The bullshit around photography and free
Written by duckrabbitIt’s interesting how the photographers who are so anti doing work for free are more often than not
- People who did work this way and benefited from it at some point in their careers
- Use plenty of ‘free’ interns
- Are trying to protect their own business
- Benefit from you keeping your photos off the internet
When we first started duckrabbit we did a training for a company for next to nothing. Since then we have had about $60000 worth of work from that company.
Someone I am working with here in Canada did a ‘free’ shoot for an NGO. They liked his work but they had already contracted someone to shoot the event so they suggested he come along and shoot. His pictures were much better than the pros. The following year they asked him to shoot the event and paid him $1200.
The FACT is that those photographers/business people who are telling you
- To never to do anything for free
- To keep your photos out of the web
Are often only doing this from self-interest. To keep you out of the market.
I’m not saying work for ‘free’, I’m saying be smart and make ‘free’ work for you. Business is not black and white. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise (and yes we have given people free places on some of our courses).
COMMENT:
Exactly my experience. About to go off to do a contract I was awarded off the back of some unpaid work I did for a friend. The ‘nothing for free’ idea is short-sighted.
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (30 Comments)
Some very good advice on doing photography work for “free” http://www.duckrabbit.info/2011/05/the-bullshit-around-photography-and-free/
The bullshit around photography and free – http://www.duckrabbit.info/2011/05/the-bullshit-around-photography-and-free/
Exactly my experience. About to go off to do a contract I was awarded off the back of some unpaid work I did for a friend. The ‘nothing for free’ idea is short-sighted.
Will, thanks for the comment. LOVELY work on your blog/website. Really.
I have never been made to blush by a comment on a blog before. Thank you so much.
Working for free is a huge gamble that can sometimes pay off. The problem is there are a lot of cynical and exploitative companies and publishers who seem to lurch from one photographer giving them a free job in the hope of jam tomorrow to the next hopeful with similar dreams.
Ours is a tough business with plenty of people offering good pictures for very little. My advice to anyone tempted to have a stab at a ‘loss leader’ is to tread very carefully. Marketing yourself is the hardest part of making a living and offering your services at discounts of up to 100% is a marketing tool that needs to be used very sparingly indeed.
The tough question: Have I ever worked for free? Yes. Has it always paid off? Hardly ever. Would I do it again? Never say never!
Neil
Difficult issue… we have to respect our work, but yes… you can definitely make ‘free” work for you. I personally feel I have benefitted greatly from work I did for free when I was still a student. Actually heading to Lebanon in June for 3 weeks to to shoot for an NGO I worked for free in Beirut back in 2008….but getting paid this time… and not just peanuts either.
I’ve had one company tell me “We never pay photographers” along with their work for free offer. Not much future growth down that road. Though recently I did do a small free thing for a band. Now I’m in the door with them there has been inklings of some paid work coming up.
Good judgement really is at the heart of choosing when to do something for free. Giving an appetizer to for someone who would pay for the full meal is much better than giving a full meal to someone just looking for a bargain dinner.
Very well put.
The irony about working for free is that those with little or no experience will be more likely to do it whereas those with a deeper knowledge of the business will be able to judge where and when it is a good move to offer ‘the appetizer’.
Look like there is a lot of BS here too. People like Mikko,say that NGO pay well for their work. That sound very bullshitting. When you ask for witch NGO they work, they never answer or pretend they cannot name it for some obscure reasons. If they name the NGO, you contact them and they telling you: “this person lie to you, we never pay for photography, we volunteer photographers in the country were we work.
Photographers love to show-off and saying bullshit like : NGOs pay me a lot for my work, I have been working since 30 years for NGOs, etc. etc. The reality is NGOs don’t pay for photos, if they do, they hired James Nachtwey, Ami Vitale or other big names like this, not a Joe Schmo on Duckrabbit.
Yves, if you struggle to get a well paying gig with an NGO, fair enough, (you would not be alone) but I’m a bit surprised that leads to you calling another photographer like Mikko a bullshitter.
Because I’m tired of people trying to sugest that NGOs give lot of work and money to photographers and we all know this not true. We also had this discusion on LightStalkers several weeks ago and everybody agree that maybe some NGOs pay for photos but this is exception not the rule.
I think you might also be confusing “we don’t pay photographers” with “we don’t fly in unknowns at great expense”. I was working in Uganda (for free) 18 months before I landed my first paid NGO job. Paid for that time with savings from working in a pub. When I got my first gig (USAID) it rested heavily on the fact that I knew the country- of 5 snappers I was the only non-citizen they hired. Maybe it’s best to head for Juba, Kinshasa etc and see what you find?
Yves
I have never worked for free for an NGO. I get one or two jobs a year but a lot of the work people had been getting has been taken over by locally hired photographers who are a hell of a lot cheaper in every way AND don’t make a huge addition to the NGOs carbon footprint, which is rapidly becoming an issue with all sorts of clients.
Will points out that local knowledge is also becoming a factor, and quite rightly too. Photography used to be something that the developed world ‘did’ to developing countries and it is now something that most try to do ‘with’ them – a far better model in all respects.
Top comment. Thanks Neil.
@Will,
working 18 months for free first should be a good sign on how thing should work? I don’t think so. I don’t buy also your “fly in the unknowns”. It does not make sense with your new customer who never work with you before. If you need an electrician and never hired one before, what you’re going to do? Call one and asking him working for free for you and, if he did ok, next time you will pay him? I thought that why we spend so much money on portfolio website, reviews, etc? So a new client can see that we are professionals. Good for you if your can afford to work for free for 18 months but not the case of the majority I guess.
@Neil
I don’t know why you introduce “local knowledge” but the problem is local and international. I support local hiring, I don’t have a problem with this and yes occidental have a colonized style approach with other countries. But the problem stay the same. People are exploited locally instead. Also if you look at the credit on the NGOs website, the photog bio, rarely the photographer is a local guy anyway. If you give a look at organization like Photophilantropy, you find out that they match amateurs with day time jobs on holiday with international NGOs.
Plenty of snappers are happy to go overseas and shoot for a charity. Why shouldn’t they? There are many, many volunteers in the sector across all professions. And yes I think you’ll find electricians working as volunteers for NGO’s.
I just saw you were in Montreal recently. Too bad, if I knew it I would have give you plenty of local NGOs names, looking for free photogs. Let me know it next time. Heu… yes I’m cynical…
Well your be pleased to know Yves there was a ‘
free’scholarship place on our workshop in Montreal.All the previous comments noted, and some very accurate ones offered.
Work for free? Yes I sometimes do when I want to, but I do my homework before I say yes.
Are the clients legit, are they screwing me, do they have a track record of this ‘work for free’ etc etc. If I’m happy with their credentials I’ll do it – with retention of copyright and some control over the resulting work agreed ahead.
If I’m directly approached and offered the ‘work’ and am told they dont pay I tell them to clear off.
BUT what I ALWAYS do when I do undertake work for ‘free’ is I keep an accurate note of my costs, and submit an invoice to the full value of my work and ‘add’ a 100% discount. This also includes all my copyright and image release/use stipulations so they are in no doubt about what they can and can’t do with my work.
The message is – my work may be free, but this is what I KNOW I am worth, and what my VALUE TO YOU amounts to. You may think you are ‘just’ getting my images, but you are actually getting ME, my experience, my creativity, my energy and my enthusiasm, and my skill.
Its hard to start charging once you have a reputation for doing work for nothing – its a hell of a lot easier to reduce the 100% discount to 75% then 50% then 25% then zero.
If YOU dont value your work, then why do you think others will?
Great comment. Thanks John.
Very interesting comment John.
I agree with John and Neil- being picky, knowing your worth and making your terms clear are very important. Self-valuation in particular is hard to learn. However I fear one of the main original points of this piece is being ovelooked, which was that Benjamin was pointing out how people who disagree with working for free often did exactly that that earlier on in their careers. I took unpaid work long before people would pay me simply because it was my only and best option for making contacts and getting published.
I would always prefer to be working than sitting idle. Now I get paid but I have learned that my unpaid time is only as valuable as the work I fill it with. I am speaking as a very, very young professional (I’ve only been a graduate and fully pro for exactly 12 months today (hooray!)) but I don’t think there’s anything new in working for free.
@Yves
I worked for free for two charities, totaling three months, during my university degree. Sorry, I should have made that clearer- my choice of words was very muddy and made it sound like I had worked FOR 18 months. However I didn’t pay for that time magically- I peeled potatoes, saved and went into debt. Those charity jobs gave me experience, but the final kick-start was a piece for which I was paid by a national newspaper a sum which didn’t even cover my bus ticket to shoot the work. However it got me my first national publication, plus valuable exposure to the refugee camps in northern Uganda, and there is a very direct line between that job and my current one.
I have always taken anything I was offered which I thought was worthwhile, because I believed it would pay off. As a photographer you are simultaneously a business and that business’s biggest investor, and as such you must invest I think, whether it be financially or in terms of time spent without guaranteed reward.
Thanks Will for pointing out the reason I posted, that there are lots of people telling you NEVER to volunteer when they did exactly that and often their business’ have been propped up by volunteers.
I agree with John, if someone approaches you to do a job they should pay.
On the other hand last weekend David gave a talk for free. Off the back of it he brought in £1700 of business. If you don’t get out there and share your work you can’t expect anybody to pay for it.
Guilty.
Hello, my name is Daniel and I work for ‘free’.
Actually, to be more precise, I choose to offer my services to deserving organizations either as paid work or as volunteering and feel great about it because my paying client subsidize my non-paing clients. So to Benjamin’s point of “business not [being] black and white”.
A long time ago, when I realized that I wanted to work for both profit sector and not-for-profit sector organizations, I realized I needed to change my personal business model; I needed it to better reflect the realities of the sectors I wanted to work in. In any given year, I offer about 15-30% of my services as volunteering.
How in the world is that possible? Well, I earmark 15-30% of my paying clients’ money to go towards ‘paying myself’ to do volunteering. Say I get paid $1500, I put $500 aside for ‘volunteering’. When volunteering, I dip in my own kitty in order to keep paying the bills, etc. And just let me add that telling my paying clients that I charge a little more in order for them to partially subsidize my volunteer work for amazing value-based organizations, most are honoured to be able to do that AND get my services.
Right, so you’ve probably figured out by now that I’m not in it to get rich and I’m not in it to get famous. I just want to be out there living my values and doing what I love.
Bottom line:
1- Reclaim and reframe ‘free’ cause nobody likes WORKING for free;
2- Choose your clients carefully and you’ll see that occasionally volunteering feels great;
3- Rethink you business model to match the sector work you most want to do in the world.
So, here’s my problem; I can’t even seem to be able to give sessions away so to at least get practice and keep my portfolio fresh. And then, what I have done for free has only put me in the hole. I’ve done some shoots as gifts at no charge but then not even one print is purchased! I loose money then when I need to be making money.
I have done my share of free work (events mostly) Have not got enough referral work from it to say it was justified from a business standpoint. However, it was fun and good for our community image. Trying to live without regrets and enemies..
Nicely said.
I think the most common distinction between ‘good free’ and ‘bad free’ has a lot to do with who reached out to who, and probably what industry are they in. For example, I hear a local school may be interested in getting a photographer for a benefit auction, so I make contact and offer to shoot for free to build some experience and portfolio. The next year, I get a call and this time they pay me to come back. But, then there’s my friend’s cousin who hears I do photography and they send me an email asking if I can shoot her wedding for free, and I can use the images in my portfolio. I shoot the wedding, deliver the images and don’t hear from her again until several years later when she would like me to shoot her new baby for free to build my portfolio. Both true stories.
From my estimation, shooting for free is often great as long as the connections are formed organically and through natural circumstances. But in my experience, when the photographer is the one solicited for free work it’s almost always an ultimate dead end. Because people who are willing to pay, will eventually pay. But people who are looking for free, will almost always keep looking if you stop being free. I mean, that’s not universally true. But in my own experience, and colleagues and interns around me, that seems to be the trend.
That’s why when I do get interns, I always tell them that officially, they don’t shoot for free. Unofficially, they should follow their intuition.
On another note, who’s telling new photographers not to share their images online?!
Hi William,
this is a great comment. I totally agree with you. If someone approaches you for a job and then when you have discussed it expects you to do it fro free they are probably a waste of space.
If my photography is worth having it is worth paying for. End of discussion.