Today I was out on assignment photographing Arlo Guthrie. It was among the assignments this week that I was most looking forward to, hopeful that he'd sing Alice's Restaurant. Alas, he did not, but he did posit a thought to the corollary:
"The problem with doing nothing, is that you never know when you're finished."
Gutherie said:
"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."
This then begs the question - "What should you be doing?
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Well, the right thing, of course.
What exactly is the right thing?
Well, in the abstract, when you justify taking an assignment for fees that are to low, or an excessive rights grab, with the sentence "well, it's better than doing nothin'", that should be a sign to you that Arlo's thinking should be kicking in.
If your justification for taking an assignment worth $1,000 and doing it for $200 because the client has said "$200, non-negotiable, take it or leave it", and you said to yourself "$200 is better than making nuthin' tomorrow" then you might need to be thinking like Arlo.
If your justification for taking an assignment and being paid $400 but having to transfer copyright is because "$400 for images that have little resale value anyway is better than not making the $400" then you might need to be thinking like Arlo.
Arlo was talking profitability by "doing nothing." At first blush, it seems contradictory.
Yet, upon further reflection, its' not. Instead, free yourself up on that day to seek out a better paying clientele base, and one that does not demand an excessive rights package. These clients are the ones who respect you and your work, and thus, your constitutionally guaranteed right to control the rights to your work.
One of the more unpleasant conversations I had today was with a client for an assignment tommorrow, who, after his subordinate signed my contract with a rights-managed rights package, called saying "I just want to make sure we own all the rights to these photos", to which I had to explain that that wasn't the case, and that, outlined in the contract was a rights package that, for the press conference we were covering, was all the common rights needed and that we grant as a part of our standard package. Further, we weren't granting rights to him which we did not have (i.e. those that require model releases when people attending have not signed model releases, and thus, cannot appear in marketing materials). I noted to him that I couldn't convey to him "all rights", since "all rights" includes the right to use the photos in ads and brochures and so forth, and I'd be charging a fee of him for something I didn't possess.
He then said "we just have a fundamental difference about how to approach this." And I said "well, mine is a perspective based upon copyright law and rights granted under the Constitution. Are you suggesting that if an artist produces a song and earns money off the CD, that they then shouldn't be paid additionally when their music is used in a movie or a commercial?" And he said "well, that's different." I said "no, actually, it's the same copyright principle."
We are doing this assignment tomorrow, not because the client is happy with the terms, but because they signed a contract with a standard rights package and then, after the fact, just a few (business) hours before the event was to start, thought they would try to renegotiate the terms of the agreement - to terms which we cannot convey, and which we principally objected to. Thus, the power of the signed contract.
Today, Arlo didn't play Alice's Restaurant, which is alright by me, since what he did play was amazing in it's own right. At first, I thought I'd be disappointed that he didn't, but afterwards, and upon reflection, I was exceedingly pleased with what he did play. So too, will tomorrow's client be pleased with the work we produce for them, even if they don't get every right under the sun, they will get quality work from a professional photographer, who is "doing something" profitable tomorrow. Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
I'm heading south tommorrow, Thursday 11/8, to help out my colleagues in the New Orleans/Gulf South chapter of the ASMP.
From their e-mail promotion of the talk:
At a time when we could all use some help and support for our businesses, the New Orleans/Gulf South Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers presents Under the Hood of Your Business with John Harrington.
John....will be discussing how to maximize profits and determine minimum charges as well as digital production, copyright, and smart paperwork. John offers a roadmap for applying sound business skills to today’s industry reality.
ASMP’s Strictly Business seminars asked John to participate in that event but it won’t be making its way to New Orleans anytime soon so I asked him to offer his expertise and enthusiasm for the business of photography. Here’s a link to his bio:
Thursday, November 8th – 1040 Magazine Street Doors open 6pm; John speaks 7-9pm Members and students with ID: $10; $20 non-members. Pay at the door. Food and drinks will be served.
So, come on down, we'll have lots to talk about!
(Comments, if any after the Jump)
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
I recieved an e-mail newsletter from WebProNews, with the subject line "AP Is Dead ... Killed By Blogs & Aggregation", and I thought, immediately, that there was breaking news about the AP. Having just photographed the head of the AP, Tom Curley, a few nights prior, and him having made no mention of this made me skeptical. So, I read on.
The author, Rich Ord, CEO of iEntry, said:
Old media is epitomized by no news source more than the Associated Press. Literally thousands of journalists are employed around the world to bring current event coverage to readers of thousands of newspapers and their online sites.
Yes, Rich, that's because there are literally thousands of places around the world where news is happening, every day, sometimes, in the same city at the same time, so we need more than once person in each city.
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He goes on to say:
In the pre-Internet days the AP had little competition beyond a few other news syndicators like Reuters and UPI. The AP's world has now changed forever with the advent of blogs and news aggregation sites.
Blogs are the new "AP" journalists and aggregation services which started with NewsLinx.com in 1996 (founded by me!) and which now include Google News, Topix, Techmeme, WebProWire and the new Blogrunner have made the AP much less relevant.
No, Rich, blogs are not the new AP. Blogs are an unfettered collection of postings by people with unknown agendas. In fact, WebProNews wrote about this very fact in this article which noted that the photographer/author team were hired to write positive blog pieces about a major retailer. I can't see how they can critisize the blogosphere in one breath, and then suggest it's the new AP in a year later. It can't be both ways. The AP is reporting - without agenda - on the news of the day. One can argue all you want about if they're conservative or liberal, or middle-of-the-road, but their overarching agenda is to take as unbiased look as possible on the news of the day.
WebProNews criticized the AP "the AP is suing Moreover for of all things... linking to AP stories. Does the AP not realize that winning this suit would result in less readers of their stories?" The AP isn't complaining about more people reading their stories, they are complaining about people generating revenue from links and ads alongside the links to their stories, which are not generating any income for the AP or it's members, but are for the link farms that are generating income.
They go on to write:
The Associated Press model of news is dead ... dead as can be. It is a business model that pays reporters to travel and write stories and then syndicate those stories to traditional news organizations.
Wait, you said at the outset "The AP is Dead", now you're just saying the model is? Which is it? Earlier in the post you cited Curley's remarks in a speech a few days ago
"We must take bold, decisive steps to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism's essential role in both our economy and democracy, or find ourselves on an ugly path to obscurity."
I think Tom Curley gets it. He wants to evolve. Heck, the guy ran USA Today when everyone joked about it as a fake newspaper before coming around to it.
Now, if we could just get the AP to increase their assignment rates, and maybe use the pay-per-play model I suggested at the end of What The Writers Strike Means to You, we'd all benefit from this new media we're (some of us are) thriving in.
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
What's happening with the Writers Guild of America, sadly, cannot happen for us. We have no union. If we did, we would have more power to affect our future, diminishing the capability for media conglomerates to screw us.
Yet, we're screwing ourselves because few of us individually has the fortitude to withstand draconian contracts foisted upon us by major media outlets, who say to us "take it, or leave it, there's a line of suckers down the block willing to sell their soul (or at least all rights) to be a photographer", and we have no recourse.
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What you should be watching, is the parallels between what the WGA recognizes is "new media", and how you may well be giving away the farm with your grant rights.
"when they make money off our product we deserve a piece of it" so said the head of the writers guild when the strike was announced.
So often, the arguments be newspapers and wire services is that your photographic contribution is a "contribution to a collective work" and thus, why should you deign to think you're due anything more?
If you're and old school photographer you agreed to paltry rates because the use was in the paper for a day, or the magazine for a week, or the smaller magazines for a month. You rarely complained when your day rates didn't increase with annual cost-of-living increases.
When digital came around, that didn't change right away. A few organizations paid a "digital transmission fee", which, for most, has disappeared. However, back in 1988, the web, iTunes, wireless phone media players, and so forth, didn't exist. Warren Leight, the executive producer of NBC's "Law and Order: Criminal Intent," sad "At the moment, we have no piece of the Internet at all." Funny how the networks are making all the money off their online presences and so forth, and the writers aren't getting a dime.
So too, when paper's assignments were being handed out, it was just for the print edition, but it didn't seem necessary to say that. Then there was the Supreme Court decision Tasini v. New York Times, which found in favor of Tasini, in that, writers deserved a piece of the revenue from other uses of their product. Now, you're being paid the same amount (rarely, if ever, even adjusted for inflation), and your photographs are being used in the electronic edition, the electronic archived versions - accessible to buyers for a fee, on news feeds to phones and PDA's, as backgrounds out of the context of the original story, in video screens in elevators in hotels and office buildings, all monetized by the conglomerates, and conveniently leaving you out.
However, you should be looking to this as an example of how other creatives are seeing money being derived from their work not making it into their pockets. The figure reported by CNN is that the writers currently are getting $0.04 per DVD, and they currently want $0.08. When it's the writers who actually write the storylines, jokes, and so forth, they deserve a piece of the profits, even when it's a contribution to a collective work. So too should you get paid $x for an assignment, for, say, Bloomberg, and each time a subscriber uses a photo, you should get a usage fee. The $x for the assignment should be what gets you there, and you should enjoy the benefits of a well made photo doing well for the wire service, and also for you. The more people that see your product, use your product, or otherwise benefit from it, the more you should be compensated.
Suppose, for example, that you did an assignment for Bloomberg, and were paid $x. And, for every one of their subscribing newspaper clients that used your photo, you got $2.25, and for every weekly news magazine, you got $4.75, how long before you were benefiting substantially? I don't know if these numbers are way too low, or way too high, I am just positing the concept. It's doable now, with online reporting and tracking, and so forth. Further, the other wires should be doing this as well, not just Bloomberg.
Watch the WGA strike, and recognize that, if only in a small way, their successes on this front could, quite possibly benefit you down the line with a model that recognizes pay-for-play for all new media. Once the WGA gets it in place, then too will other creatives.
Be sure to specify your rights granted as print, print/web, print/web/electronic, and so forth. The less ambiguous you are, the better off you will be moving forward.
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
Let's see, take $25.7M and divide it by $37.3M, and you get just over a 30% drop over 3Q of 2006. From their press release:
Net income for the third quarter of 2007 was $25.7 million...compared to $37.3 million...in the third quarter of 2006.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
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Selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A) totaled $84.0 million...compared to $73.6 million...in the third quarter of 2006.
So, you're down 30%, but are still bloated by staff you just couldn't bear to terminate in your previous 'redundancies' layoffs?
"The increase over the prior year is directly attributable to recently acquired companies, the impact of changes in foreign exchange rates and investments that the company is making in areas that will drive future growth."
Perhaps those folks are being spared until it's necessary to make Q4 numbers look good, so you'll dump them just before then? Yes yes, I know you've dropped your SG&A by 3% relative to but really, come on!
To continue:
Revenue growth came from increasing licenses for editorial and micropayment imagery, digital asset management, photo assignments, and publicity distribution. This growth was partially offset by lower revenues in the company's traditional creative stills business.
Translation: We've screwed our profitability in creative stills along the way with our roll-up of all the stock photography shops we acquired, and we've seen revenue grown from the penny-ante micropayment images, and with WireImage now in our fold, and us charging $5,000 to cover an event and post images online - a.k.a. "publicity distribution", and pay photographers only $250 and requiring them to transfer copyright to those assignments, that kind of cost-to-profit ratio sure can cover a lot of losses from when we dropped from $500 average online sale to a buffet of $49 for the same thing.
Next up:
"We have made tremendous progress expanding beyond our traditional creative stills imagery business on our way to becoming a complete digital media company," said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and chief executive officer.
Translation: We're coming for you next audio and video purveyors. We're going to slash and burn prices there too, just look at what we've done "for" creative stills! You're next!
Yet, in after-hours trading, Getty is up, even with the AP reporting "Getty Images Inc. expects fourth-quarter profit to drop below Wall Street estimates...", and "Shares are up almost 6% as traders accept lower numbers on the hopes that the worst is behind the company" according to 24/7 Wall Street.
Yeah, keep hopin' and dreamin'! That, and a few of the bucks a microstock photographer earns from several sales will be enough for them to be able to afford the latte they are serving their own customers now that they are a barista as well, hoping to make ends meet that way. Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
And so, without further ado, the additional post that accompanies my post about Getty: (With thanks to Chase Jarvis for the heads-up on this video!)
(Comments after the Jump)
Please post your comments by clicking the link below. If you've got questions, please pose them in our Photo Business Forum Flickr Group Discussion Threads.
2 ... 2 ...
Today I was out on assignment photographing Arlo Guthrie. It was among the assignments this week that I was most looking forward to, hopeful that he'd sing Alice's Restaurant. Alas, he did not, but he did posit a thought to the corollary:
I'm heading south tommorrow, Thursday 11/8, to help out my colleagues in the New Orleans/Gulf South chapter of the ASMP.
I recieved an e-mail newsletter from WebProNews, with the subject line "
What's happening with the Writers Guild of America, sadly, cannot happen for us. We have no union. If we did, we would have more power to affect our future, diminishing the capability for media conglomerates to screw us.
Let's see, take $25.7M and divide it by $37.3M, and you get just over a 30% drop over 3Q of 2006. From