A video production has soooo much more involved than a still shoot. It’s a really interesting way to sell yourself: stills and video of _______.  But it takes a lot of work and it’s a lot harder than just throwing a 5D on a tripod and shooting. You can’t fix some things in post, but not the kinds of things we photographer’s fix in photoshop on a still image (or, I’m sure you could fix them with a HUGE Hollywood budget, but not on most clients’ budgets.)

I’m actually not sure who can afford to shoot generic stock photography now. Getty itself is not shooting now and every good photographer I talk to who ever made decent money shooting stock part-time has _already_ abandoned shooting stock altogether. Why bother investing time/money/energy in stock productions if your bread and butter is in assignments and you could get more of those if you devoted whatever time you spent on stock to building your assignment work? So what remains is the crowdsourcing – generic stock will come from user-generated sources like the way iStockphoto originally worked (a place for people who work in the industry, but aren’t necessarily f/t photographers, to put the outtakes of their generic projects), and more unique, quirky and “real” imagery (though generally not slick or produced) will be found in collections like Flickr-at-Getty. I’m not really sure where the competent but not very original photographer (hundreds of whom made a great deal of money in the 90s and early 00’s) fits into this stock paradigm, even as a supplemental part of their business.

Read the entire post, click here.

So much of what he writes rights true. It’s a fact that generic stock imagery will be produced by camera enthusiasts and photographers may not be able to put loads of money into stock shoots any longer.

For myself, usually a stock image now has another purpose or was produced for another reason. OR, I have to get the model’s participation for free or for tfp.

Still, some stock images will still bring in good money, just not the kind of money that most photographers got used to in 2005.

See my article on stock in the July/August issue of American Photo. It’s on page 76 and there is no online link to it that I know of…. so I guess you’ll have to buy the issue.

He wrote back and said that it was an amazing coincidence, but he had never seen the image before, and in fact, Flickr (where we had assumed the image had been taken from) is banned in Media City where the agency is located in Dubai. There are, of course, a few different workarounds to bypassing the censorship of Flickr. However, once the AD presented us with the image he actually did use as inspiration, an image from the Guinness Book of World Records featuring the ‘most cigarettes smoked at once,’ it better matches the arrangement of toothbrushes in their model’s mouth than does my student’s. I also emailed the photographer to ask him if my student’s photo was used as a comp and the photographer confirmed that it had not been used.

A complete coincidence.

Student's Photograph

Agency's Photograph

Snapshot of my income by percentages and genre.

1999: mid 5 figure gross
30% editorial photography
70% weddings

2002: I probably grossed 6 figures for the first time in my life and for each year after 2002
10% editioral
20% advertising
30% stock image royalities
40% weddings

2005: definitely grossed low 6 figures
60% stock
40% national advertising campaigns and relicensing of campaign images.

2007:
50% stock
20% national advertising campaigns
30% teaching income

2009:
25% stock
20% weddings
5% writing for photography publications
5% national advertising campaigns
15% local advertising and editorial photography jobs
30% teaching

The author wanted a lifestyle photographer to take images of customers dining, waitstaff pouring wine at tables, close-ups of pots and pans in the kitchen, etc.  He also wanted several images of Hilton Head: lighthouses, dunes, and other local scenes. In addition, he wanted pictures of a cooking class which is held in a classroom on the second floor of the restaurant, and shots of a wine and cheese gathering on a sailboat. In total there were 5 separate shoots (many of them involving people) totaling 75 selected images and I would have to do all of the production work, styling and retouching as well.

Initially, I thought this would be a fun project that would bring me some recognition, but after I met with the author and did a little more research, I realized that it was way too much work for the $3000.  There would need to be at least 30 hours spent on the production work alone, and the potential for problems and re-shoots was high. I also realized, on a personal level, that my working relationship with the author would not be a happy one. It’s one thing to be demanding if you are paying me $20,000 for a two day advertising shoot, but I will walk away from a smaller project if you do not treat me well from the beginning.

Admittedly, if the author had been a famous chef I would have done the project, as I am working on my food and resort portfolio and wouldn’t mind that feather in my cap. However, this author had no real name recognition.

If the location was truly special I might have taken the job to gain access and images in my portfolio that I did not have. (But I have access to fine dining restaurants, so this is not the case.) For example, if I was just starting out as an architectural photographer and for some reason I.M. Pei called me to ask if I would shoot his building for free, I probably would. I’d even do it twice, or maybe even three times. After that, I could probably get business from other architects who saw that I had worked with Pei (as long as the images looked professional.) Note that this happens all the time in our business: if you are a wedding photographer and you shoot Angelina Jolie’s wedding, and she allows you to use it for your own self promotion of your wedding photography, instantly you can probably double or triple your prices and get lots and lots of hits on your website.

So I’m not happy about the loss of the $3000, but I think I’ll be a much happier person without this project.

Now comes the tough part: dealing with your rep and Art Buyers and AD’s while teaching. I kept my rep for the first two years of teaching. Often, in the middle of class time, my rep would call and I was told I had a conference call with an Art Buyer and three creatives in 1 hour. If I was lucky, class ended in 1/2 hour and I could make the call work and be in contention for the job. At the same time, I should be on the phone with my producer working on the estimate, so I could sound like I knew what I was talking about when I was on the call.

The other big issue is: if you get the job, when is the shoot date? Anyone who has worked at the highest levels of advertising photography knows that shoot dates are usually NEVER set in stone and in many cases, you make more money if the job is postponed. However, teaching make-up classes and never knowing if you are coming or going or being able to give students a schedule of make-up classes until you are on the plane is not fun.

There are many other things to contend with trying to juggle teaching and shooting commercially. It’s not easy to do but I think it is essential for a photographer to keep up their skills and give photography students current information in the commercial photography field.

One final note: There are many fine artists who shoot commercial jobs, and some are even photography department chairs at Universities. Steven Shore is one that comes to mind. He is department chair at Bard College. Larry Fink also teaches there and shoots commercial jobs. There are many, many other photographers who juggle teaching and shooting commercially.

Jump forward 5 or 6 years and shooting tethered makes little sense. If an AD is on the set, I may still shoot tethered, but the final result of the image will not resemble what is on the screen, so I now have a retoucher on the shoot who can frankenstein an image together that will somewhat look like what we are thinking of for the final image. Shooting tethered makes little sense any longer. Using cards and downloading cards is easier. The program doesn’t crash or loose its connection to the camera and the screen on the back of my 5D MKII is so good, that I can get a really good sense of the image. I don’t even need to read histograms anymore. I think it may be even faster to shoot to cards. For these reasons, I only shoot tethered if I have to.