The Business of Photography

When a photographer asks the right questions and succeeds in getting specific answers, he gets a basis for writing his proposal. A client asks him to quote for a job, and he submits a well-crafted proposal. Hopefully, a fair price, a fairly and attractively-worded proposal, his reputation or his potential as shown in his portfolio, can work together to land him the job and with it, a reasonable profit. Here are some considerations when preparing a photography contract.
The Fundamentals of a Photography Contract

A contract is simply to define expectations of both parties signing it, but photographers generally shy away from drawing up one because the word connotes many other things – lawyers, litigation, violations, penalties and many other unpleasant feelings. If you are among those who can’t say the word “contract” without wincing, let’s find some softer synonyms. What about “Memorandum of Agreement,” or perhaps “Terms of Understanding?” Be creative and find what you want to call it, but it’s something that MUST be done to avoid miscommunication and misunderstanding.

What then are the fundamental considerations when drawing up a photographer’s contract… oops, a Memorandum of Agreement?

1. A contract defines mutual responsibilities. Make sure you include, in your contract, your client’s and your responsibilities and deliverables, and the penalties and rewards (in other words -payment) for delivering or failing to deliver them. What does client expect from you in terms of images? Be very specific and descriptive so that anyone looking at your images can decide if you delivered or not. Indicate whose responsibility it is to provide products, props, talents, transportation and/or other services. You and your client should agree on payments and/or extra compensation for additional time, work or usage of your images; compensation for cancelled or postponed projects, especially when you have started to do some work for them and have already incurred expenses. For photographers who go on location, the contract should indicate if they should be compensated for weather-related cancellations. A contract also defines who owns what, which is especially useful to photographers in asserting their copyright ownership. It should govern other promises like how long they keep files (which can be anywhere from never to a few years). In all of these, be as specific as possible, using numbers to quantify your promises or what you are asking for from your client, in return for the services you are rendering.

2. A contract prevents negative surprises – on either side. Because a contract defines expectations so that you don’t spring surprises on each other, work relationships become smooth and productive. Your client hopefully will not haggle after the job is done; he understands that he can’t get the photographer to agree to shoot everything and everybody in sight, if that was not part of the contract; he knows when to pay you; and you, the photographer, must deliver all that you promised, on the day and date promised, and not whenever you’re done with your other jobs. And unless there were provisions for defined contingencies, you can’t just tuck in additional charges.

3. You can’t submit a firm quotation if your client only has tentative plans. When your client is still unsure of what and how much he wants done, indicate in your proposal that what you are submitting is also tentative, and that you would be glad to submit a firm quotation when the requirements can be better defined.

4. Protect yourself with clauses that limit your responsibility or liability, especially in areas that are hard to define or delimit. Certain phrases like, “if applicable,” if time allows,” “if available,” “except as indicated,” “equivalent equipment,” “we reserve the right to…” and other such limiting phrases, especially when you or your client is unable to really specify what is required, when you have no control over third-party materials or services, when there are many unforeseen risks, or when it is impossible to enumerate everything. This is not a cop-out, but a setting of realistic limits to an otherwise open-ended or questionable situation.

5. Make your form friendly, short and easy to understand. Don’t overwhelm your client with legalese, or with long contracts. If the project is big, you can write a short contract (one or two pages), then add separate attachments – such as shot list, itinerary, or payment schedules.

6. Give your client a chance to ask questions about your proposed contract. As you discuss your proposal with your client, he may have some questions. Sometimes, all he is needs is simple clarification. Sometimes, though, he may want to ask you to rewrite your proposal. You can re-negotiate and then rewrite your proposed contract until it is satisfactory to both of you.

7. Use your contract to cite some advantages of working with you. Maybe you have special expertise, equipment, facilities or services that are needed for the client’s project that other photographers bidding for the job do not have. You can cite them on a separate sheet or enumerate them in a cover letter, or if your contract is short, you may incorporate them in the body of your contract.

8. Don’t hide your terms and conditions in fine print. As much as possible, print your terms and conditions, together with the substance of your contract, on one face of the paper so that when your client signs, he is also signing to agree with your terms and conditions. Verbally go over the different parts of your contract, including attachments, so your client does not get surprised as to what it includes or does not include. If you have a complicated job, and you must have more than a page, you and your client can sign on all pages (no printing on reverse pages that you both may overlook).

9. Make it clear that they are signing a contract to commit, not just to receive a copy of your contract. Our cost estimates, for example, which serve as our contract when signed by both parties, have two spaces – one for receiving and the other for agreeing to the indications on the contract. We point this distinction to them, and ask them to sign on both spaces.

10. Remember that what you are aiming for is to have a respectable, profitable and long-term relationship with your client. It should be in this spirit that your contracts are written. Don’t make your contracts so strict that your clients get scared of dealing with you. On the other hand, don’t make your contracts so loose that you lose every time you sign on the dotted line.

I have also written a point-by-point discussion of what goes into contracts, but since it is rather long, it will come in several installments in the next few days. If you are too busy to check this site every now and then, you can sign up and you will be notified.

Are you shy to ask questions and frustrated with the vague answers that you get? This article will help you formulate the right questions so you can get the information that you need to understand your customer’s requirements.

Filipino photographers can avoid a lot of aggravation, delays and miscommunications if only we would be more specific. It might be a cultural thing, but we Filipinos generally do not think in specific terms. When asked, “where are you going?” we answer, “dyan lang (just over there).” Or try asking “ilan?” and we get the answer “marami (many).” “Gaano karami (how many – said in an emphatic tone)” and the reply that can be expected is “maraming-marami.” “Kailan umalis?” is answered with “kanina pa (a while ago).” If you’re Pinoy, you can cite more examples of such vague answers.

The Filipino’s penchant for being vague may be acceptable in our homes, but getting and giving specific, measurable, quantifiable answers are needed when you are in business, including in the business of photography.

When clients or customers, especially those whom we are dealing with for the first time, ask us to quote for our photo services, we need to ask them some questions. Don’t be shy about doing this. Explain that you would like to give them a fair price, and you can only do so when you fully understand their requirements.

Ask questions to define what you are going to shoot. Ask questions that will help you get an idea on how much to charge. A wedding photographer once told me that the first questions he asks of couples inquiring about his rates are “Where will you hold the reception, and how many guests are you inviting?” Answers to these two crucial questions will definitely give you an idea – if it’s at the Shangrila Makati – you’ll know right away that they can afford a more high-priced photographer. If their guests run to over 300, that tells a lot about their expectations as well as budgets.

But don’t assume anything. Ask more questions.

If you are in advertising, ask where the photos will be used. How big will the pictures be? How many copies will they print? Where will they distribute these materials? How long will be billboard be displayed?

Ask for pegs (tearsheets from magazines or print outs from online images) and compres so you can see the quality of photos that they expect you to deliver.

Ask who else is bidding for the project. Ask how much is their budget, no matter how tentative. You might be surprised to find out that your client is thinking of a higher amount than you are – something you would not know unless you asked. Or, you could be overcharging just because you assumed that the job was going to be complicated.

I cannot list all the possible questions here, as they differ with each assignment or photographer. A portrait photographer will have a different set of questions from an aerial photographer, an advertising photographer, an editorial photographer or a wedding photographer. It is important to formulate your own set of questions to get needed information on what your clients need or expect.

Of course, you also have to practice asking these questions so they are free flowing and conversational in tone. You would not want to sound like an NBI or FBI investigator interrogating a suspect. You are a friendly professional photographer who wants to know his clients and how best to serve their requirements.

To be continued:

As you practice asking questions, I will be writing some tips on how to word your proposals, quotations or offers so that they define very specifically what you are promising to deliver. Watch for it next week.

In any business transaction, cash is preferred. Cash gives you the freedom to spend it any which way you want – to enroll in photography courses, to pay for advertising space, to spend on marketing materials, to buy a new camera or lens, to pay an assistant, or to spend or keep for yourself or your family.

However, there may be occasions, especially when you are just starting out, when your client offers you no cash or very little cash. Should you accept? Should you still do the job? Before you do, ask yourself two important questions – “what’s in it for me?” and, “what else can I get instead of cash?” Hopefully, by thinking through such offers, you can maximize your non-cash benefits from this less than ideal transaction.

When you are being asked to charge low or not to charge at all, ask:

1. Is everyone on the project working on a voluntary basis, or are you the only one being asked to render your services for free?It may be a worthwhile project, especially for charity or advocacies, and maybe everyone is really pitching in – then doing photography for free may be a worthwhile effort. Even in business, there are a few situations that may justify rendering your service for free. In the U.S., ad agencies and design studios are paid to pitch for an account, but in the Philippines, they are not. So, if everyone is pitching in to pitch for an account, being there with them (creative team, account management group) from the very start may land you the account when they do. However, if in either situation – charity or business – the designers or ad agencies are being paid, or their other suppliers are being paid, therefore, you should be negotiating to get paid.
2. Can you get products and services in exchange for rendering your services?They’re called gift certificates (GCs), and you can get them in exchange for the discounts that you are giving away. Hopefully, they’re just for the discounts, and you’re not being paid the full amount of your photographer’s fee entirely in GCs. It is also important that you are selective with which GCs to accept, otherwise, you will end up with worthless certificates that you did not cash in, or if you redeemed them, you will have products that you will never need, want or use, or cannot even give away. Check the expiration of those GCs – make sure they have far dates. If your client has several branches, ask for GCs that can be negotiated at any branch. GCs that allow debits and new balances would be better than GCs that demand that you redeem them in full (no cash change given).
3. What can you get for the discount that you are giving?If your client’s budget is smaller than the fee that you have in mind, can you negotiate for faster payments? Can they bring down the number of requirements, or number of hours that you need to work? Can they take care of prints, transportation, food etc?
4. If you are being promised future jobs in exchange for a sizable discount on what is possibly your first job with a client, be smart. Avoid giving discounts now for jobs that are still to come. You cannot give away what you have not yet earned. Instead, offer to give them rebates when those promised jobs come through – when they have been actualized and paid for.
5. Can you think in terms of pesos and centavos, instead of percentages, when computing how much you are giving away in terms of discounts? Instead of thinking 20% of P10, 000, think P2, 000. Maybe this will help you realize what you are giving away. If you are doing a project for free, don’t just think free – think how much you could have charged – P5,000? P50,000? – that’s how much you are giving away. The word ‘free’ does not help you feel how much you are losing. Then, keep a record of these discounts and see how much you give away in a year – you’d be surprised.
6. Can you get photo credits in respectable, legible, recognizable size and in a form or style that will help you reach paying clients? Get at least your website or email address in your byline, and do ask for bigger type sizes (points). A better arrangement would be for you to be credited in the same way as the author. If the author has a byline for writing the article, you should see your name displayed just as prominently – in both the article and the table of contents – especially if you are the only photographer contributing to the article.
7. Can you get them to do a full feature on you as a rising talent? If the people who approached you for free photography are publishers or editors, this is a possibility. It does not cost them any money for their writer to interview you and do an article on you.
8. Can you get advertising and marketing mileage in exchange for your free or discounted services?Ask your clients or customers to allow you to distribute your card or flyer at the event. Whether wedding or trade show, you have an opportunity to pull in possible clients, if you have a place where you can give away your marketing materials. In addition, if they have invitations, souvenir programs, banners or other materials announcing the event or the event’s program, you can get your name and email address (better still, your website) on all of them as sponsor. Just make sure that the market that they are targeting is the same as yours.
9. At weddings or events, get your client or customer to treat you like a guest – with your own seat at a dining table, and allowed to mingle with guests – so you can market your services to prospective clients.Just because they are paying you dirt does not have to mean that you should be treated as such. If you were covering a conference – can you have a free hour or so not doing photography but mingling with delegates or speakers so you can learn from the speakers or market your services to the delegates?
10. Can you learn something that can help you do better photography or better business in the near future? How much is that worth to you? How much would that be if you were to pay to get in – for example in a conference on entrepreneurship, business management, photography, advertising, weddings, or any field of photography that you want to get into. Especially if that’s the only or the best place to learn it, then working for free or a low pay may be worth something, after all.

Ultimately, the test on whether you should work for free or a low pay is this – compute how much it will cost you to do the job, and how much it would bring you in terms of benefits. There may not be any cash exchanged, but there should be an exchange, preferably equal or in your favor. In the end, nothing is really free, except when you give away your services and get absolutely nothing in return. Why should you?

In a Philippine photographers’ forum, somebody wrote that if Mercedes Benz or BMW priced their cars like Toyota’s, then nobody will buy Toyota cars anymore. Since the forum’s site is presently down, I will paste the quote here later, so that readers can have a better understanding of what prompted this post.

On the analogy of pricing cars and photography:

Some car manufacturers make different model cars, with particular models to address different market segments. Segmentation is not just based on economic levels, but also even based on the personality-types or genders of the customers they hope to win. For the sake of this discussion, I will focus solely on economic considerations.

Marketing people do use various marketing strategies in order to push their products. They may focus on the benefits of special features of their cars, for example, or do brand marketing where the focus is on what the brand represents, or even on the strength of its corporate identity, but at other times, especially when the market is depressed and all other marketing strategies have been exhausted, there may be need to adjust prices, or soften terms.

When they work on pricing, they look at where they are, and which market segment they are targeting. Sometimes, a price adjustment is only in reaction to a competitor’s decision to lower prices, or sometimes, they may initiate the price change. Again, this may not necessarily be an across-the-board decision, and may target only one model.

To go back to the analogy used, Toyota has high-end models that compete with Mercedes Benz and BMW, and if Mercedes Benz and BMW were to lower prices, it would not be to compete against Toyota’s medium level products but against their equivalent high-end cars. I don’t need to go into specific brands, as those who are interested in cars know what they are. But Toyota initially came to the Philippines to bring medium-level cars (although on a limited basis, it does offer super luxury cars), so the corporate image of Toyota has been heretofore identified, in the Philippines and other countries, with middle-level car models. (That will need to change when they aggressively push their high-end models). In the same way, Kia initially came in to cater to the low-end markets. Remember, too, that Volkswagen started as a people’s car, and therefore priced low to live up to the way it was being marketed (it does not cater to the low-end anymore). For that matter, Mercedes Benz brought in Korean-assembled vans to make them more affordable.

Car companies, as with other manufacturers or service companies, will do marketing according to the segments that they want to pursue (BPI and BPI Family for example address different markets), and will use different marketing strategies to reach them, pricing being one of those strategies.

In much the same manner, even in the absence of certifications or accreditations, Philippine photo studios have identified themselves as high end, middle level, or low-end, and possibly branding their photographers so that all these market segments can be reached.

For our own studio, we are presently catering to high end and middle level markets, and offer bi-level pricing to reflect the “brands” of our photographers (two senior photographers, two not-too-senior ones). When we adjust prices, we adjust to compete with photographers in their respective levels. But sometimes, a competitor or two of our high-end photographers may offer their services at the same price level as our medium-level photographers, and sometimes even lower. These would be the times when we would need to turn down the opportunity to serve our client, and express the wish for them to remember us when they have another requirement. Even though we may sometimes lose bids, as long as we are still being asked to bid, that’s good – it means we are still in our clients’ “circle of trust.” Quote from the Ben Stiller movie “Meet the Parents” or a similar title. =)

Even when we lower prices, we need to protect the integrity of our pricing, our photographers and our company – so there is a point for each of our stratified levels below which we cannot go. This may not be issue for a solo photographer, but for a studio like ours with four photographers, different-sized studios and different camera formats, pricing is not one uniform thing.

I hope that beginning photographers, as they get more business from the industry, periodically review where they are, and define the point when they can’t go any lower, without losing their self-respect and their investments. Forget what other photographers call you, or what you call other photographers, or what you call what’s happening in our industry, you need to study your numbers. Even for photographers at the low-end, which is where we started, there is need to study break-even points, so we know whether we are making profits or losing our shirts.

Photographers shoot because they are photographers. Professional photographers shoot to earn profits because they are professional photographers. Let us not confuse the two, even when they reside in one person.