TIPS60 - Should You Quit Your "Day Job" To Become a Full-Time Photographer?

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on whether you, if you love our hobbyist photography, should become a professional. I'm John Harrington. The short version is, if you love what you're doing as a hobbyist, stick with it as a hobby. It's something that you do to relax, to entertain yourself, to blow off steam, to just kind of get away from the office. If you love what you do as a hobby stick with it as a hobby. If you're going to become a professional you're going to actually have to treat the business of photography like a business. You're going to have to treat it like you do your day job, your nine to five job. I strongly encourage you to consider that, when you switch from being a hobbyist to being a professional, that you really are starting a business from the ground up, from scratch and hopefully you will find that you can focus on staying as a hobbyist and not becoming a professional, unless that's what you want to do seven days a week. So before you consider making a jump from hobbyist to professional, recognize that it is a business and that's something that you need to stay completely professional on and not treat just like your hobby.

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TIPS60 - The Importance of Having Life Insurance

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts about the value of life insurance. I'm John Harrington. The value of life insurance can't be understated you definitely should have life insurance. In most cases it's tax deductible as a part of your business expenses. No, I'm not an accountant or lawyer so this should not be considered tax advice or legal advice, but look into getting life insurance because it will give you peace of mind. As someone who has life insurance I happen to use New York Life and think the world of them, they're a past and present client of mine, but I made my decision about going with them independent of that relationship. Life insurance lets you know that and let's your family know that if something were to happen to you, God forbid, that they would be taken care of in your absence. So strongly encourage you to look into life insurance. It should well be a tax deductible business expense as a part of what you're doing as a freelance photographer, whether an S-Corp or a Sole Proprietor. So look into life insurance, definitely worth having.

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TIPS60 - Nobody likes a Braggert

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on talking about your success or lack thereof. I'm John Harrington. In the field of photography frankly, in any field, you don't ever want to be bragging about how much money you made on any given assignment or any given month or any given job. There's a kenny rogers saying from one of his songs, ""You never count your money when you're sitting at the table, there will be time enough for counting when the deal is done."" I definitely subscribe to that notion whether I had a great month or not so great month or a particular job that I was really excited about. I generally do not discuss the success or lack thereof I've had in any given month. I would encourage you to do so. Talking about your successes, especially talking about how much money you made or didn't make really is not a good idea when it comes to talking to your colleagues, talking to your clients, because if you talk to a client and you tell them, ""Oh, I did this $10,000 job the other day"" and they're only paying you $1,000 that might not go over too well or they might think you don't need them next time and they'll call someone else. So don't talk about money especially with clients and don't brag.

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TIPS60 - The value of The Picture Licensing Universal System

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on the value of PLUS. I'm John Harrington. PLUS or the Picture Licensing Universal System is a industry standard that allows you to license your work in a way which everyone knows about and understands what you're saying. So, if you're referring to and ad slick or you're referring to a bus back or bus shelter where your pictures being licensed. Everyone understands that what that means and there's no ambiguity because the Picture Licensing Universal System, PLUS, which is free. Check out the URL below. Really explains it, everyone's gotten together ad agencies, media, art buyers, stock photo agencies, everyone's gotten together and agreed on exactly what the licensing language is so that there's no misunderstandings. In addition PLUS is creating this registry which will help photographers and image buyers connect if someone's got an image, they're trying to find who owns the rights to that photograph, they can reach out to them and find them through the PLUS registry.

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TIPS60 - Product Commentary - Spyder LensCal Camera/Lens Calibrator

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:One of the things that a lot of cameras have a problem with, no matter what professional grade camera you are working with, is that every lens and every camera combination are not perfectly calibrated, perfectly matched to them, to each other. Now you can take and send your cameras off to Nikon Professional Services, Canon Professional Services what have you and have them do all the calibrations for you. There is a fee and obviously you are without your cameras for a while. There's a really great solution that we encourage, it's actually called the Spyder LensCal tool. What's great about the Spyder LensCal tool is that it lets you focus on an exact known position and have the camera say that it's in focus at that point and then if it's actually not, off by a millimeter, off by a few inches it can actually be adjusted in camera. The camera remembers each of the lens positions for each of the focus points for the lens positions and it's a really great tool to make certain that everything you shoot that's in focus really is in focus.

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TIPS60 - A good job grows clientele, a bad job costs you clients!

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on the value of any given client. I'm John Harrington. When you're talking to a client, they've decided to call you they've made a whole host of decisions about whether or not they want to work with you. The only reason they are calling you is because they're considering working with. So you to want to make sure that all of the things that went up to that phone ringing, don't get lost and all of the sudden the job falls apart and you don't get a chance to do that work. The challenge of course is once you keep that client, and make them happy, recognize that that client, that one job, for conversations sake let's say it's a $500 job, is all of a sudden going to parlay itself over the course of a lifetime relationship with that client into ten plus jobs. Even if you're only getting one job a year, it's going to be a lot. So any given job that is worth $500, if you keep that client, is going to be worth ten times that or $5,000, but if you make a mistake and screw up that $500 job costs you that same $5,000 down the line because they're not gonna call you back.

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TIPS60 - Accounting - Managerial vs. Tax methodologies

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on managerial accounting versus tax accounting. I'm John Harrington. Managerial accounting is a system that tells you why you spend your money on what you spend it on as opposed to tax accounting which is a system that tells you what you spend your money on. Tax accounting is something that your accountant is going to use, but managerial accounting is something that you want to use in your business to understand why and where the costs are associated with different products and services that you offer. You want to work with your accountant on transitioning your accounting system from managerial to tax accounting when you're trying to deal with your tax return and that's why having a great accountant is important. But, I would strongly encourage you to check out this URL here down below. It's a great PPofA resource, Professional Photographers of America, on the differences between managerial and tax accounting. Why you should use managerial accounting and the benefits of doing so versus the importance of tax accounting. So check it out.

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TIPS60 - Staff2Freelance - having 3 - 6 months of savings

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on the potential transition for you from staff to freelance and how much money you might want to have saved. I'm John Harrington. If you're a staff photographer you have a pretty good idea of what your monthly costs are for rent, your mortgage, gas, utilities, and so on and so forth. So you really need to understand that if you go from staff to freelance unexpectedly, you need to have a bare minimum of three months of savings and more likely six months of savings to really make it easy for you to make that transition. You can't always rely on the company providing you with some form of a separation package or some kind of package to let you go out and and leave the company comfortably and happily. You've need to have three to six months worth of savings based upon your current costs. You also need to understand that you can COBRA your insurance up to eighteen months according to the latest regulations. But you need to be prepared. Three to six months savings is really what you need to have so that you can be prepared for the staff to freelance transition.

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TIPS60 - The importance of paying yourself

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:It's really important to pay yourself what you're worth and not only do so every month, but incur the costs of you the employee, even if you're a sole proprietor, if you're an S-Corp or an LLC that's different, but still very similar. You want to make sure that you pay yourself first. Look at what you should be earning, how many hours you are putting in in any given month and pay yourself. Don't sit around and not pay yourself and then just decide that you're going to use to pay your personal expenses all of the money that you have left over at the end of the month. You should be the first bill that you pay every month. Whether it's a token amount of $500 or maybe is a large amount of money maybe $2, $3, $4,000 dollars a month, $10,000 a month if you're doing really well. Ultimately though, you want to make sure you're paying yourself first and including that as a bill as a part of the business that you're running.

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TIPS60 - Determining A Client's Budget for the Project You're Going To Provide An Estimate for

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on determining the client's budget when you're talking to them about the job. I'm John Harrington. When you're dealing with a client, you're trying to figure out what their budget is you need to ask a lot of questions. One of the reasons that you ask about the client's budget is you're trying to determine what production level is exactly they're hoping to have you bring to bear. Flash on camera, no assistants, an assistant, one light, a large production, big trailers, everything, you just never know. It really helps to understand what the client's expectations are. If the client says to you, ""Gosh, we don't have a budget, we don't know what our budget is"" you need to start asking some probing questions. ""Well, were you trying to get this done for $1,000, $5000, $10,000, $20,000?"" Once you start asking questions like that you really do start to get an understanding about what the clients per hour budget is or at least the parameters within which they're trying to work. If the client says $200 and your out the door is $750 then maybe this client just isn't for you. So always ask the question about what kind of budget you're trying to work within.

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