Every time a hear a discussion about giving away photographs (and pricing in such a way as it's almost the same thing) this interview with Harlan Ellison comes to mind:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE> Cheers, Dave 2009/3/19 William Robb <[email protected]>: > Repost from April 1, 2001. > Perhaps it bears repeating. > > Don't be a cheap whore, you won't get respected for it, and when > you want to graduate to being a high class whore, no one will be > willing to pay you for it. I have seen it happen before in my > under populated part of the world. > People will only value your work as much as you do. > > The guy I mentored with had a thriving weekend wedding business > going. In 1972, I started going out on paying jobs with him, > learning how to photograph weddings. By 1975, he had over a > dozen photographers working for him, shooting weddings. Over > time, these people started going out on their own, becoming > competition for the trade. Eventually, the market for wedding > photographers saturated to the point where my mentor decided to > become more competitive. He started dropping his prices. He is > now on welfare, and pretty god damned bitter about it. > > Being a cheap whore is always a mistake. > > People will pay quality money for what they percieve as a > quality job. By charging cheap, you are sending a message that > you don't think your work is worth their money. This is not a > strategy for long term business success. > > You want to know > what happens in markets where someone comes in and low balls the > available work? Everyone suffers for it. The photographers > suffer because some idiot is saying that photo portraiture isn't > worth paying for, and everyone has to drop their prices to > compete. The clients suffer because with the new, lower pricing, > quality suffers, because it isn't worthwhile to do a good job > anymore. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
