Best Business Practices for Photographers [54]
Me: I understand your perspective. What I would like to do is give you a bit more information. It would cost you more than $200 to send your receptionist down to the local camera store to rent a professional set of lights, softbox, and digital camera and buy the seamless background, and then when you get that equipment to your office, they won't know how to use it. As a part of what I will do for you, I will be bringing my equipment and lighting down and setting them up in your office. In addition, I have been doing this for years, and I know how to make your subject comfortable in front of the camera, the right angles to make the subject look the most flattering, and how to use the equipment to make the photo look its best.
Prospective Client: I just never knew it would be this expensive. I don't know if we can afford you.
Me: I understand. What I will say is that I am available and would love to come down and do this portrait for you. It may be that this time you can't afford me, and I respect that. I would suggest you consider the value of a well-done portrait. When you see portraits that look like snapshots, they make companies look less professional than their website, office décor, or in-person presentations are and can cause people to question whether they want to do business with the company. Honestly, a professional portrait can help sell people's comfort level with a company or individual like nothing else can—even, for some people, an in-person meeting.
Prospective Client: Yeah, I just don't think we can afford it.
Me: That's fine. I think I would bring my skills to this assignment and do a good job, but I encourage you to call around. You may find someone cheaper, and they may be able to take a good photograph for you. If you can't—or worse, if you do find a cheaper photographer and you are not happy with the results—please don't hesitate to call me back, and we will set something up for you.
If you consider that any Joe or Jane could snap the shutter and earn an hourly wage if they could focus the camera and set the shutter speed and aperture, then from there, you need to value your creativity—upwards.
The Risk Factor
This is an interesting factor because the underlying question is, "How much is my life worth?" It is, for example, far riskier to hang out the door of a helicopter with one foot on the skid than to be popping off flash-on-camera images in a hotel ballroom.
The other risk factor, where the risk is more likely assigned as the challenge of completing the assignment successfully, is, "How likely is it that despite all the planning in the world, we could not come back with the image?" It is critical that you convey to your client this risk and demonstrate your planning efforts beforehand, so they know very clearly the risk.
In one instance, I had a client who wanted me to photograph a subject holding a product on the bank of a river. The challenge was that the subject with the product needed to be in front of an ocean-going freight vessel laden down with shipping containers. The purpose of the assignment was to put a face and product on the nondescript nature of the freight vessel, but we were working for the company that employed the person and made the product that in turn was shipped on those freight vessels.
Although it wasn't hard to locate the right riverbank along the path of these ships going to and from the port, getting to know the schedules of the vessels was a problem. The challenge in this instance was that the port operators, as a matter of homeland security, were not going