Category Archives: Photography Business

What NOT to do about a possible copyright violation

This photographers agent is getting ripped to shreds over at the very popular TechCrunch website.
Link here.

New Jr. Photo Editor

A reader alerted me to the hiring of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend as a Junior Photo Editor at Playboy.
Link to Page Six.
The new PE is quoted as saying:
“I think readers are sick of seeing the same cookie-cutter blondes,”
I can tell you from experience (not at a skin mag) that the reason all those “cookie-cutter [...]

Name Your Price

So, have you heard (here’s my source) about Radiohead selling downloads of their new album on their website where you pay whatever you think it’s worth.
Do you think they’re undercutting fellow artists by not maintaining pricing? I mean just because they’re famous and make all their money off touring and t-shirts doesn’t mean they can [...]

$10,000 for a stock photo

… in a magazine. I’ll admit it since it’s not my current employer (although they would not be happy to hear of my near criminal spending in the past) and what the hell, it was the perfect photo and I can’t help it if David La Chapelle took it and once everyone agreed they wanted [...]

$1 Haters

Art buyers hate $1 stock too. Clearing rights is messy not to mention the embarrassing possibility that another ad with the same image will simultaneously appear.

The Death of $1 Stock

Die, die, die you lousy repositories of crappy photography.
http://www.istockphoto.com
http://us.fotolia.com
http://www.shutterstock.com
Make room for FREE stock photos.
100 Legal Sources for Free stock photos.
For sure, it’s a bad time to be a professional photographer who makes lousy cliché imagery. It’s even worse, if your entire business model revolves around using very expensive equipment to make crappy photos. The writing [...]

Check is in the mail

A reader asks about the best way to deal with a magazine who’s 60 days late paying the invoice.
I think a couple calls to the photo editor to see what’s up is a good idea just in case they’ve been slow getting it to accounting or possibly it’s held up for some kind of error [...]

Anonymous Agent

Well it appears Andrew Hetherington got the drop on me but I was planning to post on the anonymous photography agent, “A Visual Society” who has very fine taste for fashion photography.
Soon, all the entities of the photography business will be represented anonymously and we can begin to take over the world……… ah, ah, ahhhhh.

Retouching

I’ve just been informed by a very reliable source that, for high end fashion and beauty the client will book a retoucher before the photographer… (jaw hitting floor) are you kidding me?
Furthermore, they went on to say that if you actually printed an unmolested image in one of these magazines everyone would go screaming out [...]

Why not just hire someone new?

A reader asks: 1. what’s the big deal risking a shoot on someone new when you’re only paying them $350-$500? 2. What’s up with those crap rates?
1. If you include all the expenses (assistant, rental, film and process or digital fees, travel, cell phone, messenger, insurance, tips, cab fare, and misc) a one day [...]