Best Business Practices for Photographers [122]
When lawyers and numerous other "communications" experts get involved, here's an example of what you might get:
Honda North America Consumer Division President and CEO Phillip E. Albertson Jr. (right) demonstrates the safety and clean-running features of the 2010 Honda Acura ELX Clario-Hybrid™ technology, the first of Honda's USA-branded products to carry the technology, to Anytown, USA High School student and Sierra Club 2009 essay contest winner Gina Jones (left), who wrote about how the planet could be saved if more Americans looked to safer and cleaner fuel technologies, such as those that Honda has introduced, two years before the Congressional mandate to include the technology as an option. The 2010 Honda Acura, on display here in Detroit, Michigan, is on a nationwide tour to demonstrate the technology and as an award to 10 students across the country. The tour began today, February 29, 2009, and runs through April 1, 2009.
From my perspective, I don't need to know much of the second example's sales lingo. I am not about to put a trademark symbol in my caption. My caption meets AP style, and mine would have made the East coast deadlines and been put into newspapers, whereas the second caption came two hours later and was approved by Honda's lawyers, Clario's lawyers, and the Sierra Club's vice president for communications, among others.
What a Corporate or Commercial Contract Must Have
Corporate and commercial contracts, on a basic level, must have the same things as an editorial contract—a signature, rights outlined, fees agreed to, and the like. For a more in-depth outline of those, see Chapter 13. However, there are other issues at stake. It's important to detail exactly who the end user of the images is.
If your client is Docomo Shoes, you were hired to cover their donation to the Race for the Cure footrace in your community, and all the shoe wearers are cancer survivors whose participation in the race is sponsored/underwritten by a pharmaceutical company, you have potentially three parties who could use your photos, but only one should be licensed to do so, unless you enter into a multi-party licensing agreement (MPA). More on MPAs later in the chapter.
There must also be an understanding about who has final authority to sign off on the resulting imagery from an assignment. Suppose an AD is at the shoot with a PE, the AD heads for a lengthy restroom break, and the PE gives you what you think is approval on two images with the phrase "looks good." But suppose you come to find out after the fact that the PE was offering his opinion, and only the AD could sign off before the next image. Now you've got a problem. Typically, my contracts state that the client must always provide someone onsite to approve images, and, absent that, they agree that I may make the determination as to suitability of images and setups without penalty or withholding of payment.
You'll want to know whether the process is A) a bid, which implies a fixed or "do not exceed" cost outline; B) a quote, which implies concepts similar to a bid; or C) an estimate.
Bids versus Estimates
If the client has requested a bid (or quote), realize that producing bids is a process that requires a great deal of finesse. Further, you are committing that the cost to produce the project—as outlined—will be what you have placed on the bottom line of the bid.
More and more, our clients are being asked by their clients to triple bid the project. This is done largely for two reasons. The first reason is that you and two other photographers with similar capabilities (and usually slightly different approaches) are presented to the client. With three to choose from, the client makes the decision about who will shoot the assignment.
The second reason is financial. Sometimes, the low bidder wins, but often the middle-priced photographer wins the bid, with the low bidder being identified as not knowing what goes into the shoot or the correct costs associated with completing the assignment, and the high bidder being so out