How to Get the Best out of Your Commercial Photographer

Hiring a commercial photographer is not just an investment in your business; it is setting the direction of your marketing and branding for the foreseeable future. The images produced will be the most visible part of your business for potential customers in the coming weeks and months. So, to ensure you get a good return on your investment, it is important to plan carefully and to work closely with a photography expert. To get the best value for money, I would recommend not only choosing the right person for your company but also making it easier for them to help you. This includes providing a specific brief for the project, setting out your wants and needs simply and clearly. We will unpick some elements of the brief a little later. First of all, let’s look at how we might get off to a good start with the relationship with the photographer.

Choose Them & Their Style

A photographer’s portfolio should show examples of the kind of images they produce and the best work that they have done for clients. In some cases, they may be unable to show all their work publicly due to an NDA embargo. But overall, the portfolio should be the place to get a feel for their style and their strengths. If you don’t connect well with their style, then choosing them is likely to be counterproductive. It is easy to make the mistake of thinking that you could persuade them to create images in the style of another photographer. However, they may not be able or even willing to emulate someone else. What’s more, you are unlikely to be pleased with the results and they are unlikely to give you their best as they are being pushed outside of their normal creative environment and feeling less comfortable with what they are producing.

We all like to be chosen because we are somebody’s preference. Photographers are no different. Feeling appreciated is a big motivator and can help bring out the best in us. So, try to work with someone who is going to flourish because you like their work. Creating high quality images is easier when they are feeling confident. If you exhibit confidence in them, you are freeing their creativity to do even better things for you.

Don’t Start with Price

Every project has its budget constraints. Commercial photography projects can quickly become expensive, especially if travel, additional people and props are required. So, we might think starting with price is the best approach. However, this risks putting the focus in the wrong place. Instead, we can start with our goals and then figure out how best we can reach them and remain within our budgets. Starting with price may tip the balance during other decision phases that then mean that our results are more about the budget than the goals. If we neglect our aims so that we can get something cheap, then we may end up ticking the box on finance but missing our aims, making the images less effective or possibly completely irrelevant. We can still bring things under the control of the budget and meet our financial aims if we prioritise our goals. Keeping these front and centre means that the outcome is more likely to be successful.

Approaching someone with an email or phone call asking, “how much does your photography cost?” before specifying what you actually need is a bit like walking into a restaurant and asking, “how much is food?” It is an almost impossible question to answer, at least with a short response! For example, from my perspective as a specialist product photographer, there is a big difference between an advertising image with special effects due to be printed as a poster and packshots for the shop section of a website. Even ascertaining a day rate doesn’t necessarily make things much clearer. For one thing, do you know what they can achieve in that time or are you guessing at what you think is “reasonable”? Diving straight in to discussing costs leaves both you and the photographer guessing what the other is thinking and is likely to make both parties uncomfortable. A better approach for commercial projects is to set out your goals and provide a brief to be quoted against.

Be Clear about Your Needs

To get the best return on investment, it is helpful to clarify what you want your images to do. Otherwise, it is very difficult to measure what benefit you are getting from them. Sometimes, photos may be designed to attract attention in Social Media feeds, for example. Others might be more targeted at making it clear to the customer what exactly they get when placing the order so are less artistic and more informative. Similarly, if we consider staff portraits or business headshots, there are various ways that they can be done. It might be cheapest to put everyone in quick succession in front of a white background. But, if you want these images to say something about your brand or show an aspect of each person’s role then that wouldn’t be a good fit.

Giving a clear idea of your aims helps the photographer to price more accurately and to advise you of ways in which you could make the most of your budget. In some cases, the budget may be changed as a result of these considerations. Or, you may find that you need fewer, more targeted images to meet your goals instead of a large volume of files. It will be much easier to give you a project costing and will help to clarify expectations for all parties.

Ideally, it is best to make a good start on this before you contact a photographer. Yes, we would expect to narrow things down further as we discuss the project. But it is very difficult to determine a direction until the goals are clear. If you aren’t sure about this, then by all means discuss this openly with your chosen image creator. They should be able to advise you. Try to draw up at least an outline of a photography brief first and fill in the details later if you need to.

Create a Photography Brief

Any commercial photography project will benefit from having a brief. This might just be a few lines in an email or it might be a more extensive document. The important thing is that it clearly states what your wants, needs and expectations are as a client for a particular project. It helps to avoid awkward situations where a client imagines certain things will be included where the photographer hasn’t thought they would be. A brief helps all parties understand what they are getting out of the project and what is expected of them in return. (See my guide to writing a photography brief)

The brief should start out with the intended aims and the image assets needed to realise those aims. Include key aspects of your branding guidelines so that the photographer knows what to try and include or avoid. There should be a clear indication of the scope of the project, e.g. number of products, number of staff to be photographed, etc. The shoot location and any props or personnel needed should be planned out along with the timings for the shoot and project delivery. Consider if any licenses are required, e.g. property release, model releases, etc. In some cases, an NDA may be beneficial to clarify things for all parties.

This is by no means an exhaustive list as projects can vary enormously. The important thing is to include as much detail as is reasonably possible and needed for all involved to understand their roles. Creating a detailed brief can seem like an arduous task, but it avoids misunderstandings and potential problems further down the line and can help you to get the most out of the photographer you’ve hired.

Allow Room for their Creative Input

The brief isn’t designed to be a straitjacket — it is a guide, setting out boundaries within which a project takes place. The final version often contains input from the photographer, so it doesn’t have to be seen as a unilateral list of demands. Nevertheless, the client would be expected to provide the bulk of it as they are, after all, paying for the photographer’s services. In addition to all this, it is important to remember why you chose that particular photographer in the first place. Their approach will have stood out to you in some way. So, it is vital to allow some room for creative freedom.

Boxing a photographer in too much can mean that images lose that special creative flair. We should expect their style to be evident in the final assets, so something of their own personality and brand will shine through. The final photographs will be an expression of your brand through that of the photographer. It is their approach that marks them out from others. So, within the bounds of the brief, the photographer needs the freedom to make it their own.

This creative input can come at any stage of the process. It may help define the brief in the first place, suggesting new ideas that complement the client’s brand. In fact, I firmly believe it is best to have an ongoing dialogue with your photographer from the start. They may not only have other ideas to suggest, they may also be able to help steer things to keep you on budget. You will get more out of your commercial photographer if you use their experience to find solutions and see them as a key part of the team delivering the project.

Consider Collaborations on Social Media

One possible extra benefit that you can tap into when working with a commercial photographer is their online presence, including their Social Media following. It may well be that you came across them initially because of a post on Social Media or because their website ranks highly in search engine results. Both of these could be something that you could leverage for your brand. Proactively asking the photographer to share the images and tagging them when you do so is good for both parties. It helps to give longevity to the relationship beyond the photoshoot and can be a welcome boost for both parties’ profiles.

Collaborations need to have something of benefit for each party involved. So, I would suggest that backlinks and social mentions could be offered on a reciprocal basis. Both the photographer and the client can benefit from reaching each other’s audiences, especially if the photographer is very active in the client’s industry niche.

Stick to Agreed Payment Schedules

Suppliers are often small businesses and photographers are often sole traders. They don’t necessarily have large amounts of cashflow. So, it can be very helpful if bills are paid on time. This can save frustration and annoyance at chasing money and make them even happier to work with you again in the future.

Deposits can be essential for small businesses, so you’ll always make your photographer happy if you pay yours on time. It also shows that you are committed to both them and the project, all of which helps foster a better relationship and reduce stress.

Things to Avoid

There are a few things that are likely to cause friction in a relationship with a photographer, but they can easily be avoided or dealt with in a way that minimises problems. One prime example is what photographers refer to as a “copyright grab”. Legally (at least in the UK), the photographer owns the copyright to any images they create. They then license those images to the client for whatever purposes the client has specified. Sometimes licenses might cost extra, or they may be built in to the project fee. Occasionally, clients think that they need to own the copyright of their images. In the very rare instances where this is actually the case they should expect to pay a high premium to the photographer for this. Normally all that is really needed is an unrestricted license for the client or an exclusive license that only permits the client and the photographer to use the images. Terms that keep the images from being sub-licensed to stock libraries or the like can easily be included in the brief/contract without muddying the waters by seeking to transfer copyright.

The other main issue that photographers find difficult is scope creep — “while you’re here…”, “could you just…” It is important to remember that the brief should have set out the scope for the project and that the fee was agreed based on that brief. Asking for extra while on the shoot can create tension and sour the relationship. If you do find that you need to add something in or that an idea only occurs to you on the shoot then the best thing to do is to negotiate with the photographer on the understanding that it is beyond the initial brief. If a photographer feels that clients expect freebies then it can put their back up for the rest of the shoot. If you want to get the best out of them then don’t assume that anything should be free.

Concluding Thoughts

Getting the most out of a commercial photographer is a lot like getting the best out of anyone else. We all share a need for being appreciated and feeling that our work is valued. We tend to perform better when we feel confident and happy. We don’t like feeling that our time is wasted and are much more likely to engage well with people who show a genuine interest in and an appreciation for what we do. Photographers are no different. If a client can help their photographer to feel valued and understood then they will be well on the way to getting good value for their money.

© Joe Lenton, July 2022

Joe is an international product photographer based in the UK