State of the commercial photo industry

- There are a lot of tricky questions that go into the photographic process, everything from camera choice to exposure options. But one of the trickiest questions of all, for some people, is how do you survive as a photographer? How do you make money at it? David McNeese is somebody who does make money at it, enough that we're standing in his lovely photographic studio here in Central Oklahoma. David, you've done a fantastic job of building up a photo business, but, - Thank you. - the business is changing. - Well, yes, it's changing every day.

It changes faster and faster every day, every week, every month. It's a lot different now than it was when I got into it. - A lot of people, on blogs and all over, lament that there's no way to make a living as a photographer anymore. There's no work out there. They say that the work is all gone. You're still finding work. - Right, the work is there. - But? - But it's harder and harder to make a living at the work that's there. So, the rates we're paid now are lower than they were say five, 10 years ago.

The clients are now dictating the rates and the usage and the licensing - Of the final images. - of the final images to the photographer and have kind of taken a lot of that power out of the photographer's hands. - Okay. - And so, if you want the work, you end up having, you're almost forced to do this, you're almost forced to lower your standards or your beliefs in order to get the work in order to pay the bills. - Okay.

- Now, that's doesn't happen all of the time, but it's happening more and more. So, a client is generally like, well, if you're not willing to do it, the next person down the line is willing to do it. So, for me to take a stand, then I lose out on work. Now, and I think the perceived value of images has gone down too. And I think the reason that that is, is because we are bombarded every day with images.

So, 10 years ago, a client would hire us and want eight images a day 'cause they're going to do a brochure or a little print piece or whatever. Now they're wanting stuff for social media, print, television. And they are a consumer of images. They're just eating images. They're image machines. So, a lot clients now are more concerned about the quantity versus the quality of work.

And I understand that 'cause they're trying to feed their machine. I mean, they're trying to feed all of their channels. And so we've had to adapt in order to stay in business and work with our clients. - So, you're getting a lower day rate. - Right. - You're not necessarily keeping the rights that you used to keep. You're expected to produce more images. - Right. - For that day rate, you're expected to deliver more of other things, right? - Right. - You're expected to have a stylist and a certain amount of editing. - Right. - So, just in every way, you're not making as much money - Right. - at this as you used to.

- So, in the good old days of film, we'd go to a photo shoot, we'd shoot our rolls of film, we'd take our transparency over to the lab, the lab would process our film, and the lab run was at four o'clock every day. And so my day ended at four o'clock every day. And then we'd go pick up the film at five and take a look at it and come back the next day and start work again. Now, we go and shoot, and it's digital.

We have to come back and download, or we tether in. And then that leads to a whole 'nother process 'cause the traditional photo labs, they aren't there anymore. So, for somebody here, we have to do our own post-production work. I'm fortunate enough to have a person on staff that does that, but there are, I would say 95% of my peers do it all themselves. So, that creates a whole 'nother layer of work.

I work, and she works about 50 hours a week doing my post-production stuff. So, that's a whole 'nother level, and it's a whole 'nother expertise that's not related to the camera. And lighting, it's a whole 'nother, it's just like the guy that prints the prints in the lab. It's a whole 'nother business, whole 'nother expertise. - So, you say you have to adapt. You have adapted, you are adapting. What do you have to do to survive in a market where you have to do more work for less money than you used to? - Well, I wouldn't say it's more, well, it is more work for less money.

The amount of images that we're expected to create is less money, at the end of the day. We're making less money per image at the end of the day. What I tell everybody is you have got to find your niche. You have to find things that are higher end. And you have to perfect your skills in a niche.

I'm trying to think about how to explain it. - What's the niche that you've found? - Well, so one of the niches that I'm very good at and I get a lot of recognition for and I get a lot of clients calling is my ability to work with executives. And it's not that my photos are the best, but I am able to work with 'em. I don't make 'em mad.

I can get in there and get out. I'm very efficient. I don't waste their time. And I've made a name, and just the ability, just to do that. And that really isn't about my photographic work itself, it's just about how I'm able to deal with the executives. Other things that are plain and simple stuff is architecture stuff. You look at things, and it's all about just doing the best work you can and delivering the cleanest stuff possible at the end of the day.

- What percentage of your time do you spend, as a photographer running a photography business, what's your ratio of shooting to looking for work? - So, my ratio of shooting to work to my-- - To selling basically. - Right, so my ratio is, I would say probably about 40% of my time is what I call trying to hustle work. And it's not me picking up the phone and cold-calling, which there's some of that, but it's following up on say a lead or, you know, you read a article, and like, hey, that might be a good fit.

You follow up with them. So, about 40% of the time is spent hustling work, and I think that that's probably the most important part of the job. And that always has been. You used to have a bunch of photo reps. Well, now there's a whole lot more photo reps. There are tons of photo reps. And I talk to art buyers and stuff, and these photo reps are great. The problem is the photo reps before would rep one or two folks, now they rep 20, 30, 40 folks.

So, these photographers, and I mean, they're like, oh, I got a rep, everything's great. Well, they're in the same boat as they were before they had the rep because the rep has a larger stable of photographers. - [Ben] Right, they're all competing against each other. - So, yeah, and so you got to go out and hustle the business. - So, you've seen the industry change. And you and I have talked about one of the things you need to do as a commercial photographer, we're not talking about the fine art market here or journalism, but no one hires just a photographer anymore.

You've got a lot of video cameras laying around here. So, you're having to embrace other media to survive as a photographer. - Right. - That's pretty normal nowadays. - Right, I think that, as a photographer, that people assume that we're going to do video. A couple of years ago, and people would call, say, hey, can you shoot video? Or do you know of somebody that can shoot video along with your still photography? If they were calling me to shoot a still photography job. Now, it's like, hey, and we want still photographs and video.

- Okay, it's just a given. - He doesn't even ask if we do it, it's just that's what we want. And so, we've had to adjust that, which is a whole learning curve, as far as running a business. The video stuff is, just the billing on it is a whole 'nother learning curve, as far as what do I charge for it when I shoot video? 'Cause I don't want to undercut the rest of the market because I fight against that every day. Don't undercut the rest of the market. So, I want to charge whatever everyone else around me is charging - Of course.

- to keep our market to stay nice and competitive. - So, where is this going? Does this just keep spiraling into less and less pay? Or does this resettle in a different way at some point? - I think it'll resettle. We've had the conversations about how the photo and video type of production is becoming more stylized over the past year. You're seeing more stylized stuff because people want to show that they've paid a professional to do it instead of this natural look, instead of all this real grainy, color-contaminated look that has been kind of the trend the past several years.

And people are wanting to see almost stuff that they saw in the '60s. Everything is tack sharp all the way through and bright colors, and the contrast is, you know-- - So, you've got to know your lighting. You've got a good makeup person. You've got to build a set. You've got to put some production value back into it. - Right, and I think that, I think that people that can do that are the people that are going to survive on the long haul. And it's going to weed out a bunch of folks that have a camera, and they're good at taking photographs, but they're not that proficient at what they're doing.

- So, if you could offer one piece of advice to someone who's trying to get started, starting a photo business, what would it be? - One piece of advice would be to be ready to hustle. - Okay. - Be ready to work hard on finding clients. No matter how great your work is, people aren't going to call. Social media is not the answer to build a great business. Yes, there are folks that have, very few, that have had instant fame, instant success on social media, but look at the thousands of photographers and videographers that are making a living.

So, you have to be ready to hustle. And once you get the clients and once you get the work, it's all about client services. It's all about your relationship with the clients, being professional in the way you run your business. I mean, this is a business. It isn't a art, it isn't, I don't want to say a art studio, but people come in here, we run it the way a business is run. It's professional.

It's like going to a doctor's office or to an accountant's office. There's proper accounting and practices, and there's, the scheduling is professional. I mean, everything's professional about what we do. So, that, I think, is a huge part, - Okay. - so. - David McNeese, you can check out his website here. He knows what he's talking about as far as running a business. We're standing in the large facility to prove it. Thanks a lot, David, this has been - Well, thank you, Ben. - really interesting.

- Thank you, been great.