Best Business Practices for Photographers [50]
One final note: There is also a risk that if your assistant made a significant contribution to a shoot (light placement, subject direction, camera angle, and so on) and he or she is classified as an independent contractor, the assistant might have a viable claim of joint authorship in the resulting copyrighted image. Classifying the assistant as an employee or using a payroll service that deems the assistant an employee of that service will reduce this risk significantly. In addition, some photographers will ask that assistants sign an agreement waiving any such rights.
Chapter 6 Setting Your Photographer's Fees
So much smoke and mirrors goes into the establishment of a fair and reasonable price for the work that we do that asking any of your colleagues, "What should I charge for this?" will almost always result in, "Well, that depends."
So, what exactly does it depend on?
There are a wide variety of factors that should go into your determination of the fee you should charge associated with your creativity, risk, time, and experience. All these factors come together to develop the fee you charge for your photographic services. It is imperative that you approach what you're doing with the understanding that almost always the least important factor is time, with rare exceptions. (I'll get to those in "The Time Factor" section.) The most significant variations in your income will come from the revenue that arises out of what people are doing with your photographs. This is the case for all artists. And you are an artist, in exactly the same manner that a musician is an artist. When, for example, that musician records a song, usually the initial use is for retail sale on iTunes and on CDs. Secondary uses of that song include use in commercials, movies, video games, television broadcasts, and so on.
So, too, when you produce a photograph, the initial use may be for one client's project. When that project expands (in much the same way a musician has more sales of the song on iTunes), you should earn more money. When that same photograph gets repurposed into another client's ad campaign or promotional material or as stock for an editorial need, again, you need to be additionally compensated.
In some instances, when dealing with some clients, you would call this photographer's fees, and in other instances—especially with ad agencies and design firms—these fees are referred to as creative fees. Separate from that are usage fees. These are fees that are associated with the use of the creative results of your time. You can read about the question of keeping together or separating creative fees from usage fees in Chapter 7, "Pricing Your Work to Stay in Business," and more is discussed regarding usage fees in Chapter 26, "Licensing Your Work."
So, what about actual numbers? Honestly, every locale in every state in every country of the world has different figures, and suggesting what they are does the locale and the economic climate of that locale a disservice and would be irresponsible. Using the Cost of Doing Business Calculator made available to you by the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) at http://nppa.org/professional_development/business_practices/cdb/ is one thing to do to help you establish your own actual CODB for your community and circumstances. If, for example, your CODB is $350 a day, and you are billing out at the rate of $70 an hour, an eight-hour day of shooting grosses $560, leaving you with $210 for that day as a net profit. However, on the next day, if you are not shooting, you still had a CODB of $350, meaning you had a loss of $140, cumulatively.
Remember, too, that even if you do earn that $210 net profit, that is before taxes, and the government will likely take about half of that, leaving you with a net profit after taxes of $105. Further, don't just use the CODB calculator for your current expenses; use it to help you track what