Tag-teaming with TV crews on ad shoots

Our producer Jess Dudley recently quoted a job for one of our photographers to shoot a number of environmental portraits of real people, for a major New York ad agency and their pharmaceutical client. Each of the subjects was a patient using the drug made by the client. The pictures were going to be used in print ads and collateral material, to help illustrate the improvement in the patients’ quality of life since starting the drug regimen. This project was different from most because the ad agency wanted to shoot TV commercials (with a separate video crew) on the same day, using the same location, models, stylists, wardrobe and props. Shooting print and video simultaneously offers a number of efficiencies for the client. It certainly makes some parts of the photographer’s job easier, and it helps create continuity between the two final products. But it adds some estimating and logistical challenges as well. In the end, our photographer was awarded the job, and Jess also served as on-site producer and digital tech.

Jess explains how he approached the initial estimate:

Request For Bid

Since the client had a lot of experience commissioning photo shoots, they were able to express pretty clearly what they wanted to accomplish, and what their expectations were (though there were still a lot of unknowns). The art buyer sent us a letter (known as a “request for bid”) with many of the details that we would need in order to put together a proper cost estimate. Then, I followed up with questions.

When you’re working with less experienced clients, you’ll need to be more proactive about getting all the information you need. We use this cheat sheet to prompt us for all the items we’ll need to consider.

Here’s what the client asked us to bid on in the RFB:

• 6 portraits of real people
• On location at a suburban home (near the photographer)
• You’ll have to schedule the still photographs around the video shoot
• The video crew will find the location and dress the set (you may need additional props)
• You’ll be able to share some of the wardrobe, stylists and catering with the video crew (and you may need to share part of those costs)
• We’ll want unlimited use of the pictures for a year (mostly for consumer ads and print collateral)

The Fee

At the most basic level, I think about the total cost of any job as a function of time, materials and licensing.

Lumped in with “time” is not only the actual time needed to prepare for and execute the shoot, but also the difficulty, level of skill, and rareness of skill required. If it’s a job that hundreds of other photographers could do and want to do, it’s not worth as much as a job that only three people in the world could do or would want to do (either by virtue of special skill or unique style).

“Materials” broadly refers to all of the production items that you have to pull together to add to the photographer’s vision, in order to pull off the shoot. These might include: assistants, digital techs, retouchers, location scouts, locations, permits, insurance, studio rentals, hair & make-up stylists, prop stylists, props, wardrobe stylists, wardrobe, vehicles, travel, meals, catering, models, casting, equipment rental, set construction, etc.

“Licensing” describes how the client is going to be able to use the picture(s). Broad usage for a long period of time is worth more than narrow usage for a brief time. Advertising use is normally worth more than collateral use. Collateral use is usually worth more than publicity use. And publicity use is usually worth more than editorial use.

I normally bundle the “time” and “licensing” into one “creative fee,” taking all the factors I can think of into account. The client had already produced a similar project before, and I was able to see the results of that, which they seemed to be happy with. The approach they were looking for was relatively low-tech, simple, flattering portraits, with naturalistic lighting, showing the patients in a warm and friendly way. What they valued most was having a photographer who could bring out the personality of the patients.

My normal rule of thumb for unlimited use of one image for one year, for a major brand, is that it’s worth about $10-20k. In this case, the pharmaceutical company was a major player but the drug itself was no blockbuster. For advertising use especially, I will normally charge by the picture rather than by the day. Even in cases where I’m quoting by the day, I’ll put a cap on the number of images we’re including for that fee. In this case, I felt that the first image held most of the value and each additional image was worth much less. Since they were very similar portraits, just with different people, each additional image merely complimented the first, rather than providing unique material.

The fact that the actual time, difficulty, and technical/creative demands would be relatively modest put some downward pressure on the price. The fact that it was a client with global reach, and they needed unlimited use (including the potential of national advertising) certainly put some upward pressure on the fee, and the one-year duration was a limiting factor. The fact that the location, props and models were going to be provided for us put downward pressure on the price. The fact that the project was local to the photographer put downward pressure on the price. The fact that the photographer had to work around the video crew was basically neutral. It just required that the photographer have patience and a manageable ego.

As a point of reference, I’ll sometimes check Getty or Fotoquote to see what a similar stock photo would fetch. But in the end, you just have to consider the totality of all the information you have, and use your intuition to determine the price. For this one, I decided to quote $14k for unlimited use of six images for a year.

The Production Costs

The art buyer wasn’t sure, at the time of the initial estimate, which production items were going to be paid for out of the video budget and which were going to be paid for out of the still budget. So to play it safe, I assumed that we were going to have to pay for everything we were going to need (or at least our fair share):

• 1 digital tech: so the client could see the results as we went along
• 2 assistants: to help move the equipment around, and stand in for the subjects
• 2 hours of retouching per image: should be more than enough for non-supermodels
• 1 production day: for me to pull together all of the production items
• 1 scout day: for the photographer to walk through the location and map out a plan with the line producer
• 1 location fee: we don’t have to find it, but we’ll need to help pay for it
• 2.5 wardrobe stylist days (1 to pull, 1 to shoot, .5 to return) and some wardrobe: we were only going to need to augment what the video crew was already providing
• Hair/make-up stylist: you might think that a makeup stylist could work on both sets, but because the stills and video were happening at the same time, on a hot day (requiring constant powdering), and sometimes hundreds of feet apart, I decided that we’d need our own dedicated person
• Props: unlikely, knowing how thorough video prop stylists are
• Travel, misc.: minimal for local shoot
• Catering: breakfast and lunch for our crew of 4
• Equipment: also minimal, so I chose not to charge separately for it
• Sales tax: some situations require the client to pay sales tax, but rather than speculating on it, I just say, “plus applicable sales tax”

Here’s the proposal (estimate and terms & conditions) I sent to the art buyer:

Later, more details came in so I had to revise the estimate. The project changed from 6 people to 5, and they also wanted to license a head shot of each subject, which they would simply crop out of each environmental portrait. To me, it was a wash. It was 10 images instead of 6. But the head shots weren’t really adding a ton of value for the client, and shooting 5 subjects instead of 6 was less work for the photographer. So I left the fee at $14k.

The art buyer also decided that she would determine our share of the location fee, wardrobe, and catering, and she would just tell us the number after the shoot, to add as a line item on the invoice. We would quote our other production items in the usual way.

That all settled, she signed off on the estimate, and sent me a check for $13.5k to cover expenses.

We had a pre-production phone call with about 20 people to iron out how the day was going to go. Then we did a walk-through of the location the day before the shoot, along with the video director, prop stylist, and line producer.

The shoot went really smoothly. The video crew shot their thing, then sent the subjects to us to do our bit. We made adjustments here and there to the wardrobe and grooming. But otherwise, it all went off without a hitch.

A couple things (in general) to remember about price quotes:

• A proposal should include at least a cover letter, estimate page, and terms & conditions page. This job was relatively straight-forward, so it doesn’t need much explanation. More cosmplex projects will require a more extensive description of how you’ll approach the shoot and how you’ll solve the technical and creative problems it presents. You’ll have to convince the client that you know what you’re doing, and that you’ll be able to deliver the final product.
• Be clear about whether you’re offering an estimate (where the expenses are detailed, and will vary somewhat in the final invoice), or a bid (where you’re offering one lump price, and as long as the client doesn’t change the parameters of the job, that will be the exact cost).
• Be clear about who you are contracting with (normally the ad agency).
• Be clear about who you are conveying the image license to (normally the client).
• If the client (or anyone else) is going to provide some normal production item (like catering or props), acknowledge it on the estimate so there’s no confusion about it.
• Be clear in cases where the client is paying for any of the production items directly, rather than through you. If you are going to be on the hook for a lot of expenses, you’ll want to make sure that you either get the expense money up front, or that the creative fee, production fees, and/or mark-up justifies the risk.
• Avoid having your payment be contingent on the ad agency being paid by their client. It’s very hard to collect money from someone with whom you do not have an agreement.
• In the same way, be clear with your subcontractors. Normally, it’s the photographer’s obligation to pay subcontractors in a timely fashion regardless of whether they have been paid by their client. If you want your subs to share in your risk, the golden rule dictates that you have to tell them that at the time of the booking.

We delivered the pictures. The client was thrilled. Here’s the final invoice:

A little less than a year later, the art buyer contacted me for a quote on extending the licensing on all 10 images for an additional 2 years.

When a client relicenses a picture, I normally discount the rate on that use. As the pictures age, they tend to (though not always) decrease in value. In this case, I figured the second year was worth about 3/4 of the first. And the third year was worth about 3/4 of the second. So I sent her a quote for $18k, which she accepted.

You can contact Carolyn Tucker to find out more about Wonderful Machine at 610.260.0200 or carolyn@wonderfulmachine.com.

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There is a known phenomena where people seem to rip their clothes off when you point a camera at them. Seems to have happened to Rielle. I don’t think the photographer is to blame.

Author Lisa DePaulo (wrote the piece in GQ) on hardball with Chris Matthews: When Matthews questioned the spread, DePaulo cracked, “This is GQ, not Newsweek.” (source)

And now the standard BTS video:

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It’s pretty amazing that people starting out on the publishing side know so very little about the appropriate terms to include for hiring photographer. Inevitably it starts with boilerplate language handed to them from some well meaning lawyer looking to protect the company but you got to wonder why companies think they need all these rights and all that protection in the first place. It’s not like there are examples where the lack of an indemnity clause took down a media company or the lack of all encompassing rights prevented them realizing their true profit center, selling mouse pads with cover photos on them.

When starting a new job photo editors have a couple big hurdles to sort out if they want access to the high end talent of the industry. Your rates and your contract are deal killers on all but the biggest of jobs. I’ve never had a problem raising rates after starting a new job but I always ran into insane roadblocks with the contracts. At one company I worked at they had such a lock down on contracts that any changes had to be run by a very busy lawyer who was in charge of multiple titles. And, they refused to pay an invoice if the company didn’t have a signed contract on file. We ended up knocking on the lawyers door so many times in the first couple months that she finally called a sit down meeting to modify the contract. Of course any changes we made had to be approved by the owner of the magazine so I was very careful to insert language where I could instead of wholesale rewriting because he would be less likely to strike the entire change if it was small words instead of entire paragraphs. Anyway, half the modifications were passed and half were rejected leaving me in the position to let photographers know the terms were only negotiable in extreme circumstances, because now the lawyer instituted a policy of once a week modification discussions (too much door knocking I guess). Combine that with the fact that editorial could be slow in handing over assignments for each issue and working with new photographers could become a real high wire act if they didn’t like the terms of the contract.

Back to Bill Cramer’s piece (here), he shows incredible aplomb after striking the offending passages and receiving the loaded reply of “I know the photo editors are excited to work with you. Can you reconsider your positions and sign our standard terms and conditions ‘as is’?” and instead of flying into a rage, taking the time to calmly educate the client on why the changes are necessary.

In the end he prevailed, but it seems so insane that people would want to spend an ounce of time mired in contract negotiations defending terms that as far as I’m concerned have zero value to the media company instead of producing content that will attract readers and advertiser to their product.

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Dead Tree Edition has a post called “The 10 Most Common Paper-Purchasing Mistakes” and I think it may even be possible to apply some of these cost savings ideas and not take a hit on paper quality. Wouldn’t that be awesome. People working in management positions at magazines owe it to themselves to understand the jobs of the other people in the office who have a stake in the monthly budget pie. And, who knows maybe some day you’ll find yourself creating a magazine on your own and need to buy paper. More insight (here).

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All the videos are (here).

thx, Jonathan.

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“Picture Black Friday is a photojournalism project that aims to revisit and analyze a combination of forces- a worsening economy, financial desperation, excitement, fear, and a distinctly American cultural tradition- that culminate the morning after Thanksgiving.”

Read more (here). I do think it’s important for professional photographers to experiment with different ways to tell stories and deliver content online. If certainly doesn’t seem like media companies are going to do anything about the future.

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When it comes to stock, a little investigation into whether there is good coverage of a subject matter is always a good strategy before a meeting. That way you can tell them “stock doesn’t exist so we need to shoot a picture and I’ve not turned up any photographers I like in the area so we need to fly someone in.”

The sooner you have these conversations in the editorial process the better it is for everyone. That way if the stock is crap and there’s no time/budget for a shoot making the decision to still run a story means they don’t care if the magazine looks horrible. At least they know they’re the one’s making that decision.

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These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

See more (here).

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MBA programs don’t have a monopoly on business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work. The Personal MBA features the very best business books available, based on thousands of hours of research. If you’re serious about learning advanced business principles, the Personal MBA can help you master business without the baggage of b-school.

I’ve since read about 15 business books (some of the list but many based on Amazon reviews) including 4 that I think should be the cornerstone of any personal business learning: Good To Great, Built To Last, What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School, How To Win Friends & Influence People. All of these I checked out at the local library.

Right now I’m really into a book called Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson that I would highly recommend for photographers and any other entrepreneurs. When you look at the principles that underpin a successful business you see the world in a very different light.

The great thing about reading a business book while you own a business, instead of while you’re in school, is that when you discover something important you can put it to work immediately. These books also prove to be awesome motivators.

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My favorite feature is the photo fakeout on their blog (here). Where they shoot their own version of the hotels pool, workout room and hotel room to show you the careful cropping and outright photoshopping the hotels have done to fool you.

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I’ve sat through too many meetings where badges, sashes, boxes, hairlines and an entire dump truck full of coverlines were added to perfectly good cover images or instead a meeting where perfectly good cover images were thrown out in favor of images that held coverlines better, to not point out the irony of a winner with no coverlines. Sure, Obama was a shoo-in as a winning cover subject but go check out the other category winners (here). Keep in mind that this is an organization of editors (ASME) who decided to let the public pick their favorite cover out of a group of nominees. Of course this proves nothing about selling on newsstands other than the public has better taste than most editors, many magazine owners and every single newsstand director in existence.

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On a recent national advertising shoot we used our back-up camera, my new 5D MKII, to shoot some behind-the-scenes footage of me at work. We edited it down into a 3-minute video that we posted on my Facebook Group page. It wasn’t particularly exciting, but it did the job of showing me directing models and assistants. About 4 weeks after posting it, the ad agency I worked with called outraged, demanding all the fees and expenses back from the shoot, and then threatened to sue me.

At first we weren’t sure what we did wrong–we put it up well after the campaign had come out and after the agency gave us the go ahead to use shoot images for self-promotion. We had retained copyright and owned all the images. We didn’t show any video of the agency or client discussing strategy or anything like that. Although I did not announce that we were shooting video footage, the assistant who was shooting walked around in full view of everyone on the set, with a camera quite close to most people on the set. He shot quite a lot and it is evident that the AB and AD at least knew we were shooting stills.

The agency claimed that we violated the Confidentiality Clause of the Purchase Order because the entire shoot was secret, that they did not know I was shooting video and that I had no right to shoot video. We disagree with all of this, but we took the video down. Even after we took it down, they kept demanding the money back, and we spent weeks going back and forth with lawyers. Eventually they just dropped it, presumably because they knew they had no case. We think what happened was that the client found it on YouTube since we had included their name in the title, and was upset at the agency failing to control their brand. The agency was trying to make amends, and wanted to use us a sacrifice.

We were at first concerned when they argued that we didn’t “have the right” to shoot video. In other words, was it our shoot and set or theirs? In our view, a client does not own a set unless the agreement is work-for-hire. In this case, we were the production company, we hired everyone else, we rented the location, we carried the insurance (i.e. it was our production). No one could tell us what we could and could not shoot on our set.

We also amended the P.O. to give us copyright to “All images created as part of the shoot” and the right to use them for self-promotion.Tip: Always ensure in writing that you retain rights to all “Images” with an “s” or better yet, put “All images, whether moving or still.”

We left their Confidentiality Clause intact, but as it was written, it did not make the shoot itself confidential – just trade secrets and the like. The shoot itself was our work product, not theirs, and its mere existence wasn’t a secret. Tip: Just because the agency says you violated the contract, doesn’t mean you did.

However, in the future I do think it is a great idea to talk to the A.B. about behind-the-scenes video and whether it is OK with them if you shoot it and if you can use it for self promotion on your website. You may have the right to shoot it and post it, but if a jittery client doesn’t like what they see, you may lose a client and any relationship you had with the agency.

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Here’s an excellent Cost of Doing Business Calculator (here), where you input your desired salary, then add up all the business expenses that can’t be billed back to the client and it gives you a day rate based on how many days you expect to bill for the year. In cases where the fee is fixed and below your day rate–editorial comes to mind– you would simply make sure you could subtract something from the promotion or testing category to make it all balance out (or your salary if it has some perceived future benefit).

Back when I used to work for photographers and negotiate the shoot fees the goal was to make the client cringe and not hang up. It would have been much better to do a budget and make sure we were making what we needed to. There seems to be a sudden spate of high end photographers headed for bankruptcy (here), don’t be one of them.

“Speaking as someone who enthusiastically sold out, every time I’ve done something just for the money, no matter how much they paid, it was never enough.” — Pentagram’s Michael Bierut

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Of course none of this is news to photographers who now regularly see important stories get trounced by the celebrity/fad of the week. In my own brief magazine career I would often get important stories handed to me with an edict to make the images “happy” so the advertisers don’t get upset. I have a little “lesson” of my own for publishers that I’d like to impart. No matter how much ass kissing you do, your advertisers are still leaving. In fact they may be leaving more quickly now because your readers no longer consider you a “must read” after you’ve taken the edge off everything (due to all that ass kissing, natch).

After the EIC of Self magazine defends their body image distorting cover retouching policy by saying “Did we alter her appearance? Only to make her look her personal best.” The proper response is for a competing magazine to run Matt Mendelshon’s “the Lessons of Lindsay” and tell Danziger to go stuff it. Why won’t anyone do that anymore?

Sports Shooter Q & A: with Matt Mendelsohn.

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“… the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn’t want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn’t change your sense of integrity and purpose.”

7. How you live changes your brain.
8. Doubt is better than certainty.
9. On Aging.
10. Tell the truth.

All ten with explanations can be found (here). I found it (here).

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“Sir, we’re not the taco stand” I clearly remember an argument with my editor once where he stood there for half an hour trying to tell me that the shoot budget needed to come down and I tried to explain that no, if he wanted to pay less then we needed to change the shoot not just tell someone to make it less. Explaining it in “real life” terms, that we’re ordering the tenderloin and if you want to pay less just order a hamburger seemed to help.

On a similar note there a new documentary out about writer Harlan Ellison called Dreams with Sharp Teeth. Remember this line from the writers strike:

“I should do a freebie for Warner Brothers? What is Warner Brothers – out with an eye patch and a tin cup on the street? Fuck no! . . . I sell my soul, but at the highest rates. I don’t piss without being paid.”

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”

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*Pray* your editor doesn’t watch 60 Minutes. I know of one magazine owner who after watching Devil Wears Prada started demanding a book with every page in the magazine for approval before going to press.
via CBS News.

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2. Members of the service may not demand to view photographs taken by a person absent consent or exigent circumstances. [...]

Full Order is (here). via, Gallery Hopper.

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SLIDE SHOW, which retails for $29.95 U.S./$32.95 Canada (Hardcover), will be available online at bookstores nationwide beginning May 5, 2009 (Amazon link).

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Jonathan,

I think the vast majority of photography that goes on in the world is simply a business transaction. You sell a product, your customers need it, and they will go elsewhere to get it if you don’t conduct yourself in a professional manner. Customer service, good communication skills, contract writing and all manner of business acumen is required in addition to the ability to take pictures.

Beyond that and I think the higher up you you go in the photography food chain the main reason to stop working with a photographer is if the shoot fails or if you or someone in the chain of command above you decides they don’t like that style of photography.

One of the important jobs photo editors and art buyers do besides finding photographers and working out the details of the shoot is determining beforehand if the photographer you want to work with can execute and deliver the shoot in a professional manner. You call them up on the phone, check out their portfolio and marketing material, look at the client list and generally try to get a feel for it beforehand.

Doug Menuez writes on his blog today (here) about the cold hard truth of shooting for the top news magazines in the 80’s:
At a conference in the 80’s I once heard a young photogapher ask Roxanne Edwards at Business Week what would happen if, you know, somehow the film just did not turn out? Response: “Then you would never work for us again.” Sharp, honest, true answer. But seriously, doh! The other editors on the panel from Time, Newsweek, US News all shook their heads solemnly in agreement. The pressure to get world-class images on deadline against tremendous competition was unrelenting, yet it was also what fueled us.

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“It is no surprise that talented photographers are 99% pain in the ass to work with. They have strong opinions, are stubborn, reckless, and most of the time have an extremely bad character. But that is simply because they are constantly challenged by a reality that annoys them. Like being assaulted by mosquitoes, all the time. They don’t have an attitude problem, it’s the world that lacks one.” — From that goddam Bohemian.

My favorite was always when the editor would come stomping into my office all up in arms because the photographer had made all kinds of unreasonable demands on the writer and/or the subject. And, at first I was concerned but then I’d investigate and maybe the subject wasn’t told there would be a photo shoot (a magazine is pictures, words and design you want to write a book go somewhere else) or possibly the writer expected a photographer to follow in their shadows (we need time with the subject to make great pictures) and more likely it’s because creative people are difficult and demanding and it’s not like your writer isn’t a neurotic basket case on deadline, the photo shoot is our deadline. Get over it.

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What I guess goes through my mind when I’m taking a picture is I’m thinking wordlessly about how all these elements relate to each other and I’m thinking again wordlessly about finding a balance that I look for a point that seems central to the picture and when I find that point that tells me where to stand and where exactly to aim the camera.
– Stephen Shore

A work can hold a lot of different things at once. explore the medium, explore perception and explore other psychological levels. I think all these levels operate through work at the same time so I don’t feel like I need to limit what I’m doing, that I can hold all these things.
– Stephen Shore

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Here’s the media alert ASMP sent out:

Omnicom Passes the Buck

It has been brought to the attention of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) that the Omnicom Group, the world’s largest advertising agency holding company, has changed its terms and conditions in an effort to limit their agency liability and in so doing transfer that liability to independent photographers and producers. Basically, by disclosing their agency status and for whom they are acting, the advertising agency is only liable to the extent that their client has specifically paid them for any amounts payable to you. Additionally, ASMP has been informed that reps are being told that there will no longer be any advances on assignments.

These new policies are most probably the result of the market and governmental pressures experienced by major corporate clients such as GM who in their effort to avoid bankruptcy are now prioritizing their financial obligations and will make payment according to those priorities. In other words, some suppliers will be waiting significantly longer to be paid depending upon the client’s priorities. That being the case, agencies do not want to be left on the hook for reimbursement of monies expended on behalf of their clients, especially where the fear of bankruptcy exists.

These terms and conditions are simply not in the best interests of photographers, producers or clients. This action, clearly taken in anticipation of increasingly difficult financial conditions is a unilateral effort to shift the burden onto those who are least prepared to bear it. Should an independent photographer of moderate means be the banker for a Fortune 100 company? By eliminating their customary role as intermediate financier, agencies are removing value from the value-added chain, and that will ultimately lead to an overall dampening effect on commerce.

Meanwhile, there is no incentive for the agencies to make photographer friendly changes to their terms and conditions as long as photographers are willing to accept the current terms. Notice of these changes should be included in your blogs and discussed on related lists and social networking sites. The issue needs to become viral and requires significant support from key photographers in order to gain traction and effect change. If it is business as usual for the agencies, then nothing will be accomplished.

ASMP would recommend that photographers include in their paperwork a statement making it clear that there will be no grant of copyright license until all related assignment invoices are paid in full. Images should be registered with the Copyright Office immediately upon completion of the shoot and prior to first publication and/or possible infringement so that in the event that legal action – a last resort – is needed, recovery of statutory damages and court costs will be possible.

In addition, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) recommends the following:

“If an agency’s internal policy insists upon these payment terms (sequential liability), the production company should:

a) Make sure the advertiser (“client”) also signs this agreement. If it is a rider, the terms of payment and the full contract price should be added to the rider.

b) Be provided with the advertiser billing and contact information.

c) Copy the advertiser on all invoices.

d) Notify the advertiser of payment due as soon as terms of the contract (payment dates) are not met by the agency.”

As a possible course of action, since the agencies are shifting liability to their corporate clients, perhaps photographers should consider approaching the clients directly for advances and or other payments prior to the beginning of the assignment.

Ultimately, this is a case of the supplier beware!

Eugene Mopsik

Executive Director, ASMP

mopsik@asmp.org

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From the media kit: “Best Life teaches successful men the art of balance. Luxurious yet packed with service, Best Life guides its reader through the many demands of his life—teaching him to manage his finances, nurture his family, care for his health, protect his environment, and still find time to pursue his passions.”

More like: “We created this magazine for advertisers. We don’t give a crap about the staff, contributors or readers. We put all that stuff between the covers to keep the ads from touching each other.”

Look, I get it. These are corporations. The bottom line is the bottom line. It’s just that some of these magazines are starting to look like wall street ponzi schemes.

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This situation is a little unusual in that it’s usually only the editor that favors literal images and uses things like the meteorological conditions in the image as a point of argument for or against using something. In the past I’ve always had good luck teaming up with the Art Director to get things past the editor and I made a post awhile back about my techniques for getting new photographers past them for assignments:

1. Gang up. Get the Creative Director to back you in the meeting. “Oh yeah he’s great, I worked with him at my previous magazine and he always delivered.”

2. Shiny Objects. Toss out important people or magazines they’ve shot for. “He shot a feature in Vanity Fair recently.”

3. Padded Portfolio. Print the portfolio shots that back your case. “See, she really gets what we’re trying to achieve here.”

4. Play Dumb. Assign and feign telling them about it recently. “Oh, I thought we discussed that she was shooting this earlier.”

The same sort of ideas work well for getting the images you want published.

1. Stall- I used to find myself in a situation where the editor would end a layout review with “Let’s see if we can top that.” To which I would spend the rest of my time that month not trying top it, because I was perfectly happy with the images we had picked. I also recall a separate situation near the end of my tenure where I had commissioned a heavy hitter to shoot a portrait for the opener of the story. The editor was not pleased with the results because he was expecting… something more literal, so I was tasked with dredging up every little bit of stock that might work instead. I didn’t completely phone-it-in, so as not to arouse suspicion, but I did find it handy to read blogs instead of scour Getty for hours on end.

2. Withholding- The classic technique is to simply leave out the obvious choices. This is like playing chicken: “Is this all there is?” “Well, these are the best.” “Can I see all the images?” “I’m still working on it, can we try these first?” “Ok, but then after this I need to see the rest of the images.” “I have a doctors appointment so it will have to wait.”

3. Showdown- First, you need to lean on the Art Director to include your images in the layout choices for the editor. Looking at pictures in the layout is so much better than on your screen or the light table (sadly only used for printouts now) and brings you one step closer to the final OK. When your variation comes up on screen or is presented you need to fight tooth and nail to defend it. This is where reading books that talk about photography comes in handy. Defending an image by saying “I like it a lot” will get you nowhere. Sometimes, honestly it comes down to a fight where telling them they’re making a huge mistake and the picture they picked blows is your only choice.

4. Build Your Case- Changing someone’s mind about the photography they think is “good” can take months and possibly years of laying a foundation with examples of work you think is important. You need to provide examples and reinforcement of quality imagery in the field. I used to have a huge bulletin board where I would rip pages out of magazines, tack up promo cards and prints of the images they didn’t pick as sort of a massive mood board to the direction I wanted the photography to go. Also, buy plenty of magazines that are using photography well and show them to the editor whenever you get a chance. Anything redesigned by Luke or DJ at Pentagram is always a sure bet.

None of this is easy. Expect your stomach to be doing back flips and your hair to tingle as you try to steer the Titanic away from the ice.

Finally, I will say this about the future of magazines and photography. There is no future for magazines that don’t challenge and surprise their readers with original sophisticated imagery. The internet has set the ground floor and if you can’t rise above it, you will disappear.

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Erik Hersman was blogging from TED 2009 and filed this from a talk Elizabeth Glibert author of “Eat, Pray, Love” and it got me thinking about dealing with not being able to capture lightning in a bottle twice:

Elizabeth Gilbert: Genius and how we ruin it

Elizabeth weaves an insightful story of artists, success and pressure. She asks if she’s doomed. What if she never replicates the success of her past book? Is it rational or logical to be afraid of the work that we were put on this earth to do? Why have artists and writers had this history of manic depressive and mental illnesses? Why does artistry always lead to mental anguish?

“I think it might be better if we encouraged our great creative minds to live.”

“It’s exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me. That’s the kind of thought that can lead a person to start drinking gin at 9:00 in the morning.”

Read it (here).

I can identify many photographers by a single image or a series of images but when I talk to them about it they tend to talk about all the flaws in the images or how it was a fluke. I wonder if that’s just a defense mechanism. I suppose there are the popular “best photos you ever made” and the critical version but when you’re just trying to make it the popular one counts the most.

UPDATE: The video just went live.

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