Paging emergency service photographer or any one willing to help me with ?'s

[STICKMAN]

Hello All,

I shoot fireground photography, for the last few years I have done such on a volunteer basis. As I have grown in the past year so has my request for images. Keep in mind these are other firefighters from the stations or calls looking to copies of the images of them working. Long story short I usually burn a disc of the images watermarked in a corner and give them to them. This has really helped my name growing. With the growing request I am finding this is becoming more of a cost to me as with time, discs droping such off etc.

My question is how would one go about charging for a disc containing the images from a incident. I usually shoot roughly 100-300 images per incident. On car accidents, non fire calls mabe 50-75 approx. I also go out and shoot these men and women while they train. For example I just spent 5 hours this past sat. shooting a rescue team practicing. For this i shot about 300 images that were keepers.

I now have one of the departments i take pics for, that now puts them on a shutterfly account and lets the members buy them, I feel this is taking money out of my pocket. They are not making any money off of it. Am I wrong with how I feel?

If any fireground photographer, or any photographer can help me out on thoughts ideas or pricing I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks In Advance

 

[Flash Harry]

"I now have one of the departments i take pics for, that now puts them on a shutterfly account and lets the members buy them"

These belong to you, no one without your permission should be selling/uploading/copying etc etc. Seems to me there's demand for your shots, open your own online ordering system and upload to that, to price your work, cost for your time, print, hosting and equipment costs, add 1/3 and charge to cover all of this, if they want them they'll pay, and, you wont be left out of pocket. H

 

[STICKMAN]

Thanks Flash,

I will have to figure all that up and work up a price. When we first started they asked permission to have the site for some shots and i agreed, but anymore they want shots from anything there personal even are involved in , including out of town jobs/shots on the site. When they started it they took a disc and posted the pics, now they want me doing it. I have my own pbase site and a .com but no sales as of yet set up. I guess with there site I have to draw the line somewhere. I hate to be this way but my time and the time it takes to post to there site which i have to do is a bit to much im my book.


Flash once again I thank yoou for responding on the matter!!!!!


Anyone else out there have any thoughts on the matter.........

 

[Chewbecca]

oh no no no. These are YOUR pictures. I agree with Flash.
Since they are receiving a disc from you, make them start paying for a disc.
I don't know going rates or prices, but they should NOT have free access to your pictures.
Not unless you grant them that permission.
And putting the pictures up on their site? What?
Spending five hours, shooting a training session...for free???
CRAZY.

Make it very clear that you are going to charge them. It's ok to do the occasional free thing to be a nice guy for your local dept., but surely not ALL the time.

 

[STICKMAN]

Thanks Chewbecca,

It is good to hear it from other folks, my wife also agrees I should be charging, but be carefull to how I approach the matter so as to not loose access to the locations. I do have a state issued press pass from the press assc/state police so im not to worried but it is nice getting in front of the lines!!!!!. At least I know longer feel like im am shooting from left field on the matter. Thanks again for the insight.

 

[photo guy]

I shoot photos for a local dept. I used to drop off the photos on CD for them since they never had many photos before I was asked to be their photographer, but now after the number of photos that I took last year increased they now have me just download directly to their computer therefor saving me money by cutting out those cds. I still download to my computer and burn a copy to cd as a backup but it works much better. They have asked me if they can email to the press and all I asked is they either credit me as their photographer or credit to the dept. After I told the dept. this they haven't asked me since. I would sit down with the members and try to work out a comprimise. By doing this it is best for everyone. They get photos of them working, you get continued access and who knows, it may work out better for you in the end some other way. Word of mouth from them on your work and maybe you'll get more work from someone else.

 

[Josh66]

Well, first decide one thing: Do you feel that you should be getting paid for the photography, or do you want to keep doing it as a volunteer service?

Nothing wrong with either one - I just think you need to decide which it is.

If you're just giving them the discs for free (and I assume letting them make prints), the shutterfly account isn't really any different than that. All it's doing is making distribution easier. (Assuming that nobody is making a profit from it - people are just paying for the actual cost of the prints.)

Asking to be reimbursed for your expenses doesn't seem out of line to me.


Now, if you want to be getting paid for this - you should get a contract made up that says what can & can't be done with the images and all that stuff, along with your fees.


One possible compromise I can see is to give them a CD or files of low res images for free (or 'at cost'), and then offer full size digital files or prints for sale.

Or another idea could be to continue to do it as a volunteer for your own station, but charge the others. That doesn't seem out of line to me.