Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/12/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Yes indeed! Reflecting on one's history in the various fields may provide information to the young. In my case I eked out a living as a freelance photo journalist along with the occasional gallery sale from 1969 to about '75, Then moved into commercial and corporate photographic and design work; where and when economic life became much better. Up until the early '90s a commercial/corporate photographer could expect $1K - $2K per shoot day (and much higher for the big names), plus expenses. by 1993 the great shift from drawing boards to computers; the elimination of typesetters and film strippers; the digitization of photography; had occurred. These shifts required whole new business models. Typesetters went out of business. Film strippers disappeared. Drum scanners and prepress operators became the new business model. Corporate graphic design buyers set up their own layout departments with pagemaker and quark express. Printers now provide design services (even for web sites) in direct competition to the agencies and deign studios that used to be their biggest customers. And yes. Anyone and everyone with a digital camera and photoshop has become a "photographer." The first pro level ink jet printers cost $100K and up. I get 2 - 5 calls per week from "graphic designers" in india trying to sell me their services for $10/hr. They're "taking" my $75/hr work right out from under me. If I had any business sense - I'd buy it from them for 10 and sell it for 75. But I'm a designer/photographer not a business man. Too bad for me (economically). 2010 indeed qualifies as a whole new world; very, very different from the pro-graphic world of 1975 and again of 1995. and everyone has to figure out their place in it. Beware! 2015 will require yet more shifts in models and perceptions. It still comes down to doing something both differently and better than the "others" and communicating its availability to a market willing to pay for that something. Regards, George Lottermoser george at imagist.com http://www.imagist.com http://www.imagist.com/blog http://www.linkedin.com/in/imagist On Dec 5, 2010, at 1:43 PM, Sonny Carter wrote: > That's all pretty true, though I did pretty good in pay and benefits wise > in > the sixties and seventies as a union (IBEW) TV photographer for network > stations in New Orleans. > > I did about four years of fulltime freelance that I combined writing and > photography, but I never really wanted to be a pure freelance shooter. In > that time, I made a reasonable living, but it was a crazy time keeping the > cash flow stable. > > I remember one time when a major oil company was threatening to cut off my > gas credit card because I was behind $90. The problem was that same > company > owed me nearly $3000 for photography and was taking their sweet time > paying. Go figure. > > Since 1992, I've worked for the University and confined my freelance work > to > editorial, since commercial work would involve paperwork with the State of > Louisiana. The freelance is usually enough to finance a nice Leica goodie a > year.