The group shot is no one’s favorite photo to take.

I’m sure we’ve all been at the big family event where someone hands you a point-and-shoot camera and says, “You’re a pro photographer — take everyone’s picture!”

If you’re particularly unlucky, it’s an important, once-in-a-lifetime gathering and none of your subjects will ever be in the same room again.

The pressure’s on.

Nervous … fumbling with an unfamiliar point-and-shoot … now here it comes — flop sweat.

Train Wreck Potential

There is legitimate reason for your trepidation.

Any group shot has the potential of becoming a train wreck — an out-of-control portrait where the photographer is reduced to a button-pusher and the result is a listless mugshot with a whole bunch of mugs in it.

But when the photo is an assignment (rather than an impromptu request), you at least have the opportunity to prepare for what might go wrong in advance.

Council members of the city of Grand Terrace, Calif. The picture was made between agenda items while the council was in session.

Here are five tips for making better group photos:

1. Take control.

As photographers, we do our best work when we are orchestrating, cajoling, schmoozing and generally making people do our bidding in our pictures. The same is true for group photos.

You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you walk into a room to take a picture and you are told what to do — and even where to stand — by someone “organizing” things. Chances are, they’ll already have everyone packed together like sardines in front of what the client describes as the “perfect background.”

Take control in advance of the shoot by laying out expectations for the client, including what subjects should wear and any other particulars. Then, show up and set up early.

2. Bring an assistant.

With group photos, particularly of larger groups, there is often too much for one person to keep track of. Looking out for disheveled hair, unbuttoned flies, mismatched accessories, and distracting expressions becomes difficult if not impossible. Having an extra set of eyes in the form of an assistant makes the assignment much more manageable.

An assistant also can help watch your gear and make sure no one trips over those long extension cords you’re hauling around.


3. Bring out the big guns for lighting.

With large groups, unless you plan to shoot the picture in bright sunlight at high noon (with everyone squinting), you won’t have the depth-of-field to keep everyone in focus. That means you’ll need to light.

Expect to keep your Speedlights at home and break out the big guns or studio strobes, because only the big guns will have the necessary power to provide even coverage for all the subjects.

Of course, using flash introduces another little problem: you can generally expect someone’s eyes to be closed at the most inopportune time. So beware.

4. Be mindful of backgrounds.

Groups of people can occupy lots of space, so what’s in the background — an ugly wall, a distracting mural, etc. — becomes harder to ignore as the size of the group expands. Whenever possible, decide on an appropriate background in advance of the shoot, and have furniture rearranged or any other changes made before people arrive.

5. Prepare for the elements.

If you’re shooting outdoors, the scariest sound you might ever hear is a sudden gust of wind taking down your light and stand with a loud crash. Have an assistant stand by your light stand in the event your sandbags aren’t doing their job; this will keep the elements from sending your umbrella and lights into the next county.

The key to all five of these tips is good preparation, which has another, intangible benefit for group photo shoots.

How you cope with all the obstacles you encounter, and the confidence you project on assignment, makes all the difference in whether your group listens attentively and follows instructions — or turns your shoot into a train wreck.

(The following is excerpted from the new book The Successful Wedding Photographer, by the editors of Photopreneur.)

When viral campaigns work, they can be extremely powerful — but they don’t work all the time. Even professional marketers can struggle to get a viral campaign off the ground, and they often work best when you least expect them to.

In 2009, Pollenizer, a Web promotion firm, was asked to create a viral campaign for Photo Art Gallery, a new photo-sharing site.

The site had created a video that aimed to show — in an amusing way — the lengths to which photographers will go to capture a great picture. The video showed a photographer repeatedly falling out of a tree as he attempts to photograph a colorful bird.

Pollenizer, in a deliberate attempt to make the video viral and help the new site to grow, tried to use that video to encourage the site’s users to contribute clips of their own, some of which they would try to push virally as well.

No Guarantees

Pollenizer created a page on their client’s site that asked six questions and invited members to pick up their video cameras to create an answer. They ended up with about 10 videos, most of them contributed by the site’s employees.

Those videos went up on a YouTube channel, were linked to on websites and promoted through social media. After about six hours, they had still only picked up about 100 views.

If you’ve never heard of Photo Art Gallery, that’s a pretty good sign that that particular campaign didn’t work.

As Mike Liubinskas, a founding partner of Pollenizer, wrote on his blog about the viral photography campaign, there is a difference between viral promotion — in which a company tries deliberately to provoke people to talk about it — and intrinsic virality, which requires more than one person to participate.

Unpredictable Power

The most famous example of viral power in relation to a wedding wasn’t photographic. It also wasn’t deliberately promotional, but it did have a strong effect on one person’s career, leading to a burst of valuable extra sales.

When Jill Peterson’s father uploaded to YouTube a video of his daughter’s wedding on June 20, 2009, in St. Paul, Minnesota, he had no idea how far the clip would spread. He just wanted relatives who couldn’t make the wedding to see what had happened.

The “JK Wedding Entrance” showed the ushers closing the church door before Chris Brown’s “Forever” begins to play. The ushers, groomsmen and bridesmaids then dance down the aisle, followed by the groom, Kevin Heinz, who tumbles through the group. Finally, the bride dances down the aisle to join the groom.

Within 48 hours, the video had picked up more than 3.5 million views. In less than a year, that figure had risen to 45 million views and the dance had been copied by the U.S. TV show “The Office” as well as dancing shows from Australia to the Netherlands.

Helpfully for Chris Brown, the video also pushed sales of his song to No. 4 on iTunes and No. 3 on Amazon.

Worst or Best?

In theory, then, viral content linked closely to a wedding photographer could have a similar effect on business, spreading the photographer’s name widely and making him or her well-known enough to find new bookings easily.

Certainly, there’s no shortage of suggestions. Mat Siltala of 97th Floor, an Internet marketing firm, points out that photographers often take plenty of amusing pictures at weddings that aren’t as romantic as the couple would have liked.

The photos might show the groom receiving a face full of cake, the best man trying to hit on the maid of honor or children doing the kind of cute and irritating things that children do at weddings. If the picture is entertaining enough, people will pass it along to friends.

But your clients might not take kindly to a wedding photographer who’s ready to capture (and spread) the worst moments of their day as well as the best. Potential clients may also end up wondering whether the outtakes from their wedding would end up littering the world’s email boxes as well.

So while using your worst or funniest wedding photos might seem like the most obvious virus bait, a better option might be to disseminate your best photos. The trick is that they still must be interesting enough to share.

Take a look at the most shared wedding-related photos on Digg, for example, and you’ll find not only many bad or embarrassing images, but also an assortment of wedding photographs that went viral because they are impressive, creative and fun.

Take incredible pictures, send them to friends and relatives, post them on social networking sites — and chances are, they’ll be shared. Worst case scenario? Only a few people will see your best work, rather than the thousands you might hope for.

And who knows? Those photos you’re most proud of just might go viral, too.

(The following is excerpted from the new book The Successful Wedding Photographer, by the editors of Photopreneur.)

Julie Kim has been voted one of the best wedding photographers working in the U.K. She earns over £2,500 for a full day’s shoot, including album and files, and covers about 30 weddings a year. And she’s only been shooting professionally since 2006.

In building her business, Kim has had success with Facebook ads as well as with referrals from past clients. But her biggest source of referrals might surprise you.

It’s other photographers.

Colleagues, Not Competitors

In 2008, Kim made a conscious decision to contact other photographers and begin networking within the industry. Instead of looking at other photographers as competitors, she started to see them as friends, colleagues and sources of information about technique and business strategies.

The “referral networks” she forged as a result now generate the “bulk of my bookings,” Kim says.

That other photographers can be sources of referrals might come as a surprise to wedding photographers more used to seeing other professionals as competitors. But a photographer who works alone might only take 20 or 30 weddings a year and receive many more inquiries than that each year.

They might also receive those inquiries at inconvenient times, with potential clients hoping to book the same photographer for the same date.

That’s an opportunity for smart photographers to become sociable, to get to know other wedding photographers in their area — and their work — and to create a professional network in which support is provided and excess work is shared.

Building Your Network

Like any form of social interaction, making first contact with a photographer you don’t know might be a little tricky — especially for shy photographers more comfortable shooting parties than attending them. But a quick email that contains three kinds of information should be enough to begin forging a relationship:

• a note saying you admire their work;
• a question about technique;
• and a mention that you’re looking for a way to help your leads when your schedule is full.

All of those things help to pull the photographer toward you and persuade him or her to write back. Other photographers will appreciate someone telling them that they admire their photography — as you would — and genuine respect is a foundation of any kind of relationship.

Asking them about technique gives the photographer an opportunity to talk more about their work, something most photographers enjoy doing and rarely get the chance to do — at least unless they’re in the company of other photographers.

And saying that you’re looking for a place to send your overflow makes your approach a valuable offer with no obligations but plenty of possible rewards. It also makes it very likely that the person you’re contacting will reciprocate, opening up a series of potential channels to good quality clients.

The Real World

This kind of individual contact was how Julie Kim began building her network.

Kim didn’t settle for email and Internet communication, however; she also meets members of her network in person for chats and coffee.

Online contact is a good first step, but real relationships need to be built in the real world. They can make you part of a community of photographers that is rich in support, information — and referrals.

tomorrow: going viral

(The following is excerpted from the new book The Successful Wedding Photographer, by the editors of Photopreneur.)

Whenever a former client discusses your work and passes your name onto a friend, she’s doing you a huge favor. It’s the kind of favor that puts money in the bank and provides the foundation of a successful wedding photography business.

But that’s not why she does it.

Clients recommend photographers because they want to do their friends a favor.

Finding the right photographer for a wedding isn’t easy. Competition is tight, portfolios can start to look similar, and a 20-minute consultation can only tell the wedding couple so much about a photographer’s personality and the way they’re likely to behave on the big day.

If a friend says they’ve used a photographer who produced great pictures, that’s one difficult task that can be crossed off the wedding planning to-do list.

Which raises an important marketing question: Since the desire to help a friend is usually the biggest referral incentive for your satisfied clients, is it useful for you to provide additional incentives in an attempt to generate additional referrals?

And if so, should these incentives include cash payments?

The Cash Incentive

Magic Eye Photography, a U.K. family photography business, chooses to reward its referrers in cash, giving them a 10 percent commission on the value of the order they bring in. The new clients just need to mention their referrer’s name and, interestingly, they have to come within four weeks of the referrer receiving their own order.

The Bauer Gallery, which calls itself a “photography & fine art company” in Dallas, does something similar. The company has a page on its website entitled “Cash Back for those New Couple Bills.” The page promises to “lessen the overall financial burden of the whole wedding experience with The Bauer Gallery’s cash back program.”

The deal is this: refer a friend to The Bauer Gallery and the studio will pay the referrer $100 in cash. It will then pay $50 for each additional referral. The gallery even goes so far as claiming that the value of the commissions could cover the cost of the referrer’s own wedding photography:

Is there a limit to how many referrals you can give? No! Refer enough people and your wedding photography could be FREE!

It’s true that The Bauer Gallery’s wedding packages begin at just $1,099, but at $50 a referral, the company’s former clients would still need to do a lot of referring to generate enough commissions to cover their own wedding photography.

Missing the Point

While offering a cash-back reward to former clients is certainly the easiest way to incentivize referrals, it misses the point. Clients almost always make referrals — particularly in the case of wedding photography — to help their friends, not out of self-interest.

That’s why non-cash rewards, or even rewards that go to the client’s friends rather than the referring client, can be more effective. Incentives presented as gifts rather than payments help maintain the real connection that made the client want to refer you in the first place.

Peter Yamasaki, a portrait photographer in Orange County, California, offers referring clients two different kinds of rewards.

First, the new client receives a discount on their initial sitting fee. And second, the client who provided the referral receives a credit toward a complimentary 5 x 7 print. They can either cash in that credit immediately or they can hold out, wait for a second referral and receive an 8 x 10 print. Four credits are worth an 11 x 14 print, and five credits win the referral an entire photo session for free.

While Yamasaki’s rewards might work well for a portrait studio, they wouldn’t be sufficient for a wedding photographer. The idea of creating bonuses that can be held in reserve and grown in order to receive bigger bonuses is useful, however. It’s the same principle that guides the use of air miles: the greater the loyalty, the greater the rewards.

So a wedding photographer who wanted to reward a client for providing a referral could offer a sliding scale of incentives that started with a DVD of images, perhaps, but which grew into a website, an album or even a free maternity shoot, if appropriate.

Whatever rewards you choose, by inviting your former clients to put off claiming them, you keep your business fresh in their minds and give them a reason to continue recommending your services.

Matching the Referrer’s Motivation

But while Yamasaki’s rewards to referring clients are smart, his decision to provide a discount to the new client is even smarter.

It’s a smarter form of reward because it matches the reason that former clients tell their friends about photographers — not because they’re hoping for a prize, but because they want to help their friend by providing them with a photographer they can trust.

By offering referred clients a substantial discount on your services, you are helping your formers clients help their friends even more. According to one study, around 40 percent of couples overspend their wedding budgets, sometimes even doubling the amount that they’d planned to spend. Anything that can help relieve some of that budgetary pressure is going to be welcomed.

For the former client, a recommendation of your services could be a wedding gift worth several hundred dollars — and one they didn’t even have to pay for. That’s the kind of incentive that makes everyone happy.

Tomorrow: earning referrals from your competitors

In this installment of “Ask the Photo Business Coach,” I tackle a controversy that has been raging on Black Star Rising since John Harrington’s post, “12 Excuses for Shooting Photos for Free — and Why They’re Bogus,” last week. The question is: “Should I work for free, and if so, when?”

Stock image producers often have two misconceptions about subscription licensing services: They believe (1) that subscription licensing is simple, and (2) that for a very low monthly fee customers are allowed to use any image for any purpose. Neither statement is true.

There are major variations among the subscription offerings of various companies. This can be demonstrated by comparing, for example, Shutterstock to the new Britannica Image Explorer.

Unquestionably, more images are currently downloaded from Shutterstock than any other subscription service. The company recently reported that its customers had downloaded over 125 million images since 2003; between 30 and 35 million of those were likely downloaded in 2009.

Shutterstock: Not So Simple

At first glance, Shutterstock pricing seems simple. For the right to download 25 images per day, the customer is given the options of paying $249 for one month, $709 for three months, $1,349 for six months or $2,559 for a year. If customers really downloaded 750 images a month, they would get the images for pennies, but almost no one consistently downloads the maximum number.

If a customer only wants a few images per year, there is an option of five downloads for $49 or 25 downloads for $229. Small file sizes for use on the Web are available through another set of subscription packages; 12 downloads during the span of a year for $49 or 60 downloads for $229.

Yet these are not the prices for everyone. The customer has to make some decisions about image uses, reminiscent of rights-managed licensing.

Wait — aren’t these royalty-free images, meaning buyers can use them any way they want? Not exactly.

Customers who purchase traditionally priced royalty-free images online or on CDs have much more flexibility in how they can legally use them than is the case with single or subscription-based microstock images.

It is not possible to summarize all of the typical microstock use restrictions. It takes Shutterstock more than 4,100 words in its license agreement to explain to customers what they are, and are not, allowed to do with the images licensed through the Web site.

The 250,000 Impression Limit

In general, customers can use the images in most of the ways people use images, so long as there are fewer than 250,000 impressions. But that varies depending on the type of use, so it is important to check the language for each specific use.

Easily understandable are 250,000 brochures, pamphlets or catalogs, but images cannot be used on a package if the manufacturing run is likely to be more than 250,000. It cannot be incorporated into a film, video or multimedia presentation if the audience is ever likely to exceed 250,000 — does anyone know when they are producing such a product?

Images can only be used in eBooks, “including multi-seat license electronic textbooks, provided that the number of potential seat licenses or end users is fewer than two hundred fifty thousand (250,000) in the aggregate.” Every category of use has different limitations.

There is, however, a way to get around the 250,000 restriction, and many of the other limitations. The customer can purchase an enhanced subscription (some companies call it an extended license).

If you only need two images per year where the use would not be covered under a standard license, you can get those for $199; five images will cost $499 and 25 images — $1,699. These prices are quite close to what is being charged for many rights-managed uses today.

It also important to remember the image creator’s percentage through Shutterstock is based on the gross fee paid by the buyer rather than a much lower “net” fee after several sub-agent percentages are removed as is the case with many rights-managed and traditional royalty-free sales today.

Not too long ago the limitation level for many microstock companies was 500,000 impressions. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future this standard license limit will come down to 100,000 impressions. The whole idea is to find some way to charge larger, more commercial and professional users more money than consumers to use images.

Brittanica Image Explorer: A Different Model

In contrast, Britannica Image Explorer is a very different type of subscription offering. One of the most important distinctions is that it is focused on a very narrow and specific market segment — education — rather than trying to service all types of users.

By narrowly defining its market, Britannica can offer a product that is better tailored to that market’s needs. A key distinction is that the only file size they offer is low-resolution (150 dpi), because that’s all the market needs. This eliminates the risk of the photos being used for commercial purposes, which require a larger file.

The images offered through Britannica Image Explorer are normally licensed at rights-managed or traditional royalty-free prices. But since the only file size offered is so small, and only educational consumers are allowed to access the database, very low prices for each individual use are reasonable.

Educational organizations will make one large payment to Britannica for the rights to access the database. This price is based on the number of students or members who will have download rights, and Britannica will track the number of downloads for each image, so the creator can be paid a portion of the gross fee based on the actual number of downloads of his or her images.

The license is also clear. If anyone wants to make any use of an image not specifically allowed in the license, or any type of commercial use, they must go to the image owner and obtain a separate license.

Unlike the situation with Shutterstock, there are two middlemen — Universal Image Group and Britannica — between the creator and the consumer. But even with this extra layer, given the percentages each middleman is taking, it seems likely the creator will earn more per download from a Britannica sale than from a standard Shutterstock license.

In addition, it seems unlikely that these educational consumers will even consider a Shutterstock image given the design of the offering: Shutterstock would be much too pricey.

In sum, the important thing to note is that subscription offerings can be designed in many different ways for different customer groups. Photographers should examine the specifics of each offering and not treat all subscriptions as equal. It also seems likely that other subscription products will be designed for specific market segments and niches in the near future.

In America today, we can say and publish just about anything we want. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and of the press — and by extension, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. But despite the fact that the First Amendment was ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the nearly unlimited freedoms we enjoy today have actually evolved only within the last 100 years.

The First Amendment’s Evolution

The interpretation of the First Amendment’s injunction that “Congress shall make no law….abridging the freedom of speech or of the press….” is the province of the U.S. Supreme Court. Until the beginning of the 20th century, however, the Court was largely mute on the subject.

When the Court finally did begin interpreting the amendment, the cases it ruled on did not involve crusading journalists or courageous editors. Instead, they stemmed from government efforts during wartime to suppress the activities of those it considered radicals and subversives — anarchists, communists, socialists, and immigrants.

The First Amendment’s evolution into a protective umbrella that now tolerates hardly any restrictions on what can be said and what can be printed is a remarkable story — about the Supreme Court’s role in shaping our society, and the role of individual judges in shaping the court.

The Espionage Act

In 1917, the United States entered World War I, and Congress passed the Espionage Act, which made it a federal crime during wartime to interfere with military recruiting, enlistment, or the draft. It also became a crime during wartime to “cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty” in the armed forces.

Anthony Lewis, author of Freedom of the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, says prosecutions under the Espionage Act swept up hundreds of people who criticized the war in speech or in print, deeming them “disloyal.”

Charles Schenck, general secretary of the Socialist Party of America, and his codefendants were found guilty in federal court of violating the Espionage Act by distributing leaflets urging men to resist the draft.

The leaflet condemned the war against Germany as a capitalist crusade being waged on behalf of Wall Street. It urged men called up for conscription to assert their rights and not to be intimidated. The leaflet supported a petition campaign to repeal the draft and also included the text of the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery and involuntary servitude.

The appeal, Schenck v. United States, was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1919. The Court upheld the guilty judgment against the plaintiffs.

Prior Restraint Only?

Until Schenck, the philosophy of the Court had been that the First Amendment’s main protection was against prior restraint. In other words, the government could not censor speech or publication ahead of time, but it could certainly punish the speaker or the publisher afterward.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote the 1907 U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Patterson v. Colorado, upholding the contempt-of-court conviction of an editor, Thomas M. Patterson, for publishing articles and a cartoon critical of the Colorado supreme court.

In Patterson, Holmes refused to read the 14th Amendment as extending First Amendment protection to defendants in state trials; he refused to allow the truth of the articles as a defense; and he wrote that the main purpose of the First Amendment speech and press guarantees was to prevent prior restraint, not to prohibit subsequent prosecution for what was written or spoken.

Writing for the Court in Schenck, however, Holmes left open the possibility that the First Amendment prohibited more than just prior restraint. But he had no trouble finding a justification to punish Schenck and his colleagues for their antidraft leaflets. After all, the United States was at war, and these radicals were trying to interfere with the war effort.

A Clear and Present Danger

The character of every act, Holmes famously wrote, depends upon the circumstances in which it is done: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” Holmes then created a test for First Amendment protection: do the words themselves, and the circumstances under which they are spoken, create “a clear and present danger” of causing “the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent”?

Two other Espionage Act cases decided in 1919 — Frohwerk v. United States and Debs v. United States — yielded basically the same results. Both men were sentenced to harsh prison terms for expressing socialist, antidraft, and antiwar sentiments during wartime.

We Dissent

But near the end of 1919, something remarkable happened. Holmes, joined by Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissented from the decision in Abrams v. United States affirming the conviction, under an amended Espionage Act, of four Russian immigrants. Their crime? Tossing leaflets from a Manhattan rooftop condemning U.S. military intervention in the Russian Revolution and calling for a general strike. Their sentence? The three men got 20 years in prison; their young female colleague got 15 years.

In his dissent, Holmes repeated his “clear and present danger” test but added the words “imminent” and “forthwith.” Did publication of what Holmes called “a silly leaflet by an unknown man” really constitute an imminent threat to the United States government and its wartime activities? Holmes wrote that he believed the four had as much right to publish their leaflets as the government had to publish the Constitution.

Holmes then went on to say that “…the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market….” All opinions, even those “that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death,” should be allowed to circulate freely, except when they immediately threaten the existence of the county.

A Seismic Shift

During the 1920s, Holmes and Brandeis continued to dissent, as First Amendment defenses came to the Court and were rejected by a majority of the justices. Gitlow v. New York (1925), Whitney v. California (1927), and United States v. Schwimmer (1929) provided ample opportunity for Holmes and Brandeis to use their eloquence and logic to start a seismic shift in First Amendment interpretation.

Did the writings of Benjamin Gitlow, a member of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party charged under New York’s criminal anarchy laws, constitute a imminent threat to the United States? “Every idea is an incitement,” Holmes wrote:

It offers itself for belief and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth….If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way.

Was Anita Whitney’s membership in the Communist Labor Party of California — an organization she helped found — a threat to the existence of the county? “Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly,” Brandeis wrote:

Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. To justify suppression of free speech there must be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free speech is practiced. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the danger apprehended is imminent. There must be reasonable ground to believe that the evil to be prevented is a serious one.

Should Rosika Schwimmer, a Hungarian immigrant, be denied U.S. citizenship because she was a pacifist who refused to swear she would bear arms in defense of her county? Holmes wrote the words that gave Lewis the title of his book:

Some of her answers might excite popular prejudice, but if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

One bright spot in the 1920s — in Gitlow the Court for the first time ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment applied free-speech and free-press protections to defendants in state courts. And state courts now became First Amendment battlegrounds.

The Theory Behind the First Amendment

Although the opinions written by Holmes and Brandeis in the 1920s did not represent the law of the land, they expanded the legal theory behind the First Amendment. Under the Holmes and Brandeis interpretation, the First Amendment was not merely a prohibition against prior restraint — it was fundamental to the notions of American freedom and liberty. And only the gravest threat should be allowed to interfere with its protections.

The coming decades would see the Holmes and Brandeis interpretation of the First Amendment take hold. This shift in interpretation will be the subject of my next column.

In reading through the 70+ comments on last Tuesday’s post, “12 Excuses for Shooting Photos for Free — and Why They’re Bogus,” I found two complaints interesting from the “will work for free” crowd.

The complaints are, to paraphrase:

1. I don’t owe anything to pro photographers; they’re just whiners who can’t compete anymore.
2. How come pro photographers don’t help “noobs” like me learn to get paying work, instead of just criticizing me?

So you don’t owe anything to pros, but they owe you something? OK.

Let me be clear. In debunking excuses for working for free, I am not trying to discourage young photographers from breaking in to the business. I am not a bitter pro photographer fearing encroachment on “my domain.” To the contrary, I have long been committed to helping people become successful photographers with a sustainable business.

The key word here is “sustainable.” That means not giving away your work for free, and not selling it at rates that don’t make sense financially.

So, for a moment, let’s stop using our obvious verbal skills to debate one another on Black Star Rising, and let’s focus them where they may actually yield a financial return: our prospective clients.

I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday…

Anyone who hangs up a shingle as a photographer will soon get a call that goes something like this: “I don’t have much (or any) money, but if you’ll do this job for me, I will make it up to you on the next one.”

Stay in the business long enough, and you’ll hear this promise a thousand times.

I am reminded of Wimpy J. Wellington, who said to Popeye, “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

Or to quote Oscar Wilde, “While a first marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence, second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience.”

Over two decades, I have never experienced the promise of future work by a lowballing client as a promise kept. Therefore, I have given up hope. And you should, too.

Here’s how to handle a client who tries to sell you short in this way:

Client: Boy, am I glad to find you. We often have assignments in [enter your city here] and really like your work. The thing is, we only have $400 for this assignment. But I can make it up to you in the future, as we frequently have a need in [enter your city here] and would love to work with you on an ongoing basis.

You: Wow, that’s great. So you’ve had a lot of shoots in [enter your city here]? Who were you working with before finding me?

Client: Um, er, different people. I’d rather not say who.

You: Hmm. Well, you know, your offer sounds enticing, but $400 is a little low. How about this: since you’re going to have a frequent need for my services, let’s assume that you’ll have 10 assignments for me per year. That works out to $4,000. So, what I’ll do is charge you $500 for the first eight, and then the ninth and tenth ones will be free. That way, you’ll be able to stick within your budget for the year, and I’ll be assured of a continued relationship and a revenue stream I can count on.

Think I’ve ever been taken up on this? Nope, and I’ve proposed it easily a dozen times. Yet, were I able to find a client willing to make that commitment, I would uphold my end of the bargain.

Getting the Price You Deserve

Notice that in the example above, I did not say “no.” I just wanted a firm commitment rather than a vague promise.

In the same way, all aspiring professional photographers should have a firm game plan for their business, rather than vague, romantic goals.

When I speak with prospective clients, I ask them, “What budget are you trying to work within?”

In most cases, they are straight with me. But even when they state a figure that is unreasonably low, my response is not “no.” Instead, I say something like, “Let me look this over, and I will send along what I can do for you.”

And then, in short order, I do. And, guess what? I often get the assignment.

Not only that, but the client makes a point to tell me that I am the only one they talked to who bothered to present my position, contract, fees and expenses, and to provide a reasonable justification for them.

So rather than twist yourself into pretzels trying to rationalize doing work that doesn’t pay the bills, why not focus on valuing your own talents — and learning how to communicate their value to clients?

With technology making it so easy to profoundly alter photojournalistic images — deleting or adding items, changing the source of the lighting and so on — how can we, the audience, know that what we’re seeing is “the truth”?

The answer is, we can’t.

While it is commendable that Reuters and Adobe, for example, are working to make altered files more readily identifiable, let’s face it: it’s a losing battle. It will never adequately protect news consumers.

It Comes Down to Two People

Ultimately, preserving truth in editorial photography comes down to the same two people it always has — the photographer and the photo editor. If either of these two is ready to lie, there is no protection to be had.

The news audience would like to believe that our eyes don’t lie. That if we see it, it’s true. That a photograph is a faithful representation of a moment in time and space.

We’d like to believe it — but are we really kidding ourselves?

The reality is, the history of photojournalism is riddled with examples of altered images and outright fakes. And there is no clear line between professionally “improving” an image and unethically “manipulating” it.

Eugene Smith was notorious for spending long hours in his darkroom working on his prints. Did this undermine the authority of his work? Certainly not.

Others have cropped, enhanced, shadowed or even damaged their negatives. Robert Capa’s famous images of the D-Day landing might not have looked like that if they hadn’t been damaged. They look real enough.

So where is the limit, and who decides?

Again, it comes down to the photographer and the photo editor. But as our news coverage becomes more crowdsourced, and as editing barriers fall, replaced by automation, it is inevitable that our images will become less and less credible.

I am still amazed, for example, that the Iranian government did not blunt negative Twitter coverage by tweeting fake images by fake users showing the government’s side of the story. Next time it will happen; count on it.

Branding for Truth

The only way to preserve ethics in photojournalism is to have brands that value credibility. We trust (most of us, anyway) the New York Times for the veracity of its information; photo agencies and individual photographers could build their brands around credibility as well.

Does that mean that ethical photojournalists shouldn’t retouch their images? Not at all. It just means they shouldn’t lie about it.

The IPTC consortium could have photographers add an “R” for “retouched” to their image files, for example — making it easy to tag images as altered.

Beyond that, it will be up to audiences to be savvier in analyzing what they see. And it will be up to photographers to brand themselves as instruments of truth, if that’s what they want to be considered.

In this installment of “Ask the Photo Business Coach,” I answer one of the questions I am most frequently asked: “With so many photographers competing for the same clients that I am, how can I possibly stand out from the crowd?”

In May 2009, I began following the sales of 198 of iStockphoto’s top contributors. According to iStockcharts data, these 198 ranked in the top 250 image sellers among the microstock site’s more than 100,000 total contributors.

The term “contributor” is more accurate than “photographer,” because a significant number of iStock’s top sellers are illustrators and graphic designers selling illustration, not photography. In any case, over the past 14 months, some of the 198 have risen to higher positions in the top 250; others have declined as more aggressive producers have moved up.

Some Hot, Others Not

The lowest person on my list, Skashkin, had more than 47,000 total downloads and between 5,033 and 6,033 total downloads from May 1, 2009, to June 30, 2010; he now ranks 347th. Yuri Arcurs, the No. 1 producer, had between 357,574 and 367,574 total downloads in the last 14 months.

Some contributors really climbed the rankings. For example, Monkey Business Images went from 254 to 37, despite its relatively late arrival to iStock in March 2008.  Today, Monkey Business-produced images have been downloaded over 180,000 times, with a total of more than 128,000 downloads in the past 12 months.

The 29,475 contributors whose information was listed on iStockcharts as of July 1, 2010, had more than 23,570,469 downloads in the last 14 months. This group represents 6,279,767 images — 89 percent of iStock’s overall total of 7,063,000.

The remaining 11 percent of the images on the site are spread over more than 70,000 contributors that iStockcharts does not identify. Though this group makes up some 70 percent of the iStock contributor pool, portfolio size (an average of 11 total images) and download statistics suggest that most of them are largely inactive. In contrast, the portfolio sizes and downloads of the top 198 contributors likely provide an accurate picture of iStock sales trends.

Flat Results

Some of the numbers available for iStock are very precise, while others are ranges. Until May 2009, iStock visitors were able, at any moment, to determine the exact number of images licensed in each contributor’s career.

That June, iStock changed its reporting to supply only the nearest lower rounded number of downloads, with the actual number varying by as much as 10,000. For example, a number listed as “greater than 100,000” could mean anything between 100,001 and 110,000. If the contributor’s total downloads are fewer than 100,000, the range is 1,000 downloads.

Estimates presented here were calculated by determining the minimum and maximum number of downloads each contributor could have had for the entire period. We subtracted the May 1, 2009, number from the July 1, 2010, number. Then we divided by 14 to determine the average monthly low for the 14-month period through June 30, 2010.

We did a separate calculation for the average high based on the highest possible number that could have been licensed during the period. Then we totaled the results for 198 contributors and compared them with the actual May totals. We are aware of a few contributors who have just recently passed the low number, but some could also be very near the top of the range and about to move to the next level.

This method revealed that, compared to May 2009:

• 55 of the 198 contributors have, on average, licensed more images per month;
• 69 have, on average, licensed fewer images per month; and
• 74 were midway in their range —more than the average low, but less than the average high.

Rising Prices

The 198 iStock contributors currently have a combined total of 567,324 images, or about 5.2 percent of the total collection. In the past six months, members of this group have enlarged their collections by an average of more than 10 percent, adding 52,449 images.

Overall, the number of images downloaded for these 198 contributors was 450,593 in May 2009. For the 14 months the average low per month was 417,686 and the average high per month was 491,174. The median is 454,430.

Since this represents 29 percent of total images downloaded, it suggests that sales — in terms of number of units — have been flat for iStockphoto over the last 14 months. Since iStock is unquestionably the largest microstock image seller in the industry, it is reasonable to assume that its numbers represent a best-case industry trend.

It is important to note that, despite flat unit sales, iStock’s revenues have still risen because of price increases. Also notable is the fact that adding more images does not appear to increase unit sales, but may be necessary in order to maintain sales volume.

Hard to Break Through

If I had tracked all the sales of the top 350 (out of 100,000), I estimate that over 50 percent of all the images licensed by iStock during the period belonged to these individuals, who represent less than 0.4 percent of all contributors. While it is certainly possible for a few to earn significant revenue licensing images as microstock, this points out how extremely difficult it can be to achieve that goal.

The reason why 5.2 percent of the images in the iStock collection generate 29 percent of total downloads is the same as it is across other microstock sites: since customers are able to sort results by downloads, previously sold images have a huge advantage. Yuri Arcurs estimates that 80 to 90 percent of customers sort results by downloads.

Consequently, new images are at an extreme disadvantage, irrespective of quality, because they tend to appear at the bottom of the search return order and are never seen.

Some will want to know how much these downloads represent in dollars. Based on information from some photographers, I believe the average gross sale for an image in the standard collection (not Vetta or video) is $6.50 to $7.50. A significant number of these top photographers are exclusive with iStock and thus earn 40 percent of this gross.

Non-exclusives earn 20 percent, but they can and do submit the same images to many other microstock sites. It is important to note that Yuri Arcurs, Andres Rodriguez and Monkey Business Images are among a group of shooters who say they earn much more by being non-exclusive than they could earn with iStock alone.

Lessons Learned

Here are the takeaways based on my research:

• Sales over the past year have been flat.
• Images produced by a very small percentage of contributors represent the majority of sales.
• Despite the widespread belief in the growing use of images online and predictions that such growth will never end, we may have reached a level where all those individuals who are willing to pay money to purchase images at microstock prices are already doing so. They need a fixed number of images per year. They already go to the lowest priced source and are unlikely to buy more simply because more are available.
• Once a business model has reached maturity — which microstock has — it will no longer grow simply by producing more. The only way to grow is to sell more units or raise prices.
• It is important not to judge success by revenue increases alone, but to also look at the underlying unit sales growth. Price increases may boost revenues in the short term but drive away customers in the long term. Some will find cheaper or free sources, particularly if Google and Flickr are able to deliver better search results.

Ninety percent of small businesses fail within the first two years. With few exceptions, working for free is the fastest way for freelance photographers to become part of this 90 percent.

Here are a few excuses I’ve heard for working for free, along with my responses:

1. I’m trying to get into concert photography, so when bands have called to ask about pricing, I’ve told them, “It’s on me.” It’s a great way for me to break into that market.

It’s a great way to break into that market known as “free.” How many times do you think musicians have screwed themselves over and given away the farm to music labels? Too many to count. Don’t make the same mistake.

2. I just did a free shoot for a young actress trying to make ends meet, like many starving artists. It helped her and was an opportunity for me to practice my lighting techniques.

Romanticizing being a “starving artist” isn’t really a good thing. It’s nice when you’re sipping a chai tea latte with your beret in the local java house listening to beatniks recite their slam poetry, but other than that, it’s mostly a good way to remain starving. Doing a trade-for-prints/trade-for-CD deal is for C-grade models and photographers who almost never become pros. And while you may think that it helps you with your lighting techniques, it doesn’t help you grow in the area that matters most — the confidence to know that your work has value.

3. I offered to shoot free family photos for all my neighbors for their holiday cards. It’s a good way to promote my business.

It’s nice to be a good neighbor. Then again, you might soon be getting lots of invitations to weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, with the suggestion: “Hey, why don’t you bring your camera? We’d love to have some photos, and you would really be saving us some money.” So now, you’re an even better neighbor than you intended to be — and you’ve knocked some local wedding photographer out of a paying gig. Or, if you respond with, “Oh, those holiday photos were a one-time thing; I charge to shoot events,” you’ll probably get something like this: “Come on, neighbor, you’re going to be there anyway!”

4. I got some valuable event-photography experience shooting one of my company’s employee celebrations for free. I got to shoot an event for a Fortune 500 corporation, and my pictures received excellent exposure on the company Web site, with over 25,000 hits. I was even given a free photo printer for my effort.

A free photo printer? You mean one of the dozen printers your company got for free when they ordered the last batch of CPU’s from Dell or HP? As someone who has shot for over half of the Fortune 500, I can tell you that I’ve earned $1,000 or more per assignment shooting company picnics, holiday parties, and so forth. It’s not glamourous, but it helps pay the bills. That is, unless you have someone willing to do it for a free printer. By the way, who insured your personal gear against spilled sodas or any other accidents? Let me guess: no one.

5. Every photography job I’ve ever gotten has been through word of mouth — often because I did something for free first.

Right, word of mouth. As in, “Hey, I know this photographer who will shoot for free…” Congratulations! You’ve just become known all over town as the guy who doesn’t expect to be paid for his work. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll even get a client who offers to buy you lunch.

6. I’ve been doing some free portraits of friends for fun, to use as their Facebook profile photos. When people see my pictures on Facebook, I’ll expand my network and it can lead to jobs.

No, it will lead to more requests to take pictures “for fun” — from friends, then friends of friends, then people who just don’t want to pay to have their portraits taken. And you’ll be making lots of new friends among the professional portrait photographers whose livelihoods you are damaging. Happy networking!

7. I like my day job in IT, but at night I am passionate about photography. I don’t mind self-funding my work because it gives me more creative freedom.

Guess what, IT guy? When India’s night work takes over your day job, don’t call me crying about it. Also, don’t bother trying to make a living from your “passion,” because you’re already doing all you can to undermine your chances — as well as everyone else’s.

8. I’m a young amateur photographer, close to graduating from college, so I’m focusing on building a portfolio I can be proud of. Money? Later.

Excellent. One more student photographer who doesn’t care about money. I predict that when Sallie Mae comes a callin’ for payback on those loans that funded your education, money will become much more important to you. And I assume you’ll have things like rent, food and clothing to worry about, too. Unless Mommy and Daddy are still paying for everything — which is really nothing for you to be bragging about.

9. I did some high-profile assignments for free, and now I’m published in major magazines with a photo credit.

“Will work for photo credit” is one of the more asinine mentalities among photographers today. You’re helping no one, including yourself. All you’re doing is killing editorial opportunities for others.

10. I recently graduated from photography school and have been shooting like crazy, mostly for free. I’ve been getting very good experience. I’m also making contacts, and once the economy improves, I’ll be in a much better place than had I sat around waiting for paid assignments.

That’s some photography school — where you didn’t get experience! Your problem is that you just want to shoot pictures rather than earn assignments. You don’t “sit around waiting” for work; you market yourself to people who are willing to pay for your services. Those contacts you’re making are worth about as much as your photography is worth to them.

11. It’s different now because of digital photography. Ten years ago, shooting for free meant eating the cost of film, processing and Polaroids unless the client paid your costs. Today, all a free shoot costs you is your time. Pixels are free!

No, actually, pixels are not free — but thanks for playing. Cameras and camera shutters have a lifespan of a few hundred thousand frames. Divide the number of frames you shot for free by the cost of the camera, and you’ll begin to get a sense of how much that shoot cost you. That doesn’t count the cost of Photoshop for post-production, storage of the raw files, burning them to CD for your clients, and on and on.

12. Once I stopped worrying about charging for shoots, I have had offers and requests coming at me from all directions. I want my photographs to benefit the world and to help other people. It’s not about the money.

Of course you have “offers and requests” coming at you from all directions. So does the drunk girl at the club who hops on the slippery oak bar-top with a short skirt and no underwear and says, “If you see anything you like, I’ll be in the back offering it for free.” You’re surprised that a line forms immediately? So, you want to “help other people.” How about helping those who earn a living producing photographs by not undercutting them? That’s the best way to ensure that great photography continues to benefit the world.

Since most professional photographers are sole proprietors, we are used to doing everything ourselves — shooting images, processing, answering the phone, keeping the books and so forth. Just because we do all these tasks, however, that doesn’t mean we are the best suited for them. That’s definitely true of graphic design.

Because we are creative professionals, it is tempting to design our own marketing collateral, business cards and Web sites. In doing so, we run the risk of looking amateurish or cheap — which is not a brand image that will help your business. If you’ve seen a colleague’s business card crowded with too many photos or printed in size 16 font, you know what I’m talking about.

We are also too close to our own businesses to be truly objective, and this is where another creative person with a trained set of eyes can really help. The fresh perspective can do wonders for your brand.

A Creative Partner

I’ve always had the desire to collaborate with a graphic designer on my marketing materials, but it took me a while to find the right one. I recently took the plunge and contacted a former art director colleague, Kaleena Tucker, to create a new business card and stationery for my photography business.

Because Kaleena and I had worked together, I knew we would have good professional chemistry. All I asked up front is that the design have a clean, minimalist style consistent with the look of my Web site.

Once we agreed on the basics, she sent me multiple layouts, and we subsequently went through several rounds of revisions. I always asked for her opinion during each step of the process, which helped to influence my decisions.

Worth the Cost

We ultimately decided to make separate sets of cards to represent the three types of photography I do — landscape, travel and photojournalism. Below is the card design for landscape photography, with my logo and contact information on the front and a photo on the back.

I’m very pleased with how the project turned out. For me, the benefits have far outweighed the costs. If you’re worried about your budget, though, keep in mind that hiring a graphic designer doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Many talented freelance designers have very reasonable rates. You can also find full-time designers who freelance on the side to stretch their creative muscles and earn a little extra money.

I’m curious to know how many other photographers out there have hired a graphic designer. If you have, please share your story in comments.

First in a series.

“Photography” — the process of capturing a split second in time on film or in a digital file.

“Project management” — the process of managing a project from beginning to end.

For many photographers, the second of these processes is an afterthought. But to produce your best work and create and maintain a successful photography business, a disciplined approach to project management can make all the difference.

In this series, I will demonstrate how the practices, processes and software packages employed by top project managers around the world can help you as a photographer.

Photography Meets Project Management

First, let me share a little about my background. I have managed several extensive photography projects of my own, including A Bann For Life, 1/365 and Hidden Newcastle, each of which have involved countless hours of development, shooting and research.

Additionally, I currently have a second job in which I provide project management to public-sector recruiters throughout the United Kingdom. I have studied and used the PRINCE2 methodology in this role. PRINCE2 was initially developed as the U.K. government standard for IT project management, but its use has since spread beyond the IT environment and to more than 50 countries.

Combining what I’ve learned from these experiences, I will cover a number of topics in this series, such as:

• initiating your photography project;
• developing your project plan;
• organizing your project into stages, such as planning, design, shooting and post-production;
• tools and techniques for each stage of your photography project;
• controlling risks and external factors;
• identifying the best project management software for the needs of your photography business.

Why Project Management Is Important

In beginning this series, I suppose the first question to answer is this: “Why do photographers need to care about project management anyway?”

After all, anyone can run a project, can’t they?  You just need to make a task list, set a budget and produce a final deliverable — right?

While you might be able to get away with this approach for a while, as your business grows and your projects become more complex, your work — and in all likelihood, your client relationships — will suffer.

Most of us have personally experienced the effects of failed projects, both on a large and small scale. The world is littered with overblown, costly mistakes that were originally promised to be the best and shiniest buttons in the box.

In almost every case, these failures are the result of poor project management.

Project management isn’t about having a rigid, inflexible structure for everything you do. It is ultimately about studying all factors associated with your project, planning for those you can influence and preparing for the potential impact of those you cannot.

This is the best way to ensure we deliver final products that meet client requirements, are produced on budget and avoid unnecessary risks and errors.

Last August, I began contacting photographic agencies to seek representation, and among those I reached out to was Black Star. I wasn’t asked to be a Black Star photographer — but the interaction did change my photography.

Here’s the story.

About a year ago, I asked a photographer friend who had moved to Georgia how his business was surviving the relocation. He said it was going well because he had a photo rep that was helping him get jobs — mostly local sports and celebrity-type gigs.

While those assignments weren’t my cup of tea, I decided to look into representation, too. I had started my photography business four years earlier and thought I might be ready.

Seeking Representation

So I found an old edition of The Photographer’s Market and began sending out e-mails. In all, I contacted a dozen companies; all but one of them responded.

In every case, I was told that I didn’t have the right kind of photographs on my Web site. At that time, my portfolio consisted mainly of weddings and portraits. Not really what agencies are looking for, I learned.

One company did more than swat away my e-mail, however. It was Black Star.

The person I contacted sent me a copy of an e-book, When to Use Assignment Photography, that showcased the kinds of corporate photography the agency sought.

I absorbed it like a sponge. In fact, that e-book has guided my photography like a road map ever since.

I committed to trying to grow my business in the direction of the commercial photographers represented by Black Star. To do that, I would have to do more research, make new contacts, beg, plead, borrow and do all sorts of other things, too.

I set a goal: to build a portfolio worthy of agency representation within a year.

Building a Commercial Photography Portfolio

So what did I do first?

I researched. I researched what other commercial photographers do, what they charge, what equipment they use, how they take their photos and how they make their photos into lasting images. I scoured the Internet; I read books and magazines; I made lots of phone calls.

I called rental houses to supplement the equipment I already owned.

And then I began calling on businesses — looking for work.

By the middle of September I was on site with a heavy industry client, taking photos of an ethanol production facility that was under construction.

I kept going. I shot portraits and an exterior panoramic photo for a local hospital. I shot photos for a local food additives and spice company. I did a number of assignments for a major steel company, including images of employees on the job, one of their production processes, and an exterior photo of the local headquarters.

I also teamed up with an established commercial photographer in my area, which gave me access to other opportunities to build my portfolio.

Am I There Yet?

It’s now nearly 11 months since that first round of agency inquiries. I’m close to getting up the nerve to try again.

Will an agency want to represent me? I don’t know. Success isn’t a destination; it’s a process. So we’ll see where I am and go from there

Editor’s note: Kathryn Wagner is a travel and food photographer who divides her time between Virginia and the Virgin Islands. In this, her first video for Black Star Rising, she offers five tips for shooting a travel assignment.

From time to time, the good people in the bowels of the Googleplex decide to tweak their algorithm to improve search results. It happened not long ago, and rest assured, it will happen again. If you care about marketing your business online, you had better be paying attention.

When Google fiddles with its formula, I always hear from a number of photographers whose Web sites have fallen off the radar. It’s akin to a rolling blackout, where a power company shuts off the electricity for some customers in a coordinated manner to reduce the load on the power grid.

Make no mistake; losing “Google juice” — say, by dropping from page 1 to page 5 in search results — can turn your business’ lights off, too.

In my case, my Web site generates anywhere from two to six assignments per month, and that is a substantial amount of money. It’s good reason to take SEO very seriously.

Keep It Fresh

So, how do you stay on the first page of results for your top keywords, if you’re fortunate enough to be there? Or how can you move up consistently from “beyond page 3″ purgatory?

First, we can never predict what Google will do — so there’s no use obsessing on the ins and outs of SEO arcana. Instead, focus on the fundamentals, which never change.

Create fresh content. Switch out your images with new ones. Blog. Use social networking. Do whatever you need to do to build quality inbound links from relevant sources.

And understand that what you are creating is transitory, not carved in stone.

Inbound links come and go. The same link can be relevant one day, less so the next. For example, let’s say a photography site that Google likes links to your photography site; that’s good. Then let’s say this site drops in standing in Google’s eyes. That means the inbound link you earned — the currency of SEO — has dropped in value.

You wouldn’t expect one advertisement or one e-mail campaign to bring you new clients indefinitely. Why expect it from SEO?

No Shortcuts

Finally, don’t use the too-good-to-be-true tricks espoused by some SEO “experts.” Google knows what you’re up to, or they’ll figure it out eventually.

Trading links doesn’t work. Link farms don’t work. Using tiny or hidden text to load up your Web site with keywords doesn’t work, either.

So many photographers rest on their laurels when they reach the search position they want. If you do this, you have no one to blame but yourself. Sooner or later, the rolling blackout will hit.

In my previous column, I wrote about the Newseum in Washington, D.C., which is an interactive museum dedicated to preserving and interpreting more than 500 years of journalism. I said that one of my favorite parts of the Newseum was a permanent exhibit called the First Amendment Gallery.

Congress Shall Make No Law

Like many school children, I learned to recite the First Amendment by heart — and I have a vague memory (it was a very long time ago) there was a song involved to help us remember the 45 words that have shaped our nation’s history.

When I began photographing and writing for newspapers and magazines in the 1970s, I knew that the First Amendment protected — with a few exceptions — my activities as a journalist and also the right of the publications I worked for to publish whatever they wanted.

However, it wasn’t until I went to journalism school at the University of South Carolina a few years ago to get my master’s degree that I learned about the intricate and often turbulent history of the First Amendment. A required course called Media Law exposed us to a wide range of topics, but it was the module on the First Amendment that has stuck in my mind as being revelatory — showing me how much I didn’t know about something I took so much for granted.

We Know What It Says, But What Does It Mean?

What does the First Amendment say and what does it mean? That was the question we grad students were asked to confront.

The First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….” Sounds simple and absolute, right? But what did these terms mean to the people who wrote them and made them part of our Constitution?

Unfortunately, there is little direct evidence to go by — in terms of discussion and debate records — to determine the original intention of the amendment.

But there is circumstantial evidence aplenty. After all, the Founders were intimately familiar with British law, which had a long history of abridging freedom of press and speech. Abridgment came in two forms: prevention of publication through government licensing or censorship, and punishment after publication for content deemed unacceptable by the government or the church.

The first form of abridgment, called “prior restraint,” ended in England in 1694, when Parliament let the law lapse. But the second form, called “seditious libel,” was still in effect in England during the time America was its colony.

Truth was no defense against a charge of seditious libel — what mattered was the perceived damage done to a public official’s reputation. The maximum punishment was death.

The Sedition Act

If it was to have any meaning at all, the First Amendment clearly prevented prior restraint — its authors were not likely to reintroduce a legal concept that had been dead in England for nearly 100 years. But what about punishment after publication?

On July 14, 1798, President John Adams signed the hastily passed Sedition Act, which made it a federal crime to write, speak, or publish anything “false, scandalous and malicious” against the federal government, the Congress, or the president, with the intent to defame them, bring them “into contempt or disrepute,” or “stir up sedition.”

The law was prompted by a feud between Adams and his vice president, Thomas Jefferson — notice that the Sedition Act says nothing about defaming the vice president.

It was also the result of a squabble between two political parties, the Federalists and the Republicans, and fears that the increasingly radical aspects of the French Revolution could spread to the new nation. Editors of pro-Jefferson newspapers and political pamphleteers were prosecuted, as was a Republican representative to Congress from Vermont.

The Supreme Court was never asked to rule on the law’s constitutionality, and it was allowed to expire on March 3, 1801, the day before Inauguration Day, as provided in the act.

In fact, it would be more than 100 years before a new federal law finally spurred the Supreme Court to wrestle with the meaning of the First Amendment. Ultimately, however, the Sedition Act backfired — it contributed to Jefferson’s victory over Adams in the 1800 presidential election and the eventual demise of the Federalists.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate

In 2007, Anthony Lewis published a book called Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment.

Lewis was a reporter and columnist for the New York Times from 1955 through 2001, twice winning the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Since 1983, he has been the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University and has also lectured at Harvard Law School and other universities.

Lewis is the author of three other books: Gideon’s Trumpet, about the right to legal counsel; Portrait of a Decade: The Second American Revolution, about the Civil Rights movement; and Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment, about libel and the press.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate should be required reading for every journalist — and anyone else interested in speech and press freedom.

The book’s title comes from a dissent to a 1929 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Schwimmer, written by 88-year-old Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The case concerned Rosika Schwimmer, a Hungarian pacifist living in Illinois, who wanted to become a U.S. citizen but refused to swear that she would personally bear arms in defense of the country. The U.S. District Court in northern Illinois denied Schwimmer’s petition, the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the denial, and the case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Schwimmer ultimately lost her case, but in his dissent, Justice Holmes showed why it is his expansive view of the First Amendment — along with that of his colleague and frequent co-dissenter Justice Louis D. Brandeis — that eventually prevailed:

Some of her answers might excite popular prejudice, but if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

Formative Years for the First Amendment

The early years of the 20th century were formative ones for the legal interpretation of the First Amendment. As Lewis points out, it wasn’t until 1919 that a Supreme Court opinion — albeit a dissenting one by Holmes and Brandeis in Abrams v. United States — first endorsed a First Amendment claim of freedom.

Why this time lag of more than 100 years from the ratification of the Bill of Rights — of which the First Amendment is a part — until the Supreme Court began a serious discussion over the meaning of the amendment?

First, says Lewis, the Supreme Court rules on matters of federal, rather than state, law. After the federal Sedition Act expired in 1801, there was no federal law concerning press or speech freedom until 1917, when the United States entered World War I, and Congress passed the Espionage Act.

State laws restricting speech and press freedom were not considered by the Supreme Court to be within its purview until the 1925 decision in Gitlow v. New York, some 57 years after the Fourteenth Amendment — theoretically at least — extended Bill of Rights protection to defendants in state trials.

Second, American society was undergoing profound changes — immigration, industrialization, urbanization — that brought a flood of new ideas, many of which appeared to threaten the established order, such as trade unionism, socialism, communism, anarchism, and radicalism of other stripes. These ideas seemed especially dangerous during wartime.

It ultimately fell to the Supreme Court to untangle the messy web of competing ideas and interests that pitted freedom of expression against society’s demand for order and public safety.

In my next column on this subject, I’ll discuss the evolution of the First Amendment, as interpreted by a Supreme Court in transition.

Happy Fourth of July!

In this installment of “Ask the Photo Business Coach,” I answer the following question submitted by Marleen De Backer of Eden Studio Photography: “Do you think a commercial photographer should have a client list on their Web site?”

Most professional photographers are adamantly opposed to Creative Commons licenses, which encourage free uses of images. But in at least one important way, I think Creative Commons is a good thing for image sellers.

With widespread use, Creative Commons is establishing in the minds of users the very important copyright law principle that “All Rights [are] Reserved” by the creator or copyright holder of any work, and that it is left to the creator to specify who has what rights to make what uses of the work and at what cost.

Creative Commons defines six levels that grant limited free uses to content found on the Web. All but one of the six Creative Commons licenses involve some type of restriction, and even the last requires credit be given.

Educating the “Right Click and Save” Crowd

How does this help image sellers?

There is widespread misunderstanding as to what rights people have to use anything found on the Web, including images. Because Creative Commons images are perceived as being “free,” the standard is broadly accepted and promoted by the Internet community.

But Creative Commons does more than promote the idea of giving away content. It also promotes the notion of reserving rights, as well as that anyone who wishes to use an image they did not create must obtain some type of license for its use.

The fact that there are six different variations of a Creative Commons license also establishes that the allowed free use is based entirely on the nature of the use — some uses are allowed, while others are not.

Those who charge fees for uses of their images are a very small segment of the Internet community. As such, this group has always had a difficult time getting their message of “compensation for use” accepted by the community at large.

With Creative Commons, a much larger and more diverse community is saying: “Yes, you can use my images for free, for certain specified uses, but there are limits, and I must be compensated at least by credit.”

This makes it far more difficult for the “right click and save” crowd to argue that they know nothing about usage rights. As more creators recognize that it is wise to put some limits on how their images can be used without their knowledge, more and more people will become aware of what is expected whenever they want to use an image they find online.

Five Licensing Options

Creative Commons helps photographers by teaching people that when they think about using images, they need a license of some kind, and that there are a whole range of available options.

As of today, licensing options include:

• Creative Commons. The allowable rights are specified in six license types, and the user is required to pay nothing as long as the use is within the specified parameters.
• Microstock. A lower-priced offshoot of traditional royalty-free, microstock sites base fees on file size. Virtually unlimited use is allowed, but the rights granted vary slightly from one distributor to the next.
• Subscription. The customer is allowed to download a specified number of images from a site, over a specified period of time, for a fixed fee.
• Traditional Royalty-Free. Fees, which vary among different distributors, are based on file size delivered and, once the fee is paid, virtually unlimited use is allowed. Microstock licenses are usually slightly more restrictive.
• Rights-Managed. Fees are based on the specific uses made of images. Discounts are usually available for customers that make volume purchases.

In the era of film photography, the accepted rules of printing had been established by masters long since departed. A photographer was limited in what he could do to enhance his images in the darkroom; he could dodge and burn, adjust the contrast, tone the final print.

Making, and Breaking, the Rules

Every now and then, somebody would come along and break one of the rules and the art would reluctantly advance a few steps forward.

In the ’20s, for instance, the avant-garde photographer Man Ray gave us blurred images and Rayographs (various objects placed on a piece of enlarging paper and exposed to light) that at the time were considered amateurish and dull. But his work influenced other artists and photographers, and today Man Ray is considered one of the greats.

Eventually, photographers began printing with multiple negatives on the same sheet of paper, while others experimented with Polaroid and — heaven forbid — color! The heretics ultimately became the masters.

In the end, what really counted was the final image and that is what prevailed. A good image is simply a good image — rules be damned.

More Tools, More Temptations

Today, in the early stages of the digital era, our tools for enhancing images have greatly expanded. Photoshop has given us the ability to alter and correct our photographs as never before.

And so, just as in past eras, there is debate as to the rules. How far can one go with these tools before our images are dismissed as “gimmicky schlock”?

Here’s my two cents.

Some time ago, I took a photo of a woman clutching her purse straps behind her back. I never gave it a second thought at the time; the RAW file looked boring to me. A few months later, while reviewing my images in Lightroom, I glanced at the picture again and wondered what it would be like with a darker background.

Once I made the change, I liked the photo much better. The distracting background is what had made the image dull.

In a darkroom, burning in the background in this way would have been all but impossible. But Photoshop enables me to burn in details with an accuracy that previously did not exist.

Eight Simple Rules

The question is where to draw the line. To me, it’s a balancing act; I try not to go overboard.

Over the past few years, I have developed a few simple rules to guide me:

1. I never add anything that was not originally there.
2. I never change the lighting or background.
3. I am OK with any modifications that were always done with film (e.g., burning and dodging.)
4. I am OK with selective alterations such as blurring, contrast, and shadows; if they were possible in the film era, they would have been the standard long ago.
5. I will remove background objects such as trees, telephone poles, and reflections from time to time — as long as the change is minor and never noticed.
6. I never retouch people’s faces — ever.
7. I am OK with cropping, but only subtle, small crops to straighten an image out or get rid of minor distractions.
8. I avoid HDR like the plague.

Conventional Wisdom Continues to Change

I am certain that a lot of readers will disagree with my rules, and that’s just fine with me. They’re my rules, not yours.

I am beginning to notice a number of photographers who are very free in their use of Photoshop. I find some of their work quite interesting.

It is as it always has been. Conventional wisdom in art is the rule until someone steps up and changes things. Even Monet and Cezanne were considered too outrageous in their early days until their acceptance became universal.

The pattern is a familiar one. There is resistance, then grudging acceptance — and finally praise.

And then there are new conventions waiting to be overturned.

(The following is excerpted from the new book The Successful Wedding Photographer, by the editors of Photopreneur.)

It should be clear that when it comes to pricing, there are a range of different approaches, each with its own set of advantages and weaknesses.

Fixed vs. Flexible

Fixed packages with the price and contents clearly stated tell clients exactly what to expect. A range of three (or sometimes four) packages enables studios to provide services for clients with different-sized budgets, ensuring that they can serve as much of their market as possible.

This is an ideal approach for large studios that outsource work to other photographers, allowing them to create specific products easily understood by both photographer and client. When there are a lot of jobs coming in and being passed on to other photographers, keeping those jobs as similar as possible makes the pricing, communication and expectations clear.

The downside to this way of pricing is that it makes the price as important (or perhaps even more important) than the photography or the photographer, and it appears to allow little room to match the package to the client’s specific needs.

Flexible packages, on the other hand, allow clients to build the shoot themselves, adding albums and other extras from a la carte menus, while still communicating the price range the photographer is willing to accept.

This allows the photographer to minimize time spent holding consultations with leads who are unlikely to convert to clients, while still offering deals for a range of different budgets.

Finally, some photographers prefer to save pricing until the end of the sales process, choosing to create desire in the client before hitting them with a price tag. That final price may be package-based or constructed according to the very specific requirements of each wedding.

An Opportunity for Upselling

Packages make it easy for photographers to serve clients with different budgets. A la carte menus enable them to adjust those packages to suit the clients more closely, but they also provide an opportunity for upselling — persuading clients to spend more than they had anticipated.

One of the reasons Chris Leary prefers to hold back on his prices, for example, is to create enough desire in prospective clients to persuade them to increase their budgets, if necessary, rather than walk away.

Additionally, being able to choose from a la carte products such as better albums or more images permits the photographer to sell more items — and more expensive items, too.

Not all photographers are willing to do this. Even some photographers with marketing backgrounds say that they prefer simply to lay the options in front of clients and let them choose the products they want without any further pressure.

But flexible pricing options do provide opportunities to stress the extra quality of more expensive albums or to offer discounts to encourage additional purchases.

For photographers who are willing to do a little selling during the consultation — either before or after the shoot — a flexible pricing system can enable them to earn more from each sale.

(The following is excerpted from the new book The Successful Wedding Photographer, by the editors of Photopreneur.)

We’ve seen that the price a client pays for a wedding shoot always includes a number of different elements. Those elements range from the time spent taking the pictures to the number of prints the client receives to the type and number of albums the photographer prepares.

By juggling those elements — by increasing or reducing the amount of time you spend shooting, by offering to print fewer pictures and by providing albums at different levels of luxury — it’s possible to avoid the question of whether to charge “low,” “medium” or “high” prices, and instead offer a range of different prices to suit everyone.

That’s the beauty of creating wedding photography packages. Let’s look at some of the ways photographers approach packages in their pricing.

Instant Memories: Clear and Precise

Instant Memories is a collection of nine wedding photographers working in the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta. The company offers four packages that list precisely what the client will receive.

The Bronze package, for example, costs $1,500 and includes “three hours of service,” formals, unlimited digital photography, and no prints.

The Silver package, which costs $2,200, includes 275 exposures and promises photographs of the ceremony as well as indoor and outdoor formals.

For an extra $400, clients can order the Gold package and keep the photographer right through the cake cutting and the first three dances, and look through 400 pictures.

Finally, the Platinum package at $2,800 provides another 50 pictures and starts at the bride’s house.

It’s a pricing model that makes things very easy both for clients and for a photography business, and especially a business that hires other photographers to do the shooting. When clients are buying packages, rather than choosing from a menu of different items, the expectations are clear and there’s little chance of the photographer forgetting a shot that the client requested or having to create a unique item.

Choosing a wedding photography package becomes almost as straightforward as buying off-the-shelf, with content, pricing and expenses all clearly covered.

Danny Steyn: A La Carte Extras

Danny Steyn, a South African-born wedding photographer now working in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, takes a similar approach.

Steyn offers three packages with shooting times that range from four to eight hours and from 150–200 to 325–375 images. Clients who take his Gold and Platinum packages also get an assistant, and Platinum clients get a second photographer as well.

However, Steyn’s Web site also stresses that these packages are flexible, and he offers a range of different a la carte extras, such as albums of different sizes, canvas prints and DVD slideshows.

The result is a clear guideline for clients to the amount that they can expect to pay for their wedding photography — and an opportunity for Steyn to offer some extras that add to the price.

Julie Harris: Quoting the Minimum

Other wedding photographers take a different approach, reducing the amount of pricing clarity they give to clients in favor of the flexibility that comes by allowing clients to pick and choose the features they want.

Pricing the shoot becomes much more complex. While leads who visit Instant Memories’ Web site can see immediately how much they’ll be paying for their photography, leads interested in hiring photographers with no packages and only a la carte offerings won’t know exactly what they’ll be paying until after they’ve actually met with the photographer.

Julie Harris, a wedding photographer in Boulder, Colorado, declares on her Web site that commissions begin at $4,250 and that there are a “variety of wedding packages and options” available. The site then lists a number of features that clients may ask for in their package, including:

• Digital files, and permission to print and distribute copies;
• Black and white/color photography;
• An engagement portrait session;
• Online viewing (and purchase);
• A range of different albums and products, such as flush-mount albums and coffee-table wedding albums;
• Post-production image editing;
• And a lifetime discount on future portrait sessions, including maternity, infant and family photography.

Harris doesn’t provide a final price until consulting with the potential client. This requires a little more effort from the photographer; she has to meet with the client and explain the options on offer, personalizing each package to suit each lead.

But quoting a minimum price of over $4,000 also allows Harris to filter out those clients she’s less interested in serving.

Teri Bloom: Getting the Specs First

Another option is to not give clients any pricing information at all until meeting. Teri Bloom’s Web site, for example, simply states:

Pricing is flexible and a la carte. Packages may include prints, digital files, engagement photos and a wide range of wedding albums. Online photo galleries are available so the wedding pictures can be shared with friends and family around the world.

Explains Bloom:

I don’t believe in putting prices on your Web site or quoting prices without knowing the specs of any job, because it locks you in a box and to me, it’s unwise in a business sense. If your price is too low, you aren’t leaving room to charge more for a difficult job, and if your price is too high, you’re automatically eliminating a client who may have a short, easy job in the middle of off-season.

The flexible pricing for “difficult” and “short, easy” jobs is important, and Bloom will quote one price for a wedding with 60 people with the ceremony and reception in a small restaurant, and a very different fee for a larger wedding with 250 people and a 45-minute drive from the church to the country club hosting the dinner — a freedom not available to a photographer with fixed packages.

Many of Bloom’s weddings, too, are “destination” weddings. Clients will come to New York just get married and will only need one to three hours of photography. Her consultations then become more important. They’re not just opportunities to pitch her services, but chances for Bloom to understand exactly what the job will involve, and decide the appropriate amount to charge for it.

That makes the questioning important, and questions that Bloom asks during the consultation stage include the location of the ceremony and the reception; the times they’ll take place (“sometimes there’s a three-hour gap between the ceremony and the reception,” she explains); the number of guests the couple is expecting; and whether they want table pictures, as well the usual questions about whether they want digital files, a Web site, prints and an album.

Says Bloom:

The answers to these screening questions will help you understand how challenging the job will be, how much post-production is required after the shoot, and also give you a sense of their budget. It’s smart business to quote prices after you know the specs of a job, and you’ll also have a better sense of the personalities you’re dealing with after learning more about them.

Chris Leary: Constant Adjustments

Bloom isn’t the only photographer not to exhibit any prices on her Web site. Chris Leary, who also shoots in New York, constantly adjusts his prices and packages to reflect what has sold in the past and what people are asking for today. Each update is based on the questions clients ask him about pricing and is intended to be as simple as possible.

Leary, however, doesn’t put those prices on his site, arguing that placing the fees online can frighten clients who are already juggling quotes from florists, disc-jockeys, caterers and event halls.

Worse, he says, when faced with a price, leads stop associating the photographer with the images in the portfolio or the personality and style he or she brings to the shoot, but with the number on the page.

Says Leary:

I don’t want to be a number. I want the couple to make an emotional connection with my images first. I want them to think about if they like the moments that I capture.

If they do like the images, Leary meets with them and tries to assess whether they share the same outlook and vision about wedding photography, and whether their personalities match. He will, after all, be with them throughout the most important day in their lives.

If he’s done his job, he says, they should feel that no one else can deliver the kind of wedding images that he creates.

It’s only at that point that Leary tell the leads his prices.

He offers three different packages. The most expensive, at $6,299, is for couples with large budgets who want extensive photography and custom products. His mid-range package costs $3,999 and includes eight hours of coverage, all the pictures on a disc and a wedding album. It’s the package, he says, that’s geared towards what most couples want.

The last package costs $2,399 and is aimed at people who want to save money or are willing to take on the post-photography services, such as printing and album-making, themselves.

All of the packages can be customized to suit each client’s needs — and provide maximum flexibility for Leary to close as many clients as he can.

Tomorrow: flexible pricing and upselling opportunities

(The following is excerpted from the new book The Successful Wedding Photographer, by the editors of Photopreneur.)

The problem with pricing wedding photography is that there is no single average price for a wedding shoot because there is no single average wedding shoot.

Just as there is no standard rate for a car — old wrecks cost $500; new Ferraris a lot more — so wedding photographers with lots of experience, awards and big name recognition will be able to charge above average rates, while new photographers with no reputation, an empty schedule and no marketing budget will be willing to accept lower amounts.

And that’s without factoring in the different packages that photographers can offer clients, or the effect that location has on prices. A new Ford might cost the same in New York as it costs in Miami, but wedding photographers, whose expenses are more closely linked to the real cost of living, will generally charge different amounts in each region.

From $1,000 to $20,000 and Beyond

Coming up with the right price list for a photography business is far from straightforward. According to a survey of more than 21,000 new brides by leading wedding Web site TheKnot.com in 2009, the mean amount spent by U.S. couples on their wedding photographer was $2,444.

Another rough guide suggests that a budget wedding photography job might cost $1,000 or less, and a moderate wedding shoot from $1,000 to $3,000. Upscale photographers might be able to receive $3,000 to $5,000, and luxury wedding photographers can get away with charging anything from $5,000 upwards. Some photographers have boasted of landing jobs that pay $10,000 or even $20,000.

But these kinds of figures mask huge differences in regions and requirements. The same survey, for example, found that the average wedding budget in Arkansas is just $15,073. In New York City, couples expect to spend an impressive $56,999.

Two Approaches to Price-Setting

Photographers generally use a couple of different approaches when they try to set prices. The first is the strategy used by Conrad Erb: they start low to reflect low expenses, expectations and experience, then raise prices once it becomes clear that customers are willing to pay more and that those low fees are actually hindering business growth.

The alternative is to look at what other photographers in that location are charging, calculate an average and pitch prices in the middle of that range.

This is the approach taken by Teri Bloom who, despite experience that includes photographs on the pages of the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and Time Magazine, keeps her prices “middle of the road.”

In part, she says, that’s because wedding photography is competitive and even well-off clients are price conscious; money spent on a photographer is money not spent on the catering, the flowers or the honeymoon.

But a mid-range price also helps to ensure a steady flow of work rather than well-paid but sporadic shoots — and the anxiety that comes between them — and room to move up should schedules fill.

Not every photographer would agree with Bloom’s preference to shoot lots of mid-range jobs rather than wait for occasional high-end weddings — they might prefer to use that time between jobs to shoot other types of photography or work on personal projects. They ignore the mid-range prices and aim straight for the upmarket weddings in the hope of earning more for each shoot.

Going Upmarket vs. Overpricing

But the work has to be of high enough quality to match the high pricing, and according to Bloom, in practice high-end fees often reflect an aspect of the photographer that has nothing to do with the way their pictures look.

Says Bloom:

I find some photographers start to get an attitude about themselves. Very often, their pricing is more about their ego than about the quality of their work. Buyer beware, pricing doesn’t have a thing to do with talent or experience!

Overpricing is a mistake that’s as easy to understand as underpricing. It takes a certain level of confidence to believe that you can capture the most important day in a couple’s life, and it’s tempting to look at a set of attractive pictures and believe that they’re better than average.

And if they’re better than average, the photographer who took them should be able to charge higher prices than average, too.

But even Denis Reggie, the founder of wedding photojournalism and a photographer whose client list has included John Kennedy, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, as well as Alan Greenspan, Ted Turner, Paula Abdul and a host of other celebrities, offers prices that start below $5,000.

That may be a higher price than average, but the client list, experience and Reggie’s own place in the development of wedding photography all go a long way towards justifying it.

To charge high-end prices, a wedding photographer needs to have a tangible reason. For Reggie, it’s a long celebrity client list that helps to deliver trust: if Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger were willing to hire him, then he must be good enough to justify the price.

For other photographers, it might be the market. A photographer with a studio in Beverly Hills or New York will be able to find more clients willing to pay higher fees than a photographer working in an area with low incomes.

It Takes More Than Talent

Rarely, though, can the quality of the images alone help to justify high prices — if only because clients aren’t always capable of seeing the differences between good wedding photos and the very best wedding photos.

Clients aren’t photographic connoisseurs. They just want to make sure that they hire a photographer who delivers beautiful pictures that remind them of their wedding day.

Good photography is always going to be vital for the success of a photographer’s career, but it must earn the photographer a reputation before the prices can start to rise. It’s not a good idea to rely on the wedding couple’s ability to spot a rare photographic talent as a way of persuading them to pay rare prices.

Personality can be as important an element in choosing a photographer as talent. Clients want photographers who are easy to work with and who won’t get in the way of the day’s proceedings. If they’re also fun and bring energy to the wedding, so much the better.

None of these caveats mean that you shouldn’t aspire to charge a premium for your wedding photography. But you’ll need to offer more than just great photos to justify your prices and win the jobs.

Tomorrow: Creating wedding photography packages

What does the competition look like in terms of the number of images available online?

Among photo-sharing sites, ImageShack had 20 billion images and Facebook had about 15 billion as of last year. In February 2010, Facebook was reportedly adding more than 2.5 billion photos each month. News Corp.’s Photobucket currently has more than 8.2 billion photos, and Yahoo!-owned Flickr is in fourth place with over 3.4 billion.

Photo-Sharing Sites Still Little Threat to Pros

About 135 million Flickr-hosted images are available for free use under Creative Commons licenses. Of this number, use of approximately 35 million is restricted to non-commercial uses, leaving only 100 million that are available for unlimited free uses.

Despite these numbers, most professional photographers are not overly concerned about these image sources, because most of the images available on photo-sharing sites have been shot by amateurs and are, for the most part, of only personal interest to a given user’s family and friends. In addition, the lack of targeted keywords makes it very difficult for a potential buyer to find anything useful.

In fact, the very volume tends to work against trying to find images on photo-sharing sites, because it takes so much sifting to locate ones that might be of use.

Microstock Continues Growth

On the other hand, the millions of images on professionally oriented sites are an area of concern. These images have been keyworded, model-released and mostly edited for duplicates and substandard technical quality.

The four major microstock agencies reported these inventories in May 2010:

• Dreamstime – 8,556,710;
• Fotolia – 9,056,403;
• iStockphoto – 6,837,000; and
• Shutterstock – 11,332,581.

In many cases, the same images are on all four microstock sites, so a total of these numbers is not an accurate indicator of the overall image quantity, but 20 million unique images is a reasonable estimate.

Also interesting is that there are 230,299 photographers and graphic artists contributing to Shutterstock alone. There are likely more than 300,000 photographers constantly adding images to these four sites.

In the case of iStock, about 8 percent of the images in the collection belong to the top 200 producers of more than 80,000. The images from these 200 generated more than 27 percent of total revenue in the first quarter of 2010.

The Rest of the Market

What about the rest of the market? The inventories — some reported and some estimated — of the larger collections total more than 130 million images, including:

• Alamy – 18,960,000;
• AP – 6,000,000;
• Bloomberg – 290,000;
• Corbis – 4,000,000 (est. 1,000,000 creative and 3,000,000 editorial);
• DPA – 7,500,000;
• Getty Images – 8,500,000 (est. 2,500,000 creative and 6,000,000 editorial);
• Microstock – 20,000,000;
• Newscom – 40,000,000+; and
• Reuters – 25,000,000.

All the smaller collections not distributed by one or more of these large distributors must also be considered. That number is hard to estimate, but an additional 30 million to 50 million unique images is probably in the ballpark.

Then and Now

An interesting historical sidelight is that back in the early 2000s, after Getty and Corbis had made a series of major acquisitions, both companies claimed to have 70 million images in their respective collections.

The major difference is that at that time these were mostly film-based images, not scanned, and in many cases, not very tightly edited. The only way to locate an image among these 140 million images was through laborious manual research. The vast majority of these images were never scanned, and it would be impossible to find most of them today — only a very small percentage are available digitally.

In contrast, the 130+ million images itemized above are digital files available in online databases for immediate research, download and use by potential customers.

Do you know what’s on the front page of this morning’s Iran Daily, published in Tehran? You will if you visit the Web site of the Newseum, an interactive museum based in Washington, D.C.

A link on the site called “Today’s Front Pages” lets you view the front pages of more than 700 newspapers from around the world. You can also sort the newspapers by region, download a PDF of any front page you choose, and link directly to the newspaper’s Web site.

“Today’s Front Pages” alone makes the Newseum a valuable resource for journalists, educators, and anyone else interested in the press. But there’s a lot more to the Newseum, and it is definitely worth a visit the next time you’re in Washington.

Preserving and Interpreting Journalism

Located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., just off the Mall, the Newseum is a modern, glass-fronted, seven-level building dedicated to preserving and interpreting more than 500 years of journalism — from the earliest European “newsbooks” to today’s state-of-the-art multimedia technology.

When you approach the Newseum, the first thing you notice is a 74-foot-high marble tablet engraved with the 45 words that comprise the First Amendment to the Constitution — words that enable what many consider the world’s freest press and one of its freest societies. Beneath the tablet, along Pennsylvania Avenue, is a sidewalk-level display of the day’s front pages of many newspapers from the U.S. and around the world.

Once inside the 250,000-square-foot building, you have your choice of 14 major galleries and 15 theaters to explore — so you obviously can’t see everything in one visit. Fortunately, the Newseum has prepared a brochure outlining a two-hour highlights tour, which you can pick up at the admission desk. At the desk, you can also learn about the current exhibits, which supplement the Newseum’s permanent exhibits.

Permanent Exhibits

While visiting the Newseum, you won’t miss a minute of breaking news, thanks to the giant “Electronic Window on the World” screen, which is suspended within a 90-foot-high atrium called the Great Hall of News, sponsored by the New York Times and its owners, the Ochs-Sulzberger family.

If journalism history is your thing, delve into the Newseum’s archives, which contain newspapers and magazines from the 19th and 20th centuries; newsbooks from 17th century Europe; and a 3,200-year-old clay brick from Sumer inscribed with cuneiform, one of the earliest known forms of writing.

Photojournalism is well represented in the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery, which contains an extensive collection of prize-winning images and interviews with many of the photojournalists who made them.

Earth-shaking stories are the bread and butter of hard news. The Newseum has an actual section of the Berlin Wall, topped by a lookout tower known as Checkpoint Charlie. The 9/11 Gallery explores the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the hurdles journalists overcame to report the story.

The 9/11 Gallery also includes a tribute to Bill Biggart, a photojournalist who was killed while making images at the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

The Interactive Newsroom lets you experience the challenges print and electronic journalists face as they grapple with getting the story, getting it right, and getting it out to the public on deadline.

Journalists sometimes get ensnared in a tangled web of ethics. Have you ever wondered how you would fare under pressure while toeing an ethical line? Find out at the Newseum’s Ethics Center, an interactive facility that presents actual situations faced by journalists — and then tells you how the journalists responded and what other visitors to the Newseum would have done in their shoes.

My Favorites

I have two favorite displays in the Newseum. The first is in the history section, where a display is devoted to journalists who besmirched the profession’s reputation and their own. Among those featured on this wall of shame are Jayson Blair and Janet Cooke, both up-and-coming newspaper reporters who fabricated stories. Cooke’s fake article, “Jimmy’s World,” about an 8-year-old heroin addict, won a Pulitzer for her paper, the Washington Post, which was then forced to return the prize.

This display is a reminder that newspapers are human endeavors and are thus fallible—and that the answer is better training for journalists and editors, more fact checking and heeding gut reactions (“If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t”), and increased responsibility and oversight by editorial staff and management.

My other favorite display is the First Amendment Gallery, which explains the “Five Freedoms” guaranteed by the Constitution — freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly, and of petition. I confess to being something of a First Amendment junkie and nearly an absolutist when it comes to these freedoms.

I plan to write a future column about the First Amendment, so I won’t go into a lengthy discussion here. Suffice it to say that the five freedoms enumerated by a mere 45 words — that’s nine words per freedom, if you’re counting — written in 1791 have done more than perhaps anything else to shape the country in which we live.

Athlete: The Sports Illustrated Photography of Walter Iooss

When I visited the Newseum, one of the special exhibits on display was a collection of photographs by Walter Iooss, who has had a remarkable 50-year career providing memorable and eye-catching images for Sports Illustrated, including more than 300 covers.

The exhibit, which continues through Jan. 16, 2011, includes more than 40 Iooss photographs of such sports icons as Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, and Tiger Woods. These photographs demonstrate Iooss’s dynamic composition and bold use of contrast — whether in color or in black and white.

If you visit the Newseum and this special exhibit, be sure also to check out Iooss’s personal diaries, collages, handwritten notes, and a video produced by the Newseum featuring Iooss discussing his work and how it evolved from his interaction with his subjects.

The Freedom Forum

The Newseum, which opened to the public on April 11, 2008, is funded and operated by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to promoting freedom of speech and of the press. The Freedom Forum also funds the First Amendment Center and the Diversity Institute.

Founded by Allen H. Neuharth — former chair and CEO of Gannett Co., and the man responsible for USA TODAY — the Freedom Forum was a successor to the Gannett Foundation but is not affiliated with Gannett Co. Two other organizations helped bring the Newseum into being—the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and The Annenberg Foundation.

I hope you get a chance to visit the Newseum the next time you are in Washington. If you have already been there, I’d love to hear your reaction to this unique facility.

I’ve found that many software companies time their new releases for late at night in the United States. That’s lunchtime here in Taiwan. So when I learned over lunch, via Twitter, that Adobe Lightroom 3 had been released, I immediately went to the Adobe site to buy my copy.

I should have had the jump on my sleeping American friends, right? It didn’t work out that way.

Address Not Accepted

I downloaded the trial version. As soon as I confirmed that it had installed properly and was able to read my Lightroom 2 catalogs, I clicked “Buy.”

Nothing happened. Then I got a message from Adobe saying it could not accept my online payment because my registered location was Taiwan.

Unfortunately, as an ex-pat photographer based here for seven years and married to a Taiwanese citizen, I no longer kept any bank accounts or addresses registered elsewhere.

What to do?

Finding a boxed copy in a store here would be close to impossible. It would need to be specially ordered and take at least 6 weeks to arrive. Many local distributors also won’t accept upgrade pricing — only the full retail price.

When Lightroom 2 was released, I had a friend on a business trip to the United States buy it for me there, but no such luck this time. I contemplated making a quick trip to Hong Kong to buy a boxed copy — but this would add $150 in plane fare to the cost of my purchase.

BitTorrent and Other Solutions

I turned to Twitter and Facebook, asking if anyone had solutions for me. They did — and how.

A surprisingly large number of photographers suggested I simply wait for Lightroom 3 to be available on BitTorrent and download an “alternative” version. In other words, skip the runaround and get a pirated copy.

I didn’t want to go there. Fortunately, one Twitter follower had another idea; he suggested I try Bundle Box, a site that allows people outside the United States to have a virtual U.S. address.

Returning to the Adobe store, I created an Adobe ID using my new Bundle Box address. I then went back to the Lightroom 3 product page, clicked on “Buy,” filled in the credit card details and I was done!

Or not.

One Final Hurdle

Adobe accepted my payment and informed me that a serial number would be sent in a separate e-mail and would appear in the “Your Orders” section. But when I got there, instead of a serial number, I got this message: “Contact Customer Service.”

Of course, it was after hours in the United States, so I had to wait till 8 p.m. my time to call. Then I had to wait on hold for someone to talk to me.

Sitting on hold on an international call is not something I normally like to do, but it’s still cheaper than a flight to Hong Kong would have been. After someone answered, I got transferred around a couple of times — but when I finally reached the right person, everything got sorted out. I got my serial number and my purchase was complete.

After going through this experience, though, I wonder how many people would have stopped looking for legal solutions and would have simply downloaded a copy over BitTorrent instead? Adobe and other software makers, take note.

High dynamic range imaging, or HDR, is a technique through which three or more photographs of different exposures are merged to create a single image that displays a greater dynamic range of luminance, characterized by more shadow and highlight detail.

Attempts to capture a higher dynamic range are not new. They go back as far as the 1850s, with Gustave Le Gray rendering seascapes to capture both sky and sea. In the film era, photographers used ND filters and stacked multiple exposures to create an image showing, for example, a properly exposed sky as well as the landscape.

Reproducing What the Eye Sees

Theoretically, high dynamic range is designed to better reproduce what the human eye actually experiences. If you look outside your window on a moderately sunny day, for example, you can see both shadow detail and highlight detail in a way that your camera cannot. (See some examples of HDR photography at HDR Spotting.)

But HDR is a controversial topic for photojournalists.

Most news outlets have a code of ethics forbidding photographers from altering the content of their images. Many, like the New York Times, specifically forbid HDR imaging in news coverage.

The Times’ John Tierney, however, recently asked readers if this was the right decision:

Some [HDR] images seem otherworldly, but others strike me as more natural than the alternative made by conventional means, like the one of the scene at Glacier National Park … Should The New York Times and other publications consider allowing news photographers to use this HDR process for giving readers a clearer view of the world?

Ethical Headaches

Ideally, the media wants to publish images that represent an event as realistically as possible. They want to put the audience at the scene of the story.

HDR imaging has the capacity to do that, by replicating what the eye resolves in a way that a single photograph cannot.

So then, is a single image — dodged, burned, noise reduced and color balanced — more of an unaltered picture than multiple images, merged to show a higher dynamic range?

Which image is a better representation of the story?

The trick is vetting a submitted image composed of three or more photographs for publication. The photo editors of news organizations have enough trouble catching manipulated images as it is. This might only multiply their ethical headaches.

What do you think?

When I walked into the museum in Boca Raton, Fla., the first thing I noticed were the signs warning visitors not to take photographs, and instructing us to check our cameras at the entrance.

I had my Leica and two lenses with me and had no interest in checking them, so I tucked my camera in my bag, bought a ticket and began wandering about the place.

Not Responsible for Checked Items

About an hour into my visit, a security guard approached me.

“Excuse me, sir. Is that a camera in your bag?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“We have a very strict policy about photography equipment — no exceptions,” she said firmly. “You cannot continue unless you go back and check your camera.”

I gave in and walked back to the entrance where the checkroom was. Behind the counter were two signs. The first, of course, reiterated that all camera equipment had to be checked. The second sign, just below it, said “Not responsible for checked items.”

I got my money back and left.

Too Many Lawyers

Unfortunately, too many museums have these kinds of restrictions on photographers. It’s like their boards of directors are made up entirely of retired lawyers.

Right near my home in West Palm Beach is the Norton Museum, which is a nice facility. But when I inquired about their policy regarding cameras, I was told that photographs were only allowed outside in the sculpture garden — not inside the museum.

“You mean flash photography is not allowed, right?” I asked.

“No, all photography,” I was told.

It made no sense to me. I could see how flash might be a problem inside the museum; over the long term, it could negatively affect the paintings and drawings. But to permit photography outside and forbid it entirely inside — where’s the logic in that?

A Popular Target

Photographers are a popular target when it comes to making rules forbidding things. Restricting photographers in museums is particularly ironic; you’re putting the clamps on artists who are admiring the work of other artists.

Could you imagine Van Gogh having to get a permit to paint a drawbridge? How about Henri Cartier-Bresson being forced to check his camera so he could look at his own photographs?

What’s interesting to me is that while so many museums have these restrictions, the greatest art collections in the world do not. The Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Art all permit photography on their premises (although sometimes flash is forbidden).

The photograph above was taken a few years ago in the Louvre. I bought my entry ticket, walked past a sign that said flash photography was not allowed, and I was in. I spent the next few hours photographing the people visiting the place. No one bothered me.

If It’s Good Enough for Rembrandt

A few weeks ago, I visited the National Gallery. At the entrance, a guard welcomed me. He looked into my camera bag for security reasons and then let me through. That was it.

The National Gallery has probably the finest collection of art in the United States. Everywhere I went, there were tourists with their little pocket cameras snapping pictures of their kids, the paintings and anything else that got their attention.

These people were not taking pictures of the work of lesser-known artists, like what appears on the walls in Boca Raton. These rooms were filled with Rembrandts, Van Dycks and Bruegels — the mother lode of art.

And yet, the National Gallery had no restrictions. Even flash was no problem.

Until I walked into one room, where a guard approached me.

In this room, the guard told me, photography was not allowed.

“Why not?” I asked.

He explained that the room contained a visiting exhibit. Because the National Gallery did not own the artwork, they could not allow pictures.

“Lawyers,” I grumbled.

Photo © David Saxe

James Cavanaugh recently posed this question to members of LinkedIn’s ASMP group: “A client wants you to create photographs that they can use on social sites so they can ‘go viral’ to promote their company. It means potentially countless people may use your copyrighted work. How would you approach such a request?”

I suggest handling the job as an all-rights assignment. Forget about copyright. Make sure you earn enough from the assignment to cover your costs, overhead and profit. Since it is highly unlikely that your name will remain attached to social network uses, do not discount your price based on some imagined promotional value.

And do not worry about — or expect to earn anything from — residuals, but do retain the right to license other non-exclusive rights to use the images.

There is no way we will ever control the use of imagery made available on social network sites, so stop agonizing over it, accept the paradigm shift of our industry and adapt to the new reality.

You have two choices. Either establish a fee that makes it worthwhile to produce the images without any hope of residuals, or refuse to do the job. Do not factor in, in any way, a potential value for residual use of the images.

Calculating Your Fee

There is a simple formula for calculating what the fee should be. First look at all your overhead expenses to operate your business, not counting expenses specifically applicable to shooting various jobs. Assume $75,000.

Add what you need in take-home pay before taxes. Assume another $75,000.

Thus, the jobs you produce need to generate $150,000 annually.

Now, estimate how many jobs you will be able to do in a year given the pre- and post-production time and marketing time involved with each one. Let’s say 100.

Divide the number of jobs into the total you need to produce, and you get an average of $1,500 per job.

You should charge that fee per job, plus all the expenses related to the particular job. (Obviously, your own numbers may be higher or lower than these illustrative figures.)

Some jobs will take a lot longer than others. If the job is not going to take much time you might want to charge less, but when thinking about time involved do not forget pre- and post-production time, waiting time and travel. For those jobs that take a lot longer or are a lot more complicated, you want to charge proportionately more than your calculated average.

In some cases, you will want to take into account the value the customer will receive from using the images produced and add appropriate fees — for example, charging more if the images are to be used in a major ad.

Retaining Future Usage Rights

If the original customer is paying the full cost of producing the image, why retain the right to license other non-exclusive rights to use the image? Because there may be future opportunities to do so despite the wide distribution through social networking.

Do not count on the revenue such situations will bring — but do not preclude it, either.

For instance, someone may need a large file for a poster, a billboard or an ad, and you can license a non-exclusive use for such a purpose. You can also place the images into an online database where customers may find them easily. They will pay to use such images, even when the images are also available for free on a lot of social network sites, because they do not necessarily know about such sites or cannot easily find the image on them.

Keep in mind that some images on microstock sites have been downloaded more than 16,000 times — at microstock prices. Certainly, those images have been used occasionally on social network sites and your customers could find and use them without paying. But despite this fact, 16,000 customers have been willing to pay something to use these images.

The main reason they are willing to pay is that they are able to find the right image easily. But when they buy rather than steal the image, its creator benefits.

There is a good chance that any image you post on a microstock site will never earn more than a few dollars, but whatever it earns is additional profit — the proverbial icing on the cake — because you have already been fully compensated for the cost of producing the images.

Regardless of whether or not you try in some way to generate residual sales, the important thing is to not depend, in any way, on such income to support your business or your lifestyle.