How to Win More Customers With Professional Photography

Comments

1. 1.

   paul (December 6th, 2009, 1:58 pm)

   You mean optional fee and not free right?

   Anyway, good to know that such feature will soon be available on BigCommerce.

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2. 2.

   joanna (December 8th, 2009, 9:36 pm)

   I can't decide on the best watermark for e-commerce..whether to make it opaque but big and noticable, or to make it semi-opaque, small and barely noticable but enough so that if the picture is floating around the internet the watermark will always be there. What are your thoughts on how to watermark best?

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3. 3.

   Mitchell Harper (December 11th, 2009, 12:24 pm)

   Hi Paul. No I mean free. All BigCommerce software updates are free and always will be. I meant you will be prompted to upgrade your store automatically. You can choose “Yes” to upgrade right away or you can schedule the upgrade to happen on a specific date. You'd schedule the update if you've made template changes and need to spend time modifying the HTML. This is really just for designers.

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4. 4.

   Mitchell Harper (December 11th, 2009, 12:24 pm)

   Hi Joanna. Don't make it too big. Just something small and semi-transparent in the bottom right with your store name and/or website address is a good idea.

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5. 5.

   gisnap (December 22nd, 2009, 6:18 am)

   Its really cool, I came to know this really worth visiting, just bookmarked your site.

   http://gisnap.com/
   The place where the fun never ends

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6. 6.

   johnslemp (January 9th, 2010, 8:13 am)

   Hello Mitchell!

   As a commercial photographer with almost twenty years of experience, there are several items in your post that bear clarification.

   Most commercial photography is licensed, just like software, and other intellectual property. It is licensed for a specific period of time, for specific publications, for specific geographic areas, and for specific print runs. These specifics are loosely called “usage” in the business. A client almost never “owns” an image, unless it was created under a “work for hire” agreement. Some commercial photographer do work under these conditions, but it's almost always a “slave labor” type of mentality by the client. I won't and never will do a WFH, unless it's for a pile of money, up front. Almost always too, the client's have no imagination, as to what is possible photographically speaking, and they almost always don't respect what you can bring to the table. It's very much a “shoot the picture and get out of my way” mentality”. Not to say that doesn't work, but it never lends itself to a good business relationship, and is usually a “one-time, one-way” deal. Not a good way to sustain a business…and commercial photography is a business, just like yours.

   Work for hire is a bad deal, in a business sense, for a photographer, because he/she loses all control of their intellectual property. As you mentioned, a client can, and client's do, “lease” (license) images down the line to others. The photographer is obviously cut out of the money generated from such an arrangement, and essentially is now competing against himself! Again, not a smart business deal.

   It is also a “bad deal” for the client to pay a lot of money up front, with the express intent of “owning” the images. If the images have a limited shelf life, commercially speaking, then it doesn't make sense to pay more than necessary to get the job done. Most photographers that I know will create a price schedule, so that if additional usage is necessary, then the client knows up front what that usage will cost. It's good business for the photographer to do so, and it helps the client go back to their corporate budget folks to work that into the mix.

   Of course, many people have small business, and as such, can't afford to pay what might the going rate that a much larger corporation does. In that instance, I take that into account, and price accordingly, and the usage granted is much broader. I'd much rather help a small company succeed, so that when they become a “big company”, hopefully they'll remember that our collaboration was a part of that success formula.

   Your point about watermarking an image “so that it can never be stolen or repurposed” is also not quite accurate. Just about anything can be stolen, including a watermarked image. If a competitor is dumb enough to do so, they can spend a great deal of time obliterating the watermark with Photoshop. It's almost never as good as original photography, unless one is extremely talented in Photoshop. And a watermark is not “real” protection anyway.

   Registration of the image with the US Copyright Office is the absolute best way to protect one's intellectual property. It establishes a public record of who owns an image, and also offers important incentives to register, including the collection of attorney's fees, and damages, which can go as high as $250,000, per infringement, should an infringement occur. Images are “misappropriated” all the time, but I don't worry about it much, as all of my images are registered, and thus protected.

   One other point too. If the photographer register's the images, then he is also protecting his client, in that another party cannot legally use the images in their advertising and promotions. It helps the client protect their “brand”.

   One other point that you skirt around is poor photography. With the advent of inexpensive digital cameras, and photo software, everyone now thinks that they are a “photographer”. While technically that might be true, it no more makes one a photographer than someone who goes outside and throws down a pumpkin seed, and calls themselves a “farmer”.

   Good solid commercial photography, is a mixture of art, skill, and a great deal of grunt work. There are no short cuts to producing good work, no magic software that will fix an out-of-focus image, or one that is poorly composed and lit. In short, there is no substitute for hiring a pro. Yes, you can make a picture yourself, but can you do it quickly, accurately, and repeatedly, over time? Probably not. And bad pictures, to my way of thinking, do almost more harm than good…

   Professional photographers are in business for one thing: to make their clients, and their client's products, look great. Consider that the next time you think you can “do it yourself…”.

   John Slemp
   Photographer

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   Mitchell Harper Reply:
   February 2nd, 2010 at 6:40 pm

   Great advice John and thanks for sharing, it’s appreciated.

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