TIPS60 - When do you just say "no"?

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 power of ""no"". I'm John Harrington. When you say ""no"" when someone makes an offer to you or makes a request off you that's unreasonable, that gives you a great deal of power. Now I'm not talking about power over somebody, but power in controlling what you do what you provide in the services that you are rendering. If someone's offering you or making you an unreasonable offer, you need only say ""no"" to that client. Now if you don't have any other alternatives, if you have to say ""yes"" to that particular job or that particular request because you need the money, your rent is due and you have no money in the bank, then you really don't have the power to say ""no"" then you are at the discretion of that clients request and you may have to fulfill it. But if you have other options, if you can afford to pay the bills because you have the reserve, saying ""no"" is very empowering. In addition when you say ""no"" just say ""no"" nicely, ""Gosh, I can't do it for that rate but I'd be happy to discuss with you a rate that works for me."

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TIPS60 - How much time do professional photographers actually spend making photographs?

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 on how photographers actually spend their time. I'm John Harrington. Most people, when they think about photographers and photography, think, "" Oh, I'm gonna be traveling the globe, slinging the camera on my shoulder, the camera bag, seeing the world, taking pictures"" and that's that. The reality is it's nowhere near the case. Most photographers spend, on average, about twenty percent of their time making pictures. The rest of the time is administrative. If you think about a wedding photographer for example, they may spend six to eight hours on a Saturday making pictures and maybe six to eight hours on a Sunday making pictures, but they're spending Monday through Friday doing post-production, talking a prospective brides and grooms about working, there's such a variety of things that they're doing that isn't making pictures and every job has its boring aspects, but for photographers you really can count on about twenty percent of the time to be making pictures and the rest doing administrative and paperwork. So that's about about how long photographers spend making pictures.

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TIPS60 - What's an NDA?

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:What's an NDA? I'm John Harrington. An NDA is a non-disclosure agreement. It's an agreement between you and a client or you and an assistant to not have things disclosed outside of the scope of the work that you are performing. Non-disclosure agreements are very common when you're working with high profile clients and frankly assistants should be signing non-disclosure agreements with you to not talk about the details of a photo shoot they worked with you on. You should be getting non-disclosure agreements from your assistants and also many times your clients can ask you to not disclose what you learned, any company trade secrets or anything about a new product coming out that you might have just photographed. NDAs are very common. Read it. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not giving legal advice, but I strongly encourage you to understand the importance of an NDA and to respect an NDA. If somebody asks you about a shoot you were on and you can't talk about it because of an NDA, just say, "I can't talk about it because I'm under and NDA."

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TIPS60 - Hobbyists - respect the profession and the livelihood of those you admire

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 idea that hobbyists can actually do some damage to the livelihoods of photographers they admire. I'm John Harrington. If you're a professional photographer the last thing you want to see, if you're at an event covering something is to see four or five photographers that are hobbyists coming in taking pictures, posting them up online, and ruining your livelihood. If you're a hobbyist who looks up to the photo journalist or the sports photographer, doing it for free, doing it just for the heck of it, and then selling those images or giving them away is really damaging the livelihood of those who are professionally doing photography day-to-day, day in and day out and have bills to pay. So I would strongly encourage you to, even if you don't necessarily need the money, as a hobbyist, to charge appropriately for your work so that you not only get that extra money that lets you upgrade to the next piece of equipment, but you're also not damaging the livelihoods of the photographers that you admire in the community.

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TIPS60 - Product Commentary - X-Rite i1 calibration tools

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:I can't stress enough the importance of having a color calibrated monitor, color calibrated printers, and just generally being color calibrated. We use, to do all of our color calibrations, the i1 system it's made by Gretag MacBeth. There are a number of other solutions out there, but the importance of making certain that your monitor is calibrated is so that when you're judging lightness and darkness, when you're judging whether or not an image has too much red, too much green, or otherwise is just not right, not visually correct. You want to make certain that you have everything in a color managed, calibrated to a known standard system. So that when you're speaking to a client and the client says to you, " Oh gosh, the photo looks too dark too light" or what have you, you can ask them, "Is your system calibrated?" Generally, it's not in many instances. And you can encourage that, you can say something like, "Oh, are you looking at it next to a light window?" or what have you. Ask them what environment they're reviewing the images in. But having a calibrated system means that you're calibrating to a known standard.

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TIPS60 - Staff2Freelance - having a professional URL

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 professional URLs as you transition possibly from staff to freelance. I'm John Harrington. Having a professional URL is one of the many signs and signals that you send to your clients that you are a professional. You don't want to use something that says something like @cox.net or @rcn or @comcast or @gmail or at @aol or @hotmail. Any of those URLs are not professional URLs whether it's in your email address or in the actual website that you have. You want to make certain that you have something like @johnharrington.com or @harringtonproductions.com or some variation that's shows that you are professional, that you're a business and people should be treating you as such. If you use non-professional URLs, free URLS, like gmail or so on and so forth clients, especially clients that have never heard about you before are going to be questioning whether not you're actually a full-time professional doing this and will be taking you seriously.

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TIPS60 - Double the money? Are your low rates actually hurting your business?

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 your rates and whether or not they're too low. I'm John Harrington. Now it may seem counter-intuitive, but the concept of doubling your rates to earn more business actually is a realistic one. It does actually apply, there is actually some credence to that idea. In some instances there are clients who know that the bill or the costs for a particular services is $1,000, $2,000. And when a photographer, even though they think they're doing the right thing, by saying, ""I'll do the job for $300"" they know, ""Gosh, this photographer may well not understand everything that's going into this project."" So they'll actually hire a photographer that's more expensive. So if you're looking at your rates and maybe you want to move up to that next echelon of client, you want to have a higher profile client, doubling your rates could actually generate you more business. In many instances that's why we ask whether or not there's a budget the clients trying to work within. So as silly as and counter-intuitive as it sounds, you might actually consider doubling your rates in order to generate more business.

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TIPS60 - The importance of having long-term care 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 on long-term care insurance. I'm John Harrington. Long term care insurance is a very valuable resource to have should something happen to you, you be debilitated or otherwise can't work and you need to go into skilled nursing facility or other location where you need to be attended to and there's daily or monthly costs to care for you medically. Long term care insurance should actually be a tax deductible business expense. I'm not an accountant so you might want to check with your accountant on that, but it's something that you should definitely be considering. It does give you peace of mind knowing that you're not going to have to sell off all your familial assets and essentially go into bankruptcy before medicare, medicaid will take care of you. Long term care insurance is kind of a form of life insurance that protects you or rather, your family while you're still alive from having to declare bankruptcy in order for you to be taken care of because of something debilitating that means you can't work anymore. So look into long term care insurance it's not that expensive and it's well worth it.

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TIPS60 - Switching to an S-Corp and what's involved with hiring a lawyer

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 switching to an S-Corp from being a Sole Proprietor or starting out. I'm John Harrington. When you're a photographer oftentimes you start out as a Sole Proprietor, you're filing your returns on the Schedule C and someone gave you the idea that you probably should switch to an S-Corp. It's a good idea. Something we talk about in another segment. I'm talking to about that how you actually go about switching to an S-Corp. Switching to an S-Corp is really easy, frankly it's pick up the phone and call a lawyer there are lawyers who for you $500 $1000, my lawyer actually was $750, will charge you to switch to file all the necessary paperwork to file an S-Corp. Filing an S-Corp isn't a big deal. It's very easy, articles of incorporation are simple to write. They are fairly boiler plate for most lawyers who are familiar with doing that and they'll do it for you fairly quickly. So get a lawyer, a competent one who knows how to file S-Corp in your local jurisdiction, and you'll be all set. It's really very simple.

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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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