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photo credit: PetroleumJelliffe

I was sent a link to a video on YouTube this week by a friend who laughed and said “this always happens to me”. I don’t know who made this video but it shows the kind of problems many photographers face on a daily basis. Especially in this current recession.

Take a look at the video below – heard this all before?

Unless I’ve missed the point, what this video illustrates so well is the way many clients want top class products for low class fees. They expect to get the best of the best for the least price possible. This is incredibly prevalent in the creative industries where creativity is often viewed as a commodity and not something of value.

In each of the scenarios we saw, the restaurant, the hairdressers, the game store; the client wanted to enjoy the creativity and art of the creator, but didn’t want to pay for it! I always find it astounding that someone can try to lowball a creative without second thought. Yet they wouldn’t try to buy a Mercedes if they only had budget for a Ford. They wouldn’t go into their local foodstore and try and buy a whole smoked salmon for the cost of a budget brand tin of tuna.

But when it comes to paying for creativity, production and ideas – they feel no shame. Some even ask us to work for free and pretend this is a good thing by offering us a credit line! See why credit lines aren’t worth the paper they’re written on here.

The lowballing usually comes in via a couple of different avenues. Either they want us to shoot for a ridiculously cheap rate or they want us to throw in “all-rights” granting usage forever and a day or even a combination of the two (that’s when you’ve got a real lowballer!).

So what can we, as creatives (and I include all those of us who provide creative services not just photographers) do about it? How can we fight back?

I believe we have two options.

Option 1: Turn down the assignment.

There is nothing wrong with saying “I’m afraid I might be outside your budget”. A client who can’t see the value your images may bring to their business is not one you want to be working for. You’re in business. Your business objectives are to make money. If you don’t you’re not doing this as a business :) If you book yourself up with low-paying gigs where you’re giving your time away cheap and/or you are granting a very loose licence for not a lot of money you’re working cheap and you’ll stay working cheap. It’s a vicious cycle to break because you get known as “the cheap guy”.

In business “time is money“. If your time is taken up with low paying gigs you’ll never make any money unless you work a 60 hour week. You could do that in an office but with all the added benefits of sick-pay, a company car, 4 weeks holiday and a decent pension. You get none of those business benefits for free as a photographer. So it doesn’t make any sense to work as a low paid employee when you run your own business. Make your valuable time work for you.

It’s a hard call – especially in a recession. I appreciate that. Do you take the paltry offer of a low day rate while signing over essentially an RF licence for a bespoke shoot OR say “No, sorry – the best I can do is £X for Y usage”. I believe the latter is the right course to take. You want your client base to come to you because of your photography and not because you’re throwing in everything for a cheap rate. But sometimes you might take the former because you want the gig and you can see it’s a low rate but there might be secondary markets to sell the work on to as well.

Option 2: Lower the production values accordingly.

If your client only has the budget for a Ford then shoot them a Ford. Don’t shoot them a Mercedes for the price of a Ford! PP get’s a lot of enquiries from people who see my website, love the images that have a high production value (by production value I mean styling, lighting, post-production and retouching) and want to hire me to shoot the same for them. Once we start pricing up the assignment it becomes clear that they can’t afford that level of production.

I then depends on how I feel about the project. That decides my next move. I always explain that the production values in the images they like are high and that for the budget they are offering I can’t produce images like that. Sometimes I offer to shoot for their budget or somewhere inbetween (always barter ok!) but at a lower production value if the project interests me.

I never shoot for all-rights though. Irrespective of budget, in the long term all-rights is always a bad deal for the photographer.

In conclusion then, either stick to your guns and seek out the clients who do see the value in your images or modify your shooting to fit the budget. Whatever you do, make sure that if you’re shooting a low budget gig then give the client low budget imagery. Don’t turn up with a crew and 10 packs if it’s the budget for a snapper with a flashgun. Make it quick to produce and get it out the door fast. Invoice it and move on. That’s what they’ve paid for. Give nothing more.

Don’t let the flattery that they “love your work” hide the fact that they don’t actually want to pay for it.

As Jodie Foster once said: “Quid pro quo Dr Lecter…”

PP