All information below is from here – Information based more around americas industry
- Commercial photography can be used for nearly every company, even if they don’t use it.
- Large cities can provide employment for hundreds of commercial photographers, whether they work out of shops, studios, film processing facilities, or freelance with their own equipment and facilities.
- Some commercial photographers may stick to one speciality, food, fashion, product. Where as others may choose to do food advertisement one day, portraits of corporate employees the next and a wedding the day after.
- The commercial photography industry was traditionally open to self-starters who learned the trade in the armed service, from a photographic school or learnt from a more experienced photographer.
- The leading technological development in the industry is digital image processing, which was revolutionised by the 1992 introduction of the Leaf Digital Studio Camera. This was the start of a photographer being able to instantly view and manipulate the photograph on a computer screen.
- The cost of digital equipment remained stagnant through 1996 and into 1997. The cost of the Leaf systems had not dropped since 1993, although the equipment was expanding and improving at a racing pace.
- Near the 2000’s Kodak, Ricoh and Sony had all developed small, handheld compact digital cameras in the $300-$500 price range. However more high-end hit, with resolution comparable to standard photographic methods was still at prices as high as $20,000.
- It was a profitable transition for studios that could afford it.
- Digitising had also chnaged the industry in other ways, it introduced companies to stock photographs kept on CD-ROMs. So by 1997, stock photographs sold for $250 to $1,500, but with a CD-ROM, a company could buy a disc containing thousands of stock images for a cost of $10 to $250.
Information below is from here.
I also found this article useful for deciding on how much you should charge per hour.
- ‘Who’s killing the photography Industry’
- Easily available digital equipment makes it easier for anyone to make photography and publish. Even on an Iphone which now has increasingly better camera quality.
- People who send raw files over when they have done work for them. Raw files should not be transferred, the client is paying for a service for you to shoot images, edit them, and give them the finished edited photos. Do not give away all your images. They have only paid for a select few. Clients need to pay for a photographers time as well as the right to use the photographers photographs.
- There are two parts to billing clients for commercial photography. A- Your time, effort and expenses for creating photography. B- Licensing fees for the specific use of individual photographs.
- The problem of not licensing properly mostly occurs in the mid to low end of the commercial photography spectrum.
- Art director, advertising agencies, publishers, professional designers all know that they will be paying to license the photography they choose to use. If you don’t include a licensing fee section/page then firstly they can see you are new to this and secondly they will get your images free forever, and they can put them where ever they want.
- It was interesting to read other peoples views on the article, even though it is from 3 years ago.
More for licensing
Not for licensing, he doesn’t see why photographs should be licensed when other types of creative professionals don’t license their work, i.e logo design
Information from this website
Statistics of demand in industry:
Freelance Vs Employee:
- In Karina’s answer to the question I asked, was about demand in her field, personal branding. She was saying how it is on the increase, which it also shows here it is meant to be on the rise, ‘demand for wedding and portrait photos’. Today more and more people are wanting photos of themselves, if it is to post on social media or just to keep for their own record.
Isobel Percy 