I was looking at a website that offers what looked very interesting workshops. It looked very interesting, so I clicked on the workshop link. Here is what was on the page word for word:

And that's it. What do you mean?

1. No list of the current workshops
2. No list of the previous workshops
3. No list of the future workshops

I won't try this guy again. If he can't be organized enough on his website, how is he going to deal with the customers and the actual workshops? How many potential clients is he turning away?

If you follow the photography business news, the sky is falling:

• All staff photographers have been laid off. Every week, a media organization is laying off their staff photographers.
• All stock photographers are out of business because of RF¹⁾ photos.
• All stock photographers are out of business because of the stock photo agencies have lowered their prices to less than a penny How low can it go?.
• All professional photographers are out of business because of all the “free” photos from Flickr.

What happened is that by having cheap photos, they have expanded the market! Great now, what's that got to do with me? Me, I am a small independent photographer.

Last week, I received a phone call from a construction company to photograph a major equipment move. They started buying photos online and last year spent almost $1,000 on stock photography. They had to rent a major mobile crane for 3 days at the price of over $10,000 per day, a few bulldozers, and a 25 construction crew for a total bill of over $90,000.

Because of their change in attitude, they decided to document and photograph the job. They have done many time this type of job, and never once used a photographer.

The sky is falling! Not really, but the sky is moving to a new position with a different light. It's up to us to adapt.

Did you know that you can sell your photos on eBay? As of 15-aug-2008, there were only 1891 photo prints on sale, directly from the photographer.

Home > Buy > Art > Direct from the Artist > Photographs > Search results: 1,891 matches found. eBay breaks it down by category.

Florida based photo agency http://prphotos.com is giving 50% commissions to their photographers! Great, that's a decent commission. But a commission of what? They charge LESS THAN A PENNY PER PHOTO.

Check: Rates

The 50% commission rate is at this link: Photographer Contract.

Can you take a photo and make 4 tenth of a penny per photo? On top of that, you have have to buy your own equipment, track the celebrities yourself, go there, pay for your own gas,…

To make a living at it, you will need to make at least 500,000 photos per year! That's 2 Canon 1DMk3 per year + the lenses or a little bit cheaper 2 Nikon D3. You can't even use cheaper cameras, the shutter would only last 3 month.

1. The sickest part of the situation is that they have over a million photos! Who is dumb enough to supply them with these photos?
2. PRPhotos have their own servers, and they need to pay for the bandwidth every month or they immediately go out of business.
3. PRPhotos has a staff of 5 employees. How can they pay their salaries?

What am I missing?

I just got this phone call:

I hanged up. Less than a minute later, she calls backs, I can see her name and number from the caller id.

I hang up. That woman never listened to anything I said, unless it was what she wanted to hear. An appointment on a Sunday @ 7:30am! Anything wrong with that?

Are you listening to what your customers are saying?

In 2004, the Detroit Big 3 automakers¹⁾ more commonly known as the domestics, spent $24 billion²⁾ in advertising in the “mainstream media”. The same “mainstream media” has been panning the US cars manufacturers, and swooning over the imports³⁾ and how much better they were. 3 years later, in 2007, the same Big 3 only spent $15 billion dollars in advertising in the “mainstream media”. On top of that, newspapers took a $131 million⁴⁾ hit in the first quarter of 2008 as dealers have pulled back on full and half-page ads because of slow sales and limited cash flow.

And now, you have the mainstream media loosing money left, right and center, laying off staff⁵⁾, including photographers.

The reporters claimed “freedom of the press”. They could have reported:

1. Quality of the domestics have significantly improved according to JD Powers & Associates.
2. Buick⁶⁾ has higher customer satisfaction than Toyota both in 2006 and 2007…

There are many more stories, reports and photos that they could have made, ethically, and still supporting the companies that are paying their salaries.

– My mom

Do I have to justify my prices? I could have gone into:

1. I literally risked my life to get that photo. 3 minutes after I made that photo, a steel beam fell were I was standing. Luckily, I had moved away.
2. It took me a month of phone calls and emails to get the authorization to get access.
3. I can't afford to go out of business.

I don't have to justify my prices. When people ask for a breakdown or a justification of prices, it's to nickel and dime to lower the price. After asking a few questions, she was going to use my photo for promotion at a whole bunch of conferences. Just making the print on acrylic for the conference displays was going to cost her over $3,000.

So far, she has not called back, but it will only take 3 weeks to make the acrylic prints and the conference is in November 2008. Will she find something else? Or maybe…

Everybody, and their dog¹⁾ has a review or announcement about Adobe's Lightroom 2. It's supposed to be the best thing since slice bread, it will even reduce global warming.

Since this blog is about “the business of being a photographer”, Lightroom has a new interesting feature²⁾: It will show you the tags already used in the other photos in the current catalog. This will help me in being more consistent with keywords.

My experience has been that buyers do not browse for photos, but search by tag, then browse the photos. Good tags will immediately increase the value of your photos. Photo buyers will be able to find your stock photos better. Photo buyers will only buy your photos, if they can find them. They will be able to better match their photo needs and your photos. Hopefully, you will have more sales.

Lightroom supports hierarchical keywords by using the “|”, the vertical bar. Dog|German Shepard and Dog|Doberman will belong to the Dog category.

→ Read more...

She has looked at your photos, asked many questions and still no sale. She needs these photos, and she knows that she just needs to click on the “Buy Now” button and still no sale. Why? Where's the urgency? Why should I do to make them buy?

• Should I discount?
• Should I make bigger website?
• Should spam the whole world with gazillion emails?

What is she waiting for?

1. An incentive
2. Clear instructions
3. Some kind of urgency

You need to give her a reason to buy by:

1. Special promotion such as buy two get the third one for free.
2. Discounts, if we can reschedule to my slow time.
3. Shoot fee waived, she only pays for the prints.
4. Free DVD of the shoot with low res JPEGs…

On 6-Jul-2008, Lewis Hamilton won the Formula 1, UK Grand Prix in is Mercedes/McLaren. Will you earn more money if you buy a Mercedes or a McLaren? Will it make you a better driver?

Kyle Busch is leading the Nascar 2008¹⁾ in his Toyota sponsored by the M&M candies. Nobody believes that, since they are driving a Toyota Camry and that Kyle Busch won last weekend, it will make them a better driver.

When was the last time you asked a carpenter what's the brand of his hammer or his drills and circular saws? Does it make a difference?

Nikon is selling a lot of Nikon D60 because people believe that since great photographers use the Nikon D3, their photos will be as good as theirs. Nikon is not the only one, Canon does the same thing with their 1DMKIII and the Rebel series. Photographers are “suckers” for the so-called technical information. Who cares if the photo was made on a Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax,… at 26mm, 1/180s, f:5.6. This subject, at that time with this light, this angle and this perspective will never happen again. This is meaningless, unless you actually get explanations of what were his options and why the photographer did it that way.

People expect that since they bought the same camera as Moose Peterson, they will have the same photos. What about pressing on the button? What about being at the right place at the right time? What about knowing about the subject you are photographing? What about the thousands of hours spent learning?…