What a coincidence. On the same day I give away a photograph for free to be used by British Airways inflight magazine I read this from Strobist
Try to resist the cheap thrill of being paid (very little) for a photo. The true expense of that action is that you ultimately deprive someone who has devoted their life to shooting professionally much of a chance of financial survival. If you are good enough to work for pay, you are good enough to work harder and raise the standards of the profession, not devalue them.
On the one hand I can totally get your point David, I really do. And you know, I do feel a little guilt for giving my photograph away (thanks for ruining a great moment in my photography career! heh).
Having pondered on it for a little while though here are my thoughts
- If I say “no” someone else will say “yes”.
- The only person I would be depriving is me and sorry but depriving me hurts a lot more than depriving you from where I am standing.
- How the heck am I supposed to build a portfolio if I have to charge what you consider fair rates to people who consider those rates anything but.
- The people who want cheap or free will not pay more than that.
- What makes the photography industry any different?
My last point needs some clarification. Consider web sites. A company comes to me and says “I want a web site to sell my widgets”. I say “That will be $£xx,xxx.99″. They say “Whoah, my neighbours nephews friends sister can do it for $£x”. I say “Go get them to do it then and come back to me when they make a hash of it”.
If an industry gets commoditised it is because that industry is doing a poor job of selling itself. What is the difference between me building a website and the 12 year old kid with a copy of Dreamweaver? Oh, probably more than a million pounds in profit on the clients bottom line, and I can prove it, but I am not going to do it at the kids rates. You have to decide what the difference is between your photograph and some kids $1 stock photo. If there is no difference who’s fault is that? Not the kid and not the customer, that’s for sure.
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{ 2 comments }
Christian 10.03.06 at 4:57 pm
Hi Chris,
a very good point that you have mentioned. Your comparison of photography and websites has a point but has to be brought up a little closer.
When building a website it has some goals: design, functionality, consistance, conformity, usability… Some of them are standarized like with guidelines of human usability, standards conformity and so on.
But how is it with photography? Isn’t it more up on ones point of view? Photography contains more an artistic component than building website (except webdesign which is also some kind of art).
I think it is a problem with customers who can not appreciate the artistic value of a photograph. But it is to blame to the photographers that the most are not able to educate their customers in the right direction.
Or did you never had the problem to teach a website customer about the value of your work. I never had a customer who was knowing in depth only a bit of what I was going to sell to him. Customer need education to learn about your profession, your knowledge and the value of what you are doing.
Chris Garrett 10.03.06 at 5:17 pm
Yes with building websites you do need to educate your customer on the true value. In fact some sales people believe a customer will only pay when they fully and truly feel not just the “need” but the “pain” that your solution will remove. With any sort of service the most effective way to sell a customer is paint a picture of how the customers situation will be different after the service has been provided and how this differs from competitors solutions.
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