Think of Your Photography as a Business

Think of Your Photography as a Business

By William Lulow

By now, we have all heard the term “Gig Economy.” What it really means is that instead of working for a company, a great many people are actually working for themselves, while being employed by companies on a part time or job basis. For employers this means that they do not have to pay benefits like health insurance, retirement plans or workman’s compensation. For the workers themselves, it might be a bit more complicated. Even today, with the advent of Covid-19 three years ago, people who have full-time jobs are working from home much more, so they have to learn to budget their time accordingly in order to remain highly productive. Many say that they are more productive this way because they actually work more hours and more intensively. 

So, first, there is the notion that whatever employment conditions apply now, e.g. the job you are working on for however long, is not guaranteed to last indefinitely. (Actually, these days, even if you work for a company, your job, or even the company may not last until you want to retire.) This is the way it is when you own your own business.

  THINK OF YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY AS A BUSINESS.

There are things you need to think about besides shooting pictures. It should make you think about how to manage your business interests as well as the money you earn and makes it more imperative for you to establish some type of retirement account into which you contribute funds as you get paid in order to begin building a more secure future. As an example, when I was making really good money in the 1980s and ’90s, I would take at least 15% of every pay check I received and deposit it into a special account for savings. It was a “rule of thumb” I used to make sure I had some money to invest at a later date.

In a “gig” situation, you and the employer begin the job knowing that it will end at some point. You begin to build up relationships on the job, much like actors do. You need to be totally immersed in the job to obtain the best results, but you know it will end at some prescribed time in the future. One of the big differences is that people who work “job-to-job” most often cannot command the kinds of salaries that well-known actors, or executives can because it is harder to build up a reputation in the corporate world until you achieve executive status. It is easy to see how famous actors can live for several years on the salary from one acting role, if it is a major one. Even star athletes can’t perform at professional levels for much more than twelve to fifteen years or so. People like photographers, illustrators or even contractors can perform at high levels of quality for quite some time, but single gigs are often short-lived.  Top executives often can negotiate very substantial plans for retirement or in case they are replaced. Average workers cannot.

Second, as the employee, you need to take steps to make sure your own welfare is covered for however long the “gig” lasts and beyond. Actors know that when the film or play is finished, their services are no longer needed. They may even contract for a period of time and when that time is up, another actor takes their place and they have to move on. So, they try to set the salary scale high enough to pay also for the time that they won’t be working. This is often negotiated on their behalf by an agent. A typical film may take several months to complete, and the actor may then not have a steady “gig” for months or even years afterwards. So, they live from “gig” to “gig.”

There are many careers that work like this, including being a photographer. I can remember working on a catalog for a large retailer. The “gig” lasted a few months. During that time, the days were long and often included weekends. Then, when the job was finished and delivered to the client, there was a period of “no work” for several weeks sometimes. On my calendar, I used to mark them as “open weeks.” Sometimes I would use the time off for other things. Sometimes I would use the time to look for new “gigs.” After several years of this kind of existence, I began to get the hang of it. That is, I began to be able to expect the lapses between jobs and to be able to use the down time productively. In addition, I began to price my services high enough to cover these down times because I knew they were a part of my career and I was getting better at what I did and consequently was in higher demand.

Luckily, in my own case, I had a number of clients early in my career that needed my services on a more or less regular basis. Sometimes the “gigs” would be once-a-week, sometimes more than that, and sometimes they were even once-a-month. But they were still steady. They often lasted for many years until a new art director came along. (I lost many such “gigs” to such turnovers but then I always gained others.) I learned from working for other photographers, that I would need clients like that in order to build an on-going “business.” Some of these clients I had for eight to ten years each. Many even overlapped with each other. That’s the way you can make the business you do successful, because you may be working for a couple of different clients EACH WEEK.

You would also need to be able to have enough money in reserve in order to survive through those down times. Keeping several months’ worth of rent plus some other, regular studio expenses was also necessary.  One of the mistakes many beginning photographer/businessmen or women make is not being actively searching for new work even while they are already working on a job. It is really an on-going process that must be attended to all the time, not just when you are “between gigs.” As a matter of fact, once you are at the stage where you know you can rely on your technical expertise repeatedly, the hardest part of being a photographer is finding the next “gig.”

This was part of a job for Hanes Hosiery that took me a solid week to complete back in the 1980s when I was just getting started:

This was a great gig that lasted a full five days, but while I was in the midst of shooting it, I made sure I followed leads and contacted people for the following week.

I also did many fashion post cards for a firm that catered to this market early in my career:

As a commercial photographer, I have often been called upon to photograph very different types of subjects from products to people to events:

So, unless you are very precise, professional and market yourself carefully, the “Gig Economy” can be a real hindrance to finding more lasting work. It forces you to do the “business” part of your work with the same intensity that you do the actual work itself. What I mean by this is that if you are going to survive in the “gig economy” you have to be able to do all the things that real businesses do. That includes marketing, accounting and organization. And, you have to develop all the skills that enable these chores to be done. All this IN ADDITION to doing the work that companies hire you to do in the first place. I know many folks who have built businesses right out of their own homes, with just their computers. But in order for it to be a real business, it has to be treated as such, with all the parts of it being handled professionally. This is one of the ways to ensure that you can survive in a “gig economy.” As a matter of fact, I know of a person in the investment banking industry who has changed jobs fairly frequently. When he was not actually working, he spent his days actively looking for the next “gig.” This meant getting up at 7:00AM to begin the searching process just as if it were a normal workday.

One other thing I might mention as far as “gigs” go – I have actually gotten better at managing my shooting schedules and my results have shown great improvement as I have gotten older and more experienced.

I think most jobs can be treated as “gigs” these days, as I have said. Gone are the days when a worker could expect to work for the same company for his or her entire working life and be rewarded with a good retirement package. It seems very far from the norm in today’s world. Another thing that many companies as well as individuals are looking for these days is an employee that can produce CONTENT for websites or other marketing efforts. Much like law firms are always interested in “rain makers,” people who can bring in additional business to a firm, anyone who can do this on a regular basis adds a great deal of value to his or her resume.

So if every job you do is treated as an opportunity for your own advancement by adding value to what you already bring to it, you will be in a much better position to deal with these “gigs.”