Learning the business
My successes have been few and far between, but then I have not had a great deal of time to work on the business of getting photography business.
I managed to have two of my photographs take 3rd and 4th place in a contest that won me two laptops, enabling me to give a laptop to my nephew when he needed one, and keep one that I use daily.
I also landed a job creating a pamphlet for a nursing home. Now that was a learning experience. Originally I was only going to take the pictures, which would have suited me fine.. but then the customer wanted me to design a logo, then to do the graphics and layouts.. and from there it escalated to my doing all the leg work with the printer (who in turn farmed out the job creating delays in the finish date that did not go over big with the client.) Then they wanted portraits of the department heads to hang on the wall.. the list kept growing but so did their requirements.
I now wish I had not taken on more than the photography although I did manage to pull off some decent graphics but the layout was more of a struggle than I care to go through again. I learned to negotiate the printing price before divulging the clients name as they flat out told me they would have raised the price if I had told them who my client was. (seems they had previous contact and knew this customer was almost impossible to please.)
After they finally signed off on the layout and design, I had to wait on payment as I was not about to foot the printing bill without being paid up front. (seems some of their other "vendors" had some difficulty being paid which I learned during the process of designing and redesigning things.)
I also won't give the deep discounts I did for this one again. I know what my work is worth more now than I did at the beginning of this job. I also will give specific number of hours or photos that I will do for a set price.
I hope to get back to the actual photography tips rather than the business end of things, but wanted to share with you that you need to be very clear upfront about how much you will be doing for the price you quote and keep in mind you don't know the track record of the folks who hire you, so make sure you don't expend funds before you get a check and it clears.
I managed to have two of my photographs take 3rd and 4th place in a contest that won me two laptops, enabling me to give a laptop to my nephew when he needed one, and keep one that I use daily.
I also landed a job creating a pamphlet for a nursing home. Now that was a learning experience. Originally I was only going to take the pictures, which would have suited me fine.. but then the customer wanted me to design a logo, then to do the graphics and layouts.. and from there it escalated to my doing all the leg work with the printer (who in turn farmed out the job creating delays in the finish date that did not go over big with the client.) Then they wanted portraits of the department heads to hang on the wall.. the list kept growing but so did their requirements.
I now wish I had not taken on more than the photography although I did manage to pull off some decent graphics but the layout was more of a struggle than I care to go through again. I learned to negotiate the printing price before divulging the clients name as they flat out told me they would have raised the price if I had told them who my client was. (seems they had previous contact and knew this customer was almost impossible to please.)
After they finally signed off on the layout and design, I had to wait on payment as I was not about to foot the printing bill without being paid up front. (seems some of their other "vendors" had some difficulty being paid which I learned during the process of designing and redesigning things.)
I also won't give the deep discounts I did for this one again. I know what my work is worth more now than I did at the beginning of this job. I also will give specific number of hours or photos that I will do for a set price.
I hope to get back to the actual photography tips rather than the business end of things, but wanted to share with you that you need to be very clear upfront about how much you will be doing for the price you quote and keep in mind you don't know the track record of the folks who hire you, so make sure you don't expend funds before you get a check and it clears.
posted by Silvatungfox at 1:14 AM
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