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By admin, February 19, 2010 12:21 pm

I have received a reply from Derek Conway to my letter regarding the Digital Economy Bill. It has all the passion of a man on his way out of politics and probably couldn’t care less:

Dear Mr Cockerham,

The reality is that the government will get its way on the Bill unless the Opposition manages to block it during the winding up of the present Parliament.

As an individual MP there is no way I can prevent this measure making progress so I hope your professional association has made the points you have given me to the Conservative and LibDem spokesmen.

Kindest regards,

Derek Conway TD MP

So much for representing the interests of your constituents! I never thought for a minute that he personally could stop it. But surely it is incumbent on him, however long he remains in the House, to hold the Executive to account? He could reassure me that he would ask probing questions and make a valid contribution to any debate. But apparently his attitude is, “what’s the point”?

It occurs to me, that with so many MPs declared to be standing down, that many, if not all, will be taking a similar approach. If so, we – the people – are no longer being represented at all, and there can be no greater justification for a call that Parliament be dissolved and a general election called immediately.

I await Michael Fallon’s response. In the meantime, this has been published today by the British Journal of Photography.

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By admin, February 17, 2010 3:44 pm

The government’s drive to enact the Digital Economy Bill before the general election poses, potentially, a far greater risk to professional photography as we know it than the digital revolution itself.

Much has been written on this quite eloquently already for example here, so rather than rehash, it makes more sense to take the problem up directly with our MPs. One wonders exactly how that will pan out given the numbers who have nothing to fight for, but I feel it is worth at least stating a case rather than lying down without a fight. On that basis I have written the following letter to two MPs – Derek Conway (Independent) who is the MP for the constituency in which I have my office, and Michael Fallon (Cons) who represents the constituency where I have my home.

I will post the responses when and if I get them. In the meantime I strongly urge you to do the same where ever you are. And by the way, if you are reading this as an amateur photographer, don’t be fooled into thinking this does not affect you. If you take pictures and post them on the internet, it probably affects you more than it does the pros.

Dear Derek Conway/Michael Fallon,

I should like to ask how you stand on the proposed Digital Economy Bill.

As a professional photographer of over 15 years based/living in your constituency, I am extremely concerned about the elements of the proposed legislation surrounding “orphan works”, and indeed anything that undermines my right as the author of creative works to be the sole controller of how and if such works are used. That right of control has been the mainstay of my living throughout my adult life. When on occasion I have discovered that my work has been used without my consent I have had the right in law to be recompensed and demand that the illegal use be stopped.

The proposed legislation will in effect remove that right, since there is no balancing item in the bill that requires publishers of such works to maintain a link between the works and their authors. Neither does the bill specify what would constitute a “diligent search” for the author of a given work. Once a work has been deemed to be “orphan” it can be used subject to a nominal payment to a government organisation. If the author subsequently comes forward, he or she gets a percentage of what was probably already a derisory sum, with the rest going to cover administrative costs and no doubt the government.

But how are such fees to be determined? A couple of years ago an editor approached me to use an image of mine she had come across, on the cover of her magazine. I rejected the request because I did not want to be associated with that publication, but had I agreed, the appropriate fee would have been nearly a thousand pounds. If this bill is enacted, a similar editor could find such an image, not be able to “discern” that it was mine, and pay a nominal fee for its use. What then? My work is used in a way I find objectionable, and on discovering its use, my recompense is a percentage of a figure that we all know is going to be significantly lower than it should have been.

If you wonder how likely this might be, consider that it is quite common when works are supplied to a client, for the layout process to strip (not necessarily deliberately) all the embedded IPTC data that indicates the provenance of the work, in effect orphaning work that had been carefully “marked” for ownership.

I accept that the issue of Intellectual Property in the digital age needs to be reexamined, but the bill as it stands while addressing key issues for the music and movie industries, is hammering a nail in the coffin of professional photography at a time when it was just starting to show a solid potential for growth following the digital revolution. When it is also dealing with the near collapse of traditional editorial markets, and the negative effects of a deep recession, the last thing we need is for our political representatives to hand over our near lifeless corpse to Mr Murdoch and his friends on a silver platter.

I hope I can rely on you to push for the bill to be reexamined paying particular attention to its effects on all forms of professional photography at its next reading in the House.

For further information on this pressing issue please read the following.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Cockerham
Member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists

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By admin, February 3, 2010 10:33 am

Much has been written recently about the unseemliness of some of the journalism (of all types) that has been coming out of Haiti since the earthquake. Some of it has been branded a kind of pornography of despair that has had more to do with raising the currency of the news organisations and/or journalists than about objective news reporting. Indeed, Foto 8 has posted an insightful piece that considers if the experience of Haiti thus far should lead us to examine whether a new approach to reporting such events is overdue.

It has become commonplace whenever some major incident, particularly a natural disaster, hits some unsuspecting part of the world, for the fora of photojournalism in particular to crackle into life with every camera swinging wannabe trying to get snippets of info so they can insert themselves into “theatre” with the expectation that it is going to launch their careers. In all likelihood, it won’t.

There are, though, still some glowing examples of how it should be. Brussels-based photographer, Bruno Stevens, has published this powerful, poignant, but more importantly, balanced piece. It documents without being judgemental or overly visceral. All the issues that have been raised about Haiti are there, but the pictures do the talking by themselves. Perhaps most important of all the images are about the plight of the Haitians, not about Bruno Stevens.

To help Haiti, give here.

UPDATE: I have just listened to this, broadcast on Radio 4’s Today programme. It could not be more apposite. McCullin has a major retrospective of his career opening at the Imperial War Museum’s Manchester galleries on February 6th – it will move to London next year.

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By admin, January 23, 2010 8:56 pm

I had the pleasure of covering Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women lunch at the Walbrook Club in London a few days ago, and was struck by the juxtaposition of a “gentleman’s club” with the colour and sophistication of the women in it. I found myself smiling at the seeming incongruity of the rather staid and forlorn hanger of “emergency ties” tucked behind the beadle’s enclosure that seemed to belong to a different age. An age finally losing its grip as women prove themselves to be more than capable of anything they want to do.

Catherine Mayer, Time’s London Bureau Chief, welcomed those present remarking that she had once thought such events would be redundant in the 21st Century. To prove how wrong she was, she recounted the recent story of a friend who is a fund manager. The CEO of a large company had hoped that the fund would invest in his business and arranged a meeting. Said CEO entered a room to meet the fund manager and her two junior male associates. He introduced himself to the associates and asked the fund manager for a tea with two sugars. Apparently the fund manager did invest in the company, saying that “with such a stupid man at the top I knew it was ripe for takeover.”

I think we deserve everything we get.

To be fair, it is symptomatic of a deeper malaise. We are all alike incapable of judging people by their merits when there is so much to distract us on the surface. Women can be just as guilty, but where they really score is in an innate understanding of the fact that image matters. While men congratulate themselves on having the balls to wear a colourful tie with their grey, crumpled, and dandruff-flaked suit, women show that they can run the very biggest organisations brilliantly, and still have time for personal flair and colour. If they are going to be judged for how they look, they aim to look good.

In the few seconds I had to work around my brief, I thought I would concoct a little homage to their sense of style:

To find out more about Torley and his music click here.

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By admin, January 9, 2010 12:08 pm

A very worthwhile post on Black Star Rising about not selling yourself short. If you intend to be a photographer for a living, take heed:

This is a tale of two photography students. One sold some pictures to a client and was bummed out. Another failed to land an assignment but ended up feeling

via Notes from the VisCom Classroom: A Tale of Two Students.

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By admin, December 19, 2009 2:34 pm

Luke helped to set the lighting for a shot before the bride and groom came over, and Mandy felt the urge to join him!

The era in question is the Era of Luke. I am a great believer in offering work experience placements to students who have an interest in photography. For the last two weeks I have had the pleasure of the company of Luke, a fifteen year old student from Welling in South East London, and his placement comes to an end today.

Luke has been all over the place with me – building sites in Birmingham; the Houses of Parliament; industrial estates in kent; weddings in Sussex; and portrait shoots in Surrey. He has met MPs and astronauts, mothers and babies, contractors and suppliers, and through it all he has been enthusiastic and eager to learn, and as this image from a wedding shows, he knows how to win friends and influence people.

Good luck with your future, Luke, and make sure you keep in touch.

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By admin, November 21, 2009 5:15 pm

I started my career as a photographer in the early 1990s, and one of my happiest moments was the discovery of a small brick building, tucked into a corner of a residential road in the East Sussex town of Uckfield: MXV.

No idea what MXV stood for – I never bothered to ask. But it was a treasure trove of used photographic equipment. Some of it well worn, some of it frankly looked unused. It did not matter what you were after, the chances were that they had it, or had recently had it, or thought they might get it in soon, and when they did, they would let you know.

It was pretty good for selling stuff to. If you had something you wanted shot of, they’d give you a reasonable price (assuming they figured they could sell it on), and if you were happy to wait, the would sell it for you on a commission basis to earn you a better price.

I lost track of the number of times I went in there, or phoned, or checked their stock on the clunky but perfectly usable website. I sold things, and I bought things. The most recent thing I bought was a Mamiya 6 rangefinder (rare beyond belief now and at least double what I paid for it if you can find them). Probably my best buy from them was a Mamiya RZ Pro II 6×7 with a 110mmf2.8 lens, waste level finder, and a couple of film backs. I paid half what it would have been new, and it was so “mint” it still had a protective shipping sticker on it. Not a finger print anywhere. Apparently someone had been labouring under the impression that a professional camera would improve their photography, a notion which to my advantage they were clearly dissuaded of.

MXV was full of stuff like that – an invaluable source of the odd thing that a photographer might need. Sadly, within the last couple of weeks, they have ceased to be; a victim not only of the astonishing speed with which so many serious photographers ditched film to dive into the brave new digital world, but also of that other digital creation – eBay. Paul Beaumont tried to take MXV in the right direction by creating an online shop on eBay to help shift the gear, but in the end there can be little doubt that the seismic downward shift in the value of their stock must have made survival near on impossible. While odd items like the Mamiya 6 have gained in value according to their scarcity and desirability, the vast majority of second hand gear simply lost its market, and most first, second and third generation digital cameras have little residual value with short shelf lives and rapid advances in new generation equipment replacing it.

Probably the only place left now of its like in the UK is Mr Cad, run by the inimitable Alex Falk. To be fair, Mr Cad always was in a different league, and whereas MXV was really about cameras, Mr Cad has always been about photography: cameras, darkroom equipment, studio lighting. You name it, Mr Cad is the Mecca of traditional photography. If your heart is in film, then Mr Cad will probably be your spiritual home. Whether you are a small scale hobbiest, or you want to kit out an industrial darkroom, Alex Falk has forgotten more about the paraphernalia of photography than the most dedicated of students is ever likely to know. When I needed a second hand specialist darkroom water heating unit (designed to keep mains water running at a temperature stable to within 3 tenths of a degree) Mr Cad had it. Actually they had about half a dozen. You get my point. But while Mr Cad may survive, it was the Tesco to MXV’s boutique.

MXV – R.I.P

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By admin, October 9, 2009 2:04 pm

A link to the above was emailed to me by my friend James Lipman – a very good car photographer.

This movie is hysterical, but oh so true!!!!!!!!!!

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By admin, October 8, 2009 2:03 pm

A wonderful, if cautionary, tale was posted today on the BBC News Magazine pages about the hazards of inept wedding photographers, and it is well worth a read for aspiring photographers and prospective couples alike.

Ever since the digital revolution there has been this misconception that everything is easier (and quicker and cheaper) than it used to be in the days of film. This article seems a good point to set a few things straight.

Let’s start with the “easier” part. In the old days – by which I mean pre-digital – most people accepted their limitations as photographers. It was not uncommon for people to have photos from their summer holiday on one roll of film sandwiched between Christmas pictures at the start and end of the roll. Even the more snap happy did not kid themselves over their talent or lack thereof, because when they picked their photos up from the processor they usually found they had a couple of good(ish) photos, with thirty odd that went straight in the bin. Thus it was that “real” photographers were seen to be performing some kind of alchemy, producing excellent work from one end of the film to the other in seemingly impossible conditions. By and large wedding practitioners were shooting on Hasselblads or Rolleiflexes (my preferred medium format kit) – cameras that the average Joe never saw let alone knew what to do with. As a result, when people got married, they expected to use professionals to get the pictures. Don’t get me wrong, there were some really dreadful photographers around, but the proportion was rather lower than I expect it is now.

Then came the revolution. The average Joe could see what he was shooting instantly, and as he scrolls through the images he has on the back of his camera anyone would think he had talent. The problem is, that while we wince at the cost of throwing away prints from negatives, deleting files has no effect on us. Most people changing from film to digital have got no better – their hit rate is much the same, deleting thirty something pictures for every couple they keep. The simple fact is, whether someone is shooting on film or a chip, they still have to understand the effects of shutter speed and aperture, sensitivity and light, focus and composition, lens choice and – most importantly of all – subject. A good photographer will take good photos even with dreadful equipment. A bad photographer will produce crap no matter how expensive their kit. And that is not all. One of the ironies of “easier” digital is that it is actually less forgiving of mistakes than film was. With film (negative, less the pedants point to the unforgiving nature of transparency) your exposure could be off by a stop and a half in either direction and you could still get an acceptable print. With digital, overexposure is a real problem to recover from, and shadows can block up pretty quickly too, although to be fair the dynamic range of the latest generation of digital SLRs is much better than it was. How much of a problem is this for the unsuspecting “wedding photographer”? Well, imagine photographing the wedding of a very pale skinned man from Dundee in a black morning coat to a deep black skinned woman in a white dress on a bright sunny (I’m talking 500th at f8) day. You have to get detail in everything – it’s no good telling the bride and groom that it was too sunny, they want to see their faces and the detail in what they are wearing. If you are not bang on with the exposure you might as well forget it.

Then comes the “quicker” bit. In the old days (sorry, I sound like Uncle Albert in Only Fools!) at the end of a wedding you could drop the film in to your chosen professional lab (important to qualify “professional” – the people working in them are highly skilled technicians rather than school leavers who have been told which buttons to press). The best ones would stagger the process with other photographers’ work, that way if something went wrong chances were that you would lose a few shots rather than loads. A couple of days later you picked up the negs and the proofs, marked them up, filed the negs, and waited for the happy couple to get back from the honeymoon. Now we have “post-production”.

The average punter tends to be a bit bemused by this, after all they take pictures and just look at them on their computer. The explanation, sadly, is not straight forward.

Unprocessed image

In essence consumer cameras process the image files to make them instantly pleasing to look at, while professional spec cameras do not, the reason being that the cameras are designed to give the user as much leeway as possible to produce the right results for the right output. For instance, a picture that has been optimised for a computer, and is only ever going to be looked at on a computer, looks dreadful if it is printed, and a file that is great for a big print, is way too big for use online. The adjustments that need to be made for each type of use are not the same, so there cannot be a one size fits all approach to processing the pictures in camera. The majority of good photographers shoot RAW files rather than JPEGs. That is, the camera saves all of the raw data from the image that falls on the sensor. These files tend to be flat, lifeless and soft, and bear little relationship to the view that the photographer sought to capture. In a very real sense the move to a RAW work flow has taken professional photography back to the days of negatives, where (to paraphrase the great Ansel Adams) the original file is akin to a musical score, and the final JPEG is the performance. Unlike the film days, though, the post-production can’t just be handed over to a lab – well it can, but wedding customers are unlikely to want to bear the cost. As a result it falls on the photographer to do it him or herself, and this can easily be another day on top of the wedding: the one day’s work of old just became two for no additional money.

post processed image

Just to be clear, post-production in this context does not mean “photoshopping” – that is, to add and subtract bits from the picture – rather it is about balancing the colours, getting the contrast right and fine tuning the exposure – exactly the kinds of things that labs did with film. Once the basic post-production and editing (taking out the images where people are blinking etc) is done, the files can be converted to JPEGS to create proofs, either physical, or (more commonly these days) online. But the work does not stop there. Each file needs to have a distinct file name (no good having the generic file name DSC_1025 on 17 different shoots, you’ll never find what you are looking for again!), and the original RAWS need to be backed up several times, preferably in different geographical locations. Why? Well, in short, hard drives fail; not so much a matter of if but when. Furthermore, computers are likely targets for thieves, so having things in different locations is a fail safe against losing all your work. With negatives the only real risk was from fire or water damage; to the best of my knowledge they never had the habit of suddenly not working – unless of course they were not properly fixed, but that’s why you didn’t get them processed at the chemist.

That brings us to “cheaper”. The simple fact is that the saving on film is minuscule, especially set against the expense of the equipment required. A pro-spec film camera would have set you back about £1500, and they tended to last for five to ten years provided they were maintained. It is worth noting that Nikon only ever released 6 professional camera bodies, and look at the dates of their going to market, and then compare this to the release dates of their digital bodies:

FILM BODIES                                                    DIGITAL BODIES

• Nikon F     1959                                              Nikon D1     June 1999
• Nikon F2   1971                                              Nikon D1x  February 2001
• Nikon F3   1980                                              Nikon D2x  September 2004
• Nikon F4   1988                                              Nikon D3x  December 2008
• Nikon F5    1996
• Nikon F6    2004

In essence they were releasing a new camera to market at the rate one a decade (compared with four digital bodies in under ten years), and the last one, the F6 (still available) came as a complete shock since no one thought Nikon would bother releasing a new design well after the digital revolution. With digital bodies though, the pace of change has been breathtaking, with pro-spec bodies costing around £3500 and needing updating every couple of years. Over a ten year period film cameras would have cost £3000, while digital bodies will set you back about £14000. Before you say that you can buy a DSLR for £300, remember that if you are doing this for a living you will likely be shooting over a hundred thousand frames a year; the cheap bodies just can’t cope, and your wedding customers won’t be pleased if your kit stops functioning because you were too cheap to get the right stuff – that reminds me, you do need to have at least two cameras, just in case one packs up on a shoot… don’t say it won’t happen: it will. Then there are the lenses, the flashguns, the spare flashguns, the memory cards, the batteries and chargers, the tripods, the bags (believe me, they aren’t cheap). Once you have shot all your images, you need to be able to process them on a computer, and the first time you try to deal with a 30Mb to 50Mb file on an insufficiently powered machine you’ll be beating a track to the shops to spend a fortune on something more powerful that can cope with processing four or five hundred such files at a a time. And remember my warning on storage and back up? Much more expensive than filing negs.

So that’s the cost of the equipment dealt with. Then there is professional insurance (which I bet the subject of the BBC story wishes he had) at about a thousand pounds a year, and don’t forget to factor in the time for all the meetings with the customer before and after the wedding, and the time required to do the layouts and revisions for their storybook. All told you can be looking at five days in total on one couple. With the cost of the book production at about £350, the depreciation of the equipment plus other overheads, a photographer charging £1500 for a wedding might be getting about £120 a day – not quite as extortionate as the headline rate would have you believe, and even that assumes they are shooting 52 weddings a year and most are not.

The reality is that traditionally wedding photographers made their living from print sales. The pictures would be so good (hopefully) that relatives and friends of the couple would order a few prints each. The widespread use of compact cameras knocked that in the 1990s, so the best photographers had to up their game and get pictures that were so much better than everyone else’s that they still had good sales. The crap photographers just made demands that no one else was allowed to use cameras at the weddings they were working on. I have heard of this so many times, and it still makes me shake my head with disbelief. The question you have to ask is: how much confidence have such photographers got in their own ability if they can’t stand the competition from people who have no idea what they are doing? Personally I have no problem with guests taking pictures at weddings I work on, in fact I often give them tips on how to take better pictures.

The real threat to print sales has not been guests with cameras, but rather the editors of bridal magazines recommending that couples ask (or demand) that photographers “give them a DVD with all the pictures on”. Why? They never recommended that photographers give the couple the negatives, but for some reason they think the democratising effect of the PC makes handing over your work perfectly legitimate. The day I had a the editor of a bridal magazine ask me to supply one of my images for the cover of her magazine (she cold called me) while informing me that she would not be paying me and I had to take out a four month advertising contract with them was the day they lost all my respect. Personally I would like to string the lot of them up, and if you think I am being petulant consider what the publishers’ response would be if prospective brides asked to be given copies of the magazine (rather than paying for them) using the argument, “well you have already written it and printed it, so what use is it to you now?” Rightly the response would be that it is copyright material, and if people want it they have to pay for it. So it should go for wedding photos. Any photographer who values their work should offer to supply a disc for a rate commensurate with the average sales that they would expect to get for a given wedding; if that is a thousand pounds, then the price of a disc should be in that region. If your photographer offers you the disc for nothing what does that tell you about how much they value their work?

The thing is, many photographers might consider the effect on sales of giving a disc (and I am not even talking about copyright, that’s a whole other issue), but very few seem to think about the effect on their credibility. Consider this:

You spend a fortune on equipment; you strive to produce the best photos you can; you toil over colour and density correcting all the files, and making sure the unsharp masking is just right; you hand over a disc of perfect files in a recognised colour space; the couple put them in their computer; the monitor is not calibrated and profiled, so they fiddle to make them look right; they print them on cheap paper with cheap inks with no colour management or profile, but plenty of banding and colour casts; they then show these to everyone they know as examples of YOUR work. What does that do for your reputation? One of those friends was thinking about getting in touch with you to shoot their wedding… not anymore they’re not!

Bruce and Claire - Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

One correspondent to the BBC article – Caroline from Winchester – said: “Your mates know how to take your best picture.” I disagree. Your mates know what is you and what isn’t, but they do not necessarily know how to take a good picture of you. Virtually every wedding I do there will be someone who puts on a mock display of not wanting their photo taken: “I look terrible in photographs,” they say. If Caroline was right no one would ever say that. Eventually I get them to give me two seconds of their time, and the response is always the same: “that’s reeeally nice!” Why are they surprised? If you only ever had your hair cut by your mates (assuming they are not all hair dressers) you would soon come to the conclusion that it was impossible for your hair to be cut nicely. Likewise since most people’s experience of having their photograph taken is by their mates, they labour under the misapprehension that they are not photogenic.

Ultimately a good wedding photographer needs to be at the top of their game. There is a huge amount to do in a very short space of time, and unlike virtually every other area of photography, there are no second chances. There are many top flight photographers working in different genres that don’t do weddings. Some claim that it is beneath them, others – possibly more honestly – don’t want the responsibility.

Photography is only a small part of what is involved. Most of it is being able to get a large group of people to do what you want and enjoy it – part drill sergeant, part stand-up comic. You have to be patient, but firm. You have to know when to take control and when to let people enjoy their day. I have a rule of thumb: while I might want to take the best photographs I can, it has to take second place to the couple having the best possible wedding day. A few years ago I was shooting a wedding when my camera informed me that it had formatted everything I had shot up to that point. It has the greatest laxative effect of anything I have ever known! But this is where professionalism and experience come to the fore. My options were either to have a fit, start swearing madly and tell the couple they would have to repeat everything; or hide my terror, take stock of where I was, figure out what I could re-shoot without alerting anyone that anything was amiss, and try to carry on as normal. The first option ensures that no one ever hires you again, the second ensures that the couple continue to have a dream wedding and if worse comes to worse you deal with the consequences on another day. As it happens by about two o’clock the following morning I had become something of an expert in forensic data retrieval, and all was recovered – the couple had no idea anything was ever amiss.

So the answer to the BBC’s question, how hard is it to photograph a wedding? Harder than simply pressing a button might make you think.

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By admin, June 17, 2009 5:14 pm

Giving it away for nothing is an age old problem that afflicts creative types, and they are often accused of prostituting themselves by doing so. Let’s be clear – prostitutes charge for their services.

A good thread was started by Guilad Kahn on Lightstalkers on just this subject, titled “I’ll Pay You”. Sadly it descended into general mud slinging and eventually the whole thread was pulled – shame really as it was an important issue. Anyway, a rather nice chap called Daniel Cuthbert saw fit to comment on the issue in his own blog, and sent me a message saying that he thought my “reply to Guilad’s post has to be one of the most inspirational ones i’ve seen on LS yet”. Flattery will get you everywhere, Daniel, so for the sake of posterity I thought I would post that reply here – perhaps if Guilad agrees, I can place the original post here as well.

My post on Lightstalkers:

The only reason Guilad’s post is so funny is because it is so bloody true. I have lost track of the number of times I have had to explain to prosepctive clients that I am providing a service and they should expect to pay for it.

The wannabes that do everything for nothing (not to be confused with doing things for free) undermine the very profession they claim to be so passionate about getting into.

Know your worth, and stick to it. If someone does not want to pay your rates, thank them for their enquiry and politely suggest that they look elsewhere. Because most photographers are not trained in good business practice, they have a tendency to jump on any prospective job, and strangle the life out of it. I know that there are many who will start a “negotiation” with the words: “my day rate is x, but I am prepared to discuss it”. Why the hell do people say that when the client has not even been given a chance to respond to the rate?

The thing is, all this knock down bullshit changes the mentality of the clients. Worst case I had was two years ago. Magazine editor rings me up after seeing one of my images and wanting to use it as a full bleed cover. Circulation and advertising rates were modest, and warranted a fee of about $1200. Before I could even suggest this to her, she told me that they had “a policy of only using images from photographers that advertise with them”, but that she would do me a deal and give me four months for the price of two (about $1000) and then they would use my picture on the cover. I asked her to explain the business model, and she was a little perplexed, and responded that other photographers did it. I suggested that “other photographers” clearly had vanity issues. I on the otherhand have a mortgage, a wife (very expensive), two children (even more expensive), two cats (don’t get me started on them) etc, and that what I needed was paying. I further pointed out that she had called me. I sent her a high res comp on approval, and made it clear that if they liked it, they would bloody well pay, and I would not be taking out advertising with them. Needless to say they turned to some other mug who clearly caved in.

Much has been written on LS about these issues in the past, but I think the very best post was by Sion Touhig in 2006. I hope he will forgive me for pasting it in here because it is so relevant.

Michael

Sion’s post from May 2006:

Apologies in advance to all reading this, because I’ve had a spectacularly bad day, so you all might want to get your flameproof pants on…

Yeah, fair enough, the thread was hijacked, but my argument was there’s a particular kind of mindset that seems to be unique to our business, that means clients can think they can get away with saying “We have no budget”…a phrase that in just about any other kind of work would elicit the logical response “Well, fuck off then, and stop wasting my time”.

I mean, I’m all for coming to an agreement, but in what other business would you even CONSIDER that line as a negotiating position? You work out your costs of doing business and work from there for a quote. It’s kind of an iron law, because any less than that and you’re paying to work. That has to be your bottom, unbreakable line, or you starve. Or you work out what utility the work has to you in other terms – stock sales for example.

If it hasn’t got any, then walk away.

A lowball offer is one thing, but when they say they have NO money…I mean, where do you start? All you can say is you’re a professional service provider, if they commission you, they can sleep soundly because the images will be delivered on time, to a high standard, you’re a reasonable guy…but it costs, ya know?

It’s very rare, if at all, that just getting the images ‘for your folio’ will bear any future fruit with that client. You’ve just demonstrated that you are literally, worthless.

I’ll try the “Sorry mate, I have no budget” argument the next time I walk into my local pub, and my next LS posting will be when I’ve had my collapsed lung fixed, after getting the shit kicked outta me by the barman…

To bring the thread back…Nathan, you’ve kinda answered your own question. If the company is a large wealthy entity, who can obviously pay the salaries of their staff and any outsourced services – the cleaners, the photocopier maintenance people, the I.T. support folks…why the fuck can’t they find any money for you? They didnt factor in all the costs for the job then say, “Doh! We forgot to budget for a photographer!” That’s ridiculous.

They have money – thats self evident. They just dont wanna give you any.

No…what they said was “Let’s not budget for a photographer AT ALL, because some desperate wanabee will ALWAYS roll over like a good dog and do a job for us for free…for his ‘portfolio’ or whatever those ‘artists’ call it, heh heh…”

And you know what? They’re invariably right. You sit and fret at the end of the phone about whether you should roll the dice and take the job, because a gun is being held to your head.

But…who’s holding the gun? Not the art director. They’re just taking advantage of the situation.

The gun is being held to your head by…whichever photographer is willing to do the work for nothing.

You’re being killed by another photographer. Another photographer who obviously has a death wish themselves.

Even if you ‘negotiate’ a compromise, it will invariably be a compromise based on the bottom line of whichever cheaper photographer is around. Whatever reduced fee you agree will be very hard to negotiate upwards.

Now, I don’t wanna sound like George W. Bush or anything, but in this business, I am increasingly coming to the inescapable conclusion that “You’re either with us or against us”

To widen the point somewhat – Jon Anderson has been busting his ass for about a month on LS to get together as many names as possible for a petition to combat a US copyright law, which if passed, is quite frankly, yet another nail in the coffin for independent freelance photography in the US and Worldwide. You don’t even need to be a U.S. Citizen to add your name to the list.

There are about 8000 LS members and how many have taken the trouble to do the simple task of adding their name to the list? About 300.

To which my response is – what a fuckin’ shameful disgrace. Jon is so committed to his thing, he even LIVES in the Third World, but is still willing to take time to defend your sorry asses – and most of the rest of you living in relative comfort in the First World can’t even be bothered to type your own name and address!

How the hell am I supposed to accept all this ‘Family of Man’ photojourno-concerned-photographer propaganda I keep reading on this site, when photographers won’t even support their OWN PEERS? Never mind anyone else!

Carlos is right…are we gonna stand up or not? Are we professionals or not? Do we have ANY self-respect? From what I see, some of the dirt-poor wretched of the Earth have more pride than the photographers who photograph them. They would NEVER stand to get screwed the way we do.

That’s all you need to know about what the REAL problem is in this business…and it’s most dirty, sordid, unspeakable little secret, which is – a lot of the people who will roll over and do the job over a photographers bankrupt body are all on LS.

Not so long ago when we weren’t all on the internet (I’m old enough to remember), maybe ignorance was a defence. I perceive a widespread lack of basic knowledge on LS about copyright law, licensing, rates, metadata, developments in the photo-world…it used to be tough to keep up to speed before the Web.

No more. All the info you need, is a mouseclick away.

My message to any LS member with their head in the sand, living in the NachtweyWorld Dreamland Themepark is:

YOU are the problem – not Getty Images, not Corbis, not the Orphan Works Bill, not RF images, not Micro-Stock, not Work For Hire, not rights grabbing contracts…

You. Because without you, they would never have existed.

If you can’t get to grips with the basic concepts of controlling and valuing your work in the digital world (the ONLY world which matters now), and by extension, engage in ethical business practice by valuing the work of your peers and holding the line on decent, fair rates, then you have no place in this business.

Because it’s you who are killing the photographers who value their work and businesses – and yours – enough, to walk away from ‘no budget’ nonsense.