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Photographer

Telephoto Studio

Posts: 1439

Raleigh, North Carolina, US

Wonder what's up with all the models who earn commercial rates for what is obviously non-commercial work?  Any why do non-commercial photographers pay these rates to models when it doesn't appear that they make commercial sales?

This question came up recently when I was talking to a model here in NC who says she went up to NYC to shoot over her Winter Break.  A little history here......

I am originally from up in NY, got a 4-year degree in photography from RIT and assisted in NYC for a few years.  I avoided assisting in NC because I caught a lot of flack from local photographers for going to "that Yankee school" who not only never went to any photography school but had never actually assisted another photographer to learn their craft.  They did it the old-fashioned way - either were trust-fund babies, married money, or had some great job that paid them more than enough money to invest in gear and take time to learn on their own.  And someone who went to RIT was a threat to them, so I went to NYC to assist and, due to my RIT degree and portfolio, got my foot in the door with a lot of high-end shooters and learned my craft from them.  I networked like crazy up there, and consequently have many more contacts in the photographic community up there both back in the day and now.

I chose to move back down to NC for many reasons - lower cost of doing business, ability to compete effectively with shooters based in the Northeast because I do commercial, corporate

Jan 10 07 01:47 pm Link

Photographer

San Francisco Nudes

Posts: 2910

Novato, California, US

There's a lot of guys out there who buy thousands of dollars of camera stuff before realizing they don't have anything to take pictures of.  Enter the Internet model...

Jan 10 07 01:58 pm Link

Photographer

studio36uk

Posts: 22898

Tavai, Sigave, Wallis and Futuna

Telephoto Studio wrote:
Is photography done on sites like MM and omp just an expensive hobby for the photographers who don't get published - other than those guys doing it for adult content and the few real professionals who do straight commercial work?  How do you justify paying a model $100 an hour for a few hours for work that you never get published, or sell in an art gallery?  Or is selling your work on e-bay at $40 a print actually making you enough money to pay a model $100 an hour and still make a living for you?   Or is photography a part-time side gig for you?

As a commercial and an entirely business oriented photographer the answer to your question about why someone would pay excessive fees for models with no intention to ever commercialise the work boils down to "A fool and his money are soon parted"

There was another thread where I laid out some simple rules for photographers if they want to call what they do a business at all. One of those rules was to never pay a model unless the photographer had a paying client or a paying market for the work.

I kind of caught hell for that but I still maintain it is a valid rule. Beyond the ability to actually commercialise a piece of work in ANY genre, fashion, commercial, art, glamour, the lot, even as spec work,... the photographer becomes, indeed is, little more than a collector..... a collector of models, a collector of photographs, or, in combination, a collector of photographs of models. It is the absolute hallmark of a complete amateur.

Studio36

Jan 10 07 03:57 pm Link

Photographer

Telephoto Studio

Posts: 1439

Raleigh, North Carolina, US

studio36uk wrote:

As a commercial and an entirely business oriented photographer the answer to your question about why someone would pay excessive fees for models with no intention to ever commercialise the work boils down to "A fool and his money are soon parted"

There was another thread where I laid out some simple rules for photographers if they want to call what they do a business at all. One of those rules was to never pay a model unless the photographer had a paying client or a paying market for the work.

I kind of caught hell for that but I still maintain it is a valid rule. Beyond the ability to actually commercialise a piece of work in ANY genre, fashion, commercial, art, glamour, the lot, even as spec work,... the photographer becomes, indeed is, little more than a collector..... a collector of models, a collector of photographs, or, in combination, a collector of photographs of models. It is the absolute hallmark of a complete amateur.

Studio36

The British have such a way of "understatement" - "ditto" to what you wrote!

Jan 10 07 04:58 pm Link

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