assignment photography resources

An Art Director's Guide to Assignment Photography

In today's visually saturated environment, attention grabbing photography enables your clients to break through the clutter and to effectively differentiate their products and services from the competition. The standard business paradigm is price, quality, and speed: choose two out of the three. With creative deadlines getting more compressed and attention grabbing photography even more valuable in the channel surfing era, exceptional photography is not cheap. This guide will familiarize you with the considerations involved in selecting an assignment photographer so that you can find the right photographer and budget accordingly.

1. Where can you find the right photographer?

Sourcebooks like Workbook, Black Book, Alternative Pick, Select, and their affiliated web sites.

Industry publications like Communication Arts, Photo District News, Creativity, Graphis, and Print.

As a new generation of Art Directors relies more on online resources than print media, photographers are producing web sites that serve as virtual portfolios. Online portfolios offer Art Directors the ability to quickly screen photographers for projects and to call in only those print portfolios from photographers making the "final cut."

An often overlooked resource is the photography related trade associations and their directories. Advertising Photographers of America (APA) is a national organization with regional chapters that establishes, endorses, and promotes professional practices, standards, and ethics in the photographic and advertising community. The membership directories of the regional APA chapters are good places to start. See http://www.apanational.org.

2. What questions should you ask to find the right photographer for your project?

What is the photographer's Unique Selling Position (niche)?

Is the photographer a generalist or a specialist? Does the photographer's style fit the project?

Does the photographer have the necessary technical capabilities and manpower for the project?

How does the photographer like to work? Lots of direction or lots of latitude?

Who are the photographer's clients? How knowledgeable is the photographer about the clients?

What do past clients say about the photographer? Have images met or exceeded expectations? Have projects been on schedule and within budget? How would they rate overall customer satisfaction?

What do peers say about the photographer?

Does the photographer understand the marketing-communications, design and advertising business?

Does the photographer's business philosophy match up with your own?

What happens once an estimate is approved? What is the normal production timetable?

3. How much should you budget for photography?

Art Directors often do not want to reveal budgets for fear that photographers will design their productions and create estimates to match the budget numbers. An alternative solution is to give a budget range if you are worried about giving an exact number. The key reason why a photographer needs to know a budget range is that the budget will often determine if a photographer should even estimate on the project. If the photography budget is $3000 and one of the prospective photographers could only produce the job for $10,000 as described, then it is a waste of time for both the designer and photographer to continue down the estimating process.

Ideally the Creative Team should bring the prospective photographers into the project as early as possible so you can get realistic estimates of how much the photography portion of the project will cost to produce. If you set an arbitrary budget for photography, you may find you have champagne tastes with a beer budget.

What kind of license (time, media, region, exclusivity) does your client need?

How much advance payment will the photographer need before pre-production starts?

What crew will the photographer hire and what crew will you need to pay directly? (Assistants, make-up artists, prop stylists, location scouts, models, etc.)

What is the photographer's policy for cancellation fees if the client cancels the project? Accepting one project means the photographer and crew will have been turning away other work.

What rush charges will apply?

What if you really want to use a specific photographer but just do not have the budget? Photographers may be willing to work on the project if there are other considerations. Examples might include short payment terms (COD, Net 15), reducing the scope of the license, trade for product or services, large credit line, or significant number of tearsheets.

4. What is "licensing" photography?

When a photographer creates an image, the photographer owns the copyright to that image and can "license" to the client specific rights to reproduce the image. The client "buys" the license (rights) to reproduce the image. These rights are not transferable to third parties. The client is not buying ownership of that image.

The Art Director and the client should discuss how the client will use the image early in the creative process. Getting as specific as possible is advantageous: fewer rights, smaller licensing fees. If the client really only needs 2-year corporate web site and industry trade advertising in print, the fees will be less expensive than unlimited rights in all media worldwide forever or copyright transfer.

Sometimes clients will ask for a "buyout," a confusing term since there is no standard legal definition. The client might mean they want transfer of copyright of the image (ownership). Transfer of copyright is a very expensive licensing option because the photographer gives up all rights to the image. The photographer cannot even use the image in the photographer's own portfolio without permission from the client. In fact, the client could license reproduction rights for the image to third parties now that they own the copyright.

The client may ask for a "buyout" because they are worried that a competitor would have access to the image, but licenses can include terms for exclusivity to alleviate that concern without resorting to an expensive copyright transfer.

The client might also mean they want unlimited usage (time, media, region). Unlimited usage can be unnecessary and expensive as well. Realistically, will the client use the image in Asia on billboards or in Europe for direct mail? By licensing unlimited rights to the image, the client is paying for rights that they will not use. If the client would like to lower the bottom line of the photo shoot, they can license specific rights.

5. How can I sell assignment photography to the client? Or why sell assignment photography over stock?

Get more than what you expected! A professional photographer's job is to translate the Art Director's concepts into an image that delivers the client's marketing message. Often this means shooting an image based on your layout or composite. What defines an exceptional photographer is the ability not only to create an image that you think you want, but also to experiment and create variations based on the photographer's own unique visual sense of design.

By choosing assignment photography, you receive not only the image that perfectly fits your concept, but also the "happy accidents," the variations that are often much stronger than the initial image and are created once the "safe" shot is saved to the hard drive. If you choose stock, you are stuck inside the "box" of the stock image you have just licensed from the stock agency that "almost" perfectly fits your concept.