Best Business Practices for Photographers [142]
A photographer with a roof over his or her head and a full pantry will negotiate better than one with a stack of collections notices in the mailbox
A photographer who has other resources to draw from to cover expenses, such as a part-time job or a full-time job that allows for weekends free to provide rites-of-passage types photography, will negotiate better.
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INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY PHOTOGRAPHERS
Some photographers are independently wealthy, perhaps from an earlier career from which they retired young. Some have family money from an inheritance, or perhaps they have a well-off spouse. These photographers are in an enviable position, but one that carries a responsibility to the profession. Just because you don't have to worry about making a minimum monthly income/profit level, that doesn't mean you can take assignments for the pleasure of seeing your photo credit. Doing so sets a standard that is unattainable by those who do have to make monthly minimums to survive, and you do those you admire as fellow photographers a disservice and make their lives miserable in the process. This may be one legitimate reason why the phrase "trust-fund photographer" came into parlance and is used in a derogatory manner. But one photographer who worked in the field of photography very early on did a service to the community as a trust-fund photographer—Alfred Stieglitz. He worked diligently to improve the gallery showings, pay, and general circumstances of his fellow photographers. Those with similar good fortune would do well to follow his lead. A documentary on his life and exhibitions of his work are ways to learn more about the man.
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There are many photographers I know who made pictures and waited tables to pay the bills in the early stages of their careers. Waiting tables, they could make $200 a day before taxes, and they wouldn't take off a day to do an assignment that paid less. This makes sense, and it allowed them to accept only appropriately paying assignments.
My situation was somewhat different. As I outlined in Chapter 4, after several years as a staff photographer at a magazine, I was told that another photographer and I would be offered a single full-time position to split. When the other photographer said he couldn't do it, I thought for sure I'd get the work he said he couldn't take, but instead of offering me the full-time position, the managing editor sought to keep me at the part-time level. At the time, I was very unhappy about this; yet looking back, it was very beneficial to me. It was this income that paid my rent, utilities, and such and allowed me to grow my business by turning down bad deals (whether "pay-bad" or "rights-bad") and securing long-term clients who were reasonable on rights and rates.
Practice makes perfect. Although you know that's true for dealing with difficult subjects, challenging lighting setups, driving, and everything else in the world, somehow people believe that they can never be good at negotiating. This just isn't true. Really.
Whatever your position, do everything you can to ensure that you're not negotiating "on an empty stomach" and you don't end up taking bad deals just because you're hungry. Further, you should never find yourself in a position where the loss of any one assignment (or a few in a row) would put you out of business. If you are in that predicament, then you need to reevaluate your business model from the ground up.
In his book You Can Negotiate Anything, Herb Cohen talks about three factors that govern most negotiations—an "imbalance in information, apparent time pressure, and perceived power." If you are the only person available within two hours of a location, and it's a last-minute event, you're more likely to be able to set your terms—if you have some way of knowing this, or the editor happens to mention that everyone else is booked and it's an important assignment. Now you have perceived power from the prospective client's time pressure and the information that you're the only one.
If you say, "Great, I don't have anything