Setting Your Fee
Advance Notes: Your photo suppliers are people with cameras who usually choose lifestyle over monetary
One big factor for the editorial photographer is that there's no art director hovering over them dictating how they should shoot, as is usually experienced by commercial photographers.
A long-term dividend for editorial stock photographers is that most of their editorial pictures can be sold and re-sold for years, to specialized or history markets. The pictures can serve as a future annuity for the photographer's family. Fashion images, and most commercial images, in contrast, have a short shelf life.
Do photo editors set a photographer's day rate? Most do. If the day rate set is not a fee (plus expenses) that a photographer feels they can work for, there are concessions you or the photographer can make.
Here are some of the things you can say: "I will use the resulting photos for one-time use. You are free to
You could also say, "We will send you ten copies of the (project) for your promotional purposes." And/or, "Since our focus is South America, the next assignment project we have in that region, we will put you at the top of the list to photograph for us there."
Since you value the talent and work ethics of this photographer, it's to your advantage to invent ways to keep within budget, yet entice the photographer to want to take on your publishing project.
Rohn Engh, veteran stock photographer and publisher of "PhotoRESEARCHER Newsletter," has provided on-line targeted information for photobuyers, photo researchers and editors for two decades. No other newsletter brings photobuyers such up-to-the minute, practical intimately familiar with both sides of the stock photo desk. For more info: http://www.photosource.com/photobuyer/.
 Tommy Thompson |
 Kerry Kolb |
 Jon Saban |
 Jake Nelson |