Best Business Practices for Photographers [9]
You can succeed as a professional photographer. The first edition proved that over and over. This edition expands your toolkit even more. After 20 years in the field, on the front lines of photojournalism and corporate and commercial photography, and in making images for advertising clients, the tried-and-true practices in this book have stood the test of time not just for me, but for the many other people for whom it has been a guide.
Enjoy!
Introduction
Our chosen profession is in the midst of a profound transformation, a sea change. When I became a photographer, 35mm film was the standard for photojournalism. Twenty years earlier, medium format was king, and that had evolved from a 4~5 mindset. Medium format was the format of choice for many magazine photographers, and although many advertising photographers were also using medium format, numerous were large-format only. Ansel Adams, in the introduction to his 1981 book, The Negative, foretold the coming digital era when he wrote, "I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them." In each successive shift, there was disdain for the new technology, and that held true for digital too, despite Adams' anticipation. Now there are few compelling reasons to use film.
Although there is much discussion and posturing about file formats, workflows, and such, the concepts of running a business have remained remarkably unchanged. From Dale Carnegie's advice in How to Win Friends and Influence People, to the requirement that the income we generate must exceed what we spend on expenses, solid business principles have stood the test of time. The founding fathers' inspiring notion in the Constitution that you are the creator of your works and, as such, you are entitled to a limited monopoly on them has changed little. When Arnold Newman led a boycott of Life magazine in the 1950s, it was over egregious business practices by the publisher, and the photographers won.
The points made in Best Business Practices for Photographers about customer service, giving back, the value of asset management, negotiation, and so on are timeless. The opportunity to revise and update this book will no doubt take place during successive printings and editions, but it is my hope that this book and its core messages and lessons will always be a well-worn resource on your bookshelf. Or, perhaps it will be passed along to a colleague or an aspiring photographer who you feel could benefit from these insights and what's written herein.
Photographers may disregard commercial photography, espousing the documentary photographer's status as the most honorable, and hold some irrational disdain for commercial photographers or business practices. So I return to Adams, who is cited by William Turnage of the Ansel Adams Trust in the PBS American Experience series Ansel Adams. Turnage is credited with securing Adams' financial future shortly after they met, when Adams was 70. Turnage notes, "He and Edward Weston were criticized because they weren't photographing the social crises of the 1930s, and [Henri Cartier] Bresson said, '[T]he world is going to pieces, and Adams and Weston are photographing rocks and trees.' And Ansel was very stung by this criticism. He felt that documentary photography, unless it was practiced at an extremely high level, was propaganda, and he wasn't interested in that. He wasn't trying to send a message."
Turnage then went on to say, "I never met anyone who worked as hard as he did—never took a day off, never took a vacation, ever. He simply worked seven days a week, every day of the year,