Not really my bag either. I’m lactose intolerant and can’t deal with too much cheese.

Ditto…not $30,000 but for every editorial I do I meet pubicists, company owners, syndication, access to subjects. My career started in editorial and the subjects got me the commercial jobs. The majority of my portfolio is not personal work but editorials.

Just accept editorial for what it is a marketing tool and access to subject matter.

@ 46: the only thing I would add, is diversify as well

Regarding EP, I still meet photographers that don’t have the first clue about things like copyright or even any idea of what they should be charging. Sites like EP are invaluable for at least providing a starting point with learning such basics.

Case in point, I saw an amateur photographer offering his rate today at $50 for the first hour and $20 per hour after that. What the?

Moaning about how bad the industry is won’t ever improve it. Period. Which is why I never moan about it anymore. Remember when you were getting into photography and you had the chance to get something printed ? Yeah, some of you probably fell over your selves to get your stuff in print (come on be honest. I know I did – once.). Well that hasn’t changed for people that want to get their stuff in print – whether they are chompin’ at the bit to be a full time working pro or working 9-5 during the week. This demographic IS NEVER going away and WILL continue to undercut. What matters is your cost of doing business and what you pull through the door to meet it and go above it.

1) photographers who manage their talent like a business ultimately succeed. Whether they shoot editorial for free or $500 or $2000, they calculate the cost / benefit ratio to their advantage and end up winners.

2) The success of a magazines doesn’t depend on quality photography. It’s the sum of a larger whole. It seems as though successful magazines are run by better business people than most photographers understand. You want that to change – form a great winning business strategy that will move you to the top of the heap so all the successful Magazines are paying you what you need.

3) Don’t take the whiny attitude of, “if only they would change I’d be making a great living”. Be proactive – you make the changes necessary to get what YOU want out of the business.

4) Most likely, the state of our business will follow market pressures. In other words: photographers should anticipate low wages until they get traction in the market place through either superior talent or superior hype combined with exquisite business savvy. In other words: Differentiate or die.

“The big downside for me was that anyone with a camera was suddenly using the EP attitude to badger me into paying higher rates and signing their contract terms and the reality was they didn’t have the skills as a photographer to make those demands.”

That was not the intention. Nor is EP about “US vs. THEM” mentality. Unless of course you are speaking of “US” as Photographers AND Photo Editors and “THEM” as jerks like Gerry Levin who sent all of us down the river and over the falls. Let’s face it, we’re ALL paying the price for the TimeWarnerAOL deal….

Mark Richards wrote:

“As someone whom helped start EP, I want to chime in here. I think APE is somewhat right about EP. But I feel that best value of EP has been in Education. Letting a Lot of people know what to charge etc…Speaking of the 500 day rate, because of EP, Business Week pays 850 day Forbes 750 a day (I think)”

Kudos to Mark Richards and Olivier who were among the dozen Bay Area photographers who started Editorial Photographers. I wasn’t part of EP at the time, but I supported what they were doing with the Business Week negotiations in crafting an agreement that once again actually made magazine photography financially viable.

The Business Week and Forbes contracts were good for everyone involved. Business Week pays $850/day against $1200/page. Forbes pays $800/day against $1275/page. Photographers are actually able to make a living and Photo Editors waste less time coming up with reasons why the rates haven’t changed since Margaret Bourke White was starting out…

I would also like to confirm Mark’s identity and that he was indeed a founding member of EP. As for myself I joined its founding crew, as a highly trained monkey. They had me do tricks and fetch them coffee.

I actually shot a several day shoot for a magazine that required I leave same day. I had to buy film local (expensive), and when all was said and done, the magazine’s “rate” of reimbursement for film and processing was less than my cost for film alone. And they refused to budge. Do you think I ever worked for them again?

They were the largest consumer magazine in the industry, and from the looks of it, they are not having trouble finding new photographers to take the deal. So does the magazine have any incentive to change? Nope.

Ed work is for fun, for staying sharp, and for making pics that will justify increased rates for commercial work.

There are no visionaries, no true patrons of photography left. It’s all gimme, gimme, gimme and give it to me now. It’s all about killing the golden goose. Why not, those eggs will be more exclusive.

So the system is broken, so what? In a climate where established photographers are having a hard time getting work and people are undercutting each other seems like the wrong time to fix it.

Exploiting a loop hole in the system so you can still hire great photographers seem perfectly reasonable to me. Are you unaware that the people who own/run magazines are effing crazy? The people I work for don’t give a shit about quality, only cost and return on investment. And, to be perfectly honest I don’t think anyone can prove hiring great photographers results in any significant increase of investment. Plenty of well photographed magazines fail on a regular basis. Here’s one from today: http://tinyurl.com/295xaj

If you use your own cameras, bill for their use. If the client balks at the charge, tell them OK you’ll just book a digital package w/ a tech, etc. for $2K for their 1/4 page portrait… and tell them you’re just going to book a car service instead of driving yourself. ;)

Good point. Funny.

Next time I’m asked for receipt backup, I’ll have to call Conde and ask them about setting me up with the employee health plan.

Entertainment Weekly (Time Inc) covers all home internet & cable (TW Cable), and movie tickets for employees AND pays overtime if you go see a movie on your own time. I’ll have to bill them for all the movies I’ve seen in the past year and bill OT for the 60 hours I spent watching crap movies so I know what some celebrity I’m going to shoot has done previously.

Oh yeah, and you’re right Conde only pays $350 per page.

The IRS won’t care if you’re faking receipts to your client as long as you’re declaring the income. The IRS is actually quite pragmatic – they don’t care as long as they’re getting their money.

The mags have put themselves in this position of paying outrageous rental fees because they refuse to pay for what the work is worth. And when I say “worth” I mean a value commensurate with the value they derive in ad revenue.

You can pay trec 1500 for what I normally take to a shoot or you can pay me. But I am not going to fake a receipt to get it because that is stupid. So they pay trec and end up paying for every little thing, plus delivery fees, etc, which I guarantee you are much higher that what I can do and still make money.

I think it is funny we are here because there is a rational way to this marketplace, and that is allow photographers to set fees. If the magazines doesn’t want to pay it, they don’t have to hire shooter A or B. But the market has always been destabilized, and not necessarily by a continual flood of new photographers. It is destabilized by this maniacal hubris on the part of the magazines to think that by controlling fees they are controlling costs, which may have worked once when fees bore some resemblance to usage. Now fees bear no resemblance to usage, and they don’t even pay costs. And you have studios and rental house making BANK, and costs have skyrocketed. What is wrong with this equation? The price control!
If the page rate or day rate was decoupled from rights it could simply reflect the cost of doing business. Different photographers could figure out different ways of economizing on equipment and provide a rate substantially higher than is going now, but overall substantially lower that renting every A clamp. We have the going rate for equipment, just look it up-the avg shoot rents/uses between 1000-and up per day. So what if the rate for editorial was 1500 instead of 500? That is basically what a low end corporate shoot bills out-to the photographer, not to some service provider. I am not blaming the rental houses and studios for this, they have just risen up in response to the irrationality of the market. And you need to have them because I am not going to have every thing I need for every shoot, but for the majority of work I do, I have what I need.
So you say, well photog X will just underbill to get the work, which is fine, their priority is different, but they can’ t do that all the time, and also those with no gear starting out will have to rent, so everyone gets put back on a rational footing. There is a reason to hire established people and a reason to hire newbies, and you get what you pay for.
I always chaffed at the submitting of receipts, it was demeaning, flat out wrong basically. You should submit an estimate, and and invoice. If the estimate is approved that is it, end of negotiation, plus or minus 10%. You don’t need to see up my p-shoot what I pay for anything. The buyer buys on price and quality. If they don’t like it, they go elsewhere.

Jeff

Now THAT’s funny.

So I guess you can say, “everyone – 1 rents”. I will say though, that if renting is the only way I can get paid for the use of the gear, I’ll give it to my wife, set up a rental operation, then charge you a reasonable fee. After all, it’s only fair.

“I mean, Really-when was the last time you asked your Doctor for his receipts on his bill for the rubber gloves he used to probe your p-shoot? Really….ok that was fun.”

Hilarious. Thank you!

BTW, I usually ask to keep the glove when their done that way I know I’m getting everything I paid for.

Jeff

The most logical bit said here is to put editorial shooting into the marketing column. For certain elements of the photo biz editorial is very helpful. One should just limit it to about 30% of your work. I have done one day editorial shoots for one page (a good page) that I spent 2-3 days on. It was negative income. But I just made a $30,000. deposit into my account from a job that I never would have gotten if I hadn’t shot the editorial.