- Elliot Erwitt – 1974
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So you’ve thought really hard about your future in photography and decided you want to go forward with it. You’ve talked with your family and friends, other photographers, asked all the right questions and you’re going to do it. You don’t necessarily want to work for an organization so you’ll go out on your own. Now what?

Take a vacation and clear your mind. You’re about to embark on one of the most difficult ventures of your life.

When you get home, get a job.

Seriously, find a job in something that will bring in cash. You’re going to need it. If you’re like most Americans and strapped to your ears in debt this makes even more sense for you. In my opinion, the best jobs out there are part-time with full benefits. Companies Like Starbuck’s and Trader Joe’s offer these up to employees. You work over 20 hours a week and get a health care plan just in case something happens.

There’s no shame in this, you do what you have to do. You won’t be making it overnight so you’ll need something to survive on, buy/rent equipment, spend on portfolios and marketing, etc.

Next write a business plan. This will force you to think like a business person and provide you with something tangible to go back to. It also helps in securing loans if you need some extra cash to get going.  A loan officer is going to want to see that you know what your’re doing and have a plan of action. Your business plan is your key. Although, in this market you might be better off opening a 0% interest credit card with no annual fee for the first year.

There’s one more interesting benefit to writing your plan down.

A Harvard study conducted in 1979 revealed the following: 10 years after graduation, students who had written down their goals, which was only 3% of the class, made 10 times more money than others who didn’t write them down.

It sounds ridiculous, but there are psychological mechanisms that make this work. When you write something down, you’re more likely to commit to it. Your brain subconsciously reminds you to keep thinking of your plan, your goals, how to achieve them. This is very important. Write it down. You’re more likely to accomplish your goals if you do.

The Business Plan

There are a plethora of books and software programs available out there on how to do this and what to include. Some programs will even interview you and populate the document for you. Here’s what you need to include:

1. Executive Summary – A summary of your plan on one page and how you will achieve your goals.
2. Objectives – Be specific. What do you want to accomplish as a business. List at least three.
3. Mission – Why are you in business? Of course to make money. Of course to take pictures. But think of it in terms of what problems can you solve for your customers.
4. Keys to Success – Specific action steps to achieve your objectives.
5. Company Summary – What do you shoot? Portraits, Weddings, Humor, Lifestyle, Editorial…
6. Start-up Summary – Who are you as an owner, how much capital (money) do you have? What are your start-up expenses, what equipment do you own, what do you need, how will you acquire it?
7. Company Locations and Facilities – Where are you based, do you want to expand?
8. Legal Considerations – Most of you will be registered as a sole-proprietorship or limited liability corporation. This is also a good section to discuss copyright issues and how you will communicate with outside entities on how you intend to handle copyrights to your images.
9. Products and Services. Self Explanatory.
10. Management Summary – It might just be you right now, but eventually you might need assistants Who’s on your team? Who will be on your team in the future?
11. Competitive Research – Along with market analysis, this is arguably the most important part of your plan. You need to research and understand who you are competing with. Check out their sites, studios, request more information by calling and asking for brochures, talk to assistants that have worked with them. How do they do marketing? Who are their clients? What are they doing that you aren’t? What can you do better? What is your competitive advantage. Do your research!
12. Market Analysis – Extremely important. In order to be successful you have to understand who your customers are and how to segment them so that you can track them. For many of you it will be Magazines, Non-Profits, Universities, Corporations and Ad Agencies. Take note of what’s available to you in your target area and start making a list of these potential clients and how you can solve problems for them, i.e. help them create a some promotional materials by taking portraits or creating images that will go on their promotional materials. Break these segments up into percentages on your list and even better if you can find out how much money they bring in. This information is usually publicly available except for the ad agencies because they operate privately. For example, magazines make up 10% of your market, Non-Profits 5%, etc.
13. Market Needs – What will your market segments need and how can you provide this to them? You can find this by studying the promotional materials they distribute. Their customers should be in your pictures. Also try to quantify the need. For example, if you want to shoot advertisements research industry publications like Ad Age and you’ll find stuff like this: “According to the 2/11/08 issue of Ad Age, Eighty-four percent of agencies surveyed predicted growth of advertising revenues of 8% to 10% in 2008.” That’s great information to include in your plan because it shows you understand where your industry is going. If you belong to a public library, they can provide you access to these materials online through EBSCO Host.
14. Implementation Summary -  How will you reach your audience and how will you execute your plan? This is essentially a summary of your marketing plan which I’ll write about in future posts.
15. Sales Forecast – Essentially you’re going to predict how much money you will make for the next three years, for each year, for each segment. A good way of doing this is to make a table with years at the top of the columns and market segments down the rows. Specify how many jobs you plan to have for each segment. Also specify how much money you plan to make on each of these jobs. In the end you’ll have your predicted sales for each of your market segments for each year.
16. Financial Plan – This is where photographers really struggle. But think of this in the most simple way possible. You will have revenues coming in and expenses going out of your account. The left over is your profit. This is your Profit and Loss Statement or P&L. Here is a sample. When you predict the next three years of profit and loss, it’s called a pro-forma statement. Create a pro-forma in addition to your sales forecast. It’s a great way to help you understand what you’re expenses will be and how this will eat into your income.
17. Break Even Analysis – This is optional but I think it’s a good place to see where you stand. You can use a table similar as your sales forecast. List the next three years across the top of the table. List Total Revenue, Average Revenue per Job and Total Expenses you expect to have down the rows. Your goal is to determine how much you will average per job and how many jobs it will take to cover your total expenses. In other words, figure out what you’ll need to cover your marketing, equipment, business expenses to have an income of 0$.

Some plans also include a cash flow statement and balance sheet. I think these can be too confusing for a small business and people should hire accounts for this work, so I’ll leave them out of this discussion. I know this is like reading latin if you haven’t seen it before and we’re all visual people. So here’s a sample business plan from a company that has software which generates the plans for you. I don’t own the software or have anything to do with the company.

Good luck! – Monk

Are you ready?

There’s no future as a newspaper photographer in the United States.

Let’s look at a few trends.

• Newspaper circulation has been declining for over 20 years.

• Your generation doesn’t read newspapers and neither will your kids.

• Newspaper photographer salaries had more worth in the 1960s than they do now.

• Newspaper journalists in general show a decline in job satisfaction.

• Want Weekly Updates of Layoffs?

Now, I know there are some of you who are unshakable. Photojournalism is the only thing you can imagine doing for the rest of your life. It’s in your blood. When you’re bored, you’re looking at stories to shoot and going to workshops and entering contests. There’s a very strong and understanding community for you out there. They understand why you’re in it and what you hope to accomplish. You feel that you are doing some good in the world. That your images will make a difference in someone’s life and that’s worth it for you. You might even be willing to give up family life and friends to make that difference.

I won’t argue that the training is practical and can be used in a variety of visual fields. But it has little economic value when you’re on your own trying to make it. Newspapers may be a stable income now, but the future looks very gloomy…and freelance does as well. There’s really no ‘thriving’ market for your pictures out there with the number of shooters on the scene these days. Not enough to make a stellar living at least. You know it’s a crazy industry when former Photographers of the Year, Magnum photographers, National Geographic Photographers and A-game shooters still have to shoot weddings to make it. The average person doesn’t want to look at people dying, kids in wheel chairs, the homeless, the latest disease that everybody wants to enter in the contests (autism).

Take for example the picture of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s kids that sold for millions. It has value to our society, whether it makes sense or not.

I’ll give you an extreme example. Supply and demand is what sets the price in our society. As you’ve read in previous posts, the market is saturated with photographers and pictures. There are billions of images floating around out there.

The barriers to entry have never been lower. Anyone can buy a camera, anyone can sell images. We can safely assume there will be even more images in the market in the future. Yes, pictures will be in more demand but supply is outstripping demand and will continue to do so. Because of this massive supply, the pressure on prices will  continue to drop and your services will be less in need at their current prices.

Compare this to the demand of Brad and Angelina’s twins. One pair of famous people. One set of famous kids. One photographer has the pictures. How much will the market pay for that? Apparently $14 million.

An extreme example, of course. But it illustrates the point. Much of the world we live in operates on market principles. If you understand your market, you understand the demand for your products.

If you’re already making it you know that to stay afloat, you have to supply your customers with what they WANT not what you THINK they should see or what you LIKE shooting.

So, I want to caution you for getting too involved in the “I want to change the world people have to have their stories told argument,” because I don’t want you to live at home with your parents.

Try a few of these tests out to see if people care as much about photojournalism as they used to:

1. Ask 10 people, who don’t know a thing about photography or journalism, to name one Pulitzer winner in the last 10 years.

2. Ask that same group if they can name a picture that won a Pulitzer in the last 10 years…20 years? What about one Oscar winner in the past 10 years? See my point?

3. Compare fictional movies about social issues to photo stories about social issues and, be honest, ask yourself which has more impact on generating a social dialogue.

(Remember that movie Blood Diamond? Photo stories have been done for years on that topic. Nobody cared. Then the movie came out and it’s all over CNN for a week and jewelry stores started putting up signs, “We Don’t Sell Conflict Diamonds.”

4. Compare the shelf life of a newspaper image (1 day) with an advertising picture (weeks and months) or an image in a book (forever). What has more value?

Make sense? Supply and Demand. Newspapers have dwindling demand. Images have increasing supply. Prices are going DOWN!

I’m not saying (photo)journalism is dead. I’m saying there’s no economic future in it for most people. It will always be around. It’s part of the fabric of this country.

What I am saying is don’t worry so much about complicated layering, impressing your peers and producing difficult images but focus rather on your business sense. Work on your lighting skills, portraiture, business acumen, marketing, video production. Understand what has demand in the marketplace and provide it.

If you still want to be a photojournalist, you should. If it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood. But really think hard about it. I think a viable option might be to move to a European country like Denmark or an Asian country like India. Their newspaper industry is still thriving…you’ll probably make a better living because of unionization and higher demand for print.

Your Friend,

The Monk

Update 10/24/2008: New Jersey Star-Ledger Cuts Staff in Half

Get A Website

Buyers are using online tools more than in the past. The old school method of sourcebooks aren’t as popular. Mostly because of time. Follow these guidelines for your site.

•    Have A Clear Point of View
•    Makt It Easy To Navigate
•    Be Creative
•    Post Clear Contact Information
•    Post A List of Clients and Projects

Keep Your Book Around

Having a website doesn’t mean you should go all digital. There’s still value to having a print book available. Clients want to see how your work shows up when it’s printed. Keep these tips in mind when shaping your portfolio. Strong Portfolios Should:

•    Be Creative
•    Be Organized
•    Show a Clear Point of View
•    Not Be In a Case That’s Better Than What’s Inside
•    Be A Display of a Variety of Work To Highlight Your Skillset (20-30 images)
•    Be Edited and Current

Make sure to pay for shipping costs both ways if you offered the book to your potential customer. If they ask for it however, they pay for the return.

Online Portfolio Sites

These can be expensive but with printed sourcebooks moving aside for the digital age. Art buyers and art directors can perform advanced searches for the right photographer to save time. Here are some of the more popular online sourcebooks.

Workbook
Photoserve
Altpick
Blackbook

Self Promotional Pieces – Email and Print

•    Make sure your pieces are relevant to the person who is receiving it.
•    Make it easily accessible and easy to view – A clear envelope is a good idea for example.
•    Send these regularly to list of buyers that you have also sent an email to.

Networking

Make personal visits with your target market without over doing it but don’t call incessantly.
Make sure you research each person before you go in. Know their work and recent success and how you can help them capitalize on your talents.

On a side note, right now is a very good time to meet in person with reps and buyers because of the slow economic conditions. With a slow economy comes slow ad spending. Your customers, buyers and directors, are going to have more time with a slow down in work. Get in there!

You also need to keep in touch with past clients. This is highly important. Most of the work in your career will come from word of mouth. “Hey, do you know a photographer who can XXX?” “Yeah, this girl is great, we used her for XXX and she keeps in touch to see what we’ve been up to.”

Personal work

NSS – Never Stop Shooting. I got a tip this week that adidas was looking for a particular type of shot but didn’t have any idea who to use or how to do it. I met with some friends to brainstorm a concept and shoot it over the weekend. We presented it to the company to see if they could use it. Not only did we enhance our creative problem solving but re-introduced our team to a client.

You should never stop shooting. Evolve and grow.

Consider Working With A Rep

When Looking For a Rep:
•    Market to a rep within your specialty. A rep wants to brand you to see where a good fit is.
•    Make sure they don’t already have someone who does what you do. Give them work in which they can expand the pie.
•    Don’t make fancy books…it’s what’s inside that counts.
•    Don’t undersell yourself. If you lower your price, you can get stuck there.

Win Contests - Everybody Loves A Winner

Contests lend credibility to your work and provide name recognition for you business.

Practice Good Business Acumen

Before you take on your marketing plan. Take some time to understand who is your target audience, what brands you want to work with, how can you make your promotions and assignment work different.  Answering these questions is how you get noticed.

In Summary

Word of Mouth is huge. Network. Never Stop Shooting. Never Stop Marketing. Never Stop Talking to (Existing) Customers.