by Tim Gander

Get Shorty

Even this short blog post is longer than the super small Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 lens, my absolutely favourite lens. It’s tiny, sometimes referred to as a pancake lens, but so sharp you could cut your thumb on the images it produces, yet costs just £200.00 new. I got mine for £90.00 secondhand.

It’s been the most-used lens through my Saxonvale project, but whenever I get the opportunity I use it for corporate photo sessions too, including portraits as well as for fly-on-the-wall work.

And in my experience it’s tough! I once slipped and fell and landed with my camera (40mm mounted) between me and a mud bank. I heard a click which I thought was the lens mechanism breaking. It wasn’t, it was the sound of one of my ribs fracturing! That hurt for a few weeks, but the lens was fine.

I wanted to write this post after seeing Neil Turner’s post about his favourite lens. Go here to find out which one he reaches for most.

So if I’m ever on a job for you and I put this dinky lens on my camera, check out the smile on my face.

A very close side view of the Can EF 40mm f/2.8 lens showing the Canon logo, lens name and auto focus switch.
Barely big enough for the AF/MF switch that sits upon it.
Side-portrait of a young business woman at night in London, her face illuminated by the iPad she is holding up to read. City office block lights illuminate the background.
Creative portraits are fun with this dinky whizz.
A woman sits on a metal staircase framed by its graffiti-covered rails, holding a camera, wearing glasses and a grey sweat top.
Perfect for documentary projects too - From Saxonvale.

 

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 by Tim Gander

A Helpful Guide

A screen shot of Tim Gander's corporate photography fees guide.
A screen shot of my current rates guide

How many public relations and corporate communications photographers do you know who publish their rates online? I bet you often have to dig around on their websites, discover there is no fees information there, then have to email them and wait for a reply before you can even start to get a feel for their rates. And since you’re going to get a few estimates in, this process can really slow you down.

Several years ago I made the decision to simplify life for my clients and myself.

My fees guide is based on the fees I tend to charge for the services I tend to be asked to undertake. Before this I was often spending time putting estimates together only to discover that around 90% of the time they were the same as I’d quoted another client for a near-identical job. So why not save myself the trouble and save my clients’ time and just publish what I pretty much know I’ll charge for any given time frame for the work I typically do?

Of course not every client needs exactly the same thing, but the fees I set are a guide and as such are adaptable to most scenarios. It’s often not much more than a tweak here or there to get to a final fee. What this also means is that by having guide fees published online my clients are happier knowing that I’ve based my final fees on a foundation which they’ve already seen.

This instils confidence that I’m not just plucking figures out of the air depending on what I think I can shake out of a client’s purse. Also, the client who doesn’t want to budget for the quality and service I offer can save themselves the time of contacting me when really they want someone who’ll do a much cheaper job (it’s true! such clients exist!)

So next time you’re scouting for a photographer to undertake some PR or corporate work for you, if you’re lucky enough to need someone in the Bristol/Bath/ area, at least you know of one photographer who’s open and up-front about their rates. I’ll be happy to hear from you!

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 by Tim Gander

Gimme Some Room!

Much of my business photography consists of taking portraits of, rather predictably, business people. So far so good.

This pretty much always happens at their place of work because that means less disruption to their busy schedule and I can create a set of portraits covering all the colleagues that happen to be in the building that day. Still so far so good.

Where “so far so good” becomes “ummm” is when I’m shown into a meeting room/stationery cupboard which is so crammed with immobile tables and heavy chairs/stationery that I have no space to actually take pictures.

I do make a point of requesting a space roughly 10 foot square, but sometimes the message gets lost or it’s assumed the boardroom table can be moved when I get there. More commonly now, tables are cabled to the floor with telephone and computer wires, which will only stretch so far before they go PING! and the IT department has to be called in.

So to say I was utterly delighted with the space I was given this week is an understatement – half a ballroom in a hotel. All to myself, with nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing taking up floor space. In fact I had to pull a small table into the room so I could check off peoples’ names as I went without having to squat on the floor.

A photographer's backdrop and studio flash equipment are set up in a large empty room in the Hilton, Walcot Street, Bath, UK

A great space for portraits

I thoroughly enjoyed setting up my backdrop and lights slap bang in the middle of the space. It gave the whole thing a slightly surreal air and the people who came in to have their photos taken were astonished that the room they’d been assigned for their meeting was so much smaller than the one reserved for me.

Of course the ballroom wouldn’t have worked for them because they needed AV and a projector for their presentations which the ballroom didn’t have, but it did make me feel very special and it also meant I had bags of room to control how the lights lit the backdrop and the sitters. It meant I could work towards a very particular look without too much difficulty.

Ok, not the most exciting tale in the world, and it’s not as if I’ll be dining out on that one ever, but it’s a fine illustration of how giving the photographer ample space to work will not only make their life easier, it’ll also mean they can work to achieve more accurate results in-camera and ensure that so far so good endures right through to “that’s a wrap”.

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 by Tim Gander

Don’t forget the GV!

The GV, or General View, is one of the easiest images to overlook when putting a photographic brief together, but it can be one of the most useful images on the list.

It’s easy to focus on all the meaty stuff – the people, the event, the presentations and so on, but it’s always worth listing the general view if it adds to the narrative of what you’re trying to convey. It can be a really useful image in the PR pack too, giving print and online publications another option when putting their articles together.

The GV might show the location of a project, the exterior of a building, an overview of project progress, or just add context to a story which can’t necessarily be told entirely in a single photo.

Of course even if you don’t list any specific GVs in the brief, any decent photographer should be on the lookout for opportunities for a good GV.

View of the old PO sorting office at Bristol Temple Meads as seen from the offices of Burgess Salmon in One Glass Wharf.
GV of proposed new University of Bristol campus.

This is a discipline I learned during my newspaper days and certainly during my training period I was pretty good at earning an ear-bending for forgetting to include a GV in the picture set. Happily that lesson remains with me today.

So now when I go to a job I’m often on the lookout for a GV even when it’s not listed because you just never know when it might come in handy. It might even become the most important shot of the day.

 

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 by Tim Gander

Light Reading

I like to end the day with a little light reading (currently John le Carré’s The Pigeon Tunnel), but much of my work involves reading the light. Painful punning aside, what I mean is when I’m out taking pictures I’m studying the light; the quality, the quantity, the colour and so on.

Typically I’ll be in an office getting ready to take photos for my client and what I’ll be considering is the light source (window, overhead strips, or a mixture of the two), how much of it there is and what its qualities are.

Most office lighting is great as far as the client is concerned. To the human eye it will appear bright and white, but the human eye and brain are incredible feats of biological engineering and capable of filtering out all kinds of crazy colours and of seeing details which a camera simply can’t.

These two shots demonstrate a rather extreme, if non-typical, example of what I mean.

09/02/2017 Scholars Reception, Roman Baths. University of Bath scholars gather for an evening reception held at the Roman Baths in Bath to network, be introduced to their sponsors, hear speeches from alumni and gather for a mass group photo by the Great Bath.
Just available light
09/02/2017 Scholars Reception, Roman Baths. University of Bath scholars gather for an evening reception held at the Roman Baths in Bath to network, be introduced to their sponsors, hear speeches from alumni and gather for a mass group photo by the Great Bath.
With carefully positioned flash

I was asked to take photos of a group of scholars for University of Bath at an event hosted at The Roman Baths in Bath (let’s see how many times I can work the word Bath into this blog post shall we?)

One of the shots required was a mass group of all the scholars, not too formal, but arranged along one end of the Great Bath. This was an evening job and being early February there was no daylight left. In fact the only available light was from spot lights pointing at the back wall, and a couple of gas torches either side of the pool.

Given this situation, I knew just from looking at it that whatever I did with the camera settings I wouldn’t get a usable image without the addition of flash. Since camera-top flash (which I hate anyway) wouldn’t be attractive and would probably just illuminate the steam from the water, I set up a pair of flashes on stands at the far end of the bath from me, one each side of the bath pointing towards the students.

The test shot (left) shows what the camera sees without the addition of flash. Obviously the students weren’t there for the test shots as I wanted to make sure they weren’t hanging around while I got the settings right, but my stand-ins Rachel and Chris did a fine job.

So if I’m coming to your office to shoot a series of “simple” pictures, don’t be surprised if I bring quite a lot of lighting kit even if the light looks fine to you. It’s rare that the available light on a location is already attractive enough to render the best photos, but if I can illuminate 100 students across a steamy pool of water on a chilly night, I can probably make something visually appealing in your office space.

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 by Tim Gander

Creative Field

Assuming for a moment that Mark Twain actually said “golf is a good walk spoiled,” I wonder if he would have been happier taking a good walk with a camera?

Last weekend I went for a walk in the countryside just outside Frome and as I returned across a familiar field, the way the evening sunlight glinted off the grass struck me as especially interesting. So I took a photo. Nothing special there of course, but having taken that photo I decided it wasn’t enough just to show the field as I saw it from my (approx 6’1″) stance. I wanted to explore other ways to convey what I was seeing and feeling as I stood there. I was getting dangerously artsy.

And so I used the same technique I employ when working for a client; I stood quietly for a few moments, considering options, looking at the light, the field, the grass and thinking about what other possibilities might present themselves.

Late afternoon sunlight glints off a field of silage grass on the edge of Frome, Somerset, UK
Just a field
Ground-level view along a trodden track through a field of silage on the edge of Frome, Somerset, UK.
Low angle
Grass is blurred into a circular pattern by spinning the camera as the photo is taken.
Spinny!

I tried a very low angle which emphasised the narrow footpath through the grass as well as the sunlight glinting off the blades and then I tried for one more shot. Far more abstract this time, but still making use of the sunlit highlights, I lowered the shutter speed and rotated the camera as I took the shot. I might have looked a little daft, but no one was around and I wouldn’t have cared if they were. I was having fun! To be honest, I could have spent hours there interpreting that field in different ways, but for this post I just wanted to illustrate what’s possible with something seemingly lacking in options.

It’s all too easy to see what’s in front of you and assume there is either no photo to be had, or that there is only one way to photograph it. Taking time, engaging the brain and having a think about what, if anything, you’re trying to capture or say in a photo is not only an excellent way to explore ideas, it also saves you taking up golf.

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 by Tim Gander

Keeping Organised

Any freelance will tell you that there is a great deal of admin involved in keeping things running smoothly. As a photographer one of the more critical elements of my admin, apart from making sure I keep my accounting up to date, is to ensure my photo archive is accessible.

By this I mean that if I need to look up an assignment I shot a decade ago, this shouldn’t be an exercise in rummaging through a suitcase full of random CDs, DVDs and hard drives hoping to find the one I need (and keeping fingers crossed that it hasn’t become damaged and un-readable).

Screen shot of a Media Pro image catalogue.
A searchable archive is vital to my business

Since I went digital in 2000 I’ve kept a catalogue of every assignment I’ve ever undertaken. It’s a simple piece of software which I use to record each job. It pulls keywords from the captions I’ve written to the image files, so when I go to search I just need a place or person’s name or something relevant to the assignment and the catalogue will return thumbnails of any pictures with matching keywords.

When I click on a thumbnail the software tells me which disk or drive that image (and therefore the rest of the job) is stored on. Since all my storage is kept in strict order it’s easy to find any job pretty fast.

The software, called Media Pro, has changed little over the years; I can’t remember who developed it because it has been owned by various companies including Microsoft. It’s now owned by a company called Phase One and I have to say it’s been brilliant.

The beauty of its simplicity is that even when Phase One took it over I didn’t have to start all over again, re-importing every job from the last 15 years. I just had to buy a new licence to use Media Pro, and the software automatically recognised my catalogue file.

Now you might be wondering why I’d bother to bore you with all this back-story, but the simple fact is that clients occasionally need me to relocate a job from a few years ago (and they’re often on a deadline when they ask me to do this) and my ability to reach back, find older work and resupply the images as needed is a valuable part of my service.

Of course this facility requires admin time, reliable storage and very occasionally a little extra cost in paying for a new licence, but I take these factors into consideration when setting my fees.

When you’re looking to hire a photographer it’s well worth checking what their storage and archive policies are; how long do they store images for? Do they have a system for retrieving long-forgotten jobs at short notice? Is their archive duplicated and held in different locations to protect against loss through flood, fire or theft?

No one can 100% guarantee to keep everything for ever, but I’ve kept my system safe and accessible for over 15 years now. I wonder how many other photographers can say that?

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 by Tim Gander

Photography Fees Explained

A couple of weeks ago I promised you an article about how photographers set their rates and where I fit into the market. Then I spotted some shiny things and got distracted and ended up writing about other stuff. Suitably self-chastised, I’m back on track and ready to tackle the subject properly.

I’ll qualify this article by admitting that I can’t explain all photographers’ rates for all genres. This article concentrates on photography for commercial usage by businesses, charities and other organisations. When it comes to rates set by social photographers (think families, pets, dinner dances and weddings) this is structured in a different way because the images aren’t generally licensed for commercial exploitation.

There was a time when commercial photographers worked up an estimate by showing the shoot costs plus their licensing fee based on usage and a fair few still do this, but in my experience I found it difficult to keep explaining all the cost elements repeatedly because the vast majority of clients booking me are not specialist in the field of commissioning photography. More often than not I’m contacted by an office secretary or perhaps an in-house or externally-hired press officer or public relations person.

This isn’t a criticism, it’s just one aspect of how the industry has changed and a few years ago I realised that things had shifted in such a way that I needed to simplify my fee structure in order to speed up the understanding of what I was charging and what was included or excluded.

Lego male minifig with camera takes picture of female minifig.

Now if I was a Lego photographer, I wouldn’t have to worry about running costs*
*random stock photo

What I ended up with was three main packages, one of which hardly anyone ever goes for (ironically my cheapest package, albeit with the greatest number of restrictions). And of the two other packages, the highest fee package is by far the most popular because it’s the most flexible.

If I break down my fees into their constituent elemets, essentially what I’m charging for is a combination of time on site, editing and processing time and the client’s licence to use the images for their corporate communications.

However, if you asked me to make that break-down specific, I couldn’t. I might be able to suggest rough percentages, but they really would be vague and not very informative.

There are of course other factors to account for. Within any freelance photographers fee there has to be an element of skill level and experience charged for. This is probably where I start to look pricey compared to someone who has just picked up a camera, read the instruction book and decided it’s their life ambition to take pictures for money. I reckon 25 years’ experience shows in how I approach clients, how I conduct myself on assignment right through to how the end results look and I consider all of these factors important and worth a premium.

Slightly more tangible are the running costs of being a photographer. Cameras, lenses and supporting equipment (batteries, chargers, bags) as well as a car and its associated costs, public liability insurance, computers, software, image hosting, image storage… All these things and more have to be considered before even a profit and salary (on which tax will be paid) need to be accounted for within a fee.

So where do my fees fit into the overall picture? How did I set them? The simple answer is that before I introduced my current structure I was spending quite a lot of time drawing up estimates for clients who were all of a certain level (SMEs to larger businesses with multiple office locations, but not the Goliath organisations with global span).

More often than not I found my estimates coming to very similar amounts by the time I’d factored in all the costs plus the licence fee. Eventually it just made sense to set up the three packages I have now and they’ve not only attracted more clients with their simplicity and up-front openness, but I spend much less time writing up estimates, which has to be a good thing.

Much of this has the air of a guessing game, but having worked out what it costs to run my business, what I need as a salary, and how many days a year I can expect to get paid commissions, it then comes down to whether I can attain the kind of quality that enough clients are willing to pay my fees to make the whole thing viable. This, in effect, is a business plan and is very much why I charge what I charge. Simple really, but also quite complicated which is probably why cheaper photographers charge what they do, but find they can’t sustain their businesses. That’s a whole other post, which I’m sure I’ve written already.

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 by Tim Gander

A Word (or 717) on Photography Fees

It’s a chicken and egg sort of scenario; you need a photographer for your next project, be that headshots, a PR campaign or website refresh, but you don’t know what the cost will be. If you look around on photographers’ websites you might get an idea from their fees pages (most photographers don’t publish guideline fees, which can be unhelpful), but even then, you don’t know what the budget should be.

In the meantime, the CEO or company accountant will want to set a budget for you to go and spend without exceeding it, but they won’t necessarily know what’s involved or what a photographer is likely to charge.

The other problem is you might not know how much time will be required to get what you need. It’s likely it isn’t your job to know, because you probably don’t book photography regularly enough to get a feel for what can be achieved in a given time period. Well, let me simplify and shorten the process of working out what you should be looking to spend.

high view of conference attendies mingling, shaking hands and drinking teas and coffees

Bear in mind events, conferences and large gatherings tend to generate more images which can affect fees

Start with the brief. I set out here what’s required in a brief and it’s important to make sure you have some idea of how many photos are required and what they are to be of. Take into account that mixing headshots, product shots, more feature-friendly portraits and other disciplines will extend the amount of time required because each will need a different set-up. Lighting, lenses and location will often change from one scenario to the next.

Now look at what uses the images will be put to. List them all from social media to local press/public relations (PR), trade PR, national PR, through company website, brochure, pitch documents and general corporate communications and also say if they’re going to be used in advertising. This is really important because any photographer worth their salt will set fees to reflect the levels of use you require (my standard fees cover all uses from social media, through press/public relations to company website use, but paid-for advertising is negotiated separately).

If it’s an event with set timings, look at the time period for which coverage is required. Having a start and finish time will help define the time the photographer needs to spend on site.

Consider any special requirements; props, backdrops, locations, transport and so on.

All of this can be talked through with a photographer, but the more information you have from the start, the easier it’ll be for a photographer to put an estimate together. Every so often I’ll get an email asking how much I’ll charge for “some photos,” which really isn’t enough information to work on.

Once you have a reasonable idea of what’s required, you can start to find photographers who cover the kind of work you need to get done. Use relevant search terms (discipline and location i.e. “corporate photographer Bristol”) in a search engine to find what you need. Check out online portfolios for the quality, style and content which most closely matches your brief, then call or email the most likely-looking candidates.

Of course I can’t speak for other photographers, but armed with this level of information I can help a client choose which of my fee packages will best suit their needs. It might be we have to negotiate on elements which don’t fit the standard fees, or it might be a reduced fee will cover everything. On the whole I find my fee structure helps the client get what they need with the minimum of admin and to-ing and fro-ing over details.

Even with a fairly detailed brief, I like to follow up an enquiry with a phone call just to clarify any points I need more information on and also to introduce myself personally to the client. It’s good to know who you’re going to be working with, and that cuts both ways.

This might seem like a bit of an effort, but it’s well worth it to get the best from the photographer before, during and after the event. Next week I’ll expand on how photographers set their fees and where I fit in the market. I bet you can’t wait!

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 by Tim Gander

Anatomy of Photo Delivery

According to my records, I’ve been serving up my images to clients via an online library system for exactly six years. What follows is a little back story and (spoiler alert) why I’m not about to change my setup.

Flowchart showing Tim Gander's workflow for client photography

The way I currently shoot and supply client images goes something like this

 

One of the benefits of my current system is that the turnaround of work is much faster; wherever possible I aim to deliver images within 48 hours from the end of the shoot.

Beyond this, the main benefit to clients is that they have a central image library which they can access at any time and download the images they need, when they need them. The image files are also available at a variety of sizes from web resolution to large print format, which can save the client the headache of having to resize files for different media.

Corporate photographer Tim Gander's old workflow, now obsolete

My old workflow was cumbersome and was prone to delays

The old system relied on building a web gallery which was really just for proofs, from which the client would then choose the files they wanted me to edit, process and deliver, and had the distinct disadvantage that what the client saw on the gallery were un-processed, imperfect images. I also had to await the client choices before I could finish the editing and processing stage, after which I usually had to burn a CD or DVD of photos and post them off. Lots of delay in that system, but it was as up-to-date as things were at the time.

Clients who are still served by photographers supplying images via email or posted disc have the added problem that if the originals are lost, they have to go back to the photographer (assuming they can remember who took the photos) and request duplicates. With the system I use, the client merely has to log back into their gallery and re-download their pictures with no unnecessary delay.

The gallery system allows me to offer simple, set-price packages which suit the majority of my clients. I can also set up reprint sales galleries on the odd occasion people will want to buy prints from an event. I can taylor gallery content to suit the client, removing pictures which have become obsolete and adding new pictures after a fresh photo session. I can set up duplicate galleries with different levels of access security, I can create multiple galleries with different content for different client requirements. It’s an incredibly versatile system which I imagine will serve me well for years into the future. Assuming, that is, no one invents a way of delivering photos via telepathy. Now that really would be fun!

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