Hi all...

I work in a museum (Smithsonian NMNH), so I understand where you are
coming from in regards to owning the image of the object.  However, I am
also a photographer (the museum job is my "day job"), and therefore I feel
I really need to stick my nose in this discussion.

When you go to a doctor, you pay what seems to be an exhorbitant hourly
fee for a little consultation and maybe a throat culture.  You pay this
fee because you know you're paying not just for his time at the moment,
but for the years he spent in medical school learning how to diagnose your
illness, for the equipment he used to do the tests, for the time spent
when you're not actually in the office (paperwork, going over lab results,
etc), and a little bit to go into savings so he doesn't have to work when
he's 85 years old, with shaky hands and bad hearing.

When you hire a photographer to take pictures of your objects, you're
doing the same thing.  Unless that photographer is on staff, with all the
benefits accorded to a staff position (retirement, medical insurance,
vacation, time to do paperwork, etc.) then that photographer has to earn
that with his or her hourly fee and income made on the future sales of
her work.

You're paying for the time she (*I*) spent working for free learning about
exposures, chemistry, balancing light, design, and how to bill clients.
You're paying for the camera (my $450.00 FE2 is considered to be
unbelievably basic... a Nikon F5 is going for around $5,000.00 these
days), the lenses (you need several - and they are not cheap - you get
what you pay for with equipment), back-up bodies and lenses (if it breaks,
I can't do the job, I'm up the creek.), lighting equipement, backdrops,
film, chemistry, presentation materials, etc. . I could go on for days
about the expenses of photography (actually, my husband could... He gets
"sticker shock" every time we go into a camera store together).

But the point isn't how expensive it is.  The point is that you expect
someone who has spent years learning how to do a craft to not only donate
the fee for the shoot, but to also give up any hope of making money from
that work.  Copyright laws are the only things that make photography a
viable option as a career.  If they were any looser (and believe me, they
are plenty loose already), we wouldn't be able to survive on what we make.

Let me give you an example or two:

A nice steady job for a photographer is as a journalist.  If you work for
a newspaper, you start out making anywhere from 12-18 K for full-time
work.  You don't own the copyright to anything you do.  Most of your work
has no shelf-life.  It's one-time use, and then it goes into the file.

If you freelance, for say, AP or Newshouse News, you make less than
$200.00 a day.  That seems like a lot, but there is no guarantee that you
work every day.  You have no benefits.  You have no retirement.  And you
tend to get shot at by people who don't care if you got a good exposure.

If you do weddings, you charge anywhere from $1000-3000 day, depending on
whether costs are included and the print package you deliver.  Sounds like
a lot of money for one day of work, doesn't it?  Well, how many weddings
can you do in a week?  You only have Saturday and Sunday to work (who gets
married on a Thursday afternoon?), Sunday morning is out.  So, you have 1
1/2 days to cram in as many weddings as possible.  I have known people to
do two weddings on a Saturday.  One is exhausting.  Two is unthinkable
(and unfair to the second wedding party if you're not fully alert and
rarin' to go).  Add in the studio work, and all the office work that goes
with it, and you're really not making very much at all.

So now we come to studio work.  The saving grace of a photographer's
career.  You are no longer take a picture, you're creating one.  Here, you
have control over the situation, nobody is shooting at you or threatening
to arrest you.  You don't have to worry about missing that
once-in-a-lifetime moment that gives so many wedding photographers ulcers.
You are doing work that, while not very exciting, is productive and safe
and is your insurance against never getting hired to do a wedding again.
These are the shots that help you pay off your college loan. Or put braces
on your child's teeth.  Why?  Because you get a studio fee (just like with
hourly fees for weddings), and you can resell the images.  (Incidentally,
you can resell wedding images too, but there are too many weddings and not
enough need for illustrations).

 Now, say I want to help out some nonprofit organizations.  I recognize
that they don't have a lot of money.  So I donate my studio fee (which, if
it were for a commercial organization, would be similar to a wedding
photographers's day rate, and always plus costs).  I say to myself, I'm
doing them a favor.  They need good, high-quality images that I can
produce.  I'll even let them have one-time rights for reproduction for a
catalogue, and, I'll let them keep a copy for their files.  All for free.
(or rather, for cost - film and processing can be very expensive - and I'm
not independently wealthy.)  For a few hundred dollars, the museum has
received *thousands* of dollars' worth of work.  Done on time that could
have been spent earning money to pay rent.  Or time that could be spent
with my husband.  But that's okay, I tell myself.  I've done a favor for
an organization that I believe in.  And I still have the copyright.  That
doesn't mean they'll ever sell.  You don't make that much money in
reprints, but you don't want lose the opportunity.

And what do they tell me?  Sorry, you can't have the copyright.  We want
that, too.  We want everything.

Work-for-hire is just as bad.  You get the same payrate as a staffer, but
you have none of the benefits mentioned above.  You lose.  Sure you get
the job, and a little cash in your pocket, but in the long run, you lower
the value of the work you've done.  You undercut the other photographers
who have enough balls to say no.  Good photographers.  People who know the
value of their work, and know what their time is worth.

Photography isn't a job you go into because of the money.  It can be fun,
but it's usually a big hassle.  Trying to earn a living at it is
incredibly difficult.  There are so many people out there who have a
camera and a business card and think they can get established by
undercutting their competition.   And here I am with my education, my
training, my years learning how to do quality work, and I can't find work
because Joe Schmoe offered to do the same work for half the cost and will
give up all rights to the work afterwards.  I hate that guy.

But I love photography.  I spend my days taking pictures and my nights
dreaming up ideas.  I fantasize about Pulitzers.  One of my greatest
desires is to learn to compose like Bourke-White, light like Weston and
print like Mapplethorpe. I do studio work because I know there is an art
to it, and to take an ordinary object and light it in such a way as to
show its inherent beauty, that is magic.  That is what Edward Weston did.
He turned ordinary seashells into works of art.  Your Joe Schmoe will turn
works of art into ordinary seashells.

You have to ask yourself, when you are looking to hire a photographer,
what is it that you expect from them?  What is it worth to you?  And what
is it worth to them?  If you want seashells, fine, hire Joe.  When you're
done, you have the rights.  You have everything.  And eventually, Joe will
have to take a day job, because he can't support himself on his day rate.

If you want quality, hire me.  Or someone like me.  And recognize that you
get what you pay for.  And I'll be able to keep working.  And maybe, one
of these days, I can quit my day job.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elizabeth Vance
[log in to unmask]

Okay, just one more.  Look at me... hold it.. hold it... <click> Got it!
Thanks, you've been great.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------