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Portions of this column were originally written for the November 2005 edition of News Photographer Magazine.
Mark Loundy is a media producer and consultant based in San Jose, California. Full bio.
The opinions in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Press Photographers Association.
By Mark Loundy
"PROFIT is the reason one goes into business. MONEY is the reason one goes into business. LOVING WHAT ONE DOES is a PERK, a FRINGE BENEFIT, a BONUS, but it's not the REASON to go into business."
— Photographer Joe Pobereskin
When somebody asks what I do for a living, I tell them that I produce videos. But what I really do is make money. Everything I do for a client has to be a profit center. When I ship a disk to a client, I mark-up the shipping costs. When I rent equipment for a shoot, I mark-up the rental fees.
All of the "scut" work involved in making a job work is a service to your client and you should charge them for it. Every trip to Kinko's, every hour spent in front of the computer editing and processing images, every CD-R disk, even lunch has to be paid for by somebody and that somebody is your client.
If you're not billing your expenses to your client (with an appropriate mark-up) you're giving away your profits.
No Good this time. Perhaps next year.
KC Magazine for soliciting images for its November issue from area photogs. The pay: A credit line. I'm not picking on Kansas City, honest!
Commercial real estate company CoStar Group. This company hires photographers to shoot multiple angles of businesses for the princely sum of $15 per site. A recent assignment of 17 sites would have taken the photographer an estimated 28 hours to produce, including travel time and post-production. That works out to slightly more than $9 per hour. Oh yes, and they require work-for-hire and indemnification agreements.
Wiley Publishing for its "cannot offer monetary compensation" technique for acquiring images for their upcoming "Digital Photography for Dummies" book. I guess we know which "Dummies" they're talking about.
"David Banner Heal the Hood" for requiring news photographers to sign a copyright transfer and a particularly odious indemnification agreement just for the privilege of covering the Atlanta event.
Please let me know of any particularly good, bad or ugly dealings that you have had with clients recently. I will use the client's name, but I won't use your name if you don't want me to. Anonymous submissions will not be considered. Please include contact information for yourself and for the client.
Leftovers