Photography Student Needs Business Advice!

[Gavjenks]

Before answering, I would ask about what kind of photography business?

Describe for us how you expect your business to operate.

What kind of photography do you expect to be doing and for what (kinds of) clients?
Who will be finding clients and how? Who will be handling the administrative stuff?
Do you expect to have employees or will this be a one man operation?
Do you expect to maintain studio space, or is this strictly on location work?

Also, what assets do you have that you need to protect? IE, savings, investments, personal valuables, and equity in your house? What equipment do you have or expect to need?

Depending on the answers to these questions, you may or may not need a lawyer, an accountant, or special insurance. At least right away... not until you've booked the income to pay for them.

Mostly I say this because because the above questions are far more relevant to your success in business. _MOST_ businesses fail for financial reasons, not because they had a shaky contract or didn't know what taxes to pay or have insurance for some edge case event that happened. Financial reasons almost always stem from SALES / INCOME not exceeding OVERHEAD / EXPENSES. So my advice is almost always the same (unless you have some pretty unique answers to the questios above)... spend as little as possible at first.... until you make the money to pay for it. THEN you upgrade equipment, get a studio, get the lawyer, the accountant, and the insurance.

Sound advice.

Don't pay a lawyer hundreds or thousands of dollars to draw up a bunch of incorporation documents and whatnot, before you even know for sure that you will make money.
Nor do you likely need a banker if you already have a core set of decent equipment. What do you need loans for? A studio? You don't need a studio to begin with. You can just cart around backdrops and stands in your car or even on an attachment on a bike and set up impromptu studios at your client's places, or outside, or in your house, or rent a room at a local community center, etc. Pain in the ass, but a lot cheaper than several months' rent if it turns out you don't actually make much money.

The only thing you really should make sure to have rock solid in terms of legal overhead IMO would be your model releases. There are plenty of working professionals online though who offer their releases as free models to work from, though. OR adapt the releases offered for free that any of a number of major stock photography websites use. Either will serve fine until you know you can afford considering drawing up a formal personalized one. Using a stock photogrpahy release will usually, if anything, be erring too far on the side of CAUTION. Those releases cover all kinds of crazy things, to the extent that they may be less than ideal mainly because they scare people, not because they don't have enough coverage.

And of course, any local business licenses or whatever that might apply.

Other than that, if you insist on spending some money up front on overhead, I suggest spending it on marketing and a decent website first, not the professionals in the background. Up front legal work is much more important for other types of businesses, like inventors/manufacturers with patents etc., or multiple partner businesses who immediately might need formal ownership and profit sharing structure in place. A single employee services business can get away without legal help for a lot longer at first.