Original subtitles

It's obviously very important to understand your worth

when you're negotiating with clients.

People often say to me, what's your day rate?

And I say, well, what's the job?

You may have a standard published day rate,

I mean, I do, you know,

we've dreamt that up at some time

and it's in the upper end of what we can imagine

people paying us.

But you need to understand your value

within a particular proposition.

And there's a number of factors

that will help you calculate that.

If let's say a large corporation asked me to do a job,

the first thing I would think is,

well, why they asking me?

How many other photographers

could they be talking to about the same job?

In my case, I'd ask, does it involve an actor

who I know likes to work with me,

and isn't necessarily going to work with

a number of other photographers?

Now, with that one question, I've worked out,

whether I've gone from being one in 1000

possible photographers for this job

to possibly one in 10.

Because if that is so,

then my value within that equation

has immediately gone up massively.

Then I ask if the mission of the job

is in line with my unique voice as a photographer?

And it is, maybe those 10 photographers,

maybe we're only talking about two

who really compete with me.

And in some cases, maybe the job is clearly mine.

And once you know that you're one of the only people

for the job,

then it's not that hard to work out your value

within that proposition, right?

I mean, you know,

maybe you know that your competitor

charges similarly to you.

So you just put in the rate

that you're pretty confident

they're going to put in as well.

I do a few other things.

If it's a company that I haven't heard of, I look them up.

I like to know how much money they made last year.

And that information's free, just a Google away.

What is the net worth of the company?

What was their annual turnover?

What was their profit last year?

Because from that, I can deduce a lot.

If a company made 12 million in profits,

I know that they can afford X.

If they make 3 billion in profits,

you know they can afford more.

And if they lost 400 quid,

you know that they're wasting your time, right?

So it's just research, research, research.

And it is so, so important.

I research the hell out of clients

and I understand who it is that I'm dealing with.

And then I look at usage.

A picture they need for one Instagram post

is nothing like the same usage

for a global print campaign, obviously.

So I know if it's a blue chip company

and they're doing a global campaign

that they are spending tens of millions

on that advertising placement,

then they can definitely afford to pay my top dollar rate

for the photos,

because they have to value that part of the process,

otherwise, they're going to be wasting money

on their huge ad spend by nickel and diming on the photos.

Next, you need to understand

something incredibly important called buyouts.

But to do that, you first need to understand copyright.

I really, really, really fight hard to retain my copyright,

and I have done my whole career.

I remember meeting the famous "Picture Post" photographer,

Bert Hardy, when I was about 17 years old.

And he said his best advice

was never give away your copyright.

Now let's be clear,

there are definitely situations where I have,

and it's normally because it's a job

that I really, really, really wanted to do.

And they were never going to do it without taking ownership.

Or it was that I was being paid so much

that I was prepared to make the compromise,

or that it was just a job I simply didn't care

that much about owning the material afterwards.

But I would say that in 97% of my shoots

that I've done in my career, I've owned the copyright.

And I really have walked away from and turned down

a number of really good jobs

because they were demanding my copyright,

I just wouldn't do it.

And not because I didn't want to do the job,

in many cases I did, but it was about the principle.

And it's pretty easy to give clients the reassurances

they need to convince them.

You can let them know that they can have a license

to use the images for as long as they possibly need them,

but you own the rights.

There are all sorts of deals you can make with people,

but still keep the title of copyright holder.

I'm incredibly grateful today

that I didn't give my copyright away

nearly as much as I was asked to.

You never really know where your money's going to come from

in the future.

I mean, in my case, you photograph a young actor,

you don't know that in 20 years time,

they're not going to be Leonardo DiCaprio.

I'm starting to think now, as I get older,

about the pictures that I took 25, 30 years ago,

which are actually starting to become vintage,

which sounds terrifying to me.

At some point I'm going to retire,

but I own the rights to my pictures,

the right to exhibit, to sell prints, to make books.

I can pass them down to my children and to my grandchildren.

Copyright is a huge, huge thing to give away.

Please don't do it unless you have to.

Owning your copyright also has a big impact

on how you bill your commercial shoots

long after you did them.

The legal reality of your copyright

is that when someone employs you to do a shoot,

they employ you to type the pictures,

but the pictures still belong to you.

Copyright law effectively states

that the person that creates the art owns the art.

So if you pay me to take a photo,

you still have to pay me to use the photo

unless I've signed my copyright over to you.

I certainly didn't understand that enough

when I was younger.

By the way, to be clear in editorial work,

so if you're working for magazines or newspapers,

you should absolutely always own your copyright.

They are not paying you enough.

Despite what rights you may give a magazine

to use the pictures elsewhere or to syndicate,

the copyright itself sticks with you.

I've had a few magazines try it on in the past,

but none of them fight me hard for it.

I've always retained my copyright in editorial.

The really cool thing in all this

is a thing called the buyout.

So I do a photo shoot for a client,

they've paid me my day rate, but I still own the pictures.

So if they want to use them in their ad campaign,

then they have to do a thing called a buyout,

which means they have to pay me

a usage fee on those pictures.

If it's a seasonal ad campaign,

normally the buyout for that season

is included in your rates.

But if you're talking about, for instance,

a fragrance campaign where they may use the same image,

years and years and years down the road,

each year, you charge a buyout.

Now, if I'd given my copyright away,

I would never see another penny.

And the amazing thing with the buyout

is that the client has to rebuy that image again,

every single year they want it.

Now, some businesses may buy you out

for two or three years in one go,

in which case you cut them some sort of a deal.

But often you do a shoot for one year buyout.

So when they come back the next year to reuse the images,

you can charge them the previous year's buyout, plus 10%.

Now don't forget rebuying the image is way cheaper

than that client recommissioning

a whole photo shoot production.

And it keeps building year on year,

it goes up 10% every year, and 10% is the industry standard.

I once did a fragrance campaign

that kept buying out for a total of seven years.

It turned out to be my highest paid days work

of my entire career.

So the importance of understanding your rights,

as the image maker,

and to retain the title of copyright holder

is incredibly important to a professional photographer.

And the fact that you can continue to make money

from this stuff in the future

and that you have control over your work

is hugely empowering.

People fought very hard for this to become law,

and it's something that you must fight hard for.

Fight for your copyright.

Now travel and prep days.

Then you have days that you either travel to work

or that you have to prep the actual shoots.

It's an industry standard to get paid

for travel days and prep days.

If you have to travel to America to take a picture.

Then that's a day that you're not earning money.

If I then have to prep in a studio for a shoot,

that's another day that I would otherwise

be not earning money.

So we charge a percentage.

I generally charge 50% of my day rate for a prep day

and a little under 50% for a travel day.

Now sometimes I'll do all in deals,

but everything is based on getting paid for those days

you can't work elsewhere,

because you're prepping or traveling.

Editorial.

You don't really earn money

from editorial magazine commissions.

And I rarely look at editorial

as anything more than promotion and great access to work,

to talent, to teams.

In the fashion industry,

the editorial work is the thing that attracts

the paying brands to commission photographers.

Now magazines do in part

make their money from selling copies, but for the most part,

they make their money by selling advertising.

And what that means is that all the advertisers

are looking at the magazines.

So you do your work for next to nothing,

or in some cases you lose money,

because you want the pictures to look a certain way,

and maybe those costs

are more than the budget the magazine's given you,

but the fashion brand sees your work,

and then they come to you to shoot their campaigns,

that in turn, got back into the magazines.

That's the payoff.

That is how editorial works.

When you're starting out,

you might well have to do a lot of jobs for free.

I mean, I still do a lot of jobs for free today,

so you'll definitely have to do them

when you're starting out.

What you've got to be sure

is that the client's aren't taking advantage of you.

But if you say you're going to get your pictures seen,

I mean, take editorial work.

a magazine will get you access to subjects,

you'll work with teams, you'll work with crews,

and you'll get your pictures seen.

You then take those pictures and you promote them to people

that could pay you to do those jobs.

So you have to do the stuff for free

to get it in your portfolio,

in order for people to pay you

to do what they've seen in your portfolio.

Because they're unlikely to look at your portfolio

of car pitches and give you a job to do landscapes, right?

It's just not what they're going to do.

If you're a fashion photographer,

they're probably not going to give you a commission

to photograph dogs.

If you want to make a living as a photographer,

you have to think about

the commercial application of the work you're doing.

Where could you see that being used

where it will actually benefit someone's business

enough for them to pay you to do it?