…namely, my new online store, learning.photography, which is now fully operational:

To celebrate this, I am giving my faithful readers here a very special discount code for a week: 15% off. On the last checkout screen, enter discount code newstore and you get 15% off. Only until 7 May, and only for faithful readers and followers!

Check out the store. Books, training and seminars; photo shoots, photos: an expanding range of services and products. Tell me what you think.

I get asked regularly to work “for credit” because the magazine or publication or event is “unable” to pay for photographers.

This image of Peter Appleyard, a large jazz festival wanted it. Large meaning hundreds of thousands of dollars in budget. Tickets cost $100 each. Supported by all levels of government. But when I asked for compensation, they said “oh no, we are unable to pay for photography”.. and they did not use it.

Here, that image again, this time stolen by a site called All About Jazz (click on the image to see it there):

Two things. First, “credit” has never led to any work by anyone for anyone. It’s nice to add to your portfolio, and I would not mind having a Guardian, NYT, or NatGeo byline, but it never actually leads to money.

And money is what I need to eat, and to learn, and to buy tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, and for gas to put in the car to get to shoots, and to buy memory cards, and to buy a new hard drive every few months, and to buy computers, and… you get it.

A post that puts it very well, so I do not have to repeat it, is here:

So This Just Happened

You should probably read that the next time you want to use a “free” photographer.

I am wrapping up my 13-week winter “The Small Photography Business” course tonight, at Sheridan college. And one subject we discuss in this course at length is production and pricing of images, books, prints, and so on. For all purposes, weddings, graduations, events, fashion portfolios, etc.

But.

Modern people, like the young woman above, do not do what older people did. Each generation finds this out, to their consternation.

As an example, I love to make beautiful albums, like the ones I produce at artisanstate.com. Beautiful, metallic paper, hard pages, covered to make them invulnerable to spills and fingerprints, that fold fully flat, hand-bound: super stuff for little money.

But one young person, when shown this type of album, just told me “I hate that. It’s like a small kid’s picture book. Quality doesn’t matter, how many people will look at it anyway. I’d rather have more pictures and lower cost”. She would rather have a crappy book with horrible pixelated pictures, printed on the equivalent of toilet paper, because it’s more modern, cheaper, and less like what grandma had.

And the cost of an album is considerable. An album may only cost me $300 to buy, but by the time my time is included, which can be a day or two, it’s going to be $800-$1200. Which is good value, in my opinion. But I am not the market!

Kodak made the mistake of thinking they could dictate what the market should want. No, best not to make that mistake. Please do not undersell yourself, but also please do not engage in wishful thinking regarding market desires.

Makers of albums and wristwatches, watch out.

For those of you who want to one day, or who already today, run photography as a business: today I have a few notes about running a photography business and about learning new tricks.

You always go on learning, of course. When you no longer learn, I advise you retire and watch geraniums grow, or something. So today I attended a very good workshop by Donna Papacosta, a communications expert, on Social Media. Such fun to be attending, not teaching, a seminar!

The photo: 24mm, 1/60th, f/4, 400 ISO). I focused one third of the way into the picture: I wanted Donna to be sharp – the foreground people server as a frame. I started at the famous “Willems 400-40-4” position (400 ISO, 1/40th sec, f/4) for indoors mixed flash, but since the room was bright, I had to go to 1/60th. The flash was bounced up behind me, but of course much of the light was ambient. As those of you who have my books know, balancing ambient and flash is the key to good flash photography. (Note: Special offer of $59 for all four books, a $20 discount, is still open).

Anyway – the course was great and I have a much better understanding of the role of social media in general, and twitter etc in particular. As you should too: it’s very important that you use Facebook, LinkedIn, your blog, Twitter, Pinterest, and more in a way that benefits your business. Photographers spend much time not shooting, but running their business. Social media are a great opportunity to get closer to your clients and to maximize the time you spend shooting.

Also on the business note, my “The Small Photography Business” course just started at Sheridan College. One of my slides from Monday’s session:

Meaning:

• Make sure you have the needed requirements, or are willing to work to that goal (e.g. you do not yet have to be a great shooter, but you must be willing to learn).
• Then look at the market and design an offering – one that actually makes you money.
• Then set up the business… and execute.
• And by having goals and regularly measuring performance against these, see how you do, and make changes when and where needed.

Of course this slide is a roadmap: the rest of the course is about making those squares and circles real; i.e. actually executing them. Slides are all very well, but as in all my courses, it’s about the detail rather then the abstractions, and above all, it is about actually doing it.

One “doing” is the web. I just did a web site review for a photographer friend. I looked in detail at her web site, and with my son the engineer also looked at the technical issues and possibilities for improvement, Result, a 25-page detailed document that she will use to materially improve her site. All done in just a few hours. Yes, that too is a service I offer. And whether you buy this service from me or from someone else: do it, and make sure your web presence actually helps your business, works well with all browsers, has no silly errors, is clear to your customers, and meets their needs.

Now off to do some tweeting.