Camera Samurai

Have you fallen in love with your new DSLR camera and now you want to go pro? Join the club! The good news is that you are in good company. Many of us have gone down this road as well and have found it to be quite a rewarding, interesting process of lifelong learning (so far, anyway) and an enjoyable way to make a few bucks or more. I think you should pursue those dreams and make them realities.

To that end, let me relate a story. A few days ago I was driving from one job to another when I got a call from a colleague who is a videographer. She was working with a newly minted photographer whose camera was giving her problems.

I spoke with the photographer, who described the problem she was having and I quickly diagnosed it. “It sounds like your exposure compensation is out of whack,” I suggested. There was silence on the other end.

“Do you know what exposure compensation is?” I asked. More silence. I tried to be helpful. “It’s the mechanism that lets you adjust the exposure in small increments, like one-third of a stop at a time. Normally you might hold down a button and turn the thumbwheel to adjust it.”

I quickly learned that this photography neophyte really did not know much about how the camera worked. That’s fine with me for two reasons. First, her job is to create a great picture for her client. If she can do that without knowing all the intricacies of her camera, that’s fine. Good for her. Second, if she fails to deliver on this contract, that’s one more bit of competition gone. This may sound heartless but it’s true.

So what’s the moral of the story? Know how to use your tools. In addition, bring your owner’s manual with you to every shoot. It’s a great resource and indispensable for those times you need it. If you don’t need it, it won’t take up much room in your kit bag.

Another moral of the story is to act gracious when someone, especially a competitor, tries to help you out of a jam. For my good faith effort of trying to help this person, I got a “goodbye.” I know she was under pressure but a quick thank-you call later on or perhaps an offer to network and help each other out would be nice. It’s the polite thing to do and may lead to more business. I’m just saying.

Those of you out there who need help, please ask each other, ask me or ask somebody. But if someone tries to help you, be gracious about it. And if someone asks for your help, please give assistance liberally. You never know who could become your greatest ally and who could become your greatest competitor. Even more important, you never know where your next friend might come from or what that little bit of assistance you offer could develop into.

Technorati Tags: DSLR, camera, photographer, exposure compensation, competitor

I have had a number of people contact me about doing shoots, sometimes even comp shoots through special arrangement, and the people fail to show up. To me, that’s bad business. It’s one thing to annoy the photographer, who is like the hired help in terms of the flow of money and desire to serve, but what people don’t seem to understand is that every interaction is a two-way street.

Today, you pay me for a service. What is your business? Might I someday want to pay you for something? If you stand me up, probably not. If you decide you don’t want my services after all and call to cancel, that’s a different story. Even though this transaction did not come to fruition, we have still had a positive, professional interaction.

Maybe I will call for your services. Maybe I will refer a friend your way. The sky’s the limit. All it takes is common courtesy and a simple phone call to cancel an appointment.

I have long told people – employees, employers, students, colleagues, classmates and others – that the biggest key to success is simply showing up. What this does is it gives you an opportunity to do your job.

This works on both ends of the bargain. I show up for our appointment, take your picture and get paid. When you show up, I am impressed by your professionalism in keeping an appointment and recognize you as a person of your word. Because of this, I am happy to tell someone about you and your work, should he need your services.

So to the latest person who promised to come by and did not – for the second time, mind you – and even emailed that she was on the way, I say, “Too bad.” It is hard to think of this as a loss on my end, as the real loss would have come from working with someone so unprofessional.

All the same, if she gets in touch with me and has a reasonable explanation, I would likely set up a third appointment, albeit wedged between two others so as not to possibly squander too much time waiting when she again failed to show.

Those of you in the service field – how do you handle this type of encounter? What do you do to ensure your people with appointments show? What is the effect of having people not show up?

Technorati Tags: photographer, professional, service, key to success, professionalism, appointment, unprofessional

For those of you following the Lan Bui vs. PodTech struggle, you can rest easy tonight with the knowledge that the saga of a humble man seeking the payment he deserved from PodTech’s picture pilfering has finally come to an end.

If you are not familiar with this story, please read this to get a sense of what you are missing. It’s an all-too-common occurrence these days – a company deciding to use someone’s photograph without permission and deciding not to pay until a big stink is made about it. The difference is that this time it’s a popular digital media company doing the stealing, effectively pooping in its own sandbox.

Bui, a professional photographer, had sent them an invoice for $3000 and had a hard time getting a response. After a while the company got in touch and offered to pay him $1000. Trying to negotiate a little, Bui then lowered his offer to $2500 but PodTech said that $1000 was as high as they would go.

U.S. Supreme Court precedent shows that a person is eligible to receive three times his normal rate in cases of copyright infringement. In my experience, $1000 for rights to a photo to be used as advertising on a banner at a conference is not extraordinarily high. That would make Bui’s $3000 invoice completely reasonable and fair.

Bui says that during negotiations, PodTech CEO & Founder John Furrier actually asked him if he needed the money, and that PodTech has accused him of simply trying to make some quick cash.

“It was never about the money,” Bui told me. He says that the issue is one of holding businesses accountable for their actions and showing companies that they cannot run roughshod over people’s rights without repercussion.

In the end, the big question is what the effect will be from PodTech ignoring someone’s copyright of a digital image. For a company on the forefront of digital media distribution and monetization, PodTech does not seem to have a plan for how to treat digital media makers equitably.

A recent Twitter post by Steve Woolf addressed major publishers saying, “just because you are part of enormous media conglomerates does not mean you get it!” The same thing is true of PodTech. Just because it is a leader in the world of digital media does not mean it does good business in that sphere or others.

What makes a company a good one to deal with is the same today as it was 100 years ago. The company that treats people well is the one people will want to work with. Being first out of the gate is good for something but if you can’t manage to treat people well, what value are you adding to society?

Recently, without having agreed to PodTech’s terms, Bui received a check for $1000 from the company. He has decided that the best use of the $1000, instead of lining his own pockets with the money, was to donate it to the Creative Commons organization. Kudos to Lan Bui for finding a way to turn a negative situation into a positive outcome, despite not getting what he was rightfully entitled to.

Technorati Tags: Lan Bui, PodTech, digital media, copyright infringement, John Furrier, Steve Woolf, Creative Commons

I am sometimes asked what the business of photography is like. How does it work? What are the secret tricks to success?

I once interviewed for a position with Lifetouch. They had heard of me from my website and said they were excited to bring me in to talk about how they might benefit from my expertise in youth sports photography, which I had been doing for a few years.

It was clear to me that these people, although part of a successful, nationwide business, knew nothing about photography as an art or how to recruit and retain talented people. I knew they started new photographers at low hourly rates and did not treat them particularly well. They had high turnover and low satisfaction. I knew this from having spoken to other photographers, who had come through the Lifetouch meat grinder.

They didn’t even seem to know much about cameras or whether to switch over to using digital equipment, which was rather shocking. This was only a few years ago. You’d think a company that has to buy a lot of cameras would know something about them.

After about 20 minutes of chatting and talking about business, photography and the geographic area they covered, the money shot came. How did youth sports photography work? What’s the magic key to success in that market? How do you sell such a service?

“It’s simple,” I said. “You get in front of the people who make decisions and make them an offer.” They looked at me really intensely, as if they had never thought about this and were hungering for the next step in the magic equation.

I continued. “Then you do a really good job, smile a lot, say nice things, make sure they are happy and ask them to sign a contract for next year.”

“Okay, I think we get it,” my interviewers said. “It sounds like you really know your stuff. We would like to bring you on board.” It was as if they had never thought about how sales was done and I had spoken some magic incantation that would inject new life into their organization.

They offered me a position in their business development group for $10 per hour. Was that before commission, I asked, figuring there should be more pay for someone who was going to bring in as much money as I could. No, that was it, they said. No commission.

I laughed and told them they could keep their money.

Here’s the thing. Being a photographer is no different than being a butcher, real estate agent or wire drawer. You have to get in front of people, tell them what you can do for them, help them feel good about it and ask them for the sale. It’s that simple.

Technorati Tags: business, photography, secret tricks, success, sales, photographer

Podtech.net violated the copyright of a photograph by Lan Bui for one of their posters used at the Vloggies award show. Lan has since tried to contact them, has sent an invoice for the usage fee and has not heard back. Podtech.net is an online media distributor that should know better than to wantonly violate a copyright. My guess is that the violation was accidental and that they did not intend to deprive anyone of what they are due. Knowing some folks who work for them, I highly doubt this infraction was deliberate.

However, the issue is more than just about dollars and cents. Lan is, without a doubt, owed a good sum for this image. Legally, the Supreme Court has ruled, Lan can collect up to three times the normal usage fee if copyright is violated. Will he get that much? Time will tell. Likely it will depend on a number of things, including whether Lan and Podtech decide to pursue this in court and how long Podtech decides to string this out.

Likely what is happening right now is the attorneys are trying to figure out what to do, spending Podtech’s money to the point that they will have to pay Lan’s usage fee twice – once to Lan and again to the attorneys.

Getting back to the real issue, this type of thing sets precedent for companies and for creative artists. Are we doomed to give our work away for nothing to companies with deep pockets? If we choose to fight such battles, we can easily go broke paying attorneys, while the companies who stole our work get to keep doing these deeds, illegal as they are.

I don’t think this is going to be a huge to-do. If Podtech.net is smart, they will step up and make it right, giving us all renewed faith in the business and the good people who run it. If not, they can certainly stand to lose a lot of users who disagree with the company’s shady dealings.

Lan, we are watching and hope that everything works out in short order and in your favor.

Technorati Tags: Podtech.net, copyright, photograph, Lan Bui, Vloggies, Podtech