hypertransitory.com

I’ll start this out by saying I’ve been working in a commercial design & photography studio for over 10 years now, and I’ve seen the photo market slowly shrivel up year after year because businesses are starting to realize the same thing I figured out very soon after I started:

Commercial photography just isn’t worth that much money.

Now, I’m primarily a graphic design/web design guy (by day, anyway), but I’ve been on a colossal amount of photoshoots and the thing they’ve all have in common is that they’ve been a colossal waste of my time.

They’re even a waste of time for the business, because it’s becoming less and less possible to recoup the ridiculous amounts of costs incurred on your average photoshoot. Luckily for us our design business has been steadily growing, but for many that isn’t really an option.

Anyway, let’s break this down a little. What’s all involved here? Typical photoshoot:

1. First, is this thing on location, or is it in-house at the studio? If it’s in-house you can mitigate the costs somewhat because you’re controlling the environment and there’s no equipment packing/travel times/expenses involved. Plus you can all get busy doing other things once the set is up.

If it’s not in-house, well just watch that profit shrink. Now the lost time and expenses are going to eat up your profit, unless you’re working with a client who just doesn’t give a damn about the money and you can charge it to them. There’s not too many of those these days unless you’re at a “Fortune 500 Annual Report” sort of level or photographing at very high levels in the entertainment field. In which case you won’t be coming anywhere near this article.

Plus when you get to the location you’ll have to deal with the difficulties presented by the space you’re in. Depending on how photo-friendly the space is you’ll have to deal with limited space for your equipment, limited access to power outlets and in many places you’ll have to make sure your equipment doesn’t blow any circuits.

If it’s a very nice place (we’ve had to shoot some really upscale homes) then you have to worry about scuffing up the place or breaking something in there that’s worth more than your entire business.

All these things take time to deal with, so often you’re looking at a good 1-2 hours before you start shooting -wasted time that may not be recoverable.

Lately I don’t go on too many shoots, because my time is too valuable to be standing around on location somewhere while the photographer presses a button over and over. Unfortunately, sometimes I need to fill in, and the shoots I’ve had to go on waste our studio’s money and my time. After setting up lights and tethering the laptop, I have literally jack-sh*t to do except daydream. They can’t really bill me out at my design rate, they have to bill me as an assistant, so they can’t recover that.

Plus, I can’t exactly take a laptop and be working on other jobs while I’m there. First of all, it’s kind of rude to the client you’re photographing for, and secondly, you can be pretty sure the other client wouldn’t appreciate you working on their projects in full view of another client, even if there is no overlap in their industries.

Of course, if you’re the type of outfit with 5-10 assistants running around to get this stuff done then no problem, you can just relax, knowing you’re not wasting money on having skilled people set up light-stands, then you can waltz right in and start shooting. Again, I doubt many people at that level will ever see this.

2. Next, what exactly is this shoot for? Depending on if it’s an event (lot’s of people to shoot) or a product (ice cream, a big machine) you can end up taking 50 photos, hundreds of photos. We’ve done some multi-week event photos for clients where literally thousands and thousands of photos are taken. Guess, what, the client uses approximately THREE of them. THREE.

Do you think it’s possible to literally charge the client for all that time and all that expense? Hell no. If you presented the client for an honest bill for how much work was involved they would suffer a massive collective heart-attack and die right there on the spot.

If you sent them an estimate with the same number they’d just laugh and you’d never hear from them again.

That’s one of the things I really resent about commercial photography. The time and effort involved are way too much, and the end result is just not worth the money for the client or the photographer.

Consider this: Most people can’t even tell what a “good” photo is, anyway. They just don’t know. You know how it’s always said that women dress for other women? Well, photographers shoot for other photographers.

Really. Think about all the grey balancing and f-stop changes and lens changes, the reflector tilting, background hanging, and then the inevitable Lightroom/Aperture adjusting and then the Photoshop retouching. Again, astronomical amounts of time are spent somewhere, either in the set-up or the post-work.

All to make adjustments that the client wouldn’t have noticed even if they weren’t done. It’s ridiculous. Truly ridiculous.

I’m going to go ahead and pull a statistic out of my ass here: 99.9% of people can’t tell a good photo from a bad one. I’ve seen so many horribly photographed brochures, sell sheets and advertisements -but the thing is, it didn’t even matter to the business because their customers couldn’t tell the difference!

Businesses are finally starting to figure out that they can just go get a DSLR camera for around $500, look at a couple of online tutorials and just shoot this stuff themselves. It really doesn’t take a thousand dollar camera and lens to do these things. Most people wouldn’t notice anyway so don’t waste the time and money.

That’s why the market is drying up. A lot of this stuff is going in-house now. Businesses realize they can get a good result with far less investment. Sure it won’t truly be top of the line photography but it doesn’t have to be. A bottom of the line DSLR will still get you a good enough photo for the vast majority of your audience.

Of course, pro photographers will probably pick it apart and point out every little flaw they see, but mostly because they’ll have all kinds of time to do it since they won’t be getting the business.

3. Let’s talk about equipment. The cameras. Have you seen the prices on these things? Absolutely ludicrous. The camera-bodies themselves for the DSLR’s can run you from $300 (on the lower end) up to a couple grand. That’s not as bad as the lenses, though.

We’ve bought lenses for Canon and Nikon that cost up to $3,000! Holy crap. And these were lenses that we just HAD to have, too. I mean, weren’t we doing just fine for years without this $3,000 lens, now we HAVE to have it?

No camera lens is worth that amount of money. Period.

Did it increase our business to have it? No. Did the client even notice it? Nope. Consider this: I’m typing this on a Mac Mini that cost me $600 at the time of purchase. This small computer does a HELL of a lot more than that stupid-ass lens for 1/5th of the price. I’m sorry but that just doesn’t add up.

Why do you need that lens? Is anyone really going to notice? Anyone except another photographer -someone who is NOT a customer? Be honest, here!

The answer is Hell no.

Shouldn’t you spend that money on a higher end faster computer, or a down-payment on a car, or high-priced hookers or something that’s gonna do a lot more work than some lens that will sit on a shelf or in its case for the majority of the year? Or better yet invest it and let it earn money for you? Yes. You definitely should. At least these are all options I have some respect for.

I don’t care if you have a million dollars, don’t waste $3,000 of it on a dumb-ass lens.

The camera and lens manufacturers sure have a great racket going. They’ve managed to convince all these photographers that this junk they keep spewing out into the industry is actually necessary to take decent photos. Again, all it takes is a low-end DSLR and a minor investment in some studio lights.

The nerve of these guys. Charging thousands for a lens. And yeah I know they have manufacturing costs and blah blah blah, but I really don’t care how much work they put into creating these useless accessories. It isn’t necessary anyway so they should just quit making it or reduce the cost to what the product is actually worth – something like $19.95 or so.

They should have Vince from ShamWow be the spokesman for all this stuff because it’s just snake oil, anyway.

4. Another reason commercial photography isn’t worth it is because of the massive assault the industry is undergoing from the low-cost online stock photo joints like iStock and Shutterstock, but most of all free places like morguefile and sxc.hu.

Depending on how specific companies need to be with their products, they can probably use a stock photo from those sites and save tons of money. Although I have my issues with the “credits” systems some of those sites use, they really cut down a designer’s costs by providing good photos at a reasonable price.

You’ll hear a lot of photographers complaining about these sites. Many of them act like you’re the Devil himself when you say you’ve used those sites. It’s easy to understand why, because they’re facing a direct and measurable threat to their business.

Read the comments on this post on well-known design blog Six Revisions, where the photographers are acting like they are owed money or something.

While it’s definitely unfortunate, I must say to those people that it’s not my problem. It’s not my fault they chose to get into a business where the business model may not be sustainable for much longer. I’m certainly not going to pay more money to have a “professional” photographer come out and shoot my product or set up a shot I want when a reasonable approximation may already be available for much less money and even more important -time.

I have a friend who has, unfortunately, just decided to get into the business. So far I’ve seen a massive amount of investment in instruction and equipment, with only a few jobs here and there with certainly nowhere near a return on that investment.

It’s too bad, but I had let her know pretty much from the start that I didn’t really think the product was worth that much money, and apparently potential clients are agreeing.

I had suggested that she try to shoot some stock, but seeing as how there are millions of photographers out there taking shots trying to sell stock it’s tough to get unique photos that people haven’t seen before.

Many of these places won’t even take your stuff if you’re not shooting with a certain level of camera. I guess it won’t matter, though, if you’ve fallen for the marketing hype and bought the ridiculously overpriced camera and ridiculously overpriced lenses then you should be good to go. You’ll just have to find some subject matter that hasn’t been seen over and over by everyone on Earth.

Yeah there’s some places like National Geographic where the rates those photographers are commanding might be worth it. These are photos of hard to reach places and endangered animals. Even those are getting less and less novel, though. How many elephant photos do we need after all?

But do we really need another shot of Snoop Dogg posing in front of a car, or some football player, or Lady Gaga? Hell no.

5. Finally, let’s talk about the convergence of Photoshop and the camera-phone era of technology.

Not only are your average iPhone/Droid/consumer-level camera able to take some pretty clear photos, but Photoshop and equivalent programs are nearly ubiquitous.

It used to take highly skilled/trained people to retouch and color-correct photos. Now the barriers to entry into the field are so low anyone can play. All you need are some online tutorials and an entry level program like Photoshop Elements or something.

When you see some of the shots taken by these phones (with maybe a minor amount of retouching/adjustment), you really have to wonder why you’d pay a commercial photographer for pretty much anything.

Yeah, yeah, pro photographers can find the flaws, but the majority of people, ie the people who actually matter, won’t be able to tell whatsoever. I almost regret that I’ve been trained to see these things. I look at a photo now and I think “Hmm, a little soft, could have used some sharpening.” Or “Looks like some loss of detail in the blacks there…” Except no one else cares because they’re not trained to notice.

I expect savvy companies will think like this from now on: “Hey we need a photo for our interview. Should we pay a photographer thousands of dollars to come in here and set up lights and reflectors and waste all of our time or should we just snap an iPhone shot and be done with it so we can get back to work?”

These days you’ve got to be responsible and ask yourself – is it really worth it to get this professionally photographed? It’s pretty clear to me which way to go.

To wrap up, while there’s nothing wrong with the pursuit of excellence in any field, to expect people to pay these out-of-order prices for an end result that is usually not noticeable is just not reasonable. I expect that as more and more businesses start waking up, much of the pro-photo industry is going to dry up, with only the true high-end photographers like the Scott Kelby’s of the world still hanging in there. The rest of the crowd is going to have to diversify or move into a different field entirely.