Hi I'm Doug McKinlay and you're watching
AdoramaTV. In today's segment we're going to
deconstruct a commission.
Now previous episodes are talking about the do's and
don'ts of approaching picture editors
for magazines and newspapers, especially
when you are first trying to get on their radar but
before we get into the nuts and bolts
I just want to say that this business is
all about who you know or who can
potentially pass your details on to a
potential client. So job one is to
increase your client list. Job two is to
make sure that any commission's you do
get, you do the best you can and on time
because we all know that in this
business you only as good as your last
job.
So you wake up on Monday morning,
you look at email inbox and lo and behold
you've got a commission. So what do you
do next?
I think the best way for me to
illustrate this is deconstruct a book
commission I did a while back.
Keep in mind that are basically two
kinds of commissions. One where you go
after the commission yourself by sending
ideas and
hopefully get a little nibble and two where a
media outlet comes after you.
That's what we look at today. The book
commission going to look at is one offered
to me by Lonely Planet guide books. It's
a coffee table book called "The City’s
Book”. Now just to be clear I wasn't the
only person who worked on this book
there's a number of us photographers who
collaborated to make sure the book went
well. Like most jobs getting success as a
professional photographer is a matter of
patience and perseverance by honing your
skills not only with a camera but by
increasing your client list as well. For
this particular book the company
included 200 cities, as much as I would
have liked to photograph them all, it was
physically impossible. So the
commission's I was offered was for 4 cities.
Sarajevo, Tirana, Sophia and Belgrade.
They were each their own separate commissions with
different conditions attached. The actual
amount I was paid for the commission's
is not relevant.
However what is relevant is how you go
about negotiating for these kinds of
commissions. Even though times are tough
today there's always a little wiggle
room if you have the courage to look for
it. After all with these kinds of
commissions the client sought you out so
be brave but not arrogance. For these
particular commission's I had to pay all
my own expenses. Airfares, accommodation, food,
ground transport etc and pay the taxes.
This is normal.
So before you agree to doing a big job
make sure you factor in all the
incidentals. If for example once you
factor in everything in and we left
little profit you might want to rethink
the deal. So this is where your
negotiating skills come into play and
research is your friend. So before
agreeing to do a big job
make sure you find out exactly what it’s
going to cost you. Remember though it's a
bit of a balancing act.
You don't want to sell yourself short
but you don't come across as too brash
either. So keep your letters businesslike and
to the point. Be firm but be flexible.
I'm just going to mention the Big C here.
Copyright. Make sure you're clear on who
controls the copyright at the end of the
job.
Ideally you want to maintain the
copyright to the pictures because then
you can make more money down the road
from different avenues. Most magazines
and newspapers are not interested in
copyright. Book publishers could be a
little different.
Just make sure it's written in the
contract that you own the copyright and
if not, then you want to be paid more. For
these particular commission's the company
sent me a shot list of images they
wanted. This was a great help and allowed
me to organize my time in each city and
because i was returning the copyright I
knew the more images I shot that we're
good,
the more money would make down the road.
Even though I knew each city would only
get about four to five pictures in the
book the lists were exhaustive. Meaning
the editors wanted as much choice as
possible but this worked out in my favour.
The jobs are hard and tiring but worth
the effort because some of those images
have gone on to make a fair bit of money
in other areas. So be aware of all the
intricacies of the contracts. As I mentioned
earlier lot of commissioning is
dependent on your track record and your
client list
but building a solid reputation getting
your work done in time and done well.
Plus being easy to work with goes a long way
to getting work in this industry. So
that's it for me I'm Doug McKinlay for
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