For the new photographers selling disks of their work for under $100*

* The $100 is just an example. I cannot tell you what a good price is, but the bulk of what I see out there is under $100.

“OMG, it’s another ‘everything on a disk for $50’ newbie!”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard those words. So may times that I turn off my auditory receptors and don’t engage in the outraged conversation that is guaranteed to follow.

Right now, my rule is to ignore the newbie drama and do my own thing. I can’t change what’s going on out there, it doesn’t do me any good to sit around and bitch and moan about it, so why bother? I don’t need the aggravation or stress, so I decline to have “bash the newbie” conversations.

But, as a teacher and mentor, I do have the obligation to try and make some kind of dent in this kind of business practice thinking, so here goes:

It’s great. Photography is, I mean. It’s great having a cool digital camera that offers instant results. It’s great that you’re making money doing something that is just downright fun. It’s great that all of your friends and family want you to take their pictures and the response you get when you post them on Facebook is great as well.

I’m not going to knock that, you are absolutely 100% correct. It IS great. I’m not here to talk about any of the above, I’m going to talk about pricing. I don’t even care what skill level you are at, this is advice for EVERYone that makes money from photography. More specifically, it’s for anyone that sells disks of images or is thinking about doing so.

Selling images on disks is not wrong, so you’re not going to get a lecture about that. In this day and age, some clients want disks and if those clients are who you want to make happy, then you will sell them disks. It’s as simple as that.

What the issue is – is the PRICE that you sell those disks at.

Now, you may be thinking that you took 2 hours to shoot the session and then you bought some disks, so for 2 hours of your time and the cost of a disk, which is less than $1, you have just made a pretty good pile of money.

I’m going to use my own way of doing things here as an example, so it might not be quite like  you do things, but it is a REAL example.

I recently shot a very small wedding for clients that only wished to have a disk. It was a last-minute affair that was planned in less than a week and they were scrambling for a photographer. it was on a Sunday, a day that I don’t book anything, so I was free and I thought “why not?” Since this was a new way of doing things for me, I kept close track of my time and expenses involved in this event.

The time spent for this was 15 hours:

  • 1 hour: phone calls & emails with bride, contract prep
  • 1 hour: meeting with bride and groom to go over details and sign contract
  • 1 hour: clean lenses and camera sensors, pack gear
  • 2 hours: driving to and from wedding venue
  • 3 hours: shooting wedding
  • 5 hours: downloading images, culling down to the best 200 images, straightening, brightening, tweaking 200 images, posting several sneak peeks on Facebook, converting final images to jpg, uploading to an online gallery
  • 2 hours: prepping invoices, burning disks, prepping print release forms, packaging disks and meeting with bride for pickup.

Suddenly that 3 hour wedding shoot looks a little more involved, doesn’t it?

The process for a portrait session is similarly involved, although the hours would be cut down to about 10 hours due to sessions only being 1.5 hours and no travel is involved since I shoot in my own studio that is attached to my house.

So, for me to see a photographer offering a session on disk for $35 or $50 or $75…. and then mentally dividing that by the 10 hours that I KNOW is involved with this process…I shake my head because they are making less than minimum wage.

I’m not even going to talk about all of the overhead, insurance, equipment expenses etc that go into maintaining a business that aren’t included in this, because I already know – if you’re not paying yourself what you’re worth, which is a sound business practice, you certainly aren’t considering your other business expenses. So, rather than have you tune me out to a “blah, blah blah” I’ll just focus on what you are paying yourself. For now.

So, back to the numbers. A 10 hour job, with everything on disk for $35. Seriously? You are only deeming yourself worth $3.40 an hour? (I’ve deducted $1 for the cost of the disk). Oh please, please, please start valuing yourself, your time and your work more.

The big argument I hear is that “I’m new, I’m not worth as much.” That may be true. I know that’s how I felt when I started out. But think of this – at a “real” job, you go through a training period. A time where you’re “new” and have no clue what you’re doing and everyone around you is trying to help you learn. Did your employer start you off at less than half of minimum wage because you don’t know anything? No, they didn’t. They started you off at a competitive, fair wage. Because you were worth it, learning or not. Maybe later, when you got really good, they gave you a raise, but they never undervalued your time and offered you less than you were worth.

You are your boss and what you are doing is saying “I’m not worth a fair price.”

You are also telling your clients “I am ridiculously cheap.”

Sure, your clients are happy as clams. They paid you $35 and can take the disk to a self-serve kiosk and get an 8×10 for $1.78. They’re overjoyed at how much money they just saved. They’re also thinking you’re just a little bit stupid.

And that’s where the problem starts. After awhile of thinking that you’re a little bit stupid, they begin to look around and see that there are tons of (new) photographers offering the same service at the same price. And instead of it being stupid, it becomes the norm. They EXPECT that price at every single photography studio. And suddenly I have an outraged potential client standing in my studio throwing a tantrum because I charge way more than $35 for just ONE digital file.

You are making things hard on yourself and hard on me. Suddenly, I don’t want to have anything to do with the new community of photographers in my area because all they are doing is making it hard for me to do business. Yes, I’m excellent at what I do. I’m not bragging. I’ve worked hard and attained a high degree of success. My work is award-winning and sometimes downright stellar. I can charge more. I deserve more. I also have figured in my business expenses and overhead, so when my clients hear that it’s going to cost them a minimum of $250 just to walk through my door, they’re outraged. They throw my $35 disk competitors in my face and storm out.

*sigh* It really doesn’t have to be this way.

Yes, the clients that are angry obviously do not consider the fact that I’m a higher quality photographer than the new photographers and deserve more, they just know that the $35 disk has become the standard. Because of this, even the ones that admit that I am better and worth more, think that paying 3 times more is not reasonable. Yes, this new standard has made it difficult to charge more than $100 for a disk.

So please, reconsider what you are doing and what you are charging. You’re lowering the expectations of clients across the board and making it difficult on the photographic community as a whole.

Why Print Competition?

“Lonesome Soul” 2010 PPA Loan Collection by Christine Walsh-Newton

It’s that time of year, again. The PPA International Print Competition (IPC) is August 12-15. By now, all entries have been submitted by photographers throughout the world and the PPA headquarters in Atlanta, GA has hundreds of print cases being unpacked and readied for the judging. Hundreds of photographers like myself are just a little bit nervous and are trying to put the fate of their images out if their minds while we wait for the next few weeks to crawl by until the results are posted.

And the rest of you are shaking your heads, wondering what all the fuss is about.

The IPC is a culmination of the last year’s work. Most photographers have been entering local, state and district competitions and this is the final step in judging. Some brave souls have skipped all of the preliminary steps and are only submitting images to IPC. They’re braver than I.

Although we may have different methods of madness, the process is still the same. We’ve honed our techniques, both in capturing the image and in post-processing it until we are left with the best image possible.

The print competition process involves, scores, merits and degrees. But that is not all. And that’s really not the most important part. The important part of the process is that we learn, continuously. And when you learn continuously, you improve continuously. And in our industry, improvement is good.

Competition is sometimes a confusing process. In the beginning, I was overwhelmed with all of the rules, criteria and details involved in working on my images. It can be confusing. And it can seem like more trouble than it’s worth.

I don’t think that there’s anything I can say to convince you that competition is good for you – the real convincing argument would be for you to observe a judging. I highly encourage everyone to attend a judging on a state or district level before you decide against competition. At the very least, you will have an exceptional several hours of education by watching the judges score and critique several hundred images.

The next step would be to enter. Once. Just make a commitment to do it. Just once. I swear you will be hooked. Or maybe not.

I know I was hooked. I am totally and utterly head over heels in love with competition. Competition has made me a MUCH better photographer. Every year that I compete, my work reaches new levels of technical excellence because I constantly push myself to refine my skills, both in the studio and on the computer, and in doing that I’ve looked at my images way more objectively than I ever have in order to eliminate anything that might make it less than a stellar image. It’s an improvement process and a learning experience. It’s not about the merits, scores and degrees (although they’re great reinforcement) – it’s about improving what I’m doing.

I’m not all that and a bag of chips, but if you look at my work from 2009 (my first year in business before I competed) and compare it to my current work, you would not believe it was from the same photographer.

Challenge yourself to excel. You won’t be sorry.

For more information about the PPA print competition process, please go to http://www.ppa.com/competitions/

Wootness, Explained. Again.

Warning: F BOMB contained within…

It seems that there are some folks out there who think that Wootness is a site dedicated to education and nicey-nice, with a side dish of unicorns and rainbows.

I’m not in the business of making fun of photographs or individuals like some other websites, but you should take a clear and distinctive clue from the title “The BIG Girls’ and Boys’ Guide to Starting a Photography Business.” There is a specific section called “Big Girl Panties Advice” and I say in the “About Wootness” section that I’m not going to hold your hand and more than likely I will kick you in the ass.

I have been very open about my brand of humor and writing, but apparently, a lot of people have ignored these descriptive indicators and have chosen, nay INSISTED, on putting their own beliefs and expectations onto me and this site.

I recently had to delete the comments from someone and ban them from this site because they took issue with a humorous article (You are NOT the hired photographer – part 1) and failed to comprehend that there was indeed, a part 2 of the article that should have been read and digested prior to flying off the handle and telling me to shut the fuck up.

That’s just bullshit and I don’t have time for it.

This is NOT an informational or educational site. Primarily. Yes, you will learn something (sometimes it’s what NOT to do) and occasionally I will write a serious article, but more often than not, you will find humor. Silly, sarcastic or biting – it’s all meant to be funny. Yes, I might poke fun at something you are guilty of, but I’m not poking fun at YOU. How do you think I know about these things? Perhaps it’s because I, myself have been guilty of them as well, and now that I know better, I can joke about it.

Hello? Did you get that? I was a newbie once, too. I didn’t come out of my mother’s vagina with a D3X in one hand and a degree in photography in the other. I learned the same as everyone else. The hard way. And now I can laugh about it.

You will NOT find camera technical articles here. Nope. Not one. Why? Because I already co-authored a book on photography (see right sidebar) and am under contract to not disseminate that material in any other form. I spent 6 months writing the technical section of that book and there is no other way for me to write those things, if I was so inclined. I’m not. I’m tired of writing technical stuff and I’m not willing to face down the lawyers of a publishing house, so I avoid writing technical topics altogether. Just be really thankful that I do not push my book off on all of you and try to sell it every chance I get. The link is off to the side if you are so inclined to purchase it. It matters little to me whether you purchase it or not, I do  not receive royalties, I was paid to do the writing. I do think it’s a good book and if you can’t afford it and you live local, I’ll lend you my copy.

This site is my creative outlet when I’m not behind the camera. I have a sharp and dry sense of humor and I like to write. I do not sell anything here, I do not charge to see anything here and have given away many templates and other digital creations when I have the inclination to do so. I do not sell advertising and I am not compensated for any reviews I do.

In real life, I’m nice, I’m friendly and I’m not confrontational. I’m professional as heck in my business dealings with others when it comes to my photography business. But, Wootness is separate from that and I have fun with it more than anything else. I’m not making fun of newbies – in fact – I gave up paying attention to them ages ago, so if you’re a newbie and you’re prepped for battle with me, you’re going to be disappointed.

So – I hope we’ve come to a better understanding of what Wootness is all about. And what it’s NOT about. If you’d like to hang out and have a laugh or two, that would be cool.

Peace, Love & Brownies,

Christine