[Leica] Selling photos, was; Selling gear

[afirkin at afirkin.com (Alastair Firkin)]

This is a great and very thought provoking post. Technology is threatening 
many occupations. Artists have always had to struggle in becoming 
recognized, and this is another issue, but the working photographer is 
"suffering" what skilled medical typists and those in the recording industry 
are suffering. Medicine is no different. Newer techniques threaten the 
viability of practitioners whose skills become obsolete. Once, university 
training would set you up for life, but the rate of change is the issue. For 
me, the price is much more study, meetings and research to keep somewhat 
abreast with newer techniques, and for photographers, learning computer 
skills, photoshop techniques etc is now vital. You may save on film and 
development costs, but you will have to spend on hard/software and constant 
updates. The upsurge of DIY techniques with these powerful home computers 
means that many of us now publish our own books rather than employ type 
setters etc. Its a worldwide phenomena, which is not going to change soon. 

Henning also points out the secondary issue: loss of respect. Its real. I 
recently did a wedding for a friend. There were others at the wedding who 
carried "fancy" digital cameras and were happy to document the event. It was 
very difficult light. Harsh, backlit scenes, lowish light levels mixed with 
harsh direct sunlight, and coloured awnings changing colour balance. If my 
livilhood relied on it, I would have insisted on taking the wedding party 
away to a studio or more restricted setting for a series of "shots", but I 
had given them fair warning. 

In the end, they report that the whole family was astonished at how 
different my images were to others on the day. Lack of flare, improved 
colour rendition, better "focus", yet the intitial comments were laced with 
"those leicas must be fantastic", ie its not you, it must be the equipment. 
Well the Leicas are great, but most of the "differential" came down to 
controlling light with manual metering, and a lot of "darkroom" like work in 
"lightroom". I used white cards to keep the colour balance right in 
different areas (can't rely on the M8 ;-) ) and I have a better than average 
understanding of lightroom, which in large part I attribute to years of 
darkroom work. I was happy with the results. I probably robbed some 
photographer of a job for the day, though, I stressed to the family that 
they should have a professional as well, but they took the "punt". To make 
matters worse, the son was married 2 weeks later in Sydney and employed a 
$5k photographer, who has failed to "deliver" the goods weeks later. That 
family is not impressed. 

For all of us, renewing our approach to work, and being reactive to changes 
in working environments will continue to be important. Its much tougher, but 
its also more interesting in some ways and success will reward those who 
embrace it, just as Henning has done. I do long for a simple stack of chest 
x rays sometimes though :-(

Cheers

--- henningw@archiphoto.com wrote:

From: Henning Wulff <henningw@archiphoto.com>
To: Leica Users Group <lug@leica-users.org>
Subject: [Leica] Selling photos, was; Selling gear
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 15:37:28 -0700

When I started getting serious about making money at photography in 
the early 70's, as opposed to the rather amateurish approach I had to 
stuff I sold in the 60's (which was stage and portraiture), I set out 
to find out what competition I had in my field.

As I intended to do mainly editorial, corporate and architectural 
photography at that time, I quickly realized that while there was a 
fair bit of competition at all quality and price points for editorial 
and corporate photography, there was very little in some areas of 
architectural and construction photography, especially at the higher 
end. I never did do reportage. I also abandoned editorial photography 
and only did occasional corporate photography when it dovetailed well 
with the architectural/construction photography.

In any case, when I started there was only one really good 
architectural photographer living in Vancouver, and there were 
certain things he wasn't interested in. I started by doing some of 
the things he didn't care for, and also got some equipment he didn't 
have, and was able to set my prices as I saw fit right from the 
start. This worked very well, and within a couple of years I was able 
to compete with him on anything, but preferred those areas where 
there wasn't any competition as those paid better :-). In the next 
20-25 years I was able to continue in the field and earn good money 
mostly by being the first in the area to offer new services as they 
evolved, and do things that others didn't want to.

For instance, I have no particular fear of heights and love climbing 
around on large construction projects, and that is a great asset for 
construction photography. For over 20 years, until the safety 
standards largely prevented such photography, I was the only one in 
Vancouver who would haul medium and large format gear around slip 
forms 500 feet off the ground or work from the end of tower crane 
booms when they were working. I set my own prices.

When Photoshop came out, I was the only one who could do a good job 
of composites of architectural models and aerial photos, with correct 
perspective and lighting.

Whenever something became impossible, impractical or the technology 
made it superfluous, I tried to find another niche. When, after about 
5 years, some other people learned enough about perspective, 
Photoshop and could take decent aerial photos and charge 20% or less 
of what I did, I started doing other things.

In the mid to late 90's things started changing rapidly, and almost 
all my advantages went away, so now I only do certain special jobs, 
and concentrate on my architectural business. I just couldn't make 
the sort of income I made from photography in the 80's anymore. Not 
anywhere close. The respect I used to get is also no longer there. 
The product has become devalued.

I couldn't recommend that anyone now enter the areas of photography I've 
done.

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
   /|\      Wulff Photography & Design
  /###\   mailto:henningw@archiphoto.com
  |[ ]|     http://www.archiphoto.com

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