I know I promised to begin the beguine this week, but I thought it necessary to ask you to abide for one more week of the mundane. I know photographers love the how as much, if not more than, the why. So I will share a few more nuts before I promise to get to the good bolts.

Firstly, I must address an issue that has perplexed me for many years; the need for photographers to describe themselves with terms that I abhor: fine art photographer, commercial photographer, editorial photographer, wedding photographer, still life and journalist, etc., and the list just keeps rolling along.

The term photographer, as well as the word artist are both sacred to me. They are so overused and violated that they almost feel like curse words that need to be expunged from the vocabulary. They have grown to denote and connote nothing. Everyone who picks up a camera is a photographer, and everyone who paints, draws, sculpts, or doesn’t even work is an artist.

To be a photographer implies a calling, a dedication, an ability to expose oneself in a way very few people have the capacity or courage to do. If one ever becomes a photographer, it is as if one has won the Nobel Prize.

At any one time there are only a few people in the world that are photographers. True, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) who take pictures but these are not photographers.

I find it amusing and disturbing at the same time that people who work for clients can’t produce anything of significance that will endure. Well, that leaves out a large list, from Michelangelo, Bellini, Titian, Goya, to Sargent, etc. This is a very twentieth century idea that art lives in this rarefied world, produced by pure souls and edited, displayed and criticized by distinguished members of an elite academy.

As it was earlier and as it is today this is pure hogwash and generally at best a lie agreed upon. Some weeks down my path of life, I will tell you more about these thoughts but I want to get this final erudition of usage out into the fall air before all the leaves drop and life goes dormant.

My fees are not based on the traditional photographer’s day rate. The fee is based entirely on how the picture is going to be used and for how long.

For example, if a client is going to use a picture for a small one time printing for a brochure with a domestic distribution, printed in a small quantity of 5,000 copies or less, the fee to shoot that picture would be $3,500 plus additional costs for scouting, production, etc. There would also be the non-photographic costs such as a stylist, wardrobe, hair and makeup, location fees, etc. However, to shoot the exact same picture, requiring the same effort, but the usage being a complete worldwide buyout in all media except broadcast for one year, the fee would be $45,000 plus all the additional expenses described above.

So you can see the fees vary widely, solely dependent on how the pictures are used. As many of you are aware, there are a large number of usage variations, and we try very hard to be exacting in what the needs and terms of the usage requested. This is both for images that are licensed and those that are shot for assignment.

Many times clients do not really know how they are going to use the pictures exactly, especially if they are shot on assignment. Many times they will buy out the pictures usage for a minimum duration of one year to the maximum duration that we allow of 5 years. They do this to protect the imagery from being used by any other clients and to allow them the opportunity to use the picture in any way they wish without returning to us to negotiate additional fees.

In many cases where budgets are very tight, we will all try hard to help the client realize their true needs and help them to protect the image. Everything is always a negotiation. The fee charged is based on how much usage is being requested, how many pictures are being used, how long the duration of the usage, etc. Each estimate is an attempt to fit the photograph to each client needs.

I definitely negotiate fees, but there is a point of no return, where I will go no further. It is very important to me to protect the previous clients who have purchased my work at a certain fee, and also to protect the image.

I am expensive. I am not for everyone. When people buy my images for licensing purchases, many times the images they use have never been used by anyone. They could be an outtake from a shoot or personal assignment, etc. They can be licensed as original artwork at a small fraction of the cost of shooting them.

I do not want to be with an agency. I have always wanted the work to be very exclusive, very special and very rare. This has worked so far for me in my career. There have definitely been ups and downs, but I have been able to stick to what I believe in

Because the photographs are my heart and soul, there is good and bad attached to them. Firstly the good part, although very few clients realize this, the work I shoot for them represents my deepest and profound efforts at excellence. They have someone working for them (because the copyright returns to me) who normally would not work for clients. If I did not own the pictures I would not work for clients. The more they try to violate and take that away, the less chance someone like me would work for them. If they abide by the rules, they get my soul in the process.

As for the bad, I am very emotionally attached to my work. Everything is very personal, so therefore I need to separate myself from the negotiating process and communications. The business of photography is a negotiation. You do not need someone too emotionally attached doing the negotiations; therefore I separate myself from the negotiating process. I let Michael, my studio manager,  do as much of this as possible.

With this I hope I have answered questions that have been asked of me over the years, and as I promised once before, I will get beyond this silly stuff next week.

This is a grist for the mill. This is the exterior casing of my machine and it is fun and interesting and I enjoy it a great deal, but without inner workings, in the end there would be no cigar.