Handling A Job Cancelation

Today I showed up for a job at 6:00 am and was met by the photographer who informed me that the subject couldn't show up that day and the the job was canceled for the day.  It was the first job i'd been on where the job was cancelled on the day of the shoot.  Thankfully the photographer was apologetic and promised to pay my cancelation fee.  

What do you do when a job cancels on you less than 24 hours before the shoot, what are you fees?  Well, officially, my cancelation fee less than 24 hours before the shoot is the full fee.  Why, because you dragged me out of bed before at 5:00 am and placed all my plans on hold for the day.  I developed this policy when advised a long time ago by the a photographer/good friend, that thats what he does.  So if thats what he does than why shouldn't I, the lowest paid person on the shoot?

This becomes a little sketchy on editorial jobs, where the fees are already low and charging a cancelation fee might cause the photographer to actually take a loss on the job ultimately.  This would probably loose you any future work and piss off everyone.  

You always have to ask the question, "Is it worth the cancelation fee" and by "worth" I mean financially.  You are a business.  If the photographer's from out of town than maybe it is worth charging them because you probably won't see him again and so you wont be out any future jobs.  If he's a local guy, but you think he's a jerk and wouldn't wanna work for him again anyways than charge him.  Don't hold back because you think he's going to tell all his photography friends about you, if he's a jerk than everyone probably knows it.  

If the photographer is really cool and you would feel bad charging him the fee than just don't.  If he's cool, like the guy I dealt with today, he'll probably offer you the fee anyways making life easier.  You can even give them a "cool photographers" 1/2 price discount, just to remind them that you're cool too but try not to let it happen again.  Waking up at 5:00 am for someone else is always worth money.

Photo Assistant Pricing

One of the harder parts of freelancing is trying to figure out what to charge.  When starting out and interviewing it's very easy to look like a fool if when the photographer asks your rate you have nothing to say.  A good photographer will help you out by giving you a typical rate, but sometimes they could trick you by giving you a rate way below the industry average.

Below are some starting averages that might help you on your way.

Regular Assisting

Most regular assisting rates are $175 -$250 a day.  On my very first job I worked at $175 a day, offered to me by the photographer.  I consider this a good "first time on the job" rate if you've never assisted before.  This is for a 10 hour day, which usually doesn't need to be stated unless you start getting that spooky feeling that your going to get taken advantage of.

Another rate I found was $12.50 an hour.  This seems to be the standard at catalog studios and other studios that have decided they're going to cut costs.  I would try to stay away from these rates unless you really need a job and you're not having any luck.  The pay is typically bad, the hours are hard and the environment is typically not very positive.

After a year of assisting you should bring your rate up to $225 -$250 a day.  When I moved to a new city I lowered my rate to $225 a day until I could traverse the city ok.  Before the end of my first year I was back up at $250.

In some cities, especially large jobs where there are multiple assistants, your rate could be at $300 a day and i've even heard of $400 -$500 a day.  If you're able to charge that much you shouldn't be reading this blog, you've probably got it all figured out.

Why so much $.

Veteran assistants may say, why so little.  The reason is because you are considered a freelance assistant with multiple overhead responsibilities, that doesn't typically work everyday and at the end of the year needs to support him/herself.  Most assistants make about $20,000 to $30,000 a year.  This isn't very much if you live in a city.  It's fair to try and budget your life for about 70 - 100 days of work a year.  Getting more than that means your doing really well.  Also, this has become an industry standard and typically goes into a budget or estimate before you even get a call.  So, the photographer may have you budgeted in at $250 a day (a standard) and you might say your rate is $150.  The photographer might feel guilty about this and bump up your rate for you or he might just pocket the money.  This is why setting your rate at $250 asap is a good idea and no matter how inexperience you are, most photographers won't question the rate.

Digital Tech Rates

Becoming a digi tech these days is extremely difficult.

A typical rate is usually between $400 - $500 a day.  I've been seeing a lot of tech firms keeping their rates at $400 a day lately.  Most techs make a substantial amount of their money from computer and camera rentals.  This requires a lot of startup capital or a rich father.  A good starting setup is a Canon Mark III with some lenses and the fastest Mac Tower you can get.  Check out other tech firms and match their rental prices.

Overtime

With some photographers you've really got to ride them about this.  After 10 hours you may have to mention subtly at your entering into overtime.  Don't be afraid to do this.  10 hours is a long day and you deserve something extra after that!  Some assistants won't charge overtime because their afraid that it will hurt their relationship with the photographer.  To each his/her own.  To calculate overtime do this:

 (Dayrate/10 hours) + ((Dayrate/10 hours) / 2) = Overtime rate

This is basically a time and a half hourly rate based on your day rate.  This works for all rates.

Dayrate and half day

Most day rates are set at 5 - 10 hours  and a half day is 0 - 5 hours in a day.  Doing an hourly rate and a half day is usually a bad idea, if you can avoid it, because by putting yourself on hold for a half day means you have to turn down a full day job if it comes along.  I only do half days if it's absolutely necessary and there's nothing else going on. 

The code of "Holds" and "Booking"

There is a an assisting code that all people within the industry seem live by.  You can be put on hold for a job and they can cancel up to 24 hours on you (unless its the weekend than usually by friday for a monday job).  If you have another person call and you have a hold on that day you can put them on second hold.  Then you can call the 1st hold person and put pressure on them to decide, but they don't have to decide.

If a person can "book" you, that means the job is happening and if they cancel they have to pay you regardless.  If you have a 1st hold on the day that another person wants to book you than you have to call the 1st hold and inform them that they have 24 hours to either book the day or release the hold to the other booking photographer.

Do I suck or does the industry? The end of still life.

I met with the photo editor today of one of the large local magazine syndicates (the kind that have a dozen local magazines across the us).  The interview was great.  I performed well, was thoughtful, a good listener and even threw in a few jokes.  The photo editor really liked the photography, said it was some "great work".  

Then he explained how they didn't really have a place for still life work in his magazine.  Most of the stuff is supplied by the companies that manufacture the products, like jewelry or cosmetics for example.  I was expecting this because it's pretty much the same response I got last month from another photo editor.

Then we started talking about the still life photography industry.  He went into how after 9/11 the industry changed and most companies started going to stock where they could for stuff like still life or taking it in house or using bargain photography agencies.  His theory is that this current economic slow down might be another beating on the still life section of the industry and it might not recover.  

He pretty much said what i was thinking, but to afraid to put into words.  The signs are all over the place.  Working photographers that specialize in still life are dead, some not having work for months at a time, while working people photographers seem to be slower but not as severely.   Which makes sense and heres why.

Products don't change unless you change them, people do.  If you under the gun to cut budgets, its easy to pull out last years image of a product for an ad and photoshop it up and send it out.  People noticeably change and so does last years fashion which is worn by people.

Also, it's fairly easy to CGI a product but not a person.  

Photographers beware, don't specialize in still life.

Your harddrive is going to die and you will lose everything!

Hard drives will statistically die either within the first 2 weeks of it's life or 4-5 years after its initialization.  The advent of the external drive happened roughly 5 years ago so you know what that means, that many people will be experiencing hard drive failures exponentially over the next couple of years.  I've got to admit that I was one of them and this is what I've learned from the tragedy.

Your images are worth a whole lot more than the cost of a 2 - 1tb hard drives (roughly $400 and lowering), so why are you not adequately protecting them.   You may think its a great idea to use one of these new "Big drives" that are coming out.  Well there's actually 2 hard drives that are spanned together and if one fails than the whole drive fails.  There is actually a mathematical equation for this, showing that the more drives you add to a raid your chances of failure will double each drive.  This means, these Lacie Big Drives have a 50% larger chance of failing and taking all your precious photographs with them.  Which brings me to rule #1.

1. Don't use drives that use Raid 0 (aka spanned).  

2.  Do use drives that are Raid 1 (aka Mirrored Raid) 

Setting up mirrored raid costs twice what you would normally spend, but what you need to ask yourself is "if this drive were to fail, would i be willing to pay between $1000 and $4000 to retrieve this data"?  If the answer is yes, than you need a mirrored raid system, because even if your willing to pay that sort of money to retrieve your data, it doesn't actually mean that it will be retrieved.  

3.  Plan for the 3 types of drive destruction.  Hard Drive Failure, Electrical damage (like a huge power surge) and physical damage (like a fire).

If you mirror your drives than you are protected against hard drive failure, but what if somebody plugs the wrong power cord into your hard drive.  Then in one surge, both drives get fried because they're both connected to each other.

The way to solve this is to have a 3rd drive with a copy of that data in a separate enclosure.  Then to protect from fire, take the drive home or to another location, separate from the location of the primary drive.  Some people prefer to use DVD's.  Sometimes this may be a little impractical and DVD's fail as well.

The idea is have your data in 3 places and prepare for the failure.  If your like me, than this is life work and deserves to be protected.

Some great backup resources

General Drive info

4 drive hot swappable mirror work flow idea

A great place to buy drives and enclosures

The Full Time Job Apple

Especially in times of economic slow down, theres nothing more tempting to a freelancer than the prospect of a full time job.  The benefits, the consistent pay, the consistent hours, the joy of not having to obsess everything business related are all fairly attractive especially when your hanging on by a shoestring and wondering if your going to be able to pay rent or rely on your girl friend to front the money this month.  Not that my life is anything like that.

Recently, I came across a job in the want ads for a full time retoucher.  The pay was $30-40 an hour, full time with benefits.  I thought about it a lot.  I was way over qualified for the position and the pay was far more than what i was used to.  It was the apple of knowledge in the garden of eden, so tempting and rational.  It would certainly fix a lot of problems financially, i would have more money that i'd ever had in my life.  The hours would be horrible, the commute would be hard but still worth it financially.  So why didn't I do it?

If I took the job i would have to stop assisting, I wouldn't have time to be in my new studio, everything i would do would be helping somebody else get ahead.  My own business, my own dreams would be traded in for  handful of money.  A life of stability in exchange for everything that i've worked for for the past 6 years, in exchange for knowledge that i didn't give up, but that i went out there and gave it go and did it 100%.  If i took that job and gave up my freelance life, i'd certainly die with box of regrets and questions at my bedside.

The Coming Extinction Of The Freelance Digital Tech

Is the disappearance of the digital tech as we know it coming?  As a working digital tech I think I can sufficiently say that the digital tech as a freelance position is directly related to technology and peoples understanding of it.  The industry is going though a change from film to digital still today and as working photographers come to understand their new cameras their use of techs as we know it today will alter.

Definition Of A Digital Tech

First an definition of a digital tech might be useful in understanding why the position is around and why it's demise is inevitable.

A typical digital tech is used to monitor color and sharpness on incoming images, organize incoming images, maintain the working order of digital equipment and be a the onset digital/computer expert.  This type of position is needed during certain situations.

1. There are so many images being captured that the photographer can't stop to look at the screen and evaluate quality.  ie - fashion and most people shoots.
2. There are so many incoming images, sometimes from multiple cameras, that it would take to much time to stop and rename and organize those images and its easier to have a third party be in charge of this.  ie - catalog shoot.
3. The photographer needs help understanding their equipment and how it works and having a digital tech on board give them the confidence they need to complete the shoot.  ie - could be any type of shoot.
   

The End Of Transition

This may be atypical, but most of my tech clients are in the third group of photographers, photographers who don't really need a digital tech and need help understanding their own camera and computer.  These photographers, who were film shooters 5 years ago, are slowly beginning to become confident with their equipment or they are going out of buisness for one reason or another.  New photographers entering the industry are entering with a very strong understanding of digital photography.  At Brooks Institute it's reported that their film classes have become optional "exploratory" classes.  In short, the client pool for digital techs are shrinking.

Art directors are becoming more digitally savy as well and it is becoming harder to justify digital techs on a budget where they're not absolutely necessary (like in situations 1 and 2).

The Future Of Digital Techs

As the client base for tech's slowly shrink, demands on the skills and services for digital techs will increase.  To stay competitive, techs are offering equipment rental.  This is nothing new, but in the past it has been possible to start as a digital tech without any equipment to rent and build up that collection as you went along.  As the industry changes this will be more and more difficult.

I expect a movement towards more a conglomerated business model, where instead of hiring a freelance digital tech, most photographers will lean more towards using digital tech firms.  This is because the tech firms not only offer digital techs but the most up to date digital equipment and other special services such as online review for remote art directing (which i believe is the future of the industry 5 years from now), studio rentals and long term off site digital assets archiving.  These are services that most freelancer can't keep up with unless they come together as a company or give up the life and take a full time at one of these firms.

The key is trying to keep a schedule

One of the hardest part about being an assistant is the ups and downs in work.  There are months where there will be no work at all and then the next two months might full of work.  This makes it almost impossible to keep a regular schedule.  Having a regular schedule, I believe and so do many others, is a key factor in a happier and more stress free life.  

I'm going to try and implement a schedule for myself.  The key factors are a regular sleeping regime that involves exercise.  I was thinking of waking up at 6am, exercising and going to work and them going to sleep at around 10pm so that i can get a full 8 hours.  Having set meal times are a good idea too.  This might sound pretty straightforward stuff, but in this business it's really easy to stay out late and sleep in late, miss a few meals and wind up not getting anything done, especially since most of the work year no boss is waiting for you to show up at work.

Don't let you business fail because of your bad schedule.  

The state of the industry

It's totally unclear what's going on with all aspects of the industry, but from the stand point of an assistant working mostly in the commercial advertising still life/product side, the state of the industry is poor.  With the current economic situation it seems thats many companies that are normally advertising are cutting back.  This means that there are fewer jobs for photographers and fewer jobs for assistants.  

Two photographers that i work for regularly are barely getting any new work.  These are pretty big name photographers too.  Another photographer said that she has had in rapid increase in the number of phone calls from assistants looking for work.  Other assistants that i know are reporting that they are working half as much as they did last year and i can attest to the same.

Oddly enough, it seems that people/lifestyle photographers seem unaffected by the slow.  Some photographers are exploding with new business.  Maybe this is isolated.

It does seem to be picking up little bit in comparison to earlier this year.  Normally i would be busy finishing up christmas jobs.  Maybe these are the types of jobs that others are reporting getting.

In short, this has been a rough year for photography and assisting equally.  If you have some stories about your assisting year post them here.  Lets all commiserate together.

There Used To Be A Blacklist

There used to be a great website where assistants could post the names of photographers who were assholes to them.  It was http://www.photoblacklist.com .  Believe it or not but it's no longer with us anymore.   The asshole photographers called their asshole lawyers and sued the assistants because they thought they were loosing jobs because of this site.  I'm sure thats a possibility, but more likely they were loosing business because they were assholes and trust me there are a lot of them in this industry.

This is one of those things that makes me feel sort of icky and violated inside.  Isn't there some constitutional freedoms involved in calling your employer a dick when they are one.  

Feel free to anonymously list all the photographers you hate on my site.  I certainly tell everyone I meet about my personal blacklist.  

Remember don't list your name.

Blog Rules and Intro

I've been a photography assistant and digital tech for the past 3 years.  I've worked in 2 major cities in the US and for a bunch of different photographers.  Each experience has been a unique perspective on the photography industry, piecing it together with each day of work.  I'm struggling to become a commercial advertising photographer while doing this.  I can't promise any insight into the industry, but i do promise to be honest about my experiences and try to share them with you.

I don't know why i'm compelled to do this blog.   Perhaps it seems that in this shitty industry it's nice to know that there are others struggling along with you.  Just by you logging on and looking i feel a part of a large struggle.  So with that i propose a set of rules to make this blog something that a reader can look towards.

1.  I will remain anonymous.

2. I will post honestly.

3.  I will not name names.

4.  I suggest that poster follow the above rules as well.

Lets see if anyone even sees this