Third in a series.

Every project has a starting point, which can come from a variety of sources: a fully developed brief detailing what a client wants; a scrap of paper with a couple of words on it; a verbal conversation with someone; or, quite often for photographers, an observation of some visual element in our environment.

In project management methodologies, this starting point is known as an “initiation document,” which, once received, kicks off not the project itself, but an extensive bit of exploratory research, which can be carried out with any number of tools. One of my personal favorites is Microsoft OneNote.

OneNote is basically a structured notebook held on a computer, enabling you to create folders and pages capturing any and every detail relating to the project. In addition to text and images, you can include audio — such as discussion from a meeting or even evocative noises that help set the mood for what you want to achieve. (You can watch a brief video tutorial here.)

Sources of Inspiration

Using software like OneNote, you have the flexibility to include all kinds of inspiration sources in your research. Experimenting with different forms of inspiration can keep you from getting stuck in a rut — making the same creative choices again and again.

Your research can take many different forms: statistical analysis; diagrams and sketches; sample photographs of what you would like your final outcome to be. Libraries, galleries, parks, sculptures, monuments and many other objects are just waiting to fuel your imagination.

The world is full of inspiration if you are willing to go looking for it — and have a system for capturing your explorations.

Whatever you do, get away from your computer and see things in the real world. Yes, the Internet is a wonderful research tool — but, as anyone who has had the pleasure to see some of their favorite paintings and photographs in real life can tell you, an image on a screen is a pale substitute.

Using Your Mobile Phone

The “ideas book” has long been a popular tool for art students to record anything they come across they find interesting. This may be a picture, a sketch, pieces of fabric, even leaves, papers and plastics. Mine frequently contained reems and reems of poetry, as I found writing very inspirational for my artwork and photography.

Today I like to incorporate my mobile phone into the process of capturing inspiration. If I am entranced by a bird singing, for example, I take its picture and then record its song on video. If I come across some appealing text, I save a draft text message of it.

Wherever you choose to draw your inspiration, remember: the more varied and creative your initial research, the more unique and successful your project’s final outcome is likely to be.

Once your research has been carried out, you can begin to put together your project brief. Depending on the size and source of the project, this can take a variety of formats, but it is a foundation that you will refer to regularly as you progress through the timeline of your project. I’ll cover this in more detail in my next post.

Imagine two very different personality types. One likes authority and control and believes in order and security. The other is independent, inquisitive, and perhaps a bit pushy. Both are convinced they are working for the public good. Now, put a badge and a gun on the first type, and hand the second type a camera. Do you see a potential for conflict?

The First Amendment gives photographers and videographers almost unlimited freedom to make images in public places. This includes every place from Wall Street to Main Street — streets, plazas, parks, bridges, shopping malls, industrial parks, city-owned airports, and transit systems.

OK, public places are fair game, but what about people? As long as they are in a public place, you can photograph or video to your heart’s content. This includes politicians, celebrities, police officers, and ordinary people.

A 9/11 Hangover?

Anyone appearing in public has given up what lawyers call “a reasonable expectation of privacy.” It doesn’t matter whether they are central to your image or incidental. (Of course, what you can legally do with those images after you have made them is another matter.)

However, your image-making activities may attract the attention of law enforcement officers or other officials who think what you are doing is illegal and needs to be stopped.

Perhaps the resilient trauma of the 9/11 attacks explains why photographers sometimes run into trouble while photographing in public places. Or maybe it is just the conflict between two very different personality types.

Bert Krages, attorney and author of Legal Handbook for Photographers, says few public places have rules prohibiting photography. But you wouldn’t know that from the way some officials have been behaving.

Exposing Interference with Photographers

The Washington Post has been doing an excellent job reporting on cases in which police have interfered with photographers and videographers who had every right to be making images.

In July, the newspaper’s online edition reported on 10 incidents in the D.C. area over the past two years when photographers on public property aroused the ire of law enforcement officers or other officials.

For example, in 2008 at Washington’s Union Station, a public place, a security guard told a Fox 5 television news crew to stop filming an interview with an Amtrak official. Ironically, the official was explaining that photography is permitted in the station.

In that same venue, a restaurant manager asked a still photographer for his permit to shoot pictures—in an area where no permit or permission is normally required.

In 2009, police officers told a professional freelancer covering Washington’s Chinese New Year celebrations on a public street to stop photographing them in the act of questioning someone standing nearby.

Police Should Not Expect Privacy

Court rulings and official police policy have made it clear that police officers have no reasonable expectation of privacy while on duty in public.

Nevertheless, when D.C. police were ticketing speeders near Grant Circle, they told a photographer who was capturing this seemingly benign public-safety campaign to pack up his gear and leave the area.

Police in our nation’s capital also seem to have it in for Jerome Vorus, a particularly unlucky college student. So far this year, he has been detained twice for making photographs — once on a public concourse at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and once on the street in Georgetown while police were conducting a traffic stop.

Overzealous Security Guards

Pictures of the exterior of the Department of Housing and Urban Development headquarters appear on HUD’s website and on Google Maps. But that didn’t seem to register with one of the building’s security guards, who blocked a photographer from making similar shots.

Not to be outdone in their efforts to protect national security, guards at the Department of Transportation headquarters have been equally zealous. But finally, in 2009, they relented, allowing a photographer to get a shot of the building — after being questioned.

Guards at federal buildings are within their rights to question photographers, but they overstep their authority if they deny permission to photograph a federal building from a public location.

A Night on the Town — and an Arrest

The police and other officials may simply dislike being photographed, or they may truly believe they are upholding the rights of people and of property.

They may also simply want to control the situation and exert their authority, says Jay Bender, the Reid H. Montgomery Freedom of Information Chair at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and a lecturer at the university’s law school.

Bender, who is also an attorney for the South Carolina Press Association and the South Carolina Broadcasters Association, tells the story of a photographer working for the State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina.

The photographer was enjoying a night on the town with friends in the city’s popular Five Points neighborhood. The police, meanwhile, were busy ticketing and towing cars parked in front of various nightspots.

When the photographer went to the lot where the cars had been towed, identified himself as a journalist, and tried to find out what was going on, he was arrested.

“Of course, the arrest was invalid and the charges were ultimately dismissed, because fortunately he had a videotape of the police acting in excess of their authority,” Bender says. “But it’s generally better to avoid the confrontation if you can.”

Getting Roughed Up by the Cops

March 21, 2009, was the deadliest day in its history for the Oakland, California, police department. Four of its officers were killed in two separate incidents.

Retired KGO-TV videographer Doug Laughlin went to Highland Hospital to film the ambulances arriving in front of grieving fellow officers and family members.

Several officers attacked Laughlin, shoved him against a parked car, and broke the viewfinder on his camera — all of which Laughlin caught on film and posted to YouTube.

Despite the fact that he was a journalist covering a newsworthy event from a public vantage point, Laughlin was threatened with arrest and ultimately kept away from the hospital when the police strung yellow crime-scene tape across his path.

Laughlin has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. He is asking for unspecified damages and an injunction to prevent police interference with journalists.

“The public has a right to be informed and for its journalists to report the news,” says Charles Bourdon, one of Laughlin’s attorneys. “Mr. Laughlin was doing his job to present a newsworthy event to the public and was not at any time interfering with the legitimate actions of the police.”

The Gulf Oil Spill and BP

The Gulf of Mexico is a public place, and no one doubts that the recent oil spill was a newsworthy event. Yet British Petroleum contractors, backed up by the U.S. Coast Guard, prevented a CBS television crew from filming a beach in South Pass, Louisiana.

Coast Guard officers, citing “BP’s rules,” threatened to arrest the CBS crew.

This confrontation and others like it were the subject of an online article July 28 by Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association. Osterreicher says there were “numerous reports of government interference with press coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.”

For example, police detained a freelance photographer in Texas City, Texas, for making images of a BP refinery. A BP employee and local police officers stopped the photographer at a nearby gas station and demanded to see his identification and his digital images.

The reason? “National security.”

An Ongoing Story

Clearly, the rights of image makers and the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment are not always respected by those in authority. I will continue this discussion of image makers and the law in my next column.

The material in this column comes from a chapter I wrote on media law for Videojournalism: Multimedia Storytelling, a new textbook by Ken Kobré, professor of photojournalism at San Francisco State University and author of Photojournalism, the Professionals’ Approach, now in its sixth edition. Focal Press will publish Kobré’s new book in 2011.

Meanwhile, if you have had any experience with this perplexing issue, I’d love to hear from you.

Increasingly, rights-managed and traditional royalty-free stock companies are having trouble finding photographers willing to shoot for them. Many of the star photographers from five or 10 years ago have given up shooting stock — or at the very least, dramatically cut the number of images they produce and the amount they are willing to spend on production.

Why the decline? Monthly royalty checks have plummeted to the point where many photographers feel it no longer makes economic sense to risk the upfront investment required to produce marketable images.

Very few photographers will produce as many images for rights-managed and traditional royalty-free licensing in 2010 as they did in 2007 or 2008.

If they can find a subject that has no cost in terms of props or models, they might shoot it — but even that requires an investment of time. And is this investment worth it anymore?

Looking for a Better Return

Photographers today are looking for a better, surer and quicker return on investment than the traditional stock companies are providing.

Here’s an example to help explain why:

A photographer — who most would consider to be among the most successful in the industry today — spent between $7,000 and $8,000, not counting his time, producing several shoots in June 2009. Over 300 images were accepted by his agency.

Earlier this month, he received his first quarterly check for the use of those images. It was less than $1,000.

At that rate, perhaps in another year or so, if prices don’t drop further, he’ll make his investment back and maybe earn a little for his time.

We cannot call this “profit,” because that will really be just paying himself a minimal salary for the time invested and the use of his capital; profit should be over and above a basic living wage.

Getty’s Failed Experiment

Three or four years ago, Getty Images began doing lots of wholly owned production shoots, because its contributors were not supplying imagery its data showed was in high demand.

The company’s art directors planned and organized shoots and hired the most experienced and successful stock shooters to do the work. The photographers were paid a flat fee, with no royalties, for unlimited exclusive rights to their work.

After about a year, Getty abandoned the project. Rumor has it, the imagery produced did not generate enough of a return, in a reasonable time period, to offset production costs.

Getty went back to encouraging photographers to produce more and shoulder all the production expenses themselves. That did not work very well, either.

And all this occurred before the recession hit and Getty lowered its prices by an average of 30 to 40 percent to maintain previous sales volume. This, of course, did not improve photographer royalties.

The Flickr Option

With those who had been Getty’s main source of imagery no longer contributing the volume of material the company wanted, Getty went looking for other sources. Voila, there was Flickr.

The nice thing about Flickr images for Getty is that most of the photographers are not taking pictures to earn a living. They are happy with a little money for their work, even if it does not cover cost of production. They weren’t expecting to get anything anyway.

And yet, the Flickr option proved problematic, too. Initially, Getty had to edit the work and make sure the keywording was satisfactory, which appears to have been too costly given the return from sales.

The next step was to eliminate the costs of editing and keywording and let Flickr host the images. All a photographer has to do now is put a notice alongside his or her Flickr images that basically says, “if you are interested in buying this image, call Getty.”

Time for a New Strategy

I wish I could find more positive things to say about the industry, but stock photography is not the business it was in the ’90s, and it never will be again. Change happens. Sometimes, it is very disruptive.

Twenty years ago, there were relatively few images available on any subject, so photographers had a chance to make multiple sales at relatively high prices. Since then, the number of rights-managed images licensed annually hasn’t grown, but thanks to digital technology, customers now have many more choices.

Even for the best photographers, this dramatically reduces the odds that any one of their images, no matter how good or how creative, will be licensed.

Of course, there also has been a decline in the number of printed products, as well as the number of pages in most publications. The new and growing ways to get information are digital. These new customers need pictures, but the prices they are willing to pay for the images they need for these uses are a tenth (or less) of what they used to pay to reach the same number of consumers.

Some like to place the blame for the industry’s problems on the recession and argue that everything will get better once the economy improves. They’re kidding themselves.

A Narrow Path to Success

I am not saying all photographers should give up on stock photography. I do not believe in no-win scenarios. But when you’re facing a brick wall, rather than banging your head against it in continual frustration, it may be better to look for a way around it that will allow you to achieve most of what you want and be happy.

The key to success now is to

1. design shoots that cost no money to produce, but which
2. generate unique images that aren’t similar to those already done in abundance by someone else, and the images must also
3. be in high demand by customers so when they are licensed individually for low prices the combined total sales will generate enough revenue to make the effort worth the trouble.

Obviously, meeting all three of these requirements is not easy. Going forward, however, the photographer who wants to earn enough from producing stock images alone to support himself and his family will have to be able to do this on a consistent basis.

Stock as an Income Supplement

Microstock sellers have discovered a market for imagery that annually buys about 100 times as many images as are licensed as rights-managed. Granted, these customers are usually licensing the uses for very low prices, but this is where the market is headed.

We’re not going to change that trend by wishing it would go away. We’re in the middle of a paradigm shift. We’re not going to reverse it.

That leaves us with a conundrum. In this new environment, is it possible to focus exclusively on producing stock images and have a successful career? If not, then the photographer must find some other revenue source for the bulk of his income needs and look at stock photography as a part-time, supplementary source of income.

Many photographers are quite happy operating in that manner. They might not get to spend as much time taking pictures as they would like, but they are not living on the edge or starving.

Back to the Future

Back in 1975, everyone in the stock industry was saying, “Don’t shoot on speculation.” Re-sell outtakes from assignments where the production costs have been paid for by someone else, but don’t make an upfront investment of time and money without being sure of receiving adequate compensation for your efforts.

Of course, at that time demand was much greater than supply, and speculative shooting worked very well for many photographers. But that’s not the world today.

We do a great disservice to photographers when we encourage those just getting into the business to think they can build a career around shooting stock images exclusively if they will only license them at rights-managed prices. Earning a good income from stock photography simply won’t happen that way.

If they want a career in photography, they are going to have to do something else in photography in addition to producing stock images. They had better develop a strategy from the beginning that includes some other kinds of income-producing work.

Napoleon famously said, “An army marches on its stomach.” The same is true for photographers, clients and everyone else on a photo set.

When you’re called to shoot something, even if it doesn’t span a mealtime, food can make the difference between a good experience and a bad one.

Put It in Your Estimate

I’ve had more than one corporate client complain about working with photographers who neglect to include catering in their project bids. The client isn’t looking for that line item — but when they get to the shoot and there’s no food, they definitely notice.

Even if the client isn’t planning to attend the shoot, don’t skimp on food. If you’re doing a shoot where you have a three-assistant crew, two makeup people, two subjects, and four handlers, have food there.

Otherwise, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself for the grumpiness and irritability that ensues, particularly if the day runs longer than expected.

Prepare in Advance — and Don’t Be Cheap

So, how should you go about catering a shoot?

Even before the cameras and gear are in place, I like to have the arrangements made. Check with everyone in advance to see if there are food allergies or restrictions to accommodate.

Don’t even think of making the food yourself, or using Subway or Quiznos. Shootdigital has a list of other no-nos, including:

• Only offering vegan or sushi
• Themed food (BBQ, Mexican, etc.)
• Anything smelly
• Corn on the cob
• Super spicy food
• Leaving out a healthy option
• No dessert!

For me, a good choice is a chain that makes gourmet sandwiches, cookies, and so forth, like Corner Bakery.

Have the food and beverages on the set, in full view, before anyone arrives. Your subject/client will grab a bottle of water and a cookie before heading off to a corner with BlackBerry or iPhone in hand, starting the session in a contented mood.

Remember: in photo shoots as in life, there’s no second chance at a good first impression.

I had the opportunity to interview Tony Messano, an Atlanta-based art director, for a presentation I gave at the NPPA Convergence ’10 educational event in July. In this video, Tony shares the qualities he looks for when hiring a photographer.

I had the opportunity to interview Tony Messano, an Atlanta-based art director, for a presentation I gave at the NPPA Convergence ’10 educational event in July. In this video, Tony offers some practical advice to photojournalists who wish to make the transition to advertising photography.

Tomorrow: What Tony looks for when hiring a photographer.

Are photojournalists unduly focused on the dark side of life — dead bodies, conflict, misery and the like?

Many people seem to believe this. They think we would climb over loving couples, cooing babies and content grandparents just to shoot the only negative scene at an event.

Maybe this is true for some, but I know many photojournalists who work just as hard to find positive stories.

The Lifeline Express

A doctor performs a middle ear operation on the Lifeline Express, a traveling hospital in India.

In my current project, for example, I am examining not only the challenging aspects of village life and the sometimes damaging impact of modernity and globalization around the world — but also the joy, rewards and improvements that modern life has brought to villages.

A great example of the latter is India’s Lifeline Express, a train that has been converted into a traveling hospital. The train travels across remote villages to treat those with few, if any, other medical options. Doctors and staff from India and overseas donate their services.

On this occasion, the train had parked at the Wardha railway station in the state of Maharashtra. The staff carried out operations and treatment for polio, cleft lips, cataracts, and middle ear and dental problems.

It was amazing to watch and be part of.

Patients and their families wait in a tent which has been erected on a railway platform as a temporary medical waiting room.

Worth the Wait

Often, stories of hope like this one are a long time in the making, because documentary photography can be a slow process where patience in abundance is required. But the end result is worth it.

As Magnum photographer Jean Gaumy once put it, it’s “like fishing. You find the location, check your bait and cast the line. Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you are not.”

A woman awaits her operation.

Photos © Michael Coyne.

In this installment of “Ask the Photo Business Coach, I answer a question submitted by Black Star Rising contributor Aaron Lindberg: “When is my portfolio in a new specialty good enough to promote on my Web site?”

The myth I’m writing about today has undoubtedly caused thousands of excellent, award-winning photos never to be taken. It’s the myth of the model release for editorial use.

Photography columnists, unaware of their First Amendment rights, have been fanning the fires of this issue for years. A wall of mythology has built up around the subject, and I’ll make the first move to break it down for you:

No, editorial stock photographers: you do not need model releases.

To Inform and to Educate

About two million dollars a day are spent in the publishing of editorial stock photography, where the essential use is to inform and to educate.

Photo buyers in this arena rarely require a model release, unless the photo is so sensitive that it might compromise a person in some way. These are rare cases involving highly charged subjects, such as drug abuse or certain medical issues.

A good rule of thumb would be to ask yourself, “Would a newspaper photographer ask for a model release in this situation?”

Whatever the answer, take the picture anyway. The photo editor will be the one to determine if the image can be used.

Wearing Two Hats

You might now be asking, “So why was I under the impression that model releases are always required?”

Part of the reason is that most teaching and training for working photographers in the United States is slanted to commercial photography, where you do need a model release.

As stock photography has grown and become more prevalent, commercial photographers have expanded into media photography, and brought with them the assumption that a model release is always required.

Some editorial stock photographers like to get model releases so they have the flexibility to use their photos for commercial purposes, such as advertisements or endorsements.

As my friend Jim Cook, creator of METAMachine, says, “My accountant loves me for getting model releases; so does my wife.”

Some photographers can wear two hats, commercial and editorial. Try it. You might be built for it.

Personally, I’m not. I stick to the editorial side of selling stock.

A Powerful Ally

You — as an editorial stock photographer operating a business in a free society — have a powerful ally on your side. It’s the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The First Amendment, in effect, says you can take photographs in public (no model releases needed) as long as you are not breaking any local laws, such as trespassing.

It would be a bureaucrat’s dream for officials to be able to say, “You can’t photograph in my school, my police precinct, my park.” In reality, these people (school principals, police officers, etc.) work for you. They are your civil servants. Your taxes pay for their buildings, equipment, and salaries.

As long as you are not interrupting their normal course of duties, you can photograph them.

Deep Pockets

From time to time, there are lawsuits challenging the rights of photographers. But if you examine each case, the plaintiff almost always goes after the publisher with deep pockets, not the photographer. And the plaintiff rarely wins.

Large publishing houses, which spend $50,000 to $150,000 per month for photography, are vigilant about protecting their First Amendment rights, and in so doing, they protect your First Amendment Rights.

So go out and photograph freely in public. You’ll be in the good company of Margaret Bourke-White, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, and others. And the world will be a better informed and educated place for your efforts.

On LinkedIn’s Photography Industry Professionals discussion group, Brooke Fagel recently asked: “What’s it like to be a freelance photographer?” These select responses provide a comprehensive picture of what a photographer faces.

Tim Norman • Rough. I just started as a freelancer, and I’m trying to figure out where to begin. I was a staff photographer until my job was eliminated and I’m trying my hardest to keep my dreams alive.

Matt Dunn •. 30% is shooting (pre- and post-production as well as the shoot itself) and 70% is trying to get the job.

Mike Shipman • Mostly it’s doing a lot of things you would really rather not do (but are necessary – hey, who else is gonna do it?) and not enough of what you’d hoped you’d be doing the most of when you decided to work for yourself.

John Trifiro • Like the rest of the arts and entertainment industry’s it’s the A-list or the No-List syndrome…The middle sucks!

Leni Johnston • Great when there is work, sucks when there isn’t. Networking and word of mouth is key. Get out there and get noticed. I just picked up The Wealthy Freelancer. It has some good advice.

Deborah Hart • It’s all about hurry up and wait. I am always networking, and thinking of a new way to promote myself. And then there are times I’m so busy with shooting and processing, I look forward to a minute to do billing, so that someone will, later rather than sooner, pay up.

Eric Lucero • I love my job, but I hate waiting for payment from clients, not knowing when my next job will come, and long hours. But, no matter how much sleep and hair you lose, it will always beat sitting in a cubical all day watching the clock.

Roel Loopers • It is about the love for photography and the hope you can make a living out of it. I have been free-lancing for nearly 42 years. I had fantastic years financially and have had many rough years as well. Sometimes I have longed for a well-paid constant job, but then I would have to turn up every day at the same time and at the same locations. I rather keep taking the financial risks and remain independent, free, creative and love what I am doing.

Alan Rosenberg • Never forget you are only as good as your last job.

Colin Cooke • I’m in my hot office attic with fans blowing on my computers to keep them cool. I’m downloading 290 tiff files for Stockfood. I’m hot. That’s an afternoon in the life of a freelance photographer.

Dallas Allbritton • It’s constant hunger for me and not in terms of food for the body but the next opportunity, the next network connection or opportunity. I am constantly looking at and developing new niche’s and examining what others are doing. Personally, I would not have any other life. I would not change for anything in the world except to have more opportunities to do what I do.

Greg Premru •  It is possible to make a living being a photographer. I’ve been doing it for 15 plus years. It’s without a doubt gotten harder in this economy. Photography has gone through a huge transformation in the last five years and the game has definitively changed. Just like many other professions, technology has changed how our product is not only produced but viewed by potential buyers. Photography is now more of a commodity than ever. There are too many photographers chasing after the same work. That said, the internet and social marketing craze allows you to get in front of more potential clients then ever before. What we have to avoid is the race to the bottom in terms of pricing, or the new economy of free. The world is more image-driven then ever and everyone is a contributor. It’s art, yes, but it is really a business more than anything else.

Sandy Hechtman • The key is it’s a business. Your goal is to develop a clientele that regularly uses your services. A lot of your time is spent looking for that next job. It’s important to be professional and by that I mean follow up on your phone calls and emails. Let that client know he or she is the most important person on earth. You’ll be surprised how much business you can generate by just being professional. The bottom line is that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Todd Beltz • Being a freelance photographer certainly has it’s ups and downs and as I’ve been doing this now for the last 3 years, I would never go back to a full time job. It’s not easy at times though, especially at my age to get jobs as a lot of them go to the younger and most times, cheaper photographers. I started my career late as I had lost my job and just fell into what I loved doing most. While I love every minute of it, it’s not an easy life. I realized that I’ll never be rich being a freelance photographer and starting a family is a pipe dream for me. I lost a relationship due to my career choice as sadly the woman never saw a future with someone whose monthly income is never stable. Not an easy life for sure but one that does bring happiness to my heart.

Sebastien Saykowski • I have a full time job in photography, but those I hire are all contractual and outsourced freelance photographers. From what I gather it’s brutal, up and down, and not easy to live with, depending on your life situation. You gotta love photography to be a freelancer and succumb to seasonal work. Most of my team have part-time jobs in other fields.

Andrea McLaughlin • My clients are photographers who tell me daily about the ups and downs of the freelancer’s life. Right now the marketplace is saturated with too many photographers. In a slow economy people are getting laid off and fewer new jobs are being created. People who always wanted to go out on their own become freelancers. New photographers charge less than established photographers and the market becomes a buyers paradise, but not so lucrative for photographers.

Keith Hern • After 25 years in corporate sales freelance photography is another world. If I ever get really down I just go stand at the commuter train station early in the morning with at least an hour’s journey packed in like sardines just to get to an office…. that’s a great way to remind myself why I do something freelance and creative….and not be answerable to some jumped-up opinionated ‘manager’……

Dallas Allbritton • I hear you. I am in Nashville and we don’t have the commuter trains but we have an interstate and we have a big state government work force. I cringe as I watch them drive to a parking lot with there packed lunches and climb on a bus that takes them 300-500 yards to an office building.

Todd Biss • I just wrapped 10 days in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Haiti was brutal! Outrageous heat, depressing situations, garbage everywhere… but mingled in the mess… people who were full of hope, happy to be alive and living for the day they had been given. Actually… kinda like being a freelance photographer. Not that I’m comparing my situation to those in Haiti! But so much of what I have to do is not what I want to do. Then there’s that small percentage of time that I’m actually shooting… wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Bryan Lowry • Just returned from six days and nights documenting a new lava flow heading towards my friends house. Maybe one hour sleep a day with flowing lava only 50 feet away and a large brush fire across the street as we sat eating breakfast, lunch and dinner in the house; large methane explosions everywhere. Now I’m home on the PC sorting out 1400 photos and looking for the winners. It’s periods like this followed by periods of inactivity. I do lots of hiking over and around lava. I live a strange life.

Michelle Chaplow • Without a shadow of a doubt its a privileged field to work in, you have to totally love photography to endure the course. Flexibility adaptation and change are the ingredients needed for the freelance field. Sometimes I´m bored out of my brains with the computer calibrations, however the travel, the thrill of creating and capturing new imagery, that satisfies both myself as the photographer and meets the clients brief makes the whole venture a delight. Every so often it’s good for freelance photographers to remind themselves that we have the choice and I for one feel that I have chosen well.

Frank DeSantis • I love my work, I love being behind the camera. I love shooting. I started out as a freelance graphic designer and then art director and now photographer. There have been ups and downs. You learn to live with it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I photograph homes, I photograph corporate people, I photograph dogs, I photograph product and I photograph women. I enjoy every minute because it’s mine; I made it, I’m responsible for what I do and how it plays out. I have a great studio that looks out over downtown Portland, Oregon. I can choose to look out the window all day or choose to do my work all day or both or nothing at all. There’s beauty in it. Imagine free falling but with wings. It’s not for everybody.

Marilyn Angel Wynn • After a week of shooting along the west coast (for free), visiting friends and family along the way, living inside my truck camper and then this morning selling 5 images to NGS, life is just too good! The stock sales trickle in these days but the ride is so well worth it still. Happy shooting.

Abigail Harman • I love being a freelance photographer. Each day is a different challenge and you never know what is going to happen next! I meet wonderful people who often become friends. It’s nerve wracking sometimes but exciting and fulfilling at the same time. We get to create something and have fun at the same time. How many professions have that?

Scott Stahl • You have to love people and the rewards of great photography to stay with it.

Jim Pickerell • It is survival of the fittest, but the fittest is the best marketer, best communicator, best financial manager, best adapter to new technology, best business person not necessarily the most creative or best photographer.

John Trifiro • Like any business, if you don’t do it for the money, then you shouldn’t expect to make much of a living. Luck is a lot of blood, sweat and tears!

I recently came across two job postings that say a lot about the state of the photography market today. And while the news is not altogether surprising, it still might stick in your craw a little bit.

The first listing, on Craigslist, was flagged by John Harrington. A New York PR firm had posted an ad online looking for a photographer to take pictures for a “High Profile Client.”

Full Credit and Future Work

The ad reads (italics ours):

Photographer Needed for High Profile Client (Indianapolis)

New York City based Public Relations Company is seeking a photographer for a small photo shoot with a well known professional tennis player. Great way to add photos to your portfolio and work with a great company. Photos will be used in a marketing campaign geared towards the US Open.

Although there isn’t any financial compensation for this project, full credit is given as well as an opportunity for future work with a magazine. We will work to create a great credit package for the right photographer!

Please email us for details ASAP, as this project would be taking place within the next few days.

John figures the PR account rep “billed $150 for the time necessary to create this craigslist ad,” and will “spend another few hours culling through the idiots that respond to this ad.”

Then, “the studio you have to rent will get paid, the car service that brings the pro athlete will get paid, the cell phone bill that the account exec has for all the calls related to the shoot will get paid,” and on and on.

Everyone but you, the creative talent making the project a reality.

Doing More with Less for Less

The second ad, a job posting for a photo editor at Time Inc. found by Paul Melcher, demonstrates that similar pressures exist on the editorial side.

Qualifications for the ideal job candidate at the world’s largest magazine publisher include (again, italics added):

• Excellent editorial judgment and eye, must generate story ideas and identify topics to cover, must react to news.
• Edit and build various online photo galleries, notably never-seen LIFE archival content and LIFE.com’s weekly feature: The Weeks Best Photos
• Oversee and perform the digital restoration of LIFE archival photos (basic retouching and color correction)
• Experience negotiating and managing usage rights and rates for digital, mobile and video content
• Assign, produce and direct original photo essays
• Liaise with Editorial, Legal, Sales and PR Teams in the execution of featured content packages
• Manage freelance staff
• Strong eye for young talent
• Must be creative in terms of doing more with less for less and must be ready and willing to do so

As Paul translates that last bullet point:

Must be capable of getting the best images for peanuts and not complain about it. Ever.

No Magic Bullet

In other words, in both commercial and editorial photography today, the squeeze is on. And don’t expect it to end when the economy improves.

Now, is there a magic-bullet answer to these challenges for today’s pro photographers? No, there isn’t.

But one thing I do know from reading and editing the contributions of Black Star Rising contributors is that the qualities that make for a successful photography career have evolved markedly over the past several years.

The photographers who make it today are more than picture-takers, more than artists even. They know how to brand themselves and market their businesses. They know how to communicate their value in no uncertain terms to clients and prospects. They are savvy negotiators.

They know a bad deal when they see one, too. And they have no qualms about walking away from it.

Remember that the next time a low-balling PR firm or publisher tries to hire you for little or nothing.

It’s hard to turn down help in building your photography business, especially from friends and relatives. But a few years ago, I realized that the assistance I was receiving actually had become counterproductive. To grow my business, I had to learn to say “no.”

I had moved to a new city, where I was fortunate to have a number of friends and acquaintances. Knowing that I needed to establish a clientele in my new surroundings, several of my friends were kind enough to send work my way. Some of the jobs were corporate assignments; others were family portraits.

A Job’s a Job — or Is It?

The problem was, neither of those were my speciality. I focus on cultural photography, from traditional festivals and customs to modern, urban subcultures. So while I accepted some of the jobs sent my way at first, I ultimately decided that these assignments were preventing me from developing my business in my chosen field.

As soon as I started saying “no” and referring the portrait and corporate jobs to other photographers, I began unearthing opportunities in my own genre.

I know what you may be thinking: in today’s economy, a job’s a job — and it’s crazy to turn one down, especially from someone who cares about you. When you’re invited to photograph Cousin Ernie’s wedding, your natural instinct is to jump at the chance.

And why shouldn’t you?

The reason is that it can turn your photography business into a rudderless enterprise that veers from opportunity to opportunity without ever charting its own path. And that is a formula for financial failure — not to mention creative frustration.

So it’s OK to say “no,” even to friends and relatives, when an assignment isn’t a good fit. “No” is a very powerful word; it’s a word that offers you the freedom to succeed on your own terms.

Single-Minded Determination

I can count on one hand the photographers I know who are employed by someone else; the great majority of us are small business owners. And in a world where fewer than half of new businesses ever turn a profit, spending time, money and resources photographing something irrelevant to your business is simply not a smart move.

Especially when you are just starting out, you need a single-minded determination to establish yourself in your chosen genre. You need to shoot new work for your book; you need to create or otherwise source a database of prospective clients; and you need to develop a targeted marketing plan. And that’s just the beginning.

All of this takes time — time you lose if you spend it taking random jobs to make a quick buck.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter if everyone loves those baby photos you shot, if your goal is a career as an adventure photographer. It just becomes a distraction, pulling you further from your dreams.

Stay focused on your goals by learning to say “no.”

Heavenly shades of night are falling
It’s twilight time
Out of the mist your voice is calling
It’s twilight time
When purple colored curtains
Mark the end of the day
I hear you my dear at twilight time

– The Platters

One of my best photography tips is a simple one: Don’t leave after the sun sets.

There are two cool sky events that happen after sunset. The first is the “afterglow” which is that burst of color that frequently (not always) spills up into the clouds after the sun has sunk below the horizon. The other is simply twilight, and you can count on that every night.

Blues and Purples

Twilight, to me, is an incredibly pretty time — the sky fills with blues and purples and any artificial lights have a nice, warm glow. Also, because the light tends to be very even at twilight, contrast is low and you have a lot of latitude with exposure.

I always shoot in RAW these days, so I can also moderate the amount of blue/purple light in the twilight and adjust the exposure before I even open the image in Photoshop. As far as metering, I tend to just meter the sky using the matrix or center-weighted meter and let the foreground shapes go into silhouette.

The shot below was taken in East Haven, Connecticut, at Lighthouse Park — a great setting for sunset and twilight shots. I shot the photo with a Nikon D90 and an 18-70mm Nikkor zoom, on a Bogen 3021 tripod. Exposure was 1/50 second at f/5.6.

Skylines at Twilight Time

I’ve always loved shooting city skylines. There is something magical about all those thousands of lights glittering silently in the night. The bigger the city is, of course, the more impressive the skyline — and when it comes to places like New York or Chicago, the view is downright breathtaking at night.

The trick to getting a great photo of a city skyline at “night,” though, is not to shoot it at night, but rather at twilight. Depending on which direction the skyline faces, you can often get a beautiful mix of sunset colors, twilight sky and city lights all mixed together.

Probably the very best time to shoot is just after the sunset and during a very brief, magic window of opportunity when the twilight sky glows an almost turquoise blue and the city lights are beginning to come alive.

I recently had the chance to shoot the Manhattan skyline from the New Jersey shore along the edge of the Hudson River. There is a beautiful boardwalk that runs along the entire waterfront in Jersey City that makes a perfect shooting location; it’s a devastatingly beautiful vantage point. I shot this picture from a continuation of that walking path that runs through Liberty State Park — one of the state’s most beautiful parks.

The photo above was made a few minutes past the peak of the sunset. In retrospect, I should have begun shooting about 10 minutes earlier, but even as the sun was setting there was a driving rain falling — it was a wild mixture of light and weather. In fact, just a few minutes before I shot this, the rain was pounding so hard that I almost abandoned the shoot.

Even on the best of weather days, this kind of beautiful twilight/sunset light only lasts about 15 to 25 minutes, so you really have to be in place with your tripod set up and your camera ready to shoot a half an hour before sunset.

Once the sun starts to set, the buildings (at least with west-facing buildings like these) take on some spectacular colors, and as the sky darkens the city lights get brighter and brighter. If you can capture the exact moment when all of the lighting conditions are peaking, you’ll get some fantastic shots.

A Stunning Mix

You’ll definitely need to use a tripod to get shots like this, because you’re going to need a relatively small aperture and a correspondingly long shutter speed. This shot was made at f/10 at 2.5 seconds.

At such long shutter speeds, I also suggest using either a remote control (wireless) or the self-timer, and possibly also locking up the mirror.

Even though this shot is pretty sharp, I’m not totally satisfied with the sharpness and I’m not sure if the softness came from the lens I was using or lack of depth of field. I’m going to go back and re-shoot this with a different lens (probably a prime lens), and I’ll probably begin shooting a bit earlier and also use a smaller aperture to get even more depth.

You can, of course, continue to shoot after the blue has faded from the sky, but skylines just aren’t as pretty with a black sky as they are with that nice blue glow.

Also, if you shoot much after dark you’ll be using much longer exposures, which causes the lights in the scene to blur together and create pockets of bright glare.

Twilight is the primo time, in my opinion. So just get to your location well before sunset, choose your shots and then be ready when the worlds of sunset, twilight and city lights begin to collide. It’s an absolutely stunning mix.

One of the current discussions among university faculty nationwide is whether to ban laptops from the classroom. The logic behind this? Students are using their laptops to access the Internet and social media instead of taking notes in class.

Leery of an outright ban, some universities have apparently tried to combat technology with more technology, giving professors the option of turning their classrooms into Wi-Fi dead zones, thus blocking access to the Internet.

And in some universities, no personal electronic devices are allowed in the classroom — including laptops, cell phones, iPads, and, presumably, microtransmitters concealed in the fillings of students’ teeth.

Where laptops are allowed, a compromise apparently pleasing to both students and faculty is to relegate them to the back row, where they do not distract other students.

Three Different Classroom Settings

At the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, I teach in three very different classroom settings.

For photography and videography courses, I teach in a computer lab. For Introduction to Visual Communications, a survey course required of all students in the school, I teach in a large lecture classroom holding 85 students. And for my entrepreneurship course, Freelancing for Creative Professionals, I teach in a classroom that holds about 30 students.

In the computer lab, students work on the school’s Macintosh desktop computers, so personal laptops are rarely used. In the other two classrooms, there is wireless Internet service, and students can bring their computers to class.

The Allure of the Electronic Device

As we all know, electronic devices are seductive. That’s part of their allure. Ask anyone whose spouse or partner just got an iPhone. Watch people waiting for their flight at the airport. Or attend a meeting — especially faculty meetings!

Students are not immune to this allure. One of the challenges of being a teacher these days is being more engaging than Facebook. That’s a tough challenge!

I’m making the assumption many students using laptops in the large lecture classroom are not using them to take notes. My evidence is anecdotal. When we watch the two-minute videos their classmates have created, I have to ask students to close their laptops. This tells me their minds are engaged elsewhere.

Faculty members at other universities report students using laptops in class to play video poker, watch movies, and drift from website to website.

My Dilemma

So here’s my dilemma. On the one hand, keeping students engaged is hard enough without having to compete with the Internet. The five or six students sitting next to and behind their classmate surfing the Net on their laptop will inevitably be distracted by what they see on the screen.

I try to be respectful of my students and expect a certain level of respect in return. I don’t tolerate a student who is reading a book or newspaper in class, so why should I allow electronic reading and viewing?

On the other hand, if I ban laptops, what about smartphones and iPads, which can be used both for taking notes and scanning Facebook? My wife, who is an associate professor at the University of South Carolina Aiken, tells me she has had Emergency Medical Technicians in her courses. They need their phones when they are on call.

So do we then get in the business of determining who needs a device in class and who doesn’t? Supporting documents? Does course subject come into play? R U 4 real?

Students Decide

This whole discussion has led me to think about my role as a university instructor. Unlike high school, no one is forced to go to college or university. In fact, I believe it is a privilege. My students are adults — they can vote, serve in the military, give legal consent, and enter into binding contracts.

As adults, they can also decide how they want to use the privilege of attending university. They can make the most of it, or they can squander it. That is their decision — not mine.

If they make the most of the privilege, there is a good chance they will succeed in other aspects of their life, such as a career. If they squander it, they will have wasted their parents’ hard-earned money, their scholarship or student loans, and all the hours they’ve spent working to help pay for tuition and other bills.

Laptop use has been associated in some educational studies with lower academic performance. In other words, your mind can’t be two places at once, so if it’s on Facebook, that’s like being absent from class. Imagine paying big bucks for a rock concert and then not showing up!

Rules of Engagement

My job is to engage my students in the course material — not to be a truant officer or a disciplinarian. Students who visit Facebook instead of paying attention during class may think they are putting one over on the instructor. That is a mentality left over from high school. The only one losing out in that situation is the student.

The same applies to attendance. I can’t force students to come to class. I impose a grade penalty for excessive absences, and ultimately a student who misses too many classes may fail. I do get concerned when a student stops coming to class, and I will try to contact the student and also let the administration know. But it’s the student’s choice.

Notice I use the word “engage” when I talk about my role as an instructor. There has been some talk in relation to laptop use that we can combat this by being more entertaining. I like the reaction from one of my colleagues: “I don’t juggle!” Entertainment is passive, engagement is active. I’m in favor of engagement, not edutainment.

By the way, when I recently went to graduate school, I tried using a laptop to take notes but found it prevented me from engaging with the professor and my classmates. Too bad, because my handwriting is horrible, and I wish I had the notes in electronic form.

All the Rage

Finally, there are videos on YouTube showing teachers venting their anger about laptops and cell phones by destroying student property. I believe violence of any form — whether against persons or property — is completely inappropriate and unprofessional. If you can’t manage your classroom in a nonviolent way, you should start looking for another job.

So how do you respond to laptops, cell phones, iPads, and other distractions? I’ve found the two Hs to be helpful — humor and humiliation. If a cell phone rings in class, I’ll say, “If it’s for me, tell them I’m not here.” If a student is obviously distracted by something on their computer screen, I’ll ask them to share it with the entire class. I don’t tolerate rudeness, but it doesn’t help to go ballistic.

More Info

If you want to read further on laptops and the classroom, here are some other articles:

“Why I Ban Laptops in My Classroom,” by David Cole, October 23, 2008.

“Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls,” The Washington Post, March 9, 2010.

“American lecturers banning laptops from the classroom,” by James Bone, The Times of London, March 11, 2010.

“Banning Laptops in Classrooms,” by Paul Thagard, Psychology Today, July 9, 2010.

If you’ve had experience with laptops and other electronic devices in the classroom, as either a teacher or a student, I’d love to hear from you!

Amish culture is fascinating to me. But as a photographer, documenting the Amish is a challenge, because posing for a photograph is discouraged by their religion. It is seen by many (though not all) Amish people as an act of vanity.

The Paparazzi Approach

So, what’s the best way to capture the Amish on camera? Some of the advice I’ve read or been given by other photographers includes:

• “don’t stay in one place too long;”
• “use a long lens so you can zoom in;”
• “you have a better chance of photographing Amish children than adults;” or
• “wait until they’re not looking and photograph them from behind.”

Sorry, but I don’t feel like “stealing” moments like that. It makes me feel like a paparazzi, and it’s kind of creepy.

I know if I were outside mowing the lawn or planting flowers and someone started photographing me from a distance, it would frighten me a little.

In my experience, the best photos happen when both parties are present and aware of one another. And this is just as true for the Amish as for other subjects.

Three Tips for Noninvasive Photography

I’ve found three noninvasive ways to achieve good results in documenting the Amish:

1. I feel them out first. I make sure they are aware of my equipment; then, I begin shooting at a comfortable pace and distance. Yes, I find my share of rejection — but I’ve also been greeted warmly and gotten some intimate shots.
2. I ask, “Do you mind if I use my camera here?” I don’t give them a big sob story to get their approval; if they aren’t OK with me shooting them, I don’t. But I often still stay to observe; photography is about moments, whether we capture them with our cameras or not.
3. I don’t obsess on only photographing people. Amish culture offers a treasure trove of subject matter besides the people — things like hand-made furniture, hand-sewn curtains, farm landscapes, lanterns, patterns of wood on the barn, even clothes hanging on clotheslines. I can showcase the beautiful simplicity of the Amish without insisting on including a reluctant subject in an image.

Enjoy the Process

You aren’t always going to leave the house to go shooting and come home with gold. That’s okay; enjoy the process, and respect what is in front of you for what it is.

Wear your camera visibly and know when to use it, and don’t touch it if you aren’t 100 percent confident that you should. Smile instead, and move on to the next possibility.

That’s been a pretty good rule of thumb for me in my work — whether documenting the Amish or any other subject.

There probably isn’t a photographer in the world who hasn’t dreamed of getting published in National Geographic magazine — and each year, we get our chance. The 2010 National Geographic Photography Contest, one of the most prestigious contests in the world, begins accepting submissions Sept. 1.

You can enter images in each of three categories: people, places and nature. The first prize is $2,500 in each category, and one grand-prize winner gets an additional $7,500. Plus — the real prize — your winning photos appear in the magazine.

You can submit images until Nov. 30, so you have three months to go through your very best images or perhaps shoot some new ones.

Tips for Winning

So, how do give yourself the best chance to win a highly competitive contest like this one?

I’ve interviewed a lot of contest judges in the past few years and one of the things I hear them say most often is: “Show me something different — or from an unexpected viewpoint.” Keep that in mind, especially when you’re shooting familiar subjects.

If you’re photographing a chateau in France, for example, why not take a hot-air balloon ride and shoot it at sunset from the air? If you’re photographing deer in a nearby park, think about setting your tripod in a stream and photographing them from water level as they come to drink. Surprise and entertain and you’ll get lots of serious consideration from judges.

I had the opportunity to interview National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson for my book, Winning Digital Photo Contests, and he described his approach to judging contests this way:

I always try to do a scan and go through all of the photos pretty quickly to see if there are things that really just pop out — photos that give you a rush of recognition the instant you see them. Those pictures, whatever their technical qualities, whatever their shortcomings, you give weight. If you have a reaction to the picture, something visceral and emotional, then you have to think that there’s something going on there, even if it breaks all the rules. That’s what a picture is supposed to do, to cause a reaction, to get to us.

That process of doing a scan helps me to find some of the best pictures and eliminate others — pictures that are simply “me too” pictures. Those pictures may be done well and have perfect exposure, but you realize you’ve been seeing the same shots for 15 years. I don’t care how perfectly it’s executed; if I’m jaded to the very approach and the very presentation, it doesn’t get nearly the mark up that more inventive photos get.

I had an English composition teacher in high school that used to say that the greatest tool that a writer had was a unique viewpoint. That is so often the case in pictures. There are other pictures that take time to appreciate and their gifts aren’t delivered instantaneously, so you don’t want to use that barometer all of the time on all pictures. But as you’re sitting there doing the initial scan of images, if they can’t grab your attention in a second or two, then they probably aren’t going to grab your attention at all.

Mistakes to Avoid

Richardson also described the most common mistakes he sees in contest entries:

One of the greatest sins that you see in photo contests is the overuse of things like the saturation slider. You see that over and over again, people turning up the volume too high. And it doesn’t have to be just saturation, either. It can be sharpness, or extreme focal lengths, all kinds of things. They assume that if some saturation is good then more is better, if a wide-angle lens is interesting then a fisheye lens would be even more interesting.

They make the mistake of assuming that it’s about technique rather than vision. There’s an analogy here to the ballet. Yes, all the dancers have to be technically perfect, but the perfection of the dance won’t get to your heart. It may get to your appreciation of perfection, but it won’t stir your heart like the agony of Romeo and Juliet.

Winners of the contest will be announced in December. There is an entry fee of $15 per photo. Read the official contest rules and an FAQ for more information. And to get some inspiration and see what others have done, there are galleries of previous winning shots on the NatGeo site.

His hearing was poor and he shuffled about with the aid of a walker, but 93-year-old H.D. Dennis could still preach to anyone who happened by the one-time grocery store that became a church.

It was a most unusual church of no particular denomination, faded and worn, with 400 feet of hand-painted scripture of plywood signs and cement block towers –- with a weatherworn school-bus-turned-sanctuary that had been parked in the garden for years. That particular day I was this preacher’s flock.

Margaret’s Grocery and Market

I’d been headed to downtown Vicksburg, Mississippi, taking the back roads because I had nothing but time on my hands. A scheduled photo shoot an hour away had been postponed, so I took a different route back to the hotel. Highway 61 is a down-at-the heels stretch of industrial zoned property near the edge of town that had seen better days.

I wasn’t expecting Margaret’s Grocery and Market, Home of the Double-Headed Eagle, but that’s the best thing about back roads: stumbling across the unexpected. I couldn’t keep myself from pulling over.

The Rev. H.D. Dennis added towers, archways, and signs outside Margaret's Grocery and Market to draw people off the highway so he could preach to them.

I knocked on the screen door, ignoring the “closed” sign. Margaret answered but said her husband wasn’t feeling too well that afternoon. I said I’d come back another time. “Could I just make a few pictures?” I asked. She smiled and said, “That’d be just fine.”

I marveled at the folk art that surrounded the place. I promised myself to return before driving back to the delta farmland where I hoped to be shooting the next morning.

A Tour with the Rev. Dennis

As I walked back to my car, I heard the screen door open. The Rev. Dennis slowly made his way outside. He had dressed in a tattered but freshly ironed shirt, I guessed because his wife told him a fellow with a camera was outside and he wanted to look presentable. We talked for a while. I sat right beside him on the porch and spoke in my best “hard-of-hearing” voice, but I’m not sure he heard me.

Rev. Dennis, 93, shuffles with the aid of a walker outside his wife's small grocery store that he transformed into a folk-art-covered church on the outskirts of Vicksburg, Miss.

Then H.D. escorted me around to show off his handiwork that had taken nearly 30 years to complete, though I doubted he would ever consider it finished.

“Every one of those bricks I put there myself, and it was perfectly laid,” he said proudly. “Did you ever see any bricks so perfect?” he asked. No, I hadn’t, I said. He would’ve showed every brick, block and hand-painted signs if he’d had the stamina.

We strolled through his Scripture Garden, walking among the signs that motorists driving past simply can’t ignore. He unlocked the pink and yellow bus that was a permanent fixture in his garden.

It had taken years of scavenging for the beads, golf balls, trinkets and stuff of garage sales and dollar stores that the preacher used to decorate the inside of the bus. The entire inside of the bus had been lined with thousands of colorful odds and ends glued into a mosaic that words simply couldn’t describe.

An Audience of One

H.D. stood at the pulpit just behind the driver’s seat and continued to preach. It was a hot, stuffy old bus, but it was also God’s House, a place of worship. So I sat down on a dusty, worn bus seat and listened.

One thing I’ve come to know: there’s no such thing as a “retired” preacher. Once God calls someone to preaching, no opportunity is missed. H.D. preached as though his church were standing room only, even though I was the only one there to hear him.

Margaret joined us a bit later that afternoon as we picked up where we left off on the front porch. She doted on her husband of 30 years, making sure he was doing OK. She hugged him and left us to talk.

H.D. and Margaret

H.D. married her in 1979. She was the “Widow Rogers” back then, and ran Margaret’s Grocery. H.D. promised he would transform her humble shop into a church that would glorify God — if she would marry him. She agreed, and for the next 29 years H.D. would slowly build his church to preach to whomever came by.

He used whatever materials he could find –- cement blocks, bricks, sheets of corrugated steel, gravel, donated plywood and dozens of cans of red and white paint, more glass beads and baubles, cement, pieces of broken pottery and colored glass, even busted mirrors –- nothing was too humble or useless to get folded into his shrine. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as they say.

It was all used to invite Jews and Christians, blacks and whites alike to worship there. “God have no white church and he don’t have no black church,” says one sign. “Please Go to Church,” encourages another.

A Final Prayer

The sun was setting, and it was time to go. I felt privileged to meet the preacher and his wife, and document a part of the South that would likely soon vanish. I pressed my dinner money into H.D.’s weathered hands and then we prayed together.

I left Vicksburg the next day after my original assignment was finished. I promised myself to visit H.D. and his lovely wife again if I was ever back that way.

Sadly, Margaret went home to be with her Lord a few months back. I heard that H.D., unable to live alone, was now in a nursing home. Though a local church had been given the responsibility to care for the property, I would be surprised if it was still standing on my next trip to Vicksburg. Perhaps a new business park or a strip mall would be in its place soon. Progress and all.

I have pictures and the memories. They’ve not been published until now. They reaffirm my passion for the back roads of the South — to see what lies over the next hill.

Rev. Dennis prays at the rear of his bus.

When you are a self-employed photographer, reaching the level of earning enough to support yourself and your family is difficult. There are thousands of struggling and aspiring pro photographers out there, all searching for that elusive key to success.

Some commentators will tell you that the key is simply to shoot great photos. For example, here is what Marco Oonk of Fast Media Magazine recently said:

I firmly believe that despite the “democratization” and “commoditization” of the stock photo industry, there will always be more reward for great images. By “great” I mean images that fill a need and do it superbly … There is still, and always will be, plenty of money to be made.

I totally disagree.

Certainly, as a photographer you should try to produce the best images you know how to produce, and you should always be striving to improve the quality of your images.

But just because an image is judged to be “great” by your peers, or because it wins awards, that does not mean customers will pay more for it, or that you will sell more of your work.

Photographers may spend more time in pre-planning, use better models and more expensive sets, and generally spend more money to produce a set of images. But that does not mean customers will pay more for them.

The Agenda of Stock Agencies

It is in the interest of stock agencies to make you think success is all about producing more and better photos. They constantly ask for “more and more” and “better and better.”

Do they do this to help you be successful? No, they do it because it does not cost them a thing. They have no investment in the production costs.

Following the advice of stock agencies may or may not increase your sales — but it will certainly increase your costs, and quite possibly reduce your profits.

Photography Business Realities

So before falling for the line that shooting lots of “great” images leads to commercial success, keep in mind these six basic principles of the photography business:

1. Customers always want the best image they can find, at a price they can afford. A stock picture has to be exactly what the customer needs — including the right price. The price they can afford is always a major deciding factor.
2. If the image you are selling is a stock image, the price the customer is willing to pay has absolutely no relation to your efforts to produce it. No one cares what it cost you to produce an image or what you had to go through to get it.
3. Prepare to be constantly surprised at what the customer thinks is the right picture. Customers seldom pick the images you like best. No matter how great you think your image is, how many awards it has won or what your colleagues tell you, it is the customer who determines value.
4. Customers don’t care whether your fees cover your costs. If you are doing an assignment, you can establish a fee upfront to cover your costs and profit, but many potential customers may be unwilling to pay what you ask. The value of any image is based entirely on the customer’s perception.
5. The amount customers pay is based entirely on the value they will receive from using the images and what they feel they can afford at the moment. Since the end of 2007, the average price Getty Images receives for the images it licenses has dropped 30 to 40 percent. That is not because the images are of poorer quality than they used to be, but rather because the prices agreed on are all the customers feel they can afford to pay in these difficult economic times, and because there are other easily available options that satisfy customers’ needs.
6. The price a photographer decides to charge for his work limits the number of potential customers. If the photographer sets a high price, fewer customers will consider the image. If the photographer sets a low price, more customers may consider it, but that is no guarantee there will be enough buyers at the lower price to equal what one might have earned at a higher price.

Despite growing demand for images, still photography as a profession is taking a serious hit — and not just because of the current recession.

Those in the industry who say that the photographers who continue to produce “great” images will succeed are just kidding themselves. Or, as in the case of the stock agencies, they are telling you what you want to hear because it benefits them.

The truth is, those considering entering the photography profession today need to carefully weigh their options. The pictures you produce have to be good, but that alone is not nearly enough. Beware of the temptation to spend more and more and work harder and harder without a corresponding financial result.

Second in a series.

The first step to successful project management is to develop what I call a “project toolbox.” This is the foundation that enables us to take consistent approaches to the wildly different situations we come across in the projects we embark upon as photographers.

Your project toolbox is a standard set of tools and techniques you can use and apply again and again. They can be as narrow or wide-ranging as you wish, and can also evolve over time as you come across new methods or software, for instance.

Getting on the Same Page

The first item in your toolbox should be a terminology and definition breakdown that ensures that everyone involved in your project is on the same page. You can develop this as a simple spreadsheet, listing tasks, techniques and tools relevant to how you like to work.

Your document might include entries such as:

• Mindmap: a diagram of related thoughts used to identify and develop ideas and concepts.
• Stage: a collected series of tasks and duties that must be performed before subsequent sets of tasks can be completed.
• Stakeholders: anyone who provides input or is affected by the outcome of the project. This can include the client, those funding the project, the team working on it, etc.

These are just three examples of terms to include in your definitions document.

Change Control Procedures

Another important tool for keeping everyone on the same page is a change control procedure. This is a standard format for how items and pieces of information you produce will be labeled, so the most recent version can be found.

For example, a document in your photography project might be labeled “Shot list d1a.”

In this case, “Shot list” is the title of the document, “d” shows it is a draft, “1″ is the issue number, and “a” shows there have been no amendments made as yet.

Subsequent items might be d1b, d2a, and so forth — all the way up to i1a, representing an issued document with “i” indicating “issued.” We will revisit change control in more detail in a subsequent post in this series.

Templates and Task Management

Next up are templates and tasks. As a time-saving measure, adding a range of standard templates to your toolbox is invaluable.

You can set up templates for reports, project timelines, initiation documents, work package descriptions, and equipment lists. This saves having to create such documents for each project you take on.

Everyone has their favorite method of task management, whether it be a series of notes in a calendar, a GTD style email inbox or a full blown software package with mobile sync. Your key considerations should be ease of use, how well you can involve others in the tasks, and the level of detail you require.

Planning Tools

While some people use their task managers as planning tools, they are not the ideal way to develop an overview plan for the completion of a large amount of work.  

Gantt charts and dedicated project management tools are excellent solutions here and worthy additions to your toolbox.  As with most software these days, there are both commercial and open source tools available to fill these roles.

You could also create your own planning tool using databases, spreadsheets and calendars. This might take a little time, but it can provide you with flexibility not inherent in a structured software package.

Your planning tool should be able to track resources (e.g., people, equipment, locations, props), deadlines for individual project components (e.g., set building, location scouting), review dates for progress, and any unbalance or slippage in the workload over the course of the project.

Spending the time upfront to develop your toolbox can bring consistency and structure to the wide range of projects we take on as photographers.

I recently had a distinctly unpleasant conversation with a client who called me after his subordinate had contracted me for an assignment. The contract included a standard rights package.

The client began the call by referencing the agreement and asked, “We do own all rights to these photos, right?”

Preserving Your Rights — Worth the Hassle?

“No,” I explained. The contract included the standard rights I give when I cover a press conference, which was the assignment in this case.

I also, of course, couldn’t grant the client rights that I didn’t have. For example, I did not plan to obtain model releases from all those attending the event, which meant that the photos could not be used in marketing materials.

So no, I couldn’t convey “all rights” to him.

We did the assignment as planned, successfully deflecting the client’s last-minute rights grab.

Some photographers argue that these kinds of discussions aren’t worth the hassle. Just sell your services for as much as you can up front, they say, and don’t worry about saving rights to monetize later.

This point of view usually comes from photographers who don’t want to deal with negotiations, contracts, accounting and spreadsheets. They just want to take pictures — all the way up until their business closes its doors.

A Great Deal — or So It Seemed

I once had a magazine call me to photograph 60 portraits of individual attorneys in the Washington, D.C. area. The prospective client wanted to pay $1,000 per portrait.

It sounded great at first. Upon reading the contract, however, I learned that the client planned to take all rights, including reprints.

I decided to do a little investigating about the project.

It turns out the portraits were to be included in a “special edition” of the magazine called “Washington’s Best Lawyers” and that each of the featured firms would be asked to advertise in the publication.

The magazine would also sell the attorneys reprints of their profiles, with photos, for $3,000. For an extra charge, the publication would even create a special version of the magazine’s cover showcasing the lawyer or firm.

In other words, the “special edition” of the magazine was thinly disguised advertising, and the reprints were essentially marketing brochures for the paying firms.

Oh, and for an additional fee, the law firms could buy the digital files — presumably to use for whatever other marketing purposes they wished.

I decided that the magazine should pay more, considering all the planned uses of my work. But they wouldn’t budge. So I declined the job.

Would they be able to find a photographer for this assignment? Yes, of course.

But it wouldn’t be me.

The Wisdom of Arlo

Sometime back, I got a chance to shoot the folk singer Arlo Guthrie. He said something that day that has stayed with me:

The art of doing nothin’ is probably one of the most profitable things you can do, because it sets you up to be doing something.

When you are thinking about accepting an assignment where the fees will barely cover your costs, or giving in to an excessive rights grab with the justification that “it’s better than doing nothin’,” that’s a good time to reflect on Guthrie’s advice.

Rather than take a job from a client who undervalues you, why not spend that day seeking out better-playing clientele who don’t casually tell you that they expect “all rights” to your photos?

Clients who respect you, your work and your rights are out there. You just need to go out and find them — and then consistently demonstrate why you deserve the professional respect you have been given.

Today’s photography market is flooded with functional images that wash over us without impact. They may do the “trick” for cash-crunched art directors and editors — but they have no magic.

They are “good enough” images at a time when being “good enough” seems to be all that matters.

The Economics of “Good Enough”

It’s simple economics, I suppose. When people are asked to perform the same work for less compensation, they try to crank out more product in less time to make up the difference. Volume becomes more important and quality less.

So it is for photographers today.

When amateurs entered the commercial stock market via microstock, they were lucky. There was a big, unmet need for low-cost, “good enough” images, and these amateurs were just good enough to produce them.

But if you wanted to make real money, as opposed to lunch money, microstock was all about volume. The more “good enough” images you could upload in the shortest amount of time, the better your chances of making a buck.

And so now the Web is flooded with these images. And budget-constrained image buyers seem quite satisfied with that.

This mentality isn’t confined to stock photography, however. Photojournalism, celebrity, sports, portraits, weddings — every aspect of the photography world has been affected.

Look at Time and Newsweek, for example. They once took pride in the images they published. Now, they are chock-full of photos from wire services, the supreme masters of the “good enough.”

Web sites, of course, use images by the pound. Quality is an afterthought, if it is thought of at all.

This land of the “good enough” is a comfort zone for everyone. Deadlines are met, budgets aren’t busted — and expectations are diminished.

What We Lose

So, what’s so bad about living in an era of diminished expectations?

Well, quality suffers, obviously. Since it is not rewarding anymore for photographers to spend a lot of time on images, no one really does. If someone is happy with a half-done job, then that is great.

Perfectionist photographers pay the heaviest price, as their market is quickly slipping away.

The audience for images suffers, too. Consumers simply don’t get to see great pictures anymore. They are served up illustrations that fill a need, functionality and nothing more.

For photography lovers, this is a real loss.

But for everyone else? Who knows, maybe today’s audience figures it gets what its pays for — especially online, where all the content is free. Diminished expectations all around.

We can hope that when the economy improves, we will see a resurgence of the exceptional, an opening in the market for great photography.

For now, though, it looks like we will have to settle for “good enough” and dream of a more interesting future.

I still remember the first time a photograph really affected me. I was 9 years old and reading a Life Magazine book on the history of World War II. It contained hundreds of pictures by Life photographers — but the one that grabbed me was Robert Capa’s blurred image of soldiers landing on the beach at Normandy.

As a child, I had no idea why the picture had such an emotional impact on me. I later learned that it was a very famous image, considered one of Capa’s best — so it must have had the same effect on others, too.

What Makes a Great Photograph?

Today, many years later, I still can’t say exactly what makes a great picture — why one picture resonates with me and another one doesn’t.

If you were to read a book on photography, it would tell you the importance of composition, exposure, building interest, and so forth. But that’s not really what it’s about. If photography were about following rules, we could all agree on which images were great based on specific, objective criteria.

Of course, we don’t usually agree, do we?

How many wedding or portrait photographers have shown their clients photographs they thought were outstanding, only to have them dismissed as “boring”? Or even worse, criticized because the client doesn’t like how their hair or smile looks in the picture?

How many news photographers have had their “gems” dismissed by editors in favor of other, less interesting images – or even worse, cropped so that the initial impact of an image is lost?

I recently showed a gallery owner an image of mine that has been a favorite for years. I took it over 20 years ago, and I still consider it one of my best.

The gallery owner instantly discarded it because it “reminded her” of a newspaper ad she had once seen.

Reminded her!

It’s all very subjective and personal, isn’t it? Everyone has their own reality.

Blending Random Notes into Art

Since my teen years, I have enjoyed listening to jazz. I am fascinated by the way the musicians blend a series of seemingly random notes into music, and it just flows.

I love what jazz does to my head. For me, it’s magic. But I could never explain why it has such an impact on me. I just know that it does.

The best photography is like jazz. It doesn’t overly concern itself with rules. It reveals the passion of the artist.

All photographers have opinions about which of our images are the best ones. Sometimes editors or clients or gallery owners have other ideas. We all have to deal with that.

But if we’re fortunate, every once in a while one of our photos just clicks with people. That’s when the real magic of photography occurs. It’s when the random notes come together, and we make music.

On Sunday, June 13, 1971, the New York Times ran a front-page story by reporter Neil Sheehan titled “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces 3 Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement.”

This story and others that followed were based on a secret government study, commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, that described the history of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, from World War II until 1968. The Pentagon study was massive — 30 to 40 authors churned out 2.5 million words, 3,000 pages of analysis, and 4,000 pages of official documents.

According to transcripts of phone conversations President Richard M. Nixon had that Sunday with Henry Kissinger, his national security advisor, William Rogers, his secretary of state, and Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s assistant, Nixon seemed surprisingly unconcerned about the article, instead remarking favorably on the week’s low casualty figures from Vietnam and the coverage of his daughter Tricia’s wedding, which also appeared on the Times’s front page.

The Pentagon Papers Case

After all, the Pentagon study, like the war itself, was something Nixon had inherited from previous administrations —the study reflected badly on presidents Johnson, Kennedy, and others, not on Nixon or his administration. Discovering and punishing whoever leaked the secret documents seemed to be Nixon’s main interest.

Attorney General John Mitchell, however, was not happy. On the evening of June 14, he called the Times and also sent the newspaper a telegram telling it to stop publishing the Vietnam stories, which included excerpts of the secret Pentagon study. The Times refused Mitchell’s request, and the government went to court to obtain an injunction to block publication of the stories.

The case was argued before U.S. District Judge Murray I. Gurfein, who was in his first day on the bench, having just been sworn in the previous week.

The case before Judge Gurfein represented a classic clash between government and the press. The government argued that by publishing the secret Pentagon study, the Times had damaged national security and given aid and comfort to the county’s enemies.

The Times argued that the First Amendment prevents censorship of the press, and that the law being invoked by the government was an anti-espionage statute that Congress had never meant to apply to the press.

Judge Gurfein ruled that the Times had to stop publishing for four days, until both parties could prepare for a hearing on a permanent injunction. In a ruling on June 19, Judge Gurfein denied the government’s request to permanently block publication.

A Heavy Burden

A series of quick legal maneuvers resulted in a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that further delayed publication by the Times until secret hearings before Judge Gurfein could determine which parts of the Pentagon study “pose such grave and immediate danger to the security of the United States as to warrant their publication being enjoined.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe entered the fray, publishing articles of their own, and both papers were immediately sued by the government.

Ultimately, the cases involving the New York Times and the Washington Post landed on the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 30, 1971, a little more than two weeks after the Times had begun its series, the Court, in New York Times Co. v. United States, ruled 6 to 3 that the government had not met the “heavy burden” of justifying a prior restraint on publication.

Justice Hugo Black did not mince words:

I believe that every moment’s continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment…. Now, for the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can halt the publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country.

Thus, in a little more than 50 years, the Court had moved from punishing people for printing antiwar leaflets and giving Socialist speeches to allowing the nation’s most prominent newspapers to publish stolen government documents during wartime.

Evolution of the Court

How did this evolution in the understanding of the First Amendment take place?

Interestingly, it was not the elite press that pushed the Court toward a more expansive interpretation of “freedom of the press.” In fact, the New York Times entered the First Amendment battle rather late, when it won a defamation case during the Civil Rights era brought by L. B. Sullivan, a Montgomery, Alabama, city official.

That case itself, however, wasn’t about anything Times reporters had written. Instead, it concerned a paid ad placed in the newspaper by the “Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South,” which Sullivan believed had defamed him.

After the Court’s ruling in Times v. Sullivan (1964), public officials were faced with a nearly insurmountable obstacle to win damages against the press for anything published about their official conduct. Later rulings extended this obstacle to so-called public figures — people who find themselves, willingly or unwillingly, at the center of newsworthy events.

The Thought We Hate

But in 1927, it wasn’t the New York Times or the Washington Post on trial. It was the Saturday Press, a weekly newspaper in Minnesota published by Jay M. Near.

According to Anthony Lewis, author of Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, Near was “a virulent anti-Semite” who wrote that a Jewish gangster was in control of gambling, bootlegging, and racketeering in Minneapolis, and that police and government officials were turning a blind eye toward crime and corruption.

After the ninth issue of Near’s paper, a court order shut down the Saturday Press. The legal basis? A 1925 Minnesota law, called the Public Nuisance Law, that allowed courts to close publications critical of state legislators and government officials.

The law targeted “malicious, scandalous and defamatory newspapers.” Truth was a defense, but only if the newspaper had published its articles “with good motives and for justifiable ends.”

The state supreme court offered no help for Near, and neither did his fellow newspaper publishers in Minnesota. However, Robert Rutherford McCormick, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, sensing that the First Amendment was at stake, offered Near the use of the paper’s lawyer, Weymouth Kirkland.

Near’s case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which held 5 to 4 in Near v. Minnesota (1931) that the Minnesota’s Public Nuisance Law was an unacceptable prior restraint forbidden by the First and Fourteenth amendments.

Five years after Near, the four dissenting justices changed their minds when Huey Long — the populist governor of Louisiana called by some a dictator and by others a champion of the poor — decided to tax newspapers as a way of controlling the press. In Grosjean v. American Press Co. (1936), the Court saw through the sham that Louisiana’s tax was merely a tax:

The tax here involved is bad not because it takes money from the pockets of the appellees. If that were all, a wholly different question would be presented. It is bad because, in the light of its history and of its present setting, it is seen to be a deliberate and calculated device in the guise of a tax to limit the circulation of information to which the public is entitled in virtue of the constitutional guaranties. A free press stands as one of the great interpreters between the government and the people. To allow it to be fettered is to fetter ourselves.

With its rulings in Near and Grosjean, the U.S. Supreme Court set a nearly unreachable standard for prior restraint and paved the way for the Pentagon Papers case: the only time the government can restrain publication is in cases involving the most serious breaches of national security.

Advocating “Revengence”

If you thought Jay Near was an unsavory character, albeit perhaps a crusading journalist, wait until you meet Clarence Brandenburg.

He was a Ku Klux Klan leader in Ohio. One day, he called up a Cincinnati television station and invited a news team to film a KKK rally. Segments of the team’s report were later broadcast locally and nationally.

Brandenburg was convicted under the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism statute, which outlawed advocating crime, sabotage, violence, or terrorism to accomplish “industrial or political reform.” He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to prison for one to 10 years.

Brandenburg appealed on First and Fourteenth amendment grounds. The state appeal court affirmed his conviction, and the state supreme court dismissed his appeal, saying there was no substantial constitutional question.

The U.S. Supreme Court, however, agreed to take Brandenburg’s case. The television footage showed armed and hooded figures watching a cross being burned. Although the audio quality was poor, the justices could hear derogatory references to blacks and Jews.

Brandenburg made a speech advocating “revengeance” if the government continued “to suppress the white, Caucasian race.” Brandenburg promised a Fourth of July march on Congress with 400,000 Klansmen in the streets.

Didn’t the state of Ohio have the right to outlaw this type of dangerous advocacy of violence? In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Court said no.

Overruling its 1927 decision in Whitney v. California, the Court said advocacy was protected by the First and Fourteenth amendments. Only when advocacy rose to the level of “imminent lawless action” could the speech be punished. And even then, the advocacy had to be “likely to incite or produce such action.”

Need for Constant Vigiliance

Despite its seeming invincibility, the First Amendment needs constant protection. Although prior restraint seems to be a thing of the past, journalists are sometimes prevented from doing their job by overzealous police or government officials.

Photographers and videographers are told they can’t shoot newsworthy events from public places.

Reporters and documentary filmmakers are served with subpoenas.

And the consolidation of media outlets limits the number of independent voices being heard.

A free country depends on a free press. That’s why the First Amendment matters.

I hope you have enjoyed this three-part series on the First Amendment. For further information, here are two great resources:
• The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
• The First Amendment Center

As always, I look forward to your comments!

When I got into this business in the 1960s, the dream of every photographer was to do a comprehensive picture story and get a 10-page or longer display in Life, Look or National Geographic.

As time passed and the space to publish stories got tighter, more and more picture editors started looking for the one great image to illustrate a text piece, because they only had space for a single image. Often the pictures were designed more to catch the reader’s attention than to give an accurate depiction of the story.

Gradually, most professional photographers gave up the idea of doing picture stories. The vast majority started thinking in terms of getting that single, powerful image.

Back to the Future — with a Twist

Now, the market for single images is under intense pressure. Advancements in digital camera technology and the Internet have opened the door to microstock. Part-timers and hobbyists are providing, at extremely low prices, much of the imagery that is needed for single illustrations.

In 2009, more than 95 percent of the images used as single generic illustrations were licensed at microstock prices. As a result, many professional photographers are finding it difficult to sustain their businesses by licensing single illustrations.

Fortunately, the picture story is making a comeback. With the cost of paper and other traditional limitations made irrelevant by the Web, the demand for imagery that hangs together as a narrative is on the rise.

And the greatest need is for multimedia storytelling, the direction professional photography will likely take in the future.

Storytelling with Multimedia

Producing picture stories — whether with still images or video — is more complex than shooting single illustrations. Stories require more thought and, at the very least, a different type of planning.

Today’s multimedia projects may use stills, video or a combination of both. While it is possible to tell multimedia stories with stills alone, editors increasingly want presentations to include video or be done entirely with video.

During the heyday of Life magazine, every editorial photographer wanted to shoot picture stories that visually explored issues in depth. Life died, and photographers became illustrators. With short-form video, photographers can become storytellers again.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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.