You’ve heard the saying, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so why the heck people still try to do their photography on the cheap beats me.  It’s a hiding to nothing.  Here’s why …..

I saw an ad recently,  from a company looking for photographers to basically work for free.  They are looking for 10 photographers, they suggest students and people learning but also mention professional photographers and they are looking for 7 usable images, for which they are offering the princely sum of £50!!  Like really??? If they use more than five they’ll pay an additional £2 per image!!!

Wow, get rich fast photographers!!  Obviously I was being sarcastic there.   

That’s not even rude it’s plain insulting!  It’s in the same boat as ‘it’ll be good exposure for you’ – Let me tell you right now, NO it won’t be good exposure not for me, not for you,  not for anyone!  And actually for anyone playing this stupid game it won’t be good for you either. Here’s why.

You can’t get great photography on the cheap.

A professional photographer has skills built up over years, they have insurance, in many case big overheads like studios to help them do the work they do, they have kit that is VERY expensive and they know how to use it.  £50 is just laughable.  You get a student or beginner you have none of that.  Do they even know about the legals of model releases and their importance to themselves and you as a client?

The company are probably hoping that they’ll get a pro to do them some almost free images in the hope of getting more work from them. Only when you work for free or cheap, those clients are never gonna want to pay more.  They are cheapskates.  End of.

They want the world, but don’t want to pay for it, they’d rather you did that, probably while sunning themselves somewhere hot on your dollar, as in the dollars you didn’t charge them!

There are risks in getting photography on the cheap too.

The other aspect of this is that if they get a beginner or student which is likely, then they probably won’t get the quality they’d like and will compromise their brand and their business.  They also don’t probably get this last really important point.  But maybe that’s karma?

Maybe, they don’t think their marketing is worth paying for?  Maybe its not their marketing, maybe it’s their product??  All the best photography in the world can’t sell a crap product – something else that’s worth bearing in mind.

Why big brands don’t attempt photography on the cheap.

Can you imagine a big brand like M & S saying we need some new photography but we don’t want to pay for it, let’s forget all this branding nonsense and just ask for some pics for £50?  They’d get pics for sure, but would they help to showcase the company in the best light?  Probably not.  Would they risk it?  Not for the real marketing, not a chance. Can you imagine the reactions, the social media, the newspapers …. Then they’d be the recoil from shareholders when sales plummeted and dividends did the same.

But, for sure, they might do something for a small campaign …. in the right circumstances, perhaps with schools, but they’d offer something way more tangible for the winners too.

The Outrageous Offer

£50 per photographer for 7 images, if they use more than 5 you get an extra £2 per image.  Let’s look at that.  Maybe a half day to create the images and as long again to edit.  That’s 8 hours for £50?? That equates to £6.25 per hour which isn’t any where near minimum wage.

But of course if you want really cheap that’s like 2 hours on an iPhone and no editing, that’s £25 per hour.  But it will never be just 2 hours.  They’ll be amends and changes and ‘we like it but could you just do this’ and ‘could you just edit it so that ….’ .   

Can you tell that hit a nerve?  If you went to the same person and said ’No, I’m sorry give me 3 items for that price and I’ll buy’ they’d be horrified.  And they’ll never see your side of the argument, so it’s pointless from the outset.

Good Exposure does not pay bills and is worthless.

I had someone a good few years ago who approached me and asked for a quote, but it needed to be the right figure, the exposure would be good for me as their restaurant was going places.  When I took a look at their website I was quite surprised to see a number of my images looking back at me.  Images not taken for them but for a client, images they’d stolen.  I explained that wasn’t on and that they’d need to remove them and pay for usage.  They weren’t happy.

Also never copy other people’s images.

In fact this guy was irate.  I said it was a bit like me entering his restaurant, ordering dinner for ten and then us all getting up and leaving without paying.  He got apoplectic at this point and said that would be a terrible thing, he had a business to run and a family to support ….

He didn’t seem to understand that I was in the same position.  Sadly before I got him to court to regain the monies he’d already gone bust!   Karma again, to an extent.

Marketing properly is so important.

Marketing is so important, and given we all remember 60% of what we see visually compared with 20% of what we read, who in their right mind, wants crap photography to try and promote themselves with?    

If you’ve got a product, a great product and it’s not selling what it should, it might be your photography that’s responsible!  And if you have a product that’s selling but not as much as you’d like, again it might be your photography at fault.   If you’ve got a product and great photography that’s not selling it, then it might just be the product!  In my time I’ve seen it all.

Recently I’ve seen some beautiful packaging, it’s expensive packaging on a not cheap food product, but the photography for it is mind-blowingly bad. The boxes are beautiful, they have gold embossed shiny textured print on them, does any of it show on the images they are using?  NO!  Why because it’s DIY photography at it’s worst.  The product can be brilliant but it needs more than that to fly off the shelf!!

As with anything in life, you get what you pay for!   Pay peanuts? Get Monkeys!   End of Rant!

If you’d like mind-glowingly beautiful imagery that talks to your ideal audience, lets chat!

But do also come and connect with me on LinkedIn, it’s always lovely to make new connections.