When A Shoot Goes Bad

All to often, I hear stories about shoots gone bad. Not bad as in, the photos were horrible, but bad as in "the model tripped", or the lightstand crashed into that antique table..." bad. These are the kinds of incidents that turn the shoot from profitable to you into an expensive debacle that you'd just as soon have stayed in bed for instead of shooting it.

Enter photographers working for the upstart Desi Life magazine, launched under a year ago by the Toronto Star in Canada, serving the niche South-Asian community in the area.

Many photographers who find themselves working for startups are conned into accepting "startup" pay scales. These are photographers who, in many cases, don't have their act together when it comes to having their bases covered when things like insurance and so forth. I don't know the photographer who shot the cover in question, he may well have his insurance in line, but many many others don't.

Insurance? Who needs insurance?

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You do, when you're on set and the lion that is your prop attacks (even playfully) the human subject for your cover! To see the video (via RobGalbraith.com) of the attack, click here. It seems that four broken ribs occured during the lion's throw-down if it's prey.

I previously wrote about liability insurance as it pertains to sports photographers (10/23/07, Speculative Photography - Risks and Liabilities for Leagues, Venues, and Teams) where I outlined the risks of taking to the field without the proper insurance. In fact, there is a huge risk to the players and the league when individuals without the proper insurance coverage are allowed to be near multi-million dollar players where they could injure them and then not be accountable.

So too, when you're working on an assignment in a museum near priceless paintings, or with a celebrity where a wayward light stand could strike them, you have to have insurance. You need only read this report (and see the accompanying photo!) about former supermodel Lauren Hutton's shiner which happened recently on a photo shoot to get the idea!

If you don't know what a COI is, call your insurance provider and ask about them. If you don't have insurance for your business, what are you doing in business? You could lose your house, your savings, and everything you've ever worked for if something goes awry!

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Chicago Magazine Report Retort - Come Again!?!

I recieved a retort from a Chicago area photographer a week or so ago about an APA/Apple Store presentation he'd seen by Brittney Blair, Photo Editor of Chicago Magazine from back on February 11th. APA's website reports the presentation as "...Brittney’s Pro Session discussion focused on the best ways to break into photography, how to catch a photo editors attention, and steps to landing your dream assignment." However, one glaring issue arose. Ms. Blair is reported to have said, either exactly, or very near exactly, "You know that nobody can make a living off of editorial magazine photography."

I'll share what the attending photographer was infuriated about. He noted in his missive to me:

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• Is she poisoning everyones expectations to keep their idea of how much they should charge lower?
• Secondly, don't magazine writers earn a living?
• Don't magazine editors and PHOTO EDITORS earn livings?
• Doesn't the publisher of a magazine earn a living?
• Don't the ad sales team earn livings?
• Doesn't the printer of a magazine earn a living?
• In fact they would EXPECT to.
• Why should editorial photographers have to believe they can't earn a living????
• Isn't a photo on the cover what sells a magazine to the casual shopper?
• Are not photos the "stoppers" that capture something like 1.7 seconds of a page flippin' reader's attention and get them to read the article?

The attending photographer goes on to object:

"She later went on to say that she know sometimes that with pre-production and expenses a photographer might only break even or lose money on a shoot but that the exposure in a regional publication is worth it. Would she accept breaking even or losing money on HER job to be worth the exposure?? Maybe for an intern, but not a professional. Are the guest "experts" we as photographer flock to for advice telling the truth or building the walls of a ghetto?"

Well said, well said.

I will note that I was a previous speaker at an APA/Apple Store Presentation in that same store in Chicago just over a year ago, and my message was exactly opposite this one. Further, Friday I completed a profitable editorial assignment, and today, Monday, I am completing both a profitable editorial assignment as well as an even more profitable corporate assignment.

I will say, APA nor Apple vetted these message points - they surely did not vet mine before I presented. I know that APA's thought process is 100% contrary to several of the points reported out above. Further, the good folks at Apple are truly committed to helping photographers succeed, hence not only this APA seminar series, but also, their ASMP seminar series, both of which have been extremely well received.

Even if this photo editor did not say this (and I believe this photographer's reporting that she did), it stands as a common mentality amongst many photo editors who believe we should all be blessed to have our work appear in their publications. Think again - its' our work that will enhance the otherwise blank or text-filled pages you are printing on those presses of yours.

You, dear photo editors, should be fighting to pay us assignment fees that you know will allow us to sustain ourselves. I know many that do, and I work for a substantial subset of that group. I appreciate the photo editors that I work for, and who look out for the creatives that supply art for their pages.

Further, the good folks over at Editorial Photographers, EP President Brian Smith among them, would also take issue with her suggestion of how the world turns for photographers. Or, perhaps, I am sounding a bit like the Bitter Photographer now?

To those of you who are content in your full time, self-sustaining jobs where you know the assignment fees you are paying photographers do not sustain your talent pool, I say, bollocks to you.

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© Infringements - Don't be a Hypocrite

I'm really getting tired of this. Colleagues, both highly respected and prosumer alike, who have no regard for copyrights. I recently watched an amazing presentation of work by a noted photographer, who's work was enhanced by the aural addition of music by Enya. I know just how next to impossible it is to get permission for uses like this, as I have tried, so I am almost certain that she was infringing on Enya's copyright. I also continue to watch as a other photographers continue to promote videos/presentations where music I know to be popular, but which are on YouTube with music that it is almost certain to be infringing uses. I wish they would just take a pause and realize what they are doing.

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The hypocrisy continues. Friends who "share" a Photoshop or PhotoMechanic serial #, yet complain when their own work is stolen.

Interestingly enough, were I to provide a photograph that was not my own to an organization for their presentation, or to a website/blog to grow traffic/hits, the infringing party would be the organization or website/blog. It is the "publication" of the material, by the "publisher" that is the infringement, in large part. For a public performance, it would be the corporation or organization that provided the forum/programming that would likely be held accountable.

Several years ago, I was working a product launch for a pharmaceutical company for the sales reps who visit doctors offices to give them samples, and promote the product. The music that started the event was the Red Hot Chili Pepper's song "Give It Away Now", perfectly appropriate in terms of theme, inappropriate in terms of the infringement of the band's intellectual property by a company with IP of it's own in the form of the medicine they sell.

I am not a lawyer, but here's a good rule:
Unless you're commenting on the music itself, as in "listen to the multiple downbeats", or "the refrain here is repetitive...", making a claim that your use is "fair use" is likely not to hold water. When you use music to accompany your images, you need to get permission, or don't use it. Period.

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Getty Images - Moving Forward

Getty Images (NYSE: GYI) is a lot of things. Right now, they are on the chopping block, having just left the auction block, with, as the AP reports (Regulators OK Getty Images' $2.1B Buyout, 3/18/08), "Antitrust regulators have cleared private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC's $2.1 billion purchase of Getty Images Inc., a federal agency said Tuesday."

The company that has acquired them, Hellman & Friedman, is known for stripping down the company to increase margins on the profitable divisions, and killing off those that are not, and then dumping it - yes, for a profit. They don't do this for all their aquisitions, of course. But, they are not likely to remain in the photography business as a purveyor of images. So, what's going to go?

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1) The Getty wire service is the least profitable division, and I think that, without much of the re-sales that they get, that figure might even be worse. It takes a great deal of staffing and often a shot-in-the-dark mentality when assigning coverage. In DC for example, there are many many events, and it's very had to know just what to cover. I don't envy the editors who have to make that decision. Note though, this challenge is not unique to Getty. AP, Reuters, and AFP all face similar challenges. Bloomberg is, to a small degree, immune from this, only because they are a essentially a niche wire service, covering events from a financial aspect. They are not trying to be all things to all people. Yet, Getty's wire service will likely go first.

2) The Getty editorial department. I've spoken with a few folks smarter than me on this, and there seems to be some agreement here, that this department too will be trimmed to within an inch of it's life, and may just get cut altogether. The reason? The margins are just not where they should be.

What does this leave? Oh, of course, iStockphoto, and their commercial/corporate division. Getty actually does have the potential to generate huge sums from the commercial division with all the advertising sales, exclusivity up-charges, and so forth. In addition, most anytime you can get an assignment out of someone, that's going to be fairly profitable, especially with the unfair percentages they are paying out.

In addition, Getty's sports contracts for the leagues will continue to bring them money, but more as an arm of the leagues as a distribution channel. Same for entertainment clients, more in LA and NYC than anywhere else, where event promoters want a distribution channel there as well that have the eyeballs of the entertainment news media to get pickup from their events. But, wait, isn't that editorial? Nope. When a corporate client pays you $5k to cover and event that has a few celebrities in attendance, and then you put those photos up from the arrivals area with a step-and-repeat backdrop with the clients' logo, or you are the "inside exclusive photographer" getting great photos that will look good for the commercial client, and these happen to appear in editorial coverage, that's commercial/corporate, not editorial!

Did you catch that above, I said "distribution channel" twice, for two distinct divisions? That's right friends, Getty will become a distribution channel for corporate America more so now than ever before. These are, after all, extremely profitable. Sure, they have some great archive materials, from acquired collections, but that, along with good margins elsewhere will make Getty attractive as a private acquisition.

By who? Probably Corbis.

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Speedlinks 03/18/07

I know I've been absent, but I'll have a post or two in the next few days, so, my apologies! In the meantime, Check out the following speedlinks:

• Photoshop Disasters - This site is awesome because is shows you all the mistakes retouchers make, and breaks them down for you!
• Carolyn Wright, over at PhotoAttorney reports: - "an Illinois District Court held that Daniel Schrock of Dan Schrock Photography had no right to register his photographs of toys because they were unauthorized derivative works of the copyrights in the toys. Schrock was hired by Learning Curve Intern, Inc. ("LCI"), to shoot the toys for marketing uses. Alleging that LCI and others had used the photos beyond the license terms, Schrock sued for copyright infringement. But the Court agreed with the defendants that "without approval from the owner of the underlying [copyrighted] work, approval that was totally absent here, Schrock could not obtain a copyright over his derivative works."
• A little off topic, but worth a read: LEAKS: Best Buy's Internal Customer Profiling Document - "Consumerist is now in possession of an internal training document that teaches Best Buy blue shirts how to stereotype..."
• Scott Regan Photo Blog - Scott has a few nice words to say about my book, and also, some interesting images and insights about his own work that is worth a look.

Now go! Check 'em out, and come back soon!

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NSC - A brief note about the Photo Booth

While I will have more later on the highly successful NPPA Northern Short Course (NSC), if you had your photo taken in the photo booth, shoot me an e-mail and I will get you an invite to view and download the images that were made.

To prove you were there, you'll have to tell me what floor the booth was on. Please no hints in the comments!

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It pays to do your homework

It's 3am, Wednesday, and I am finishing the booking of air and travel for the next 10-day assignment which begins after I finish photographing Kermit the Frog on Capitol Hill, travels to Rochester NY, then Los Angeles, then Las Vegas, then Oakland, then Los Angeles, before returning to DC. It's an exhaustive trip, and we spent much of the day today in pre-production, packing bags to confirm to size and weight restrictions, and so forth.

In Los Angeles, the client is staying in the West Hollywod area, and gave us several recommendations for where to stay. Typically, we make these calls ourselves, however, we were surely amenable to their suggestions. One of them was the Hyatt West Hollywood. I checked Orbitz (graphic above), and it was $215 a night, for this 4-star "upscale" hotel.

I decided to have a look at Priceline, to see where hotels would fall price-wise.

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Remarkably, by selecting 4-star, and West Hollywood as my options, I found myself and my team booked into...the Hyatt West Hollywood for $106 a night! A significant savings, to be sure! Laughably, Orbitz's site says "lowest price guarantee", which is clearly not the case here.

In the end, this was over a 50% savings from booking with Orbitz.

I post this as a suggestion that, as the title of the entry says, "it pays to do your homework."

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Stock Video Footage - The Clinton/Obama Gaff

There's an interesting footnote to the well-known Hillary Clinton ad about experience, they titled "Children", but which is commonly referred to now as the "3am phone call commercial." The short description for the commercial on YouTube reads:

On March 4th, your vote will decide who will be in the White House to pick up the phone when it rings at 3 AM.

Yet, one of the children in the video is now all grown up, is 18, and is an Obama supporter.

Such is the risk of using stock imagery (whether video, or stills), securing contracts from appropriate models, and so forth. The Wonkette website reports about the (then) young girl:

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her family shopped her out as a little girl to be in non-POLITICS OF FEAR commercials, and that footage was then sold to the wire service Getty. That way, cheap Getty subscribers, like the Hillary Clinton campaign, could use the footage for anything -- including the POLITICS OF FEAR.

Clicking the image above gets you to the MSNBC footage from NBC's Today Show where they interview the now-voting-age young woman. Visiting the YouTube link above has other interviews of her by several other outlets.

I share this story with you not as a story critical of Getty (NYSE: GYI) per se, but as one that demonstrates the risk of using stock footage, where assignment work gives you guarantees and protections. We reported last November ( Black Friday? Try, "You Get What You Pay For" Friday! , 11/27/07) about the risks of RF, and, non-exclusive RM. In fact, with RF, for example, you have little to no control over the exclusivity of an image/video clip. With RM, you can at-least secure an exclusivity license for a term. The ASMP website has several examples of how this problem became a poke in the eye for dualing companies, (Rights Managed Stock vs Royalty Free Stock - Is RF the bargain they claim?), but it stands, thus, to reason that the better solution is the commissioning of original content that has A) never been seen, B) has an exclusivity term, and C) has been properly contracted so that the subjects in the images/video don't go destroying your message.

Since Getty should have had the releases on file, due-diligence on the part of the Clinton Campaign should have taken place where they not only paid additional fees for exclusivity of the footage for a period of time, but also contacted each of the people in their stock footage to ensure they were either a Clinton supporter, or would atleast remain mum about their position for the election.

Better yet, try not going the cheap route, and shoot the footage yourself!

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Making the Most Of Your Situation

Yesterday, while on a fairly straightforward assignment for a corporate client covering their day's conference, the day was scheduled to include a brief meet-and-greet with the legend Cal Ripkin. I'd originally intended to do this with on-camera strobe, but the client wanted me to bring a background. So, I selected my favorite - Thunder Grey. It wasn't until we were pulling the seamless from the car, that I got a thought:

"I am about to photograph a legendary baseball player infront of a seamless. What can I do to make this better?

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So I pulled out my Chimera 57 and set it up as a 7' softbox. We had it in the car from the day before, doing a magazine cover shoot, and hadn't offloaded the equipment because of the late wrap-time the night before, and a 6am call time for this shoot.

We moved through the group photos fairly quickly (at left is an example), and working with Cal was an illustration of the height of professionalism. I'd worked with him several times before, doing official portraits (lights and all) for other endeavors he's involved in, but never with a seamless, which I'd wanted to do for some time. People were immediately put at ease by him, and even though people knew they were coming to have their image made with him, and he knew he was there for that reason (before giving a presentation) he still asked each of them "would you take a picture with me?" which put each of those being photographed with him at ease, and facilitated the process in a very efficient manner. Further, I had just the light I wanted to have Cal in for him against the seamless.

In the end, I had an expedited shoot thanks to Cal's making it smooth as people entered and exited the portrait area, a very happy client, and, for me, a portrait that I'd wanted to make for some time.

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Taxes & Artists: Taking a Time & Services Deduction

Awhile back, we wrote about how you CAN'T donate your time and services and claim fair market value for such as a deduction (An Original Picasso for $50? That's what they say..., 2/10/07), and one potential solution that could get you a bit more credit for your donations, when you do (The Non-Profit Challenge, 11/19/07), but once again, there is a bill winding it's way through Congress that would allow:

"...artists to take a fair-market value deduction for works given to and retained by nonprofit institutions. The U.S. tax system accords unequal treatment to creators and collectors who donate tangible works (e.g., paintings or manuscripts) to museums, libraries, educational or other collecting institutions. A collector may take a tax deduction for the fair-market value of the work, but creators may deduct only their "basis" value—essentially the cost of materials such as paint and canvas."

If you can enter your name and address, and click the "send" button, in less than two minutes you can actually send an e-mail to your elected official that represents you, through this very cool system. Americans for the Arts has their Advocate for the Arts website and all you do is enter your address, and they will automatically route your sentiments to your Senator or Member! If you'd like to her Senator/Photographer Pat Leahy (and the bill's sponsor) in an NPR interview on the subject, click here.

(Comments, if any, after the Jump)

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