HOW TO BE A FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER: THE COMPLETE GUIDE
PART TWO
The Big Bad World of Freelance
Establish Your Goals
What is it exactly you want to achieve? Do you want to own a bustling family portrait studio with a plush sofa in the waiting area and a shining white infinity curve to shoot on? Would you like to see your pictures on the wall of a top art gallery, being admired by bigwigs as they schmooze over free wine?! Or would it thrill you to pieces to see your photograph on the front page of a national newspaper, illustrating a breaking headline? These are all tangible goals. While wanting to be the world’s most awesome photographer is a fine ambition to have, it’s hardly quantifiable. It’s important to have some clearly defined motivations to work towards. Otherwise, how will you know when you’ve got there?
Basic Equipment
Ok, so it’s day one of your photography empire and you’re about to take over the world with your fabulous photo skills… I’m assuming you have a camera, right?! If you’re working professionally it’s probably not the best idea to turn up with an entry-level point & shoot from the Argos catalogue. But if you’ve come this far you probably have the majority of the basic kit already. A mid-range, semi-pro DSLR and a selection of good quality lenses should see you through the majority of jobs you’ll encounter over the next few months. Nikon or Canon are forever the favourites and although they annoyingly whip out a new model every couple of months, don’t be fooled into thinking you need to be constantly upgrading. Aim for something with at least 12 million pixels and a good sensor and all will be well; you don’t even really need to shell out extra for full frame capabilities.
More important than the camera are the lenses. Depending on the type of photography in which you’re specialising, I’d recommend you have at least one standard zoom and one or two good prime lenses (one of which preferably being a 50mm f1.4 or f1.8) in your repertoire. A telephoto zoom is probably a good idea if you’re shooting gigs or sporting events but to be honest I’ve never found myself needing one as I don’t take these kinds of pictures.
Other pieces of equipment that you might find beneficial are a flashgun with iTTL settings, a sturdy tripod (again, I managed without this until I moved into doing a lot of studio work) and a good quality camera bag. You should be able to tear it open and swap your kit around with ease without break your back on long shoots. Most camera bags are hideously ugly and you’re likely to catch me throwing my camera into my handbag instead, but I wouldn’t exactly advise you to do this. It’s asking for trouble really… but until someone designs a decent looking, non-clunky camera bag I will probably continue my bad ways!
Marketing & Promotion
You should aim to have a consistent style. Maybe it’s adaptable to a variety of different areas, but it is often best to specialise in one thing. Pay heed to the phrase, ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule and many people run several successful schemes in parallel with each other, but if you are just starting out in self-employment, focusing your energies in one area will be far more productive than the overwhelming task of managing multiple ventures. Everyone has at least one idea that can be turned into a viable business. Pick one thing you can maintain your passion for and run wild with it.
If you can you tailor your passion and skills to a niche market in your local area then all the better. Furthermore, if that one great idea is unique or unusual you will stand out a mile in a sea of cookie cutter wedding and baby photographers. For example, perhaps you live somewhere rural with a roaring equestrian culture and you just happen to be a horsey sort who loves shooting riders on their prize stallions. Or maybe your love of product photography can blossom photographing the wares of local craftspeople in an area with a big arts and crafts scene. Into food photography or interiors? Maybe there’s a massive foodie industry in your town and the award winning restaurants need pictures for their advertising needs? Hey, maybe you’ll even get a free dinner out of it!
If you already know the area in which you wish to specialise and you have the beginnings of a portfolio, really start working like crazy to promote yourself. Maybe invest in a little PR. Enter Dragons’ Den style business competitions. Print up some promotional material then visit trade fairs and local businesses and hand it out. Avoid tacky gimmicks such as having your name or logo printed onto pointless unrelated bumf such as mini calculators or calendar magnets. Stick with a simple and stylish business card, postcard or flyer. If it’s well designed and looks professional, people are more likely to keep it in their files rather than tossing it straight in the bin.
Advertising can be pretty expensive and you may find that once you start working in a certain area, many of your new clients will come from word of mouth anyway. But if you have some money to invest in ad space and a good idea of whom you want to target, then by all means go for it. Do your research though and find the right venue for your advert. Email regional publications or relevant blogs and websites and request their media packs. It’s always worth enquiring as to whether there is a discount available for first time advertisers or for ads placed consecutively over a given time period. If you find yourself advertising in multiple places, ask your customers to quote a reference when calling, that way you can keep track of which ads have been most effective in driving traffic back to you. But before you sign up to any advertising deal, always make an effort to contact a few similar businesses that are already advertising in your chosen publication to ask how they’ve found the service.
The photographic market is extremely competitive and unfortunately it’s currently saturated with sub-standard work based on the notion that anyone can be photographer. If your work really is top quality then it will definitely stand out above the rest. The only difficulty is getting it seen among all the rubbish! Creative and innovative promotional ideas, gimmicks and some savvy PR skills are all good for generating interest. For example, you could offer a prize draw or a day of free photography, put together a press release and send it out to your local press, relevant blogs and websites or anyone who you think might be able to promote it to the general public. Make yourself available for journalists and writers to interview and you could even set up photo op in advance of the actual event. And don’t forget the obvious - print up posters, flyer around town and promote it on your own website and social networks.
Finally, always carry a handful of business cards with your website and/or contact details on them as you really never know who you are going to meet. Moo make fabulous business cards – you can order 50 cards with up to 50 different designs so they’re a great way to show off a variety of your work – almost like a pocket portfolio. They’ve also recently brought out a new eco-friendly paper type so you can save the planet while you promote!
Networking Online
Perhaps the most important advice anyone can give you is to NEVER underestimate the power of self-promotion and the importance of developing a strong web presence. Everyone is online these days and if you’re not easy to locate you’re going to lose out on important clients. Over the past few years there have been endless resources written on social networking online for business and the wealth of information can be overwhelming, especially if you’re not technologically inclined. Many photographers can think of few more boring ways to spend a day than sat at a computer, but dedicate a set amount of time each day to your online activities, even if it’s no more than an hour or so, and you’ll begin to enjoy it… honest!
Initially it’s fine to start with the basics; all you really need is a simple website with an easy-to-navigate portfolio and a news or blog section you can update without drama. And if you haven’t been living in space over the past few years you probably already have an account on a social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter or Flickr. Your website doesn’t have to be super flashy and corporate. Personally I think there’s nothing worse than a photographer’s website that opens with a time consuming and impossible to skip flash animation. You may think it’s awesome but believe me, everyone else will just find it self indulgent and irritating and they probably won’t stick around to find out what follows. Just as criminal is a dirge-like slideshow accompanied by an instrumental soundtrack… especially if you’re using the music without permission. NO! Ahem, so, don’t do that. Your website is so important but clearly this is something that can go hideously wrong.
If you can’t afford a web designer and struggle to do it yourself, ask a friend to help out, use a free portfolio template site such as Clickpic or modify a blogging platform such as Typepad or Wordpress. Then get researching on the topic of SEO (search engine optimisation) and do all that you can to implement it. You can have the most beautiful website in the world but without any effort in this area you’re unlikely to rank very highly in Googleland.
Blogging is so important these days – most successful sites now use a blog in place of a news section as it’s a far more friendly and attractive way of informing your audience about your latest activity. It’s also a fun (& somewhat addictive!) way of networking with your peers. You don’t have to bare your soul online or update every single day. But do establish who your audience are – potential clients, other photographers, etc - and focus on targeting your online activities towards them.
Blogging Tips:
- Keep a regular and reliable posting schedule, engage and communicate with others and always appear personable.
- Link your website to your social networking outlets, using them to promote whenever you write a new blog post, upload a set of images or make significant changes.
- If your hosting package doesn’t already offer analytics software, implement some immediately! You need to be able to track how many people are visiting your site, where they are coming from and in which areas they are spending the most time. Without this information you may struggle to understand your audience and will find it difficult to target content to their needs.
- Be yourself! This is so important. The internet can be such a smokescreen and we all know it’s full of weirdos. But don’t ever try to convince people you’re something you aren’t. You want your readers to trust you and likewise, you want to trust them. Be genuine.
- Part of the fun of blogging is the vast and varied networking opportunities it offers, so don’t forget to interact! Interact directly with other photographers and creative types online – comment on their blogs, link back to posts you found particularly interesting or informative… share the blogging love!
Pricing
There are myriad ways that you can make money from photography and the many different styles, niches and markets ensure that this question can have no definitive answer. If you’re working on providing images for press or printed media The National Union of Journalists publish freelance rate guidelines that you may find useful. Similarly, the Artist’s Network produce a booklet on figuring out what rates to charge as a professional artist. But for general commercial/wedding/portrait photography the best course of action is to browse the internet for other photographers in your area in order to find out what the going rate is. However, please be aware that the more experienced photographers will obviously be charging more and you certainly shouldn’t expect to be earning similar money from the get go. Sure, some wedding photographers charge up to £2,000 a wedding, but unless you have the portfolio to back it up, please don’t do the same. Price yourself modestly to begin with. You can still get a fair price for your services without being greedy.
And at the other end of the scale, once you’re in business, don’t work for free unless it’s going to be really, really, really beneficial to your portfolio and isn’t going to inconvenience you financially. Clients need to believe that you’re worth it, but you will never succeed in giving that impression when your actions actively state that your work is worthless. Whether you’ve been in the industry for years or are just starting out on your first year at college, if a client wants your images, they have a value. Remember that!
The Official Bit
In the United Kingdom you don’t need a license to set up as a professional photographer but don’t forget that if you’re going to be self employed there are a few very important official bits and pieces you’ll have to sort out before you begin. It’s best to familiarise yourself with what is required of you legally sooner rather than later if you’d like to give the most polished impression of professionalism. The internet can offer an abundance of information for new small business owners but at first it can all seem rather overwhelming. This is where joining a business support group or finding a business mentor will really help you.
Rules and regulations are different from country to country but here are a few basic pieces of information for those of you who live in the United Kingdom.
- Firstly, you must register as self employed with the Inland Revenue within three months of the date you start trading. Don’t think this is something you can get away without doing. They’re smart cookies and once they find out, you’ll be in all sorts of trouble! Decide whether you’re going to be registered as a sole trader or a partner in a company (if you’re going to be working with someone else). Also decide whether the company you are registering is going to be limited. This means that if something goes terribly wrong and you get in a big old financial stink, the bailiffs won’t come round your house and take your belongings away! Any debt your business gets into will be restricted solely to the property of the business.
- From the day you start running your business, start keeping an accounts book. Note every single penny that goes in and out of your business, be it for business cards, postage stamps or the cup of coffee you bought a potential client in a casual meeting last week. Any equipment you already own or go on to purchase that cost over £100 is to be listed at the front of the book as ‘capital’.
- Open a business bank account. Managing your finances is so much easier when you keep your personal money separate.
- Insurance! Things can go wrong and believe me, they’re more likely to go wrong if you don’t have the proper cover. 1) Insure your equipment against theft and mishaps. 2) If you’re using your vehicle for business use, insure it as such. 3) Public Liability Insurance is insurance against damages caused to a person or their property as a result of you or your business. You never know what’s going to happen and a million and one tiny things could go wrong so cover your back. It’s not that expensive and it’s worth having cover in the event of something terrible happening. 4) Professional indemnity is another one you might want to look into. This protects your business for claims of loss or damage by a client or a third party if you have made a mistake or been negligent in some way. For example, if someone hired you to photograph their wedding and on the day you totally ballsed it up! Yes, it sucks having to cover your back in so many ways. But unfortunately this is the world we live in today and you need to protect yourself against it.
- If you’re planning on working with children you may need to apply for a CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) check.
- When photographing people and sometimes even property it is important to obtain a signed model/property release if you want to use the images for anything outside of your portfolio. Releases can be as detailed as you want to make them and there are a number of templates available online.
There is a really great book available from the Association of Photographers called “Beyond the Lens” which covers all the essential information on rights, ethics and good business practise in freelance photography. It covers copyright, moral rights, contract law, late payment legislation, photographing children, tax advice, accounting, book keeping, insurance and so much more. There is also a section on how to make a living in different areas of photography written by experienced photographers already working in that field. An extended appendix includes a number of templates for model releases, contracts and a number of business forms that you will no doubt find useful throughout your freelance career. It really is an invaluable resource.
I would also recommend the websites Business Link and HM Revenue & Customs for more information.
Phewf... that was wordy! Check back next week for Part Three of How To Be A Freelance Photographer: The Complete Guide and find out how to survive and motivate yourself when working from home.
See HERE for PART ONE.
