Best Business Practices for Photographers [33]
Here's a partial list of where these people might need some assistance:
Contracts. If a photographer has been a staffer for awhile, it's likely his or her last agreement to provide photography was done on a handshake. If a photographer has only been on staff for year or so and came straight from school, that photographer, too, doesn't understand the importance of a contract—signed by the photographer and the client. Offer to give the photographer a copy of yours (preferably in a Word document so they can edit it) to get started.
Equipment. They likely need help getting their equipment set up. They may have been given their old equipment from their place of work, but in most cases the gear is on its last legs. Redundant camera bodies and lenses ranging from ultra-wide 14-24mm Nikon or 16-35mm Canon, all the way to 200mm lenses for each, plus two strobes and a Jackrabbit/Quantum battery pack will be sufficient. In the rare case that they are going to do sports or major news events, a 300mm with a 1.4x or 2x teleconverter is useful, but freelancers headed that direction with a need to sustain themselves are not going to find a lot of success chasing sports.
Software. They may have their own laptop but are unclear about the importance of backing up their images and acquiring legal copies of the software they'll need. Don't start them off on the wrong foot by giving them copies of your software. Recommend that they get full versions that are registered in their own name of Photoshop, Photo Mechanic, fotoQuote, Microsoft Office, Lightroom (or Aperture), and QuickBooks Pro.
Dealing with clients. Be sure to tell them that when the client says, "Oh, you're the first photographer I've talked to who has a problem with __________," where the blank is "work-for-hire," "wanting to be paid," "charges for post-production," or "wanting a contract signed," they're being dishonest at best, and more than likely they're lying.
Marketing. This one's tricky, because if you're not careful, you'll teach your newfound freelancer friends to compete for your own work—and they will be doing so without the understanding of the true costs of being in their new shoes as self-employed people, and so they may well undervalue themselves. (They did just get laid off, remember? Their self-worth wounds likely need a bit of time to heal before they remember that they're worth a lot.) Most important is to get a website that they can get online quickly and one that is easy for them to update and change. Once they get a website, they can begin their marketing campaign. The notion of having a printed portfolio these days applies to maybe 10 percent or less of the assignment work out there (much of which is in the advertising field), so the online version of that is the best route to go.
Pricing and rates. The first thing you should do is send them to the NPPA's pricing calculator, which we discuss in Chapter 7, "Pricing Your Work to Stay in Business." This calculator works for the vast majority of photographic fields and gets your colleagues thinking about the true costs of being in business— which in turn will assist them in calculating what they should charge. The biggest problem with photographer's rates is not that they've been artificially inflated to a price that's too high; it's that photographers fail to contemplate the total costs of being in business, and thus they price jobs too low.
Longevity. Awhile back, I sat down to dinner with a colleague who thought he'd gotten his golden ticket—a staff job at a community newspaper. Just under three months later, he was laid off. Guess what? He wasn't eligible under the rules that applied to him to even collect unemployment. Everyone is replaceable. No one is safe.
Where Does All Your Time Go?
One of the challenges of being self-employed—especially as a photographer—is the presumption of how your time is spent. Few, if any, photographers