Cold emailing can be an efficient method for reaching new clients as a music photographer. It may be possible to reach dozens or hundreds of potential new clients. What cold emails lack in effectiveness, they make up for in relative ease and reach.

In this article, we'll cover a common mistake many photographers (and in particular music photographers) make when trying to pitch their services.

Effective cold emails should do a few things well. Ideally, your cold emails should:

• Clearly understand the reader/audience and their potential needs
• They should very clearly state your value
• You should establish credibility
• There should be a clear ask that prompts a response

One common problem with music photographers emailing clients occurs with this last point.

Avoid the Trap of Vague Wording

It's best to be as clear as possible in a cold email. All too often, I hear from music photographers who are asking bands or management if they “need a photographer” or they are generally stating how they'd “love to photograph the show.”

Even the wording “I'd love to work with you” may a little too ambiguous for our purposes here.

When asking if a band “needs a photographer,” it can easily be confused with offering to shoot for free (which is a common occurrence) or asking for access in exchange for photos. Generally wanting to “shoot the show” or “shoot with you” is similarly vague. What comes across at most is a request for access.

None of these requests are what you want to communicate if you're actually inquiring about being paid as a professional. And if you're cold emailing prospective clients to be paid as a music photographer, this is exactly what you want to do.

At best, vague language is only inefficient — and there are situations that are perfectly suited to diction open to interpretation. But at worst, when using vague language you fail to communicate clearly and you won't get the result you want.

Using Specific Business Language

If you want to clear, use business language that is specific as possible if the goal is avoiding any possible confusion. Here are a couple phrases that can help avoid confusion:

“Hire a photographer”

The use of the business specific action of hiring is very clear. You're not volunteering, you're not asking for a photo pass, you're not hoping to trade photos for access, you're not giving away your work. Aside from some willful misunderstanding, asking if they're looking to hire a professional is about as clear as it gets.

“Happy to discuss rates”

This is a great follow up to the above use of “hire,” which may be used well in a follow up. You're reinforcing that you're offering a service, and if they have need of it, you can get into the details. The use of “rates” here isn't jumping the gun with more info than is needed, but floats the discussion of pricing as part of the natural flow of conversation.

End Notes

There's no single magic cold email template that will work 100% of the time. Using cold emails is a numbers game — it's about creating opportunities and forging new connections. Cold emails might have a very low success rate, maybe 10% for a positive response, and an even much smaller percentage for actually booking a job.

Given all the challenges of generating business, using clear language can be a huge asset to the best results when cold emailing as a music photographer.

The post Writing Better Cold Emails for Music Photographers appeared first on ishootshows.com.

The last several years have seen record inflation and increases in the cost of living overall around the world. From the cost of milk and eggs to camera gear, just about everything except maybe big screen TVs has gone up in price.

It's as important as ever to emphasize the importance of making sure your fees and rates as a photographer increase along with inflation and the cost of living. Evaluating and raises in your rates should be done every single year.

This year we launched the Photography Rates sheet. If you're lost on what to charge for music or sports photography, we have dedicated spreadsheets for these specialities that can give insight into what real market rates are for specific jobs.

US INFLATION RATES

In the last 3 years, we've seen historic rates of inflation worldwide. Normally, inflation rates hover around 2% Over the last 3 years, we've seen inflation rates average 5.93% for a cumulative 18.88% increase.

Beyond inflation itself, the consumer price index for goods across the board have averaged higher. While we're seeing a decline in the trend of the CPI, the fact remains that prices are higher than ever, not lower.

KEEPING THE SAME RATE YEAR OVER YEAR REDUCES YOUR VALUE

In recent years, the cost of various essentials, including gas, food, and utilities, has consistently risen. Consequently, it's reasonable for you to consider adjusting your rates for the services you provide to your clients.

In essence, failing to raise your rates in line with inflation means a decrease in your purchasing power. As the prices of necessities such as gas, milk, and the materials you use for your work continue to climb, it's essential to keep pace with the rising cost of living. Anything less quite literally means less value for your work as a creative.

YOUR CLIENTS ARE RAISING THEIR RATES

Just as consumer goods are increase, so are services. You can bet that the prices charged by your clients — whether they're musicians, agencies, art buyers, managers, etc — are increasing to keep their own profit margins up.

This year, publishers and streaming services have reached a settlement to increase streaming royalty rates to 15.35%. This is after already winning an increase from 10.5% to 15.1% for the 2018-2022 period. While this increase is not due solely to inflation, it's not independent from the fact that value has to track with the times.

It's not personal — it's just business. Your best clients should understand. And those who don't — they are not budgeting accordingly in a way that truly respects the value of photographers in relation to global economics.

INCREASING YOUR VALUE YEAR OVER YEAR

Beyond cost of living adjustments, another important reason to increase your rates every year is for your own professional growth. As creatives, we are not static — we are constantly learning, adapting and bettering ourselves in small but important ways.

Wherever you are in your career, you are gaining experience in your craft. This comes in the form of faster workflows, better technique, and more. All of these small but important and incremental changes add value to your customers.

And that value to your customers can and should be expressed as increased rates.

GIVING YOURSELF A RAISE

With conventional 9-5 jobs, you should expect not only cost of living adjustments, but also pay increases that reflect your experience and abilities as tied to promotions, title changes and professional growth.

As photographers, we have only ourselves to advocate for ourselves in most instances. No one else will be fighting to give you a raise. You must be the one to demand it for yourself.

HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU RAISE YOUR RATES?

A 2-3% raise year over year is generally accepted as appropriate for cost of living increases for many corporate employers. Again, this is in a typical 9-5 office world that many photographers don't occupy.

Personally, going into 2024, I would recommend at least a 3.2% increase. Why 3.2%? If you're based in the United States, this is the rate the US Social Security Administration is raising benefits from 2023 going into 2024.

Almost every year since its inception, social security payments have been adjusted to ensure that the purchasing power of these benefits tracks with inflation. Note, this is simply keeping the same purchasing power — it does not account for your professional growth or advancement.

So at the minimum, I'd still recommend at least a 3.2% increase to your rates as you head into 2024. This is assuming you raised your rates last year.

END NOTES

Now that we've covered why you should raise your rates every year, jump into the 4 best times to raise your rates as a photographer (spoiler alert: it's right now). And as a refresher, for more reading, check out the common things to charge for as a photographer. You might be surprised at some costs and fees you can pass on to your clients if you aren't already.

The post Photographers: Raise Your Rates Right Now appeared first on ishootshows.com.

Pricing photography can feel like a daunting task, even for experienced professionals. For beginners, the feeling of not knowing where to start in pricing photography is natural and completely understandable.

After all, many photographers get into a love and passion for the creative aspect of making images. Putting a value on our work doesn't necessarily come easily, because the creative act comes first.

In this post, we'll look at some of the factors in how to consider pricing your work, resources to use for pricing, and more.

Factors to consider when pricing photography

Pricing photography should consider many factors. These include:

• Usage
• Client
• Licensing Rights
• Deliverables
• Rarity
• Effort
• Expenses
• Time
• Expertise

Now let's break down these factors. This won't be an exhaustive examination, but the goal of this article is to get you thinking about how to price photography and why.

It's ultimately most important to understand what goes into pricing. Even viewing specific ranges or prices for jobs, as shown in the Music Photography Rates Sheet, may not give the full picture. The rate should ultimately depend on the details. So let's dig in.

Usage

Usage is one of the most important factors. Usage in photography is how a client will use images when those images are licensed. The use of an image for an album cover is dramatically different than use for social media or editorial coverage.

More broadly, use can fall into a few main categories:

• Editorial use
• Marketing/Promotional use
• Commercial use

Marketing and promotional use is technical commercial, but here the main distinction is that for commercial use, the image itself is being sold either directly or as part of a product.

Editorial use is generally the least expensive in terms of licensing cost, while commercial is the most expensive.

Client

The client is hugely important in licensing photography. Who is using a photo can be just as important as what they're using it for. In music photography for example, a local band using an image for an album cover is much different than an established national band or a pop star.

Another way to consider the client is their reach or the impact the images will have. The client can be tied to use and usage in a sense. While the specific use may be the same, the actual “work” the images does is different in scope. So when considering clients, this weight of the images is critical in considering their value.

Licensing

The licensing rights that you assign to a client are integral to usage, but for this purpose, let's break it down in terms of exclusivity and ownership as it pertains to the images.

The main types of licensing agreements include:

• Non-exclusive
• Exclusive
• Full buyout
• Work For Hire

When photography is made, all rights reside with the photographer/creator as a matter of law as defined by the Berne Convention. You as the photographer hold the rights to the images until you assign them away under a licensing agreement.

Licenses can also be defined as unlimited use or limited specific uses (which should be outlined and agreed on by all parties).

It's most common to have limited use and this is often in the best interest for photographers, to maintain the highest control of their images and to limit use.

Deliverables

What the photographer delivers should be a large factor in pricing. Is the price for one image, or one hundred? Is it for JPGs or RAW files? Are you delivering photographer selects from your edit, or are you showing the client everything as proofs?

Generally speaking, the more you deliver, the more you should charge.

Generally, you should to control your photography unless the client pays for the right to dictate the final product. For this reason, most photographers prefer to only deliver final processed images — not RAW files. The reason is that giving a client RAW files means they may have the final say on the edit and processing, which in turn means the final product may not represent the photographer's style accurately.

Rarity

Rarity of images can also be a factor in pricing. If there was a historic moment or scene that was only photographed by a single photographer, those images have more value in one sense than if there were 10 or 100 other photographers who made similar images. This is most often the case with editorial images for moments there aren't planned or cannot be recreated.

Effort

The effort and production involved in a shoot should be a factor in pricing photography. Effort can be related to time and equipment required, but it can also be related to art direction, the level of production required, planning and so forth.

Time

A photoshoot that takes an hour can be priced differently than a multi-day shoot. If you travel for a photo job, the travel days should be considered in how you bill as an opportunity cost.

If you're a music photographer bidding on a tour, your rate has to account for travel days as well, not just show days. With extended jobs like touring, the rate also has to account for not being able to take other jobs in that time as well.

Expenses

All hard costs should be a factor in pricing photography. This includes specialized equipment, studio time/rental, and hard costs such as transportation.

Experience

While experience doesn't always have a bearing on the value of photography, one should factor in experience if you're able to do a job efficiently. If it takes an experienced photographer an hour to create the work a client needs that would take another photographer four hours, that experience should be reflected in the value of the work. At the very least, the work is not valued on the time it took, but in the work it does for the client, which is the same regardless of the time and effort.

Further Reading

If you're newer to pricing photography, here are a few more articles for your further reading:

The post How to Price Photography for Beginners appeared first on ishootshows.com.

The writer's strike of the Writer's Guild of America that started May 2, 2023 is ongoing. With the recent news that the Screen Actors Guild is joining them, it feels like a notable point in history. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA have not both been on strike simultaneously since 1960.

Writing and acting are different pursuits from photography and the creative work we do. But many demands for fair contracts for are the exact same things we as photographers should be concerned about.

Understanding the Value of Creators

At the heart of both the demands of writers and actors are the impact of AI on their work. And more fundamentally, compensation and the ability to preserve a sustainable earning ability.

With SAG-AFTRA now striking with WGA, one key point that's surfaced are studios' demand for the right to use an actor's likeness.

An actor's likeness is part of their value and earning potential. And when star power relies on the currency of image, it can mean everything for a production's box office returns.

With photographers, it is the work we create and the copyright that we own that is part of our concrete value. For this reason, it is critical that we do not give away our rights without the compensation that matches that value.

A Story about the Importance of Copyright

My friend and hero Baron Wolman was Rolling Stone's first staff photographer. He shot from 1967 to 1970. In the founding years of the magazine, he made iconic images of rock royalty. Baron created the iconic images we associate with legends such as Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, the Rolling stones, the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Hendix, Johnny Cash and more. Even if you don't know his name, you certainly know his images.

The images from those short 3.5 years supported Baron for the rest of his life, particularly in his later years as the iconic nature of his images and the fame of his subjects were cemented in history.

When he agreed to shoot for Rolling Stone, Baron fought to keep his copyright. He went so far as to forego payment as an early employee so that he could retain ownership of his work, rather than work for hire and assign copyright to the magazine.

Baron Wolman was able to live off his images precisely because of his insistence to keep his copyright. Baron had the foresight and keen understanding that he was capturing history, and he knew the value of his work.

We all don't have the luck, talent and grace to create the iconic images that Baron Wolman did so easily throughout his career. But we do have the chance. And that's what so many of us are chasing.

One thing that is guaranteed: we as photographers will never have the opportunity to have the value of work recognized if we don't value ourselves, our copyright and our rights overall as creatives.

If photographers had the same unions in place as writers and actors do in the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, we would be striking for the very same fundamental protections for our ability to practice our crafts as professionals.

The post The Hollywood WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike, Copyright and Photographers appeared first on ishootshows.com.

Misunderstanding can happen in the best circumstances in life. When you're a photographer, delivering images to clients seems simple enough, but there are a few important details that can save headaches down the line.

First, it's important to outline use for photography as clearly as possible. This includes agreeing on exactly how the images can be used and what exactly you'll deliver, in as clear as language as you can make it. Are the images for social media use only? How many images? Resolution? Duration of license? And so forth.

There are a lot of details of image licensing, copyright as a photographer and more. But the intent of this article is to give you an approach for how to be direct with clients to limit misunderstanding and misuse of photography as a professional.

When to overdeliver

There can be a huge benefit to overdelivering for a client. Underpromising and overdelivering makes you look good. It makes a client feel like they're getting more than they're paying for, shows your drive, and so forth.

But in the context of this article, we're taking a different approach. Delivering precisely what's needed and what's agreed on, so that you're protected as a photographer.

Common image misuse

Common types of misuse by photo clients can include usage that is out of agreed:

• Licensing (commercial vs editorial)
• Duration
• Scope/specific use

In this post, we'll look at a few technical ways of trying to limit the latter, photo usage out of scope.

Preventing misuse

There are few aspects of business that we aren't going to go into detail on. There are absolutely best practices you should be doing that should prevent misuse in the first place. These include:

• Getting all terms of use in writing
• Signing a contract with clients new and old
• Agreeing on exactly what you'll deliver
  • How many images
  • What resolution
  • Turnaround time
  • Licensing and usage
  • Duration of license

Deliver what's agreed

From a business standpoint it can be advantageous to deliver the minimum agreed deliverables. It's worth stressing that this approach is in direct contrast to overdelivering to take advantage of a big break, networking, client pleasing or ease of working perspective.

Ideally, there's a balance for overdelivering in quality rather than quantity, and one every photographer has to feel out for themselves and each situation.

I'm a music photographer, so let's take a hypothetical scenario in which you're hired by a band to make images they can use on social media.

You've agreed to deliver 10 final photos from a show. You're being paid $500 for this gig.

Limit quantity

In this approach for limiting liability, if you agreed to deliver 10 images, deliver 10 images. Not 20 and not 50 or 100. Overdelivering certainly has it's places and they can be numerous, but in this approach for limiting potential misunderstanding and misuse, deliver exactly what was agreed on.

Why?

Because limiting quantity sets and fulfills boundaries. It sets the expectation that you're sticking to your part of the agreement and that you have delivered the very best with zero filler. If they want more images, that's outside of the original scope. At the very least, it's worth considering a discussion.

In addition, there's a clear price to image ratio here. 10 images for $500. When the quantity goes up, unless you have agreed on it with the band, the price per image goes down when you deliver in excess. There are plenty of times to do so, but in this context of limiting liability, it should give you pause for consideration.

If you haven't set expectations on the number of images you should deliver at all, it's always a good idea to do so. At the very least, part of being a pro is managing expectations, even if you plan to exceed them.

Limit Resolution

In addition, if the understood use is social media, limit the resolution to precisely what is needed. Don't deliver the high res files when that isn't what is expected.

1080 pixels on the short image side for Instagram is fine, maybe a little more if you want to allow for cropping.

Why is this important? Limiting resolution to the final, intended size helps reduce the chances of misuse that requires larger resolution. Low res web images don't make great printed tour posters or album covers.

If the client needs higher resolution, they can come back with that request and negotiate for it's use.

File Format & Size

Similarly, a client doesn't need the RAW files if the agreed use is social media. They don't need TIFF files. All they should realistically need is a 65-80% compression JPEG.

Just like resolution, if they need the RAW file, they should pay for it.

Furthermore, a full res file RAW file reinforces an assumption the notion that no further discussion is needed for even the most demanding technical uses. Billboard? Poster? No problem.

Final Thoughts

When you overdeliver in terms of quantity or other technical aspects of deliverables, the first time, it's a pleasant surprise. The next time and every time after, it's now the expectation.

This is not inherently a negative, but when the rate doesn't reflect the work rendered, it becomes an imbalance of power, which should give any pro pause.

The real aim should be to impress with professionalism, quality, reliability, and so forth.

The post Delivering Images to Clients to Limit Misuse as a Photographer appeared first on ishootshows.com.