A male Fashion and Lifestyle Photographer based in Milan, Italy, with 20 years of experience.
100k pre covid
130k during covid
I’m repped by a small agency and have been full time for 13 years.
During covid Italian companies needed to remain local rather than shooting in NY or London which increased sales by 30%.
I shoot a lot of ecom at 350-500 per day, then mid tier social media work which goes for 1500-3000 a day plus usage which is usually about 100% of the day fee for 1 year.
I get about 3 large agency gigs a year the last of which was a cellphone company doing a single city ooh campaign and that was 5000 plus 3000 usage for the one city.
I have a studio which I rent out to cover its costs but apart from that and a few leasing deals for cameras and computers, I have no other fixed costs… I charge rental for all my personal gear and will often retouch editorial or small commercial jobs myself.
Since December 2022 work has dropped sharply due to markets opening up again and a deep sense of instability due to inflation and war and whatnot… everybody in Milan is in a holding pattern except for the very big boys or the very cheap boys
I do video but it’s more of an extra, I would say less than 10 percent of my income but it’s a big growth market that if I got my finger out my bum and did some proper tests i could probably increase that. The big issue is that volume clients like ecom take up so much time when things are cooking that working on new business becomes difficult. Photographers aren’t supposed to work every day… hahahahah.
The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
No one can forget the images of the senseless and heartless murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and many are also aware that only a few months earlier on Feb 23rd Amaud Arbery was also murdered.
It was Amaud’s murder that was very personal and the genesis of this project. He was chased down and hunted while jogging in a neighborhood in Georgia.
When watching the footage on the news, my son walked in and before I could turn it off, he saw the story and began asking questions.
Besides the expected, “why did they do that to him” he also asked the more jarring, “is that going to happen to you dad”?
I wasn’t even thinking about myself, but I stopped for a minute and struggled to say, “no that wouldn’t be me” to try to reassure him but immediately started thinking – it could have been me.
Any of these murders could have been any of us black men. Across all walks of life, from boys to men we are targeted. And whether we are sleeping, walking, running, driving, putting our hands up, putting our hands behind our backs, or riding our bikes, we are targeted.
The vilification of the victims is an age-old tactic to dehumanize them and to in some ways justify their murders.
But I reject that. I believe that all these unarmed men deserved to live.
So, my objectives with this personal project are simple:
To shine as much light on the issue and to “speak their names” so they aren’t forgotten.
Some of the names will be known but many others most people won’t be familiar with, so we speak their names to honor them and remember them.
And every black man in America realizes: It Could Have Been Me.
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Images from the ongoing series: “It Could Have Been Me” By Damien Carter,
(@Dcarterphotography) a portrait and lifestyle photographer out of the Washington DC area.
Note: on the back of each card that had a victim’s name on front, was the news story about the actual killing and the men read those while I captured their raw reactions and emotions.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it. And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.
Concept: Multi-day photo shoot of food still life, and chefs/talent portraiture
Licensing: Unlimited use (excluding Broadcast) of up to 20 images for 10 years from the first use
Photographer: Food/Drink Still Life, and Portraiture specialist
Agency: Medium-size, full service
Client: High-end restaurant within a major metropolitan city
Summary
I recently helped a photographer build an estimate and negotiate a project for a high-end restaurant client. The creative brief and subsequent conversations described a multi-day production featuring styled food/drinks and studio portraiture of chefs and patrons. The final use of the photography would be client web, local OOH placements, and web/social advertising.
While reviewing the initial shot list and scope of the project with the agency, the photographer estimated this would need to be accomplished over 4 shoot days, with a tech/scout day prior to visiting the locations. We discussed this approach with the agency and client, and after review, they asked that we keep this production to a three-day shoot. In order to hit the entire shot list, we created a plan for each shoot day, with one of the days needing overtime to accomplish the project.
As our client would be handling various items, I added a note of the Client Provisions to describe precisely what the client was to provide. In this case, they would handle all location(s), location coordination, all casting and people to be photographed, all food/drink to be photographed and food/drink styling, and client-specific wardrobe.
Take a look at the estimate below:
Fees
I put the fees at $26,000 for the three-day shoot, including unlimited use of up to 20 images for 10 years. I came to this fee by discussing the project with the photographer and learning that they had previously worked with this client. Their previous projects had been billed at a $2,000/day fee plus $200/image for web collateral use. Originally I assumed a $1,800/per image fee but reduced this to ~$1,000/per image based on the number of images and our estimate of the client’s total budget. The combined Creative/Licensing fees included $2,000/day for the photographer, plus $20,000 for the 20 image use. I added $1,100/day for the photographer tech/scout day and anticipated 2 hours of overtime at $375/hr. We added a description within Licensing Options for additional still images to be included for $2,200 per image, as well as the option to extend the use of the 20 images in perpetuity for an additional $21,000.
Crew
We added a first assistant at $550/day to help with lighting and camera equipment management, and to attend the tech scout day to familiarize themselves with the location needs and help advise on lighting equipment. A second assistant was added to the project at $400/day and a digital tech was hired to manage the files and display the content to the agency and client as it was being captured. We added a Producer and anticipated they would need 11 days of work, a production assistant for the 3 shoot days, as well as a prep day. As a final consideration, we added two hours of anticipated OT for each of these roles at 1.5x their hourly rate based on a 10-hour day. These fees were consistent with appropriate rates in this city.
Equipment
We included $3,600 for camera, lighting, and grip rentals. The photographer brought their own cameras, and lenses, and intended to rent some supplemental lighting and grip from a local rental house and a few specific specialty items were purchased as well. We added $750 per shoot day for the digital tech workstation rental to consist of a laptop, 4 external monitors, a cart, cables, etc. As we expected a large client presence on set, we planned for additional monitors to set up a viewing area for the client away from the set. We also included $480 for 3x 1TB hard drives, and $3,300 for production supplies like tables & chairs rental, styling racks, production book printing, etc.
Styling Crew
As we planned to have one day of portrait photography, we added a hair/makeup stylist for $900/day, as well as an assistant. Because the portraits would highlight people’s hands, we added a nail artist/stylist at $1,200/day. A wardrobe stylist was hired along with an assistant to dress our five hired talent and help prep the chefs/staff. We anticipated wardrobe at $2,000 assuming $400 per outfit for our five talent. We added a prop stylist at $1,000/day for all three shoot days, plus two shopping/prep/returns days. We anticipated props might cost $2,300 but added a TBD here pending final creative needs. As we did with the other roles, we added two hours of anticipated OT for each of these roles at 1.5x their hourly rate based on a 10-hour day.
Covid Safety
Since we would be photographing indoors within client-owned spaces, we required all on set to be fully vaccinated with proof of a negative PCR test within 24hrs of their first day on set. We added $200 per person for these test costs and/or a stipend to all. We also added $400 for PPE and necessary healthcare supplies.
Meals
We included $3,055 for meals and craft services to cover the 21 people to be on set over the 3 days, as well as $250 for the scout day meals/crafty.
Miscellaneous
As we would need to pay for garage parking for all attendees at each of our locations, and added $3,200 for the anticipated parking, mileage/taxis, as well as additional meals. Our final estimate for insurance coverage was $1,500 for the project.
Post Production
We added $1,000 for the photographer to perform an initial edit of all the content and delivery to client for review and included retouching for up to 20 images at $150/hr.
Results
The photographer was awarded the project, and the work is currently a large part of the client campaign currently running. The photographer even informed me that they recently met with the client and were told the campaign has increased their web traffic and look forward to another shoot in early 2023!
Photographer Rep Heather Elder has a post up on AI in photography from a reps point of view:
“Yes, AI is terrifying. Yes, it is ok to be afraid. And yes, it is changing our industry. But it is here; so you should not ignore it and hope it goes away. Now is the time to educate yourself. Whether you choose to sell against it or advocate for it (or both), you will need to understand it because the person bidding alongside you and the creative you want to work with most certainly will. ”
“Craft will see a resurgence. Just like any artistic endeavor you need to be talented. The best work will always rise to the top and this is because the best photographers understand all that is required to create a truly compelling photograph.
The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
After attending The International Center of Photography, I assisted several photographers and then went out on my own in 2004. Times got tough in 2008 and I took whatever jobs I could get, happily. I was making a living as a professional photographer, but I was shooting food, catalog jewelry and architecture- not very well by the way. I was uninspired by the direction my career was taking me and it became apparent I needed show clients what I wanted to be hired for.
In 2012, I saw a local news story about the “National Beard and Mustache Championships” having just taken place down the street from my studio in Las Vegas. I reached out to the producer of the event who invited me to join them for the competition in New Orleans the following year. In late 2013, after months of testing lighting styles in anticipation, I flew down there with an assistant and all of the gear we could carry on the plane. All in, it cost right around $3000 to travel down and do the shoot.
The result of the project was a body of work that I loved making and I now had international exposure after the gallery got shared and went viral online to the tune of 1.2 million impressions in the first week and over 2 million in the first month. I immediately sent out a calendar, email promo and then a printed tri-fold promo to capitalize on the attention. Several advertising agencies took notice, and the resulting shoots and global exposure made the initial investment of $3000 money well spent.
I just shot the National Beard and Mustache Championships for the 10th year in 2022. Each time I have tried to evolve the project with subtle lighting and background changes to make them feel a little different. I’m planning on shooting an international competition to round out the project before self-publishing a coffee table book, that I’ll then send out to ad agencies as a promotional piece. I have made quite a few friends photographing the world of professional bearding and don’t have any plans of stopping. It’s just too fun.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it. And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.
Massachusetts-based fashion and Lifestyle photographer (NYC-based rep) with occasional ad agency gigs working professionally for 10 years.
Pre Covid: $180k taxable income
Last couple of years: $80k
2023 is starting off well. January billing was $37,500 from 6 shoots and only $3k in expenses.
My best-paying job was working with an ad agency for an eyewear brand. Global usage for 2 years, 5 days of shooting which paid $76k. I shot for that client for years, and every 2 years, they would re-up a lot of the usage.
Average fashion shoot: $4,500/day 1yr term (they change the collection every 6 months)
Average lifestyle shoot: $4,500/day +10k usage.
Ad agency jobs: Last year, my best one was 1 day, 15k for an OOH campaign in 3 cities for an energy company. The worst was $1k to shoot stills on a TV commercial shoot.
No employees… just freelance assistants
I’m all about working with any budget because, in my experience, small gigs have led to big ones either directly or through word of mouth or contacts made. The agency that gave me the 1-day 15k job this past fall is the same one I shot a day for 1k and have a 1-day 5.5k gig coming up.
Photography Director: Andy Greenarce
Photographer: Kari Medig
Kari Medig has a deep appreciation of landscapes and film: moving through them and being still within them. Snow and photography are familiar friends to the British Columbia local. He grew up in the boreal forest of northern BC where his dad converted a bathroom into a darkroom. This slow practice informs his current body of work and love of film. He sees the quiet impact skiing has on people and culture around the world finding joy and quirkiness in the simplicity of sliding down snow or otherwise. I caught up with Telegraph’s Photography Director Andy Greenacre and Kari about his long term personal project, 1000 Words for Snow.
Heidi: Did you know about Kari’s ski work prior to this pitch?
Andy: Kari Medig first came to my attention back in 2014. I don’t remember if he approached the magazine first or us him, but we ran a portfolio of his quirky ski pictures in the magazine in January 2015.
How did this project come about?
We’ve stayed in touch over the years (I’m a keen skier too) and then he pitched this story to me last October. He was going to be in the UK for a short period of time, and would the magazine be interested in a photo essay on dry slope skiing in the UK? The way in for the piece was off the back of British slalom skier Dave Ryding who won at Kitzbuhlin January 2022. Quite an achievement for a skier who started out on brutal dry slopes, in a country with no actual downhill skiing at all (not counting Scotland!)
Despite having snow parks for Brits, what about the work connected for you?
This immediately resonated with me, as someone who endured the ‘delights’ of dry slope skiing in my youth. Bleak, soulless places, guaranteed to leave your body feeling like it’s been dragged over a bed of nails, I knew Kari could produce a memorable set of photographs that wouldbring a wry smile to our readers’ faces. I pitched his proposal at our weekly features meeting and the magazine editor was thankfully straight on board. I provided Kari with consent forms and away he went to shoot at various different slopes. I couldn’t have been happier with the edit he subsequently sent me, a selection of which ran as per the 3 spreads.
Yes we have indoor snow parks now that mimic snow in a way that dry slopes could never do. But for generations of Brits who first learnt to ski on carpet and bristle, and those still enduring them now, Kari’s photographs are evocative of this strange and wonderful facet of British sporting life.
APRIL 2014 The upper level of the Borovets ski station, Bulgaria during the final weekend of operation for the season.MARCH 2012 The base of the ski station at Solang Nala, Himachal Pradesh, India.MARCH 2012 A young skier from Sissu village in the Lahaul Valley in Himachal Pradesh province, India poses with his family’s livestock.JANUARY 2007 A old Kashmiri ski guide poses with his old pair of skis in Gulmarg, Kashmir.MARCH 2014 A man walks with his horse on the road leading to Oukaïmeden ski station in Morocco.
1000 Words for Snow
Heidi: How has he pandemic impacted your project as a creative or how did staying close to home inform your eye?
Kari: The pandemic was definitely rough for this project. Almost immediately, several important trips were cancelled. My usual approach was to work with writers on a ski/travel assignment and then add a few days to make images for the project. Almost all of the images were made that way. But during the pandemic’s early days I had to stay closer to home.
I spent a lot of time in the parking lot at my local ski hill (Whitewater Resort here in Nelson) where people were having picnics and BBQs on their tailgates. This was a fun way to keep progressing on the project. (SKI magazine did a story about this). In the summer of 2021 I managed to make it to southern Africa for Outside Magazine to cover the ski culture of Lesotho. It wasn’t easy with the pandemic still impacting lives, but I was able to do it in a way that kept everyone safe. Since then things have opened up and I am back on the road.
You’ve been doing this project since 2007, 15 years later, did you ever think this would become a commentary on climate change? Great question. I’ve been working on it indirectly since my first ski assignment in Kashmir in 2007. It was only about seven years ago that I realized it was actually a cohesive body of work – this motivated me to be more purposeful with my shooting, specifically for this project.
Many of the places I’m drawn to have a tenuous relationship with snow. They’re often smaller, low elevation, or lesser known ski locations where I know I’m more likely to encounter something interesting or bizarre. For example, in Lesotho the ski hill is almost entirely made from artificial snow produced during the sub-zero temperatures at night. It’s a very unlikely place for a ski hill, one that is created largely by human intervention. One picture I was after was of the stark strip of snow against an arid rocky landscape. There was something symbolic and cautionary here considering our current climate trajectory.
I know your hope is to make this into a book, will you self publish? Yes, I ultimately see this project landing in book format. I like the idea of people taking time with the photos, flipping through pages in a backcountry lodge or wherever the book finds a home. I think the images and subject straddle both the art and trade spaces, and I currently have an interested publisher. I’m working through a few final locations and hope it will be available within a few years.
How will you structure the edit? Will you structure the sequence to an Inuit poem, a time frame, location? Such an important question, and one that I am not clear on just yet. I am currently still in the image-making process and am working with a very rough edit. I have turned all of the images into 4×4 prints and move them around on the blank wall of my office. I’m actually just back from a book sequencing workshop in Venice with photographer Sabiha Çimen. I deeply admire her work, especially her recently published book Hafiz which received much acclaim. It was incredibly helpful to have her go through my images and make an edit, especially since she has no connection to the ski world. Such a reassuring process. It affirmed I was on the right track and will help inform my image-making process going forward.
Tell me about your promo.
I used Paper Chase Press for these promos; they are a community-driven, environmentally conscious printing press based in LA. I had a lot of back and forth with Cole, and his knowledge and patience made a usually frustrating process seamless and rather exciting.
I designed these myself; I always laugh a bit at the overexertion of wanting to be found. I think it looks rather funny to list websites, email addresses, and Instagram handles, as they often are different combinations of my name: www.paulyem.com, info@paulyem.com, @paulyem, etc. etc., so I went a super minimalist route. I feel strongly about conveying a connection through my portraiture, so I didn’t want there to be much other than the imagery I’m passionate about. I trust that if the work resonates with who I am targeting, they’ll have no problem finding me through the one point of contact.
These images are a somewhat disjointed culmination of an exploration over the past 5ish years in finding my voice as an artist. I moved to NYC in 2017 to pursue a career as a photographer, and as many of us have come to find, being an artist isn’t exactly the easiest way to make a living. Through assisting other photographers, I started to identify the different tiers of what being a professional photographer could look like. I became very passionate about staying connected to my roots as a fine artist and started visualizing my identity being intertwined with my approach to photography as a career. I dreamed of the possibility of being hired for my voice, and I knew the more honest I was with what was bubbling up from my soul, the more compelling my images would be. Staying true to that voice has seemed at times ill-advised, as I never positioned myself as an attractive option for the low-hanging fruit, the e-comm jobs, the sort of mindless application of being a just technician. My goal was to be hired because I was Paul Yem not because I could own and operate specialized tools. More of this work can be found here https://www.booooooom.com/2021/04/15/fragments-by-photographer-paul-yem/
I printed 200 of these postcards, Paper Chase had a nice option where you can submit a handful of images per order, I thought it would be nice to send people a little stack of 5 through the mail or to have a variety of images in my pelican when I’m on set. They sort of act as free prints for me to give out.
Unfortunately, from what I’ve gathered through taking meetings with various photo editors, the printed matter is becoming a bit obsolete. I’ve found that our friends in the editorial world don’t often have the personalized desk space they once had, and the collecting of promos has become a bit cumbersome. I’d like to get into a better rhythm of printing things; I think it’s important for us to think about our work existing in the physical form as it gives the images more validity in my mind. I’ve found myself more in the habit of making PDFs; I’m on a much better consistency with reaching out through cold emails and to contacts I’ve made with a nicely designed PDF. It’s something that is minimally invasive and easily forwardable to other editors, and if I’m able to get a face-to-face meeting that’s where I’ll give out my printed promos. I’d say I’d send those emails once every 3 months. I’ve found following up after about a week of the initial email is the most successful in getting a response. Just make work and put it out in the world, and nothing bad can come of it (and emails are a lot cheaper).
I think what this industry lacks the most is honesty. Honesty in what we want to make, in what we want to be hired for, in how we truly want to convey a message through imagery. We are held so tightly by the anxiety of trying to make ends meet that we lose our unique voice. The beauty in art is being unique, pushing the envelope, and being unapologetically passionate. Being an artist is vulnerable, it’s daring, and it’s brave, and so we should let go and be all of those things. I want to see what people truly want to make, not what they’ve made to hopefully make money. I’m not exactly sure what my point here is, but if at the end of the day the rent is paid fuck everything else and just be free and true to yourself. I need our community to do that for my own inspiration and in return, I’ll promise to never compromise in the images I’m adding back into the pool.
I hadn’t, until I began teaching at Chrysalis High School, here in Taos, back in 2005.
(Shortly after we moved home from Brooklyn.)
The school started a few years prior, designed to help at-risk teenagers; children who who had abuse histories, and didn’t fit well in the structure of traditional learning.
It was a rag-tag place, for sure, (now since abandoned,) and art was a huge part of the curriculum, for all the reasons I’ve discussed in this column over the years.
Art can allow communication that is too painful, traumatic, difficult, or confusing for words.
It was at that school, teaching art in a therapeutic environment, (in a pilot program for UNM-Taos,) that I first learned the term “behavior modeling.”
And while it is much as it sounds, the concept is profound.
Basically, behavior modeling is the idea that acting in calm, measured, polite, adult, well-adjusted, healthy ways, around people who have not witnessed such things before, (or perhaps rarely,) can be cathartic.
We all need role models.
That’s a given.
But for people raised in dysfunctional, unhealthy families, or systems where poverty creates extreme conditions for addiction and abuse…
…just being around someone who’s nice to them, follows through on what he/she/they says, listens, doesn’t rush to judgement, gives positive feedback, doesn’t fly into a rage, or undermine one’s dreams…
…when I first started teaching there, it was stressed that behavior modeling alone could have a positive effect on the students.
So I learned to do check-ins, ask good questions, and care.
I learned how to teach a demographic with which I had little prior experience.
And ended up staying a decade.
(Because sometimes, showing works better than telling.)
I mention this all, because if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know this is my final column here at A Photo Editor.
It’s February 2023, and I published my first piece on the bog in June 2010.
Nearly 13 years, and my column lasted 11.5.
As I’ve written before, (and won’t get into today,) the community I’ve covered here as a blogger/journalist has changed enormously.
It’s like another Universe, as social media was not yet ascendant, when we started.
Back then, Trump was just a loudmouth on TV, and I’d never heard of Elon Musk.
I still felt like a kid, (in a way,) at 36.
Or at least, I identified with my 20’s, and still partied a bit.
Now, at nearly 49, my son is in high school, we somehow have four dogs, and I’m glad we got a decent interest rate on our mortgage.
Nothing about any of this feels remotely like my 20’s.
(Not even a little.)
Having four dogs is cool.
It started with a pandemic pup in August 2020, and while Summer 2022 brought her a companion, (Billy Bones,) it wasn’t until last month that our canine family became complete.
We adopted Sunshine and Olly nearly a month ago; fraternal twin sisters we brought home from Stray Hearts Animal Shelter in Taos.
Sunshine and Olly
You can choose to believe me, (or not,) but the twins are a tad magical, and kept each other alive, when they were abandoned in a box at the shelter overnight, unnoticed for more than a day.
Sunshine is hearing impaired, (not sure if it’s OK to say she’s deaf, but I am positive I’m not supposed to say she’s among The Deaf,) and has taken to following me everywhere I go.
Like a sidekick. (Or maybe I’m the sidekick?)
Frankly, it’s a long story.
But the twins have had such an impact on our lives, in a short amount of time, and between them seem to represent so many elemental things…
Because Sunshine and Olly is non-commercial, and just for me at the moment, I will iterate, and make it more professional over time. (The first post is live, but the homepage is broken, so I’ll try to fix it.)
I’ll learn WordPress better, (Rob was a pro at giving me an easy system to use,) and hopefully you’ll be able to enjoy reading me over there from time to time.
It is a culture and lifestyle blog, but I’ll def be writing about photography, as the whole impetus for Sunshine and Olly was to review the photo books people had sent me, before I quit.
Whether you care to read about sports, art, food, travel, politics, or such things from me, when they’re divested from photography entirely, is up to you.
(Or when they don’t come into your email inbox from Rob, or go out to his massive Twitter following.)
But it doesn’t matter.
I’m doing this for fun, as art, and because I thought it was the right thing to do, according to my personal ethical code.
That’s all.
Given how much I’ve tried to teach in this column over the years, choosing to leave, (and when and how,) seemed like some of the best behavior modeling I could do, in 2023.
(Having the guts to walk away, and the willingness to embrace the future, without knowing exactly what that future’s going to bring.)
If you’ve been reading for a while, (or maybe even all along,) you’ll be familiar with my style, and voice.
I mixed it up over the years, for sure, but then some things are probably just as they were in 2011.
Understanding when it’s time to go, or change, is so difficult.
So this is how it’s going to end.
I went to PhotoNOLA in December of last year, held at the International House Hotel in New Orleans, and as I’ve previously reported, it was a problematic affair.
Not going to land on the negative, in my last piece, so suffice to say, there were plenty of awesome moments as well.
More than enough to make great memories.
I met four artists, at the review table, whose work I thought was worthy of publication here.
One of them, Undine Groeger, (originally from Germany,) isn’t ready to release the project, before a major publication can do it justice, so of course we respect her wishes.
(But you can check out her website, and hire her!)
The other three women will share the distinction of being the last few artists I published/promoted/appreciated during my time as a world-famous-photography-blogger, who told stories to the planet from a little, horse pasture outside Taos, New Mexico.
As with all the articles in the past, the artists are in no particular order.
When I first started looking at Anne Berry’s work, it reminded me of someone else I’d met at PhotoNOLA before, and published here: Mary Anne Mitchell.
Mary Anne had shown me moody, Southern Gothic, mysterious narrative images, (often featuring grandchildren in costumes,) and they were great.
I didn’t love that they were presented kind of like fabric curtains, and told her so.
Last year, at PhotoNOLA 2021, Mary Anne showed the prints, large and slickly framed, in the Currents show at the Ogden Museum, and I was floored.
They were dynamite, and I told her so. (It was nice to reconnect.)
When I met Anne, I mentioned her own moody, grayscale, constructed narrative images reminded me of Mary Anne’s work.
After a moment’s confusion, Anne told me that she was friends with Mary Anne, and along with some others in the Georgia photo community, they made work in a similar style.
When I came up, we tried to differentiate our work from our buddies. It was a point of pride.
Larry Bird is always talking about how players in the 80’s and 90’s hated their rivals, but the soft NBA kids today are friends with their enemies.
Times change. It’s cool that hoopers are friends today.
I’m no hater, so I adjusted to the idea that they liked making similar types of work.
And Anne’s pictures are lovely. Really well done.
(That penguin pic!)
Anne and I then talked about editing, and refining her image choices to make the most surprising, edgy, and original grouping she could.
It’s beautiful stuff, and I’m sure you’ll like it.
So of course we have to talk about Anne Walker next.
Anne used to be a pastry chef, and reported she just had hand surgery. (We hope you feel better soon, Anne!)
She also had grayscale, constructed images, though these were less about narrative, and more about object resonance.
Anne admitted she was relatively new to this, but I felt her past incarnation as an artist/craftsperson definitely informed her growth, because the selenium-toned prints were gorgeous, and flawless.
Finally, we have Lily Brooks, who works as Assistant Professor of Photography at Southeastern Louisiana University, and was recently named Edward G. Schlieder Foundation Endowed Professorship in Environmental Studies and Sustainability. (But she came South from New England.)
Lily showed me two projects, mixed together, and both were environmental series focusing on weather, pollution, and the effects of Climate Change.
We discussed whether two projects were actually one, and I shared I saw a divide between more emotional, moody images, and ones that were clinical/dry/academic.
How one weaves those strands together, or even understands where one project ends, and the next begins, is why art is art, and not science.
Thanks, Lily.
So I guess this calls time on the JBlau era at APE.
The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
This project’s impetus started with watching boardwalk chalk artists create elongated illustrations that, when viewed from a distance, foreshortened to appear three-dimensional, especially when people interacted with them. In my approach, the opposite happens- a 3D collage assemblage that ends up appearing in two dimensions.
I chose an outside corner as the overall shape because I wasn’t quite sure my theory would work. I had to keep it simple. I realized the “box” metaphor when I made my first sketches and thought about what that meant.
To me, a box can either be protection or a prison, depending on the subject. If in the form of protection, an environmental subject comes to mind. If in the form of imprisonment, then social issues seem applicable. So, I chose the latter as my first subject, and my friend, Cash Danielsen, came to mind.
When I approached him initially, I wanted to make sure the metaphor was something he could relate to in his experience as a transgender person. He confirmed that, indeed, it did, and away we went.
What I find so exciting about this project are all the possibilities in the vast array of subject matter and the technical aspects this process demands. It involves a precise workflow that I thrive on as an artist. For the illusion to succeed, all working parts must be duplicated over two capture sessions. Everything is marked, measured, calculated, and recorded throughout the entire project. Only in this way can the process deliver an illusion created in front of the camera. It’s that same outcome I’ve strived for throughout my 32-year-long practice, and I never seem to grow tired of its magic.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it. And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.
Heidi: I know you’re a trained illustrator, when did you switch from agency Art Director back to your roots as an artist? Justin: My early agency days were spent mostly as an artist but as I became more established I started to contribute ideas for pitches and over time my role evolved into more of an art director’s one. As a digital artist specializing in CG I found it freed-up me creatively – anything was possible, both logistically and budgetary. Later I was part of a staff cull at the agency and had to consider my next move which in the end turned out to be an easy decision as all of the advice was to become a freelance artist.
What specific learnings did your agency work transfer to your current work? Wit and originality. The culture there was incredibly focused on finding new ways of approaching a brief, there was a lot of friendly competition which led to ever more interesting ideas. Working in an agency requires you to think differently and once learned it stays with you forever – it feeds into everything I do now. Editorial work is slightly different in that it needs a faster response – not just to the brief (I often get just a single day for concept and artwork) but from the consumer as it will be fighting to be heard above all the other covers on the newsstand.
What inspires you from the real world? Everything and nothing, it seems that for me inspiration strikes only when the conditions are right which is often removing myself from the process altogether. There are some things which will often jump start things – browsing through an art book for instance, and reading around the subject can often reveal a phrase which sparks an idea. That first idea, however poor it might be, is the most important one as it usually unlocks the mind.
Where do you look for inspiration since most of your work is conceptual? I think I subconsciously draw from past experiences and observations, I’m always studying how things look, how they behave and their effect on the environment, and how people respond to it. I think the real world is the best source of inspiration for conceptual work.
Do you have a journal or have any analog processes to sketch ideas? Yes, I sketch out all ideas very roughly on a pad but I have them all in my head too. Good ideas are hard won and stick around forever up there.
Where do you get your source images from? The usual stock libraries. If I need to use them the image will be built around them as it’s the only part I can’t fully control and if something isn’t working I’ll build it in CG which means I get to do whatever I want with it.
How do you know when you’ve solved the creative problem, or when the piece is done? I try to provide at least five ideas on the brief and with one or two I’m usually confident I have something that will work well, more often than not though my preferred concept is not the one that makes it to final. I don’t consider anything I’ve done to be finished, just cut short to meet the deadline.
How do you unwind your mind, or try and relax it in order for new ideas to flow in? Yes, it’s hard not to be on duty all of the time but I’m lucky – I have a great family which is very successful at diverting my attention. They’re funny and entertaining we spend time away from my work as often as we can.
Did you research Tesla crash images for this cover story and what direction did the magazine share?
I’ve worked with the New York Times Magazine a few times before and they’re a great team to work with so I knew it would be an interesting project. They knew they wanted me to smash up a few different models in different colors. The white one was intended for the cover and for me it was mostly a question of the extent of damage and making the images bold and impactful whilst ensuring they are as accurate as possible – I had to specifically research Tesla crash images as they’re very different ‘under the hood’. I wanted the images to look as if the crash has actually happened in the studio so the undamaged parts should look like a beauty shot.
Tell me about the images.
It is a mix of new personal and new client work for brands such as McDonald’s, Patron, UBER EATS and Angostura Rum. Stylistically, I’ve paired the vibrant shots on one side, and the somewhat warmer ones on the other. I like the fact that there is a coherent theme and look. Those are really my favorite images from the previous 12 months, as I don’t like to select work in a calculated way. I hope that approach resonates with the creatives who receive the mailer.
How many did you make?
I’ve printed 250 of them
How many times a year do you send out promos?
I usually send out a promo with new work 1x a year to specific and select clients who have opted in to receive them. The rest I hand out during in-person portfolio reviews and meetings.
Do you think printed promos are effective for marketing your work?
As a targeted approach, I think it is an appreciated reminder for those who are connected to me and really want to receive them. I’ve stopped sending mailers out to contacts I don’t personally know, haven’t worked with or haven’t met. I have a curated, personal list of about 1100 creatives I’m connected to that way and about 200 have opted in to receive actual mailers. I see it as an old fashioned way of staying in touch and I would of course love it if everyone on my list would opt in. I understand though that many don’t feel comfortable sharing their personal address, which is absolutely fine. This way, I don’t waste natural resources, money and efforts and know that I don’t bother anybody with unwanted mail.
The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
They file in one by one, these kids, carrying their instruments. A young man with his harp, three more with trumpets, two young women with violins. A tenor guitar or vihuela, a large bass guitar or guitarrón. These are mariachi musicians.
They arrange themselves on the stage in two semi-circular lines. Violins and guitars in front, trumpets in back.
Finally, the singer walks in and takes her place in front of the group facing the audience. She is dressed in a colorful, form-fitting floral, floor-length dress. Her black shiny hair is pulled back in a bun fixed with colorful ribbons. She carries a large black sombrero trimmed in gold.
These are high school kids from La Grulla, Texas and musically refined beyond their years.
They wear Charro-inspired uniforms. Men in beautifully embroidered pants with rows of buttons down the outside of their legs, a short, waist length jacket also embroidered, a white shirt and colorful silk ties. The young women wear the same uniform except they wear long fitted skirts that fall to their boot tops.
Mariachi is a Mexican style of music dating from the 18th century. The groups play a variety of musical styles including rancheros, corridas, cumbias, huapangos, boleros, etc.
The music begins. A bolero, a romantic song. The singer is very dramatic and emotional in her delivery. She holds the microphone with one hand and with the other gestures with outstretched hand to the heavens, then makes a fist and pulls her hand to her heart. Such emotion! She sounds like a mature woman who has loved and lost and loved again. I think to myself: this is a 17-year-old girl! How did she learn to sing like that? How does she know to make her voice laugh and cry?
These portraits were done at the Mariachi Extravaganza in San Antonio, Texas. It’s an important yearly contest that has been going on for more than 20 years.
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it. And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.
Who printed it?
The cards are printed by https://www.4by6.com. I’ve been using them for several years and they print both my Promo Cards and my Business Cards. I really love them because they allow small orders so you can make multiple cards and not have to rely on just one design that you have to have a large number printed. Also their Satin finish is really nice.
The Promo Book was printed by https://www.blurb.com. It’s their Trade Book size. I just wanted to create something similar to a “zine”. And I see it as it can be updated or changed around as I create new work. As with the Promo Cards I like that Blurb will allow limited runs so I tend to order as needed.
Who designed it?
The cards and the Promo Book where designed by my Graphic Designer friend, Lisa Kay based on a rough design I had. Lisa is based here in New York and her resume and client base is extensive and impressive. I feel she certainly elevates my work. Also I think it helps to have another set of eyes, (especially someone who might not be so personally attached to the work) look at what works together and what might not.
Essentially I like to do new physical cards whenever there is new work that I am really excited about or I feel will be a nice addition to the set.
When I first started working with this particular design it was only my work of cultural icons but about 10 months ago I decided to start incorporating some of my Beauty work into it with the thought that it complimented the portraits rather well.
How Many Times a Year Do You Send Out Promos?
This is a trickier question to answer. I primarily use promos as leave behinds when I have in person meetings or portfolio reviews. I find that with a lot of people now working hybrid it’s more effective to just send a digital PDF of new work via an e-mail. I also believe in personalizing or catering the e-mail to the specific and hopefully potential client who is on the other end of the e-mail. So I’m not really using an e-mail blast service.
I’m basically writing each person individually. I think this is effective especially if you are reaching out to a team of people who work together. At least this way it’s not just the same e-mail going to each of them. I do try to find a way to personalize the body of the e-mail to each team member even if the PDF that they are receiving is the same one that their colleagues are receiving as well.
Because my work is more portrait driven and not lifestyle advertising I think this approach has been beneficial. So the round about answer is for the past year whenever I’ve done new work, whether it be client work or just a personal Beauty shoot I will make a PDF of the new work and send it out to Editors and Clients I’ve worked with in the past and to new potential clients.
When there is a positive response from someone I have not met with in person before depending on the response I may ask if I can send them the physical package. But before doing that I like to ask if they are in the office these days first. Because if they aren’t, I feel asking for someone’s home address might be a bit of an overreach.
You might think that was that, but a few of the photographers I invited to participate were off-line for the holidays, or not-quite-able to get me their work in time.
Therefore, when they popped back up again offering jpegs, how could I refuse?
To leave them hanging, and not publish their work, would not be cool.
And that’s been the core value of this blog all along: Be Cool.
With that said, today, we’ll be featuring an impromptu Part 2 of the best work I saw at Filter last year.
As usual, the artists are in no particular order.
I guess we can start with Yvette Marie Dostatni, as she and I go way back. (And I’ve shared her work here at least once over the years.)
It would be fair to call me a fan of her quirky, odd, excellent work.
(Yvette is born and raised Chicago, and is as local as it gets.)
That said, when I saw her last in Portland in 2019, I challenged her to push her newer color work, “My American Dream” forward a bit.
It felt transitional, and needed tightening.
Therefore, I was super-psyched to check it out in its current iteration.
There is a vibrance to Yvette’s work that matches her personal energy, and I can’t think of a much bigger compliment.
(I’m going to share Yvette’s captions below the images, which I rarely do, because it’s important to understand the context here.)
My American Dream Captions:
1. A tatted biker tenderly holding his effeminately dressed chihuahua, wearing a pink sweat-shirt complemented with delicate pink pearls at The International Kennel Club Dog Show in Chicago, Illinois.
2. Anthony Alfano, living with cerebral palsy, wears a costume his Parent’smade him for Halloween.Tony and Deanna Alfano make their son an elaborate Halloween costume every year. In 2016, Anthony’soutfit was the Lincoln Memorial Snow globe.To the left of him are his neighbors, who were out trick-or-treating as well.
3. Joyce Berg is the owner-operator, curator, and docent of the Angel Museum in Beloit, Wisconsin. Shewears a glittering angel costume to give tours of her personally acquired collection of more than 15,000 angel statutes. Joyce poses next to one of three cases donated by Oprah Winfrey.
4. A professional groomer and her canine creation pose for a photo after the ‘Creative Styling Category’ competition at the ‘All American Grooming Show’ in Wheeling, Illinois.
5. A Michael Jackson impersonator stands vigil next to the King of Pop’schildhood home in Gary, Indiana, on the ninth anniversary of his death, in 2018.Next to him, enshrined in glass, is a Michael Jackson sequinedglove.
6. Twin brothers and Professional Socialites Jon and Andrew Landon wear couture outfits in their downtown Chicago, Illinois apartment.
7. American Patriots at a life-size diorama of a burning Twin Towers during a 9/11 outdoor memorial ceremony in Schererville, Indiana.
8. Tourists patiently wait for the jousting event at Medieval Times in Schaumburg, Illinois.
9. Michael Foley and his girlfriend Colleen wait for the doorbell to ring to pass out candy on Halloween in Chicago, Illinois.
10. Susan Henderson puts her treasured collection of dolls away for the evening in the affluent suburb of Wilmette, Illinois. Thedolls remind Susan of her happy childhood. She changes their outfits seasonally.
11. Vehemently anti-Trump, Bob Rogers poses with a Trump Pinata in a funeral home’sempty viewing area above which he lives.Bob was looking forward to burning the pinata during President Biden’s inauguration.
12. King Jeremie and Haija Sidd, who work at New Style Comfort Furniture, pose in the store’sfront window display.New Style Comfort Furniture is located in the most diverse neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois: Roger’s Park.
13. Samuel J. Lewis II, a professional puppeteer, holds a puppet modeled after his late Grandfather, James Aubrey Lewis, in front of his house in Skokie, IL. On this night, civil unrest was occurring less than 40 miles away in Kenosha, Wis., after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
I’ve also known Meg Griffiths, whom I first met in Santa Fe in 2010, for quite some time too.
Meg’s been featured on the blog, for her co-curation of A Yellow Rose Project, and I’ve admired her art over the years too.
Meg showed me a Covid-era, studio project in which she got way out of her comfort zone, and made trippy, futuristic, sometimes off-putting, constructed images.
The metaphorical photos were edgy, and felt of the time they were made.
As with some of the artists I featured last time, Meg and I worked on an edit, with two piles, in which we pruned the few images that felt too safe, familiar, or both.
Jeff Schewe and I met the moment he sat down at the table, so it was a rather different experience than the previous two artists.
(Though he had sent me a FB friend request the week before the event, so I recognized his name. Smart move.)
Jeff had a long-time commercial photography career, and was something of a Photoshop wiz, having written more than one book on the subject.
I didn’t much care for the first project he showed me, but as is often the case, the second was more intriguing, in which Jeff made digitally-simulated-tintype-aesthetic images of Saguaro cacti.
I know some people aren’t in for the fakery, but IRL, the effect was convincing, the prints were luscious, and I thought the form and content matched each other well.
(Weird shit has always gotten my attention, and I hope that never changes.)
I didn’t review Grace’s work at the table, but we hung out several times, and definitely clicked on a human level.
(Despite the fact that being from Philly, she likes the dreaded Eagles, whom I very much hope the Giants beat tomorrow.)
Grace showed me her work briefly at the Filter Portfolio Walk, and it interweaves historical, family imagery with contemporary art pictures.
Grace’s history is dramatic, with an ancestry in Liberia, a move to the Midwest, a heap of whole and part siblings, and she weaves the narrative together in her art.
And a big Shout Out to Grace for communicating me with me (via IG DM) while she’s currently in Liberia, working on the project.
These pictures are so cool!
Anyway, that’s it for today, and in two weeks, I’ll say my final goodbye, and step away from APE, after a long and successful run.
The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.
“As an artist, I am constantly seeking inspiration for my work. What could be more inspiring than the humble Icelandic hot dog? This legendary street food can be found on nearly every corner in the country. Their abundance and affordability make them a go-to snack for locals and visitors alike.
But beyond the delicious flavor and convenience, I was drawn to the quiet beauty of the experience. An empty late-night stand offers a sense of calm and solitude in the midst of a busy city. From the steaming sausages on the grill and the colorful condiment bars, to the vendor preparing the hotdogs with care, each photograph tells a story of tradition and the simple pleasures of life. Through my photography, I sought to capture the quiet, meditative side of this Icelandic staple.
Whether you prefer yours with ketchup and mustard or the more traditional toppings of sweet brown mustard and crispy fried onions, there is something for everyone to enjoy. If you ever find yourself in Iceland, be sure to grab a hot dog and take a moment to soak in the unique atmosphere and culture of this beautiful country.”
APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease. Instagram
Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it. And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.
Concept: 4-day photo/video shoot capturing environmental portraiture, architecture, and scenic photography of a travel destination.
Licensing: Perpetual Web Advertising and Web Collateral use of all content captured.
Photographer: Travel, Portraiture, Interiors, and Architecture specialist.
Client: Large Financial Institution and their partner restaurants/hotel/hospitality clients.
Summary
A NYC-based photographer recently came to Wonderful Machine for help building an estimate and negotiating a project with a large well-known financial institution. The client brief and subsequent conversations described a multi-day travel shoot and production needs with multiple subjects/locations each day. It also described the need for scenic interiors and architecture imagery, as well as environmental portraiture of notable proprietors and chefs within various client partner establishments (restaurant, hotel, and hospitality). The final use of the photography would be on the client’s web platforms and web ads to promote their financial services while highlighting the various hotels and restaurants within the travel destination. The video needs included 10 second – 20 second clips mirroring the stills shot list, and would be used for social media and potentially a few banner ads.
While reviewing the initial shot list and scope of the project with the agency, the photographer estimated this would need to be accomplished over 8 shoot days, with a tech scout day prior to visit the locations, determine sun times, etc.
Take a look at the Estimate here:
Fees
I put the fees at $40,000 for the 8-day shoot, including Web Advertising and Web Collateral use of all images captured in perpetuity. We found this number to be appropriate for the client’s use, the number of potential locations/scenes that we anticipated per shoot day and considering the project scope and what the competition might charge. This fee was in line with what this photographer was accustomed to charging for a project with similar deliverables. I added $1,000/day for the photographer tech scout day and two travel days. The agency requested two “Hold Days” on location to account for potential weather delays, and we included this for the photographer at $1,000 for each day.
Crew
We added a DP/Camera Operator for 8 shoot days at $2,500/day, plus five Scout/Travel/Hold days at $1,000 each. We added the first assistant to help with lighting and camera equipment management and to attend the tech scout day to familiarize themselves with the shoot needs and help advise on equipment needs. The second assistant would be local, but we needed to account for the hold days as well. We also chose to bring the second assistant on the scout day, potentially as another set of hands or driver as needed. As a final member of the crew, we added a digital tech to manage the files and display the content to the client as it was being captured, and who would be traveling with the photographer and first assistant. These fees were consistent with previous rates the photographer had paid their team on past productions.
Equipment
For all gear needs, we included $3,200/day for stills, video cameras, grip, and lighting rentals. The photographer would bring their own cameras, lenses, and lighting, and intended to rent some supplemental lighting, grip, and a few specific modifiers and other specialty items from a local rental house. An estimate of $350 per shoot day was determined by the digital tech for their workstation rental, consisting of: a laptop, external monitor, mobile power supply, and cables. We also included $2,500 for 3x 8TB hard drives.
Travel
The traveling party would include the photographer, their first assistant, and digital tech. I included an estimated $725 each for flights and baggage fees and $675 for taxis to and from the airport. We added Per Diems at $75 each for the 3-person traveling party.
Miscellaneous
Given the crew, equipment, and travel necessary for the project I included $1,200 for insurance coverage.
Post Production
Lastly, I added $2,500 for the photographer to perform an initial edit of all the content and deliver it to the client for review. We assume this process would consist of culling images, global curves, simple color balance needs, and export to jpg for client review and backup. Even though there would be a digital tech on set, we estimated that going through 8 days of photo/videography would take approximately 20+ hours. At the agency’s request, we also included hourly retouching for up to 50 images at $125/hr.
Results
After the agency reviewed this estimate with the client, they let us know that these shoot days and bottom line numbers would need to be reduced significantly. The agency followed up to provide a reduced shot list and a large reduction of video needs. They advised that we should include crew transportation on location and lodging, as the client previously was leaning on their partners to provide lodging for all. During these negotations it was established that the client wanted to keep the total to approximately $65k all in.
With this info, we discussed the shot list with the creative team, and ended up slimming the shot list a little further. As a result we estimated a 4-day shoot, plus 1 scout day. While we were reviewing the video shot list and budget parameters, it was decided that the photographer would now be able to handle all video needs themselves. The agency would be handling all on-site production including all location(s), location coordination, employee/staff talent, and talent coordination, wardrobe/hair/makeup styling, crew meals and craft services, and COVID safety protocols. We included a Client Provisions section within the Job Description to note who would be handling these items, as well as any/all final video editing.
Below is the updated Estimate:
Fees
As the agency was now anticipating a $5,000/day fee, I put the fees at $22,000 for the four days with an increase of $500/day for the photographer to now handle the video needs themselves. I added $1,000/day for the photographer tech scout day and two travel days. The previous “Hold Days” were removed so that if needed they would be approved on-site.
Crew
We reduced our first assistant and digital tech to seven days, including scout, shooting, and traveling. As noted above, we had removed the previous DP/camera operator need. At the agency’s suggestion, we added two producer days for pre/post-production assistance with securing travel and invoicing/paying crew.
Equipment
We included $2,000/day for cameras, grip, and lighting rentals. As we said before, the photographer would bring their own cameras, lenses, and lighting, and intended to rent some supplemental lighting, grip, and a few specific modifiers and other specialty items. The same $350 per shoot day was estimated by the digital tech for their workstation rental, however, we adjusted the budget to $1,500 for 3x 4TB hard drives and $1,000 for any production supply potential needs.
Travel
The traveling party would still include the photographer, their first assistant, and digital tech. As requested by the agency, we included six hotel nights for each based on anticipated rates in that area. We included an estimated $725 each for flights and baggage fees and $675 for taxis to and from the airport. Additionally, 21 Per Diems at $75 per day were added for the 3-person traveling party.
Vehicles
I added five days for passenger van rental, so the crew and agency personnel could move about town together. We were told that a local fixer/PA hired by the production team would handle the van driving and pick-up/return.
Miscellaneous
We adjusted the insurance to $1,000 for the project.
Post Production
We adjusted the first edit and client review of all content to $1,750. Because we reduced the amount of shoot days, we determined that going through 4 days of photo/videography would take 8-12 hours. At the agency’s request, we included hourly retouching for up to 50 images. Initially, we suggested $125/hr, but this rate was discounted to $75/hr by the photographer in order for us to slim down the bottom line.
Final Results
The bottom line was $3,575 above the client’s stated budget, but all needs were met and the additional funds were approved. The photographer was awarded the project, and the shoot was a success! The client was thrilled with the work, and is currently running the project all over the internet!
Who printed it?
Newspaper Club out of the UK. This is my first time printing with them and I was impressed with their quality and customer service.
Who designed it?
I worked with Samantha Ricca, a talented designer and art director based here in Seattle. I love design so I found the process of working with her very exciting and collaborative throughout. We each provided input on the scope and direction of the promo, down to the small details. During one of the early brainstorming sessions, she came up with the idea to incorporate some of my behind-the-scenes stories from the photos, as well as my general thoughts/philosophies on how I approach my work. They appear as copy blocks and pull quotes in the promo, and help give it a magazine feel, which is exactly what I had envisioned.
Tell me about the images.
Ultimately, I wanted the piece to showcase my portraiture, which is my biggest love, and the area I feel I’m strongest in. The images come from many different projects spanning my career so the portrait theme was a natural way to keep the promo cohesive. The edit includes some favorites from my time as a photojournalist, where I first developed my affinity for portraits, and now as a commercial/advertising photographer. I not only wanted to show clients the style and quality of my work, but it was important to also convey its range and diversity of subject matter. Part of the reason why I enjoy portraiture so much is that I really enjoy working with all kinds of people, and am always excited at figuring out how to tell their story visually. These were some of the main things I hoped to convey in the piece.
How many did you make?
I made one copy as a test to make sure it looked good. I was happy when I opened the package to see that it was great, so I went ahead and ordered 100 more copies. Since this was my first time with Newspaper Club, I was a little concerned on whether the quality of the second run would be consistent with the single copy run, but they really nailed it again on the bigger order. They were identical in all respects.
How many times a year do you send out promos?
To be honest, this is the first promo I’ve ever made, so I’m still trying to find a good cadence that works for me. Overall, I think I will aim for once a year for promos of this size.
Do you think printed promos are effective for marketing your work?
Yes, I do. I feel it’s a wonderful way for clients and anyone else who receives it, to remember you. I have begun sending these out in an organic manner and the response has been extremely positive, and heartening. Given the feedback, I get the sense that it not only serves as a promo of your work, but also as a gift of sorts, in a gentle way. It fits the way I work and my personality, so this first experience with promos, so far, is extremely encouraging.
