Questions on the business end of photography

[cpurves]

Originally Posted by Songman45

"Oh, I'm just doing this for myself, its my hobby" Do you smell that? Its B.S. In a matter of moments he or his partner are glad handing the competitors, giving business cards, and marketing their hobby photos. ....


....I'm off my soap box now.

I could not agree more Songman - I've only had it happen twice so far. First time buddy shows up in the photog vest and with a couple of cameras hanging off his shoulder. Tells the show secretary he is with "Joe Blow's country newspaper" flashes a homemade press pass and starts to shoot. Two hours later he is still there shooting. I appoach him as to what he is doing and says that it's okay for him to be there because he is press and all press sell photos to the general public and I can't stop him. He has a PDF rag that he posts on the web site. The website is mostly about selling the photos. No matter what the website didn't last three months after that. What goes around comes around.

Second one the show organizer saw her before I did. She approached the interloper and when told she "was only selling to friends" tells her to come to the secretaries desk and pay her vendor fee and did she have proof of insurance with her. It always pays to have a good relationship with your customers.

The moral of these two rants is -- Don't horn in on the pros business - It will bite you in the A**.

Cheers
Chris