employment law before they hire baristas. Even contractors need to understand what to do with piles of rubble and what might happen to them if they leave wiring exposed. So photographers too have to know when they need model releases, what permission they need to request from property owners, and what copyright law means for them — and for their clients.

It’s not terribly complicated, and it’s the kind of knowledge that’s often picked up as enthusiasts start selling images and bringing in income. But it’s also worth picking up a book and keeping a copy close so that you always know how the law protects photographers — and what it demands from them.

2. You Understand Licensing and Pricing

More complex, much harder to grasp and with no definitive correct answers are the issues surrounding licensing and pricing. Begin selling images and you’ll quickly become aware of the difference between Rights Managed images that are priced according to what the publisher intends to do with the pictures, and Royalty-Free images that allow the buyer to do anything he or she wants with the image (short of re-selling it) any number of times. While even a professional  stock photographer won’t be able to recount every possible combination of uses to which a Rights-Managed image might be put, let alone price them (there’s software for that), they will have a broad idea of how usage affects pricing.

More importantly, they’ll also know when a photograph should be offered on a Rights-Managed basis and when it’s better to sell it Royalty-Free. That’s not something you’re going to find in a photographer’s handbook. It comes with experience and with a feel for the kinds of general, flexible images that buyers prefer on a Royalty-Free basis and the specific, often higher quality images that buyers expect to see Rights-Managed.

And while software can give a guide to current market rates, it’s only as valuable as Kelly Blue Book is to car sellers. It’s the start of a negotiation, something that professional photographers have to know how to do too.

3. You Have a Professional Attitude

Much of the difference between a talented enthusiast and someone who makes a living out of photography has nothing to do with professional knowledge. It has a lot to do with professional attitude.

One of the reasons that buyers still purchase images from stock and microstock sites, and a big part of the reason that Getty was able to make a deal with Flickr, is that professional buyers prefer to deal with professional companies than try to pick up images from amateurs. They know their email will be answered quickly. They know the photographer will have a way of sending them their picture and delivering it on time. They know the negotiation will be smooth, fair and swift. They know that when they make contact, the result will be the image they want in the format they need, at a price that’s right and in time for publication.

That isn’t the case when they approach an enthusiast. Buyers have complained about photographers who disappear when contacted, who respond too slowly or who don’t understand enough about formats to deliver images in a size and quality that they can use. What should be a smooth, professional exchange becomes a protracted process that costs the buyer time and money.

Turn professional and your ability to bring in regular income will depend as much on how you communicate and work with buyers as the products and services you deliver to them.

4. You’ve Built Contacts

It would be great to say that what you know and how you behave are all you need to make the move from keen enthusiast to professional photographer. But who you know will count too. How much it counts will depend on the branch of photography you’re trying to break into. If you’re hoping to become a wedding photographer, then familiarity with local wedding planners, hotel managers and even other event photographers will all help to bring in new business. But they’re not essential. Former clients might be more vital as they help to spread the word about your work and pass on recommendations. If you’re looking to break into commissioned jobs though, such as photojournalism or commercial photography, then editors and buyers will need to know who you are and what you shoot.

There are no shortcuts to building up those contacts. They come from being active in the same circles as the people you need to know, by being sociable and personable, and by staying in touch so that buyers remember you — and remember that they can trust you. It’s something that should happen naturally as you’re producing work that gets you noticed.

5. You Have a Reliable Income

Like any new business, a photography studio can take time to get up and running. In most industries, that’s time that eats up capital, destroys savings and scares the business owner. Photographers have an advantage. Because they can start selling before they turn professional, they can test the water without risking the house. If you’re making sales, if those sales are coming in on a regular basis, and if the income is starting to compete with your main salary, there’s a good chance that you’re ready to turn professional.

Related posts:

1. 7 Signs That You Should be a Professional Photographer
2. From Amateur Photographer to Professional Photographer in 4 Easy Steps
3. Photographers Struggle with Licensing Models
4. Professional Photographers Turn to Microstock
5. Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Professional Photographer?

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Photography: Kevin Sommers

For photographers, the ownership of images seems obvious: they had the concept, set up the shots, used their creativity, drew on their technical skills, and produced beautiful photographs. The results belong to the artists who created them, and they’re the ones who should get to control how the photos are used. For clients, that attitude can come as a surprise. If they’re hiring a portrait photographer or an event photographer to take pictures of them or their wedding, then they should own the pictures. After all, there wouldn’t be any images if they hadn’t approached the photographer, and they are paying plenty of money for them to be created too.

Copyright law sides with the photographer, but that conflict between who should own the images and what the client wants do with them is often a source of tension between photographers and the people who commission them. When those clients aren’t professional image buyers but occasional users, the result tends to be a lot of small-scale copyright breaches. Wedding clients print out the images on their DVDs, email photos to friends, and make copies of the DVD to share with family. On that scale, photographers tolerate it. The smart ones even encourage it, using the sharing as a form of viral marketing, especially on Facebook.

Ignoring Usage Restrictions

But some clients take things a little further. People who need portraits taken for professional reasons — such as to advance a singing career — may either be unaware of the usage restrictions placed on their images, or they may simply choose to ignore them, passing out their headshots and publicity photos to anyone who needs them regardless of the small print in the photography contracts, and any fees that are supposed to be paid for each use.

It’s a problem that has led one photographer to redefine the usage license of the images he produces. Kevin Sommers is a former lawyer married to a retired copyright attorney. After spending several years at a large corporate law firm then running his own law firm, he found that he missed the creativity he had enjoyed in a previous job as a commercial advertising photographer for Caterpillar. He turned his 100-year-old law office building in Nashville into a studio and set himself up as a professional photographer specializing in portraits, model portfolios, music promotion work and headshots.

Like other photographers, Kevin requires clients to sign a form declaring that he retains copyright ownership of his images. Clients, however, are then granted a limited release to copy, post and distribute the images for personal and self-promotional use. The license doesn’t apply to third parties but it does give clients the flexibility to print modeling comp cards, headshots and other marketing material without returning to the studio for a release. It’s a solution, Kevin explains, that’s convenient for both sides.

“They often need to provide an image quickly when a newspaper, magazine or agency needs an image and I do not want to hold them up in case I am not available right then,” says Kevin of his clients. “I travel several months of the year and this is the most practical for everyone involved.”

Singer Beau Davidson, for example, has submitted Kevin’s images to InTouch Magazine, The Tennessean, Cosmopolitan and other media outlets. Kevin receives a credit but Beau Davidson doesn’t have to contact Kevin before each use — and he doesn’t have to pay an extra fee for each publication or pass the bill on to the magazine.

But it’s not just the convenience of not forcing clients to wait for him to issue a release that has led Kevin Sommers to waive fees for those usages. There’s also the inevitability that the pictures would be used anyway.

“I also realize that since they get their images from me in CD or DVD form, they may be used even without the release,” he explains.

Don’t Sue If You Can’t Collect

To some photographers, that may sound like an expression of defeat. A photographer’s biggest asset is the collection of images that he or she builds up over a career. Allowing clients to use those photographs without additional payments, and worse, not chasing down illegitimate use may lower the value of those assets and encourage even more copyright abuse.

To Kevin though, it’s about practicality. As a lawyer, he points out that legal cases can be costly, lengthy and emotionally draining. Each photographer, he says, has to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a copyright infringement is serious enough to pursue. Because his clients are mostly young singers, taking their first steps in the music industry, he says, he has little to gain by taking them to court.

“Winning a judgment does not mean much if you cannot collect it,” notes Kevin. “That should be the first thing they teach in law school.”

But changing usage licenses to acknowledge that clients will use the images the way they want anyway is only one aspect of the change that Kevin Sommers’ contract brings to photography. It also marks a change in one aspect of the photography business model. Photographers may earn most of their income during the time it takes them to shoot and edit the pictures, but the profits for printing images over which they retain reproduction rights can provide valuable extra income. In an atmosphere of intense competition, that’s a benefit that’s quick to disappear. Clients aren’t dumb, says Kevin, they know when they are being overcharged for “print packages” that give them more than they need or want. Letting portrait clients, for example, print as they want saves them money and makes his offers more competitive.

More importantly, Kevin, who usually charges between $300 and $575 for a shoot, sees his job not as a printer but as a photographer. He wants to let the client worry about what to do with the pictures while he focuses almost entirely on creating the shot.

“I… personally do not enjoy the tedium of filling print orders,” he explains. “I am in the business of taking portraits, not selling prints at outrageous rates.”

Kevin acknowledges that his model isn’t going to suit every photographer and every photography business. But it does suit him. The question is how many other photographers find that it’s a solution that suits them too — and whether it will relieve the tension between photographers and the clients who commission them to create pictures.

Related posts:

1. Copyright Alliance Formed To Fight For Creators’ Rights
2. Start Your Photography Career as a Second Shooter
3. 3 Ways To Kick-Start Your Photography Career
4. Entrepreneurial Photographers Become Successful Developers
5. It’s Never too Late to Start Photography

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Photography: Thomas Hawk

When Matt Pagel received an email from a publication he’d never heard of asking if they could use an image they’d found on his Flickr stream, he was flattered. The message was humble and even though the sender was only promising a credit in return for the use, Matt agreed, assuming that he was dealing with a small online magazine with no picture budget. He just asked that they send him a link when the article went online. A few weeks later, UK design magazine Icon sent him a glossy copy of its latest edition containing his photograph. Above his shot of the de Young Museum in San Francisco, then neatly wrapped and under construction, was the headline “This image didn’t cost Icon anything.”

Not all photo deals turn out to be that obviously bad, and some that look bad may actually be fair. An online publication always has enough Creative Commons options to walk away from a request for payment, and when it has no income, it also has no other choice. For a blog with a small readership — the sort of publication that Matt Pagel wrongly thought he was dealing with — the correct usage fee may well be nothing more than a credit and a link. There are some propositions though that seem fair but often turn out to be worth less than they look.

Bargain Assignments

Bounty shots, for example, look like opportunities. Over the years, a number of sites have come and gone that allow photo buyers to place requests for specific images in the hope that photographers will then go out and shoot them on their behalf. Some microstock companies, too, list requests from buyers who haven’t been able to find the images they need.

It looks like an easy deal. Shoot stock in general, and you can only hope that the image you create will find buyers. Act on a request and you know that there’s a buyer available for the shot.

But you don’t know how serious the buyer is. You don’t know whether he or she has found the image since posting the request. You don’t know how many other photographers will submit their images. And, most important of all, you don’t know how much it’s going to cost you to go out and create that image in the hope that that single buyer will be willing to pay you a few bucks to use it. To a professional, an image request can look like a bargain basement assignment with no guarantee of even a small payment at the end, let alone expenses.

That doesn’t mean that image requests aren’t useful. If you happen to have an image available that fits the bill, then submitting it won’t cost anything. It will just save the buyer a difficult search. And if you see similar requests turning up again and again (such as for ethnic models or more realistic work scenes) then you can get an idea of what’s missing from the market. Image requests are worth following but they’re rarely worth shooting.

Even big sales at fair prices though can sometimes be less attractive than they appear when they come with the wrong conditions. A buyer who pays for a print takes home a picture. Apart from hanging that picture on the wall, there’s little else they can do with it and no more demands that they can make of the seller. An editorial or commercial user isn’t paying for a picture; he or she is paying for the rights to use the picture, something that’s much harder to negotiate, especially when the buyer asks for it with all sorts of complex conditions.

How Much for all the Rights?

Getty, for example, demands a two-year exclusivity from contributors when it accepts images posted on Flickr. The company argues that it’s a necessary requirement, that buyers want to know where else the image is appearing and feel confident that an image isn’t going to be overused. In return for that exclusivity the company offers enthusiasts the opportunity to sell their photos on a rights-managed basis for prices far higher than they’d get from microstock (although lower perhaps than they’d make if they were willing to push the images themselves). Some photographers have found the requirement too limiting; others are happy to let Getty take their pictures and make whatever money they can out of them. It’s not an unfair demand in itself but one that each photographer needs to consider.

Exclusivity does become an unfair demand though when it comes from photography contest organizers hoping to build up their inventory, and when it comes from buyers who aren’t offering enough money to cover all of the lost income. In general, the more rights a buyer wants over an image the, more they have to pay. When even a limited exclusivity limits earnings, buyers have to cover those losses. Anything else is a bad deal.

But perhaps the most obvious bad deal is the one in which photographers are told that they won’t be paid but the picture will boost their portfolio, give them a tear sheet or help them become better known. Use of your image would only help you if the client is well-known and the photo will be seen in lots of places. And if that happens the client should be paying for it. There’s a difference between working as an assistant for low-pay and even no pay to pick up an education, and giving away your photography talents and its results for nothing.

For most photographers, the biggest problem with trying to spot bad photography deals is in the pricing. Usage fees can be difficult to calculate and even when you have picked up a sense of the market rate, there’s still room for negotiation. But know what your images are worth, know what the buyer wants to do with them, and know who you’re dealing with too, and you should find that your sales are always good.

Related posts:

1. Turning Free Photo Requests into Sales
2. How To Make Money Out Of Photography Without Selling A Picture

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Photography: AtomicShed

Once you’ve made contact with a buyer, shown him that you produce images that he needs, demonstrated that your pricing is competitive, and proven that you can be relied upon to deliver great shots, you’ll have put in a lot of work. You’ll want that work to keep paying you by keeping that client on board. It’s always much harder to find a new client and start the marketing process all over again than to keep in touch with an old one who already knows, trusts and likes you. But buyers rarely have a strong sense of loyalty. Their heads will always be turned by the next photographer with lower prices, pretty pictures and the professionalism to deliver them smoothly. So what can you do to lock your clients and buyers in, and prevent them wandering off once you’ve made your first deal?

Stock companies have what appears to be the best strategy. It’s a little like an airline’s loyalty program but one in which the customer is forced to buy the air miles in advance.

The stereotype price level of a buck a microstock image is actually almost impossible to find, if only because prices are rarely quoted on an image-by-image basis. Instead buyers pay for credits which they can exchange for images. A new buyer looking for a single image on iStockPhoto, for example, has to pay a minimum of $18.25 for twelve credits at a rate of $1.52 per credit. That’s unlikely to translate to twelve separate purchases at one credit each. The only photographs that are available for single credits are sized at “XSmall.” “Small” images cost three credits, while “Medium” swallow up six. If the buyer is looking for “Large” or “XLarge” sizes he’ll need ten or fifteen credits respectively.

Stock Companies Force Buyers to Leave Money Behind

But the credits come in blocks of 12, 26, 50 and so on, so whichever size of image or images a buyer chooses, there’s a good chance that he’ll have credits left over. Now he has a good reason to come back to iStockPhoto next time he needs photos. He might not have wanted to buy a subscription, the most reliable way to keep buyers on board, but having left money on the site, he’s effectively getting a discount the next time he comes to buy.

That’s not an easy model to copy, and it works best when competitors are doing the same thing. A site that simply allowed  buyers to purchase single images at a set price would look more inviting than a model which forces customers to put money towards their next purchase each time they buy. With images of a similar quality it might even be able to eat some market share. But the attractiveness of locking customers in is so strong that most microstock sites use the same model, selling credits and expecting customers to come back to use their leftovers.

For a photography seller who produces on a regular basis, selling packets of credits might work too. But a more occasional seller, with a more limited inventory, will have to look to other strategies.

Rewards for Loyalty and Referrals

The easiest is to offer a discount to returning clients, a policy followed by wedding photographer, Kelli Lynn. She gives returning clients a 25 percent discount on their portrait sessions. But she also goes a little further and provides $50 gift cards to clients who refer their friends. The cards have no time limit, are transferable and can be combined, so the more new customers the old client refers, the greater the incentive they have to go back to the photographer and use those discounts.

That might not be the best strategy for a referral program. When clients recommend a photographer to a friend their prime motivation is to help their friend, not to gain a benefit for themselves. If you’re going to pass out a discount for referrals, the prize would be more effective if it went to the new clients, not the old ones. But that would only encourage new clients to come in, not to keep the old ones on board. Perhaps the best strategy then is to reward both sides: give a discount to a new referred client to increase the value of the recommendation; and give the old client a reason to come back by showing your gratitude with a discount card.

Of course, when the new client refers someone else, they’ll receive another discount, something to bear in mind when your set your pricing levels.

Much less complex than loyalty and referral awards are newsletters. These don’t lock clients in so much as remind them that you’re still around. A newsletter alone won’t force a client to come back to you and it certainly won’t stop them from looking at your competitors but it can remind them of your work and keep them informed about the projects you’re completing. Instead of being forgotten over time, a process that quickly breaks down any sense of loyalty a customer might have felt for you, the newsletter can bring you back to mind and strengthen the positive feelings the client felt last time he worked with you. More directly, a newsletter can also act as a channel to deliver time-limited offers that do force clients to come back to you right away.

Or at least some of them. Offers in newsletters will only be taken up by a small percentage of subscribers; the rest will ignore the offer and if the newsletter doesn’t engage or interest them, they’ll ignore that too.

Persuading clients to come back to you is difficult. On the one hand, buyers have little sense of loyalty and always want the best for their money. On the other hand though, they don’t want to have to keep looking for new suppliers any more than you want to keep searching for buyers. And that’s perhaps the best strategy of all. Be the best photographer in your field and it doesn’t matter where you customers look, they’ll always come back to you.

Related posts:

1. Turn a Single Photo Shoot Into a Lifelong Business Relationship
2. What Buyers Know About Microstock Photography
3. Photo Buyers Looking for Human Touch
4. Photo Buyers Still Asking for More Ethnic Diversity in Images

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