Is it reasonable to pay more than once for a photo?

It used to be that you would hire a photographer to come out for a shoot. You’d spend an awful lot of cash on their time and expertise for that shoot. Fair enough – you get what you pay for and good work and talent cost money. But that was (and still is with a lot of photographers) not the end of the transaction. If a photographer has a rights managed clause in their contract, you now get to pay for the rights to USE the photos that you’ve just paid them to take. What the $%@#?!!!

Pardon my ascii French, but that just seems lame to me. And I’ve heard all the arguments. I get it. But it’s still lame. You pay someone to perform a service and then you have to keep paying them to use the end product of the service they’ve performed. It doesn’t compute as reasonable and more and more clients are calling bull on this archaic way of doing business. Good – I think it’s about time it stopped.

Rights managed contracts still have a place and it’s called stock photography. If a photographer invests THEIR OWN time and money to go out and shoot something – let’s say it’s the ocean or an old church – and you want to use that photo for commercial purposes, then you should pay for that of course. And rights managed contracts are pretty much the only way to do this. The details of the agreement may vary – but it’s pretty much the solution. But if YOU pay for that photog to come out and shoot something, why on earth should you have to pay more? Especially if it’s a picture of your face or product or building, etc… And trust me – that happens.

I know how I felt when I was a Marketing Director and working with photographers and how ticked I used to get with their contracts. That’s why now that I’m on the other end I choose to do things differently. One flat fee. You pay for my time and in return you get full rights to the pics. I hand over everything – raw files, the works. You can use the photos indefinitely. The only thing I retain is copyright and that just means you can’t sell the photo to someone else for a completely different purpose. Mostly protecting me from my work getting stuck on some stock photo site. Retaining copyright also allows me to use the work in my portfolio for self-promotional purposes and keeps someone else from taking credit. Also reasonable I think.

So come on photogs! Get with it – the boat is leaving without you! If you are bummed because you will make less, sorry, charge more for your initial service I guess. And if you are good enough and have that “look” that everyone wants, then you can get your price. But enough with the usage fees after you’ve already been paid for your services. It just doesn’t make sense anymore.

-N

P.S. If you want to charge usage, then waive your day rates and negotiate that way. Could work out in your favor and wouldn’t leave such a bad taste in the client’s mouth. It’s really the double-dipping that bugs people I think…

But what was Charles Eames saying in the illustration below? Well I think his words and drawing are pretty clear. He’s basically defining, with shapes, the boundaries of the parties involved and considered in the design process. The designer, the client and the public – specifically the group that the client is trying to reach. When those seemingly abstract shapes are laid over the top of one another, the areas of intersect create a new shape. Or as I like to think of it, a target.

This target is the sweet spot. It’s the area of the bat that will knock the ball out of the park if you connect it with the pitch. It’s the area where we as designers can be most effective. If it’s agreed that our work needs to satisfy the client and ultimately achieve the goals of the client, then that “sweet spot” is what we need to strive to define before we can proceed with anything else. It’s the truth of any project and thus its heart and soul. If our work is true to these parameters, then our design solution will succeed.

I encourage you to check out Charles and Ray Eames’ work and learn more about his approach to design. He was very good at articulating his thoughts and has been an enormous influence on me as a designer and creative professional.

There’s a fantastic (and short) interview with Charles Eames on his design philosophy here: http://www.hermanmiller.com/discover/an-interview-with-charles-eames/

-N

Eames design process recreated from Charles Eames’ sketch for the 1965 Paris Design Convention