Respect the work
Jan. 4th, 2010 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
batskeetsI'm sure I'm preaching to the choir posting this here, but it bears repeating:
Dear clients, respect the photographers!
Stop seeing a picture as a bunch of pixels on a disk or as a group of ink droplets on a piece of paper. A picture = vision + experience + knowledge + creativity + equipment + talent. That is what you pay us for.
We don't mind working lots of hours a week, because we love what we do. But please understand that working 60 hours doesn’t equal 60 times our hourly fee. Most of our time goes to administration, marketing, meeting you and other unpaid tasks.
Also please stop thinking that what you pay us equals what we put in our pockets. We have to invest huge amounts of money in up-to-date equipment and backup equipment to make sure we can make pictures for you. We also need a car to get to you, we need a studio to welcome you, we need electricity, water, gas,.... We hope you are able to set some money aside to enjoy life after you stopped working and have insurances and health care in case something goes wrong. We are sure you understand that we want to provide ourselves and our families the same security. And then there’s the huge amount of money most of us invest in our society by paying our taxes.
(excerpted from here)
I remember just starting out as a photographer, and thinking that the rates we were talking about charging sounded *really* expensive. But, like he says above, so much more time and energy goes into a photo than what the client sees during the session. Planning, organizing, scheduling, having meetings, gathering resources, and of course, proofing, post-processing, album layout... it's a lot of work, and I don't think the average layperson recognizes that.
But yeah, I'm sure you guys know that, at least. Just saying it anyway. :)
Dear clients, respect the photographers!
Stop seeing a picture as a bunch of pixels on a disk or as a group of ink droplets on a piece of paper. A picture = vision + experience + knowledge + creativity + equipment + talent. That is what you pay us for.
We don't mind working lots of hours a week, because we love what we do. But please understand that working 60 hours doesn’t equal 60 times our hourly fee. Most of our time goes to administration, marketing, meeting you and other unpaid tasks.
Also please stop thinking that what you pay us equals what we put in our pockets. We have to invest huge amounts of money in up-to-date equipment and backup equipment to make sure we can make pictures for you. We also need a car to get to you, we need a studio to welcome you, we need electricity, water, gas,.... We hope you are able to set some money aside to enjoy life after you stopped working and have insurances and health care in case something goes wrong. We are sure you understand that we want to provide ourselves and our families the same security. And then there’s the huge amount of money most of us invest in our society by paying our taxes.
(excerpted from here)
I remember just starting out as a photographer, and thinking that the rates we were talking about charging sounded *really* expensive. But, like he says above, so much more time and energy goes into a photo than what the client sees during the session. Planning, organizing, scheduling, having meetings, gathering resources, and of course, proofing, post-processing, album layout... it's a lot of work, and I don't think the average layperson recognizes that.
But yeah, I'm sure you guys know that, at least. Just saying it anyway. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 09:13 pm (UTC)