On 2/21/2018 9:20 AM, Igor PDML-StR wrote:
HAR!
People with K-{1,3,5} are overqualified for that job! ;-)
BTW, regarding using their own gear:
There could be an interesting twist if the photographers are using their
own gear, especially if they are getting 1099 tax form, and not W-2
(which might be the case, especially it sounds like a seasonal job,
according to the reviewer on Glassdoor). In that case, the photographer
might not be considered "an employee" but "an independent contractor".
If that's the case, then the copyright on the photos belongs to the
photographer, not to the studio, unless it is explicitly written
differently in the contract. I would assume, that they have written that
in the contract. It doesn't matter to me as a customer, it's just a
curious aspect of the copyright laws.
He will be signing his copyrights over to the company as part of his
contract. That is a given. I don't like our present copyright law. The
Canadian law used to read that the first owner of copyright was the
person who commissioned the work. That makes more sense to me than the
way we do it now.
Cheers,
Igor
A few decades ago, I was a stringer for a large specialty company that
did school photos and not much else. I don't know how representative my
experience with them was, but I suspect they all work pretty much the
same way.
All gear was supplied by the company, and lighting set up was fixed.
There was no allowing for the photographer to freelance with the
equipment. The posing stool was placed exactly the same distance from
the background in every set up, in every school, and with every
photographer. The lights were also positioned exactly the same way, same
distance from the subject, same angles, same power output, etc. The
camera to subject distance was locked in place. In fact, we were using
fixed focus lenses so we had to string the camera to subject distance.
This was done to allow the many thousands of images to flow through the
system as smoothly as possible and fie on any photographer who deviated .
Group shots had a bit more flexibility, but getting a group shot with
everyone looking at the camera with their eyes open is more of a
challenge than anyone who hasn't done it would realize. The success rate
is an inverse square proportion related to the number of people in the
group. By the time you get to a couple of dozen people in the group,
only Mr. Spock could figure the odds of success in his head.
The group I worked with were actually interested in portrait
photography, and most of the people were very good photographers in
their own right. However, I didn't see being a photographer as being
especially necessary, it was much more important to be able to relate to
people, especially kids, since they were really the only variable.
They tended to haul me in at graduation time, as they needed to swell
their ranks temporarily to keep up with demand. I liked doing the grad
stuff as there was a lot more freedom, and working with young adults is
more fun than with surly, mewling twelve year old mini-demons.
Grads were pretty much a free for all, I was allowed to light the
subjects as I wanted to with some limitations. They didn't want really
hard ratios, for example.
I imagine with everything being digital now, they could composite the
group shots to get everyone looking at the camera if they wanted to, it
depends on the individual company. If they are a photographic company,
they might, in fact probably would, but if they are a company that just
happens to make their money doing photography, it might be a different
story.
A decade ago, I was working as one of the Photoshop technicians for a
small studio that was trying hard to break into the school market. By
then we were shooting digital, and the owner allowed the photographers a
lot more freedom.
As a tech, my responsibility was to pick the best picture out of the
series and then do minor retouching to make the subjects look their
best. Zit cloning was the biggie, but occasionally we would do other
things to improve the look of the subject. Nothing that was terribly
obvious.
The problem we had was that competing against the aforementioned large
company, we didn't have the financial resources to be in the same price
point, and it is a very price sensitive market. The big player
eventually got tired of us and crushed us by dropping their bid price in
our market to the point that it would have cost us money to win
projects. They did this to every independent in the markets they wanted
to own.
Eventually, I went to work for a home improvement store, another
photographer went to work at a seed mill, the other retoucher drifted
off to work for an insurance company, and after the rent per square foot
quadrupled because the mall decided it wanted national stores not
independents and decided to squeeze us out via absurd rent demands, the
business owner closed the place and took a job selling building products
for a specialty supply company. The last shoot I did there was Dec 31, 2011.
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