When I got out of the car, I had the intention of blogging and posting the pics I took, “my two cents worth,” so this past Monday it felt serendipitous to find this post which is very much in this same spirit of giving…

Thank you.

W.

I agree with his take on low budget work for appropriate entities. There was a local alcoholic recovery house that I use to donate time to shoot their annual fundraiser. Some of the images were great, and the people were a pleasure to be around. Overall it was a great experience.

Obviously one is not going to make a living from this, but it is still worth doing every once in a while. I feel we should give back a bit, or help out, when we can.

BEFORE you do anything for free, decide how much money you want to earn per year, and work up a serious Cost of Doing Business calculation. Factor in replacing your camera bodies every two years (shutters wear out when you’re working full-time), a budget for glass and flashes, insurance (individual medical insurance is very expensive), liability coverage, transportation costs, client entertainment, contingencies… Did I mention your salary? Better not forget that one.

If you do this realistically your annual CODB should fall somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000+ / year. If it’s much lower, and you’re just getting started in your photography career, do it again, and ask an established pro to look over your numbers for you. You’ve missed something important, I guarantee it. It took me several months to come to grips with my true cost of doing business.

Now recognize that you might need time off for illness, that there will be slow weeks, or even slow months… consider that you may only work 40 weeks per year. How many gigs can you really squeeze out per week, factoring in processing time, client discussions, delivery, and your marketing and business activities? Keep in mind, many photographers cite 80% business, 20% shooting.

Multiply the number of gigs per week by the number of weeks you can shoot per year (~40).

Average charge per gig = annual costs / gigs per year. Let’s call that Average charge per gig number The Big Sacrifice.

Now, when somebody asks you to shoot for free, ask yourself, “is this opportunity worth $The Big Sacrifice? Am I willing to pay that much money to work for these people?”

The sooner you realize that free isn’t free, the better. It sure is easy to forget all those numbers in the spreadsheet — until the bills come due, that is.

Every time a “free” gig comes up, imagine that the “client” is a pair of Girl Scouts at your door. Are those cookies really worth $The Big Sacrifice? If it’s a great project, or a great cause, and you really think it’ll help your career, go for it. But don’t pass out those freebies without seeing $The Big Sacrifice flash in your head, really big, in red.

I usually ask for a coverage of the expenses and sometimes there is the opportunity to pubblish book.
I don’t like the idea of working for free on commercial assignements and so I simply don’t.

In 2000, I became a member of the board and now am very active within the organization. I shoot every time I return to Haiti, I help with the web site, my sales of prints to donors has raised significant money. One donor was given a 20×24 print and he liked the image so much, he wrote a check for 40K,. That money was used to purchase new equipment for the hospital, medical supplies and food for an orphanage.

Over the years, I’ve purchased some incredible domain names as bank of sorts. I am giving many of them to my group to use as a fundraiser for purchasing seeds for haitian farmers. The hurricanes of this year wiped out the crops in Northern Haiti. Three hurricanes in the row with massive floods. For a country with little to no topsoil, that was too much. So far, we have raised about 30K for purchasing seeds. We were given 100K in seeds by an American Seed company. My goal with the auctioning of the domain names is to raise about 20K for seeds and a feeding program for two orphanages.

I get incredible joy form the work I’ve done in Haiti. Two years ago, I had a great location portrait shoot that came specifically from the work in Haiti. The Creative Director for the project felt that if I could pull warm portraits from the streets of Haiti that I could get union workers to be real and warm for their campaign.

(If you are interested in purchasing some killer photographer related domain names with the money going to Community Coalition for Haiti – let me know – the auction will start next week. A few of the names are: location-photographer.com, corporate-photographer.com, editorial-photographer.com. virginia-photographer.com, etc, etc.)

Since that time, I’ve seen friends wither and die of cancer. One of my best friends from childhood is currently battling cancer that has been in and out of remission for years.

When I heard that I could donate CPU cycles to cancer research projects, I did. I put together a network of six computers, and I ran them all for years, donating in total about 18 years of CPU processing time.

When I started doing photography, one of the first things I did was photograph cancer research fund raising events pro-bono.

To every photographer who tells me I’m taking a paying gig from a professional photographer: No, I’m not. I am a professional photographer donating my most valuable skill to a cause that I believe is worth sacrificing for. Try it. Helping people in need is its own reward.

- Eric

Also very interesting timing on the post. Was it in response to the recent “free” discussion over at Strobist and Chase Jarvis? Or just a happy coincidence to expose all different angles of free?

It’s not all about money, and I can assure you, one of my shoots for a baby girl changed my life. I don’t think any commercial work has. The founder of Soul was very happy with the photographs, and she wrote me:

“You were just the right guy for the job!”

“No,” I replied, hiding tears from behind the monitor, “it was the right job for the guy.”

Thank you for a great story, Rob.

Thanks APE, Bil.

Doing this kind of work is a win/win for everyone involved. I started my project (www.detaineeproject.org) with no funding and no idea where it would go, if anywhere. In fact, other than selling a few prints, I haven’t made a nickel. But, I had the good fortune to come across something that was politically (and morally) relevant and it has exceeded my expectations.

Chris