I’ve been running the formal critique section of the forum on the Model Mayhem community site since it was started, and over the last few years I’ve identified several recurring issues. Here are my stock responses to some of the most common problems new and experienced photographers have. [...]

I’m going through a lot of old magazines ripping out the photos I like and tossing the other 99.5% of the paper.

One thing I noticed in the stack of what I’ve kept, the models don’t look at the camera very often. I sometimes tell new models “don’t look at the camera unless you mean it.”

I look at all of these thousands of images in the magazines I’m tossing out, and I have a visceral reaction to compelling lighting, compositions, dances of color on the page. When I look at a photo in which the model is just standing there deer in headlights waiting for the shutter to click, supremely unconfident, no matter what is going on in the rest of the image, I have a strong dislike for the whole. If it is an interesting setting, I am even angry at the photographer for wasting it on an uncompelling subject.

To me, photography is only a rush when it feels challenging, and if the model just stands there looking at the lens, waiting to have their picture taken, it is uninteresting. I don’t like when they submit to the process, when they are having their picture taken rather than being interesting.

Unless you have the confidence to stare down the lens or tell a story, don’t go near it, the lens will know you are weak. The lens is predatory. To use it is always to be hunting for something. When the prey is immediately submissive, the hunt is dull.

A lot of newer photographers seem at a loss as to how to charge for their services. I know I was. This is an attempt to explain professional billing and licensing practices for photography. It is not a comprehensive explanation, and there are many resources available online that go into much greater detail.

Creative Fee + License Fees + Production Costs = estimate

To pay you a small amount of money and ask for full unrestricted use of your images for all time is unreasonable and unacceptable.

To expect you to have a set rate for a production with as many variable costs as a photo shoot is unreasonable and unacceptable.

You charge them your creative fee, a low license fee for specific things in a limited amount of time, and your production costs.

Your creative fee when you start out should be slightly higher than your CODB (cost of doing business). Google that to find a CODB calculator and figure out your own exact number.

Your creative fee is also an estimate based on how long you think the shoot will take. If they drag their feet and you shoot for 14 hours instead of 6, make sure you’ve put overtime options into the estimate. This is why most pros never use the term “day rate” anymore.

The key to making money in photography is the license fees.

Go look at the pricing for stock agency images to get some numbers.

Say the group you’re going to be working for is just starting out and can’t pay much, so you charge them your costs plus a low license for the first year, but for each additional year you ramp it up. Make them come back to you to get permission to use the images next year. Make them pay to reuse images, and upon renewal they have to select the usage licenses they want, so if they want to put a picture on a bus that’s a separate charge from the license to print fliers and put them on cars at a supermarket. Make the license fee slightly cheaper than what they’ll be charged for another shoot, so they’re more likely to want to simply renew the license than have you do an updated set on the same subject. That way you’re making money for a shoot you already did and can continue to rack up more gigs. Plus, if they don’t renew the license, as long as your creative fees and production cost charges covered your cost of doing business, who cares, you’ve moved on to other work, and continuing this policy with all your clients means eventually you’ll make more from licensing your images than from creating new ones.

Your license fee for the first year should attempt to cover all the uses the client thinks they might want. You show them a breakdown of many possible uses and make them choose what ways they really think for which they’ll use it. Again, see stock agency sites for more info on how to break it down.

So, they buy the licenses they think they need. For example, a small startup surf magazine might want to print it in the magazine once, be able to make posters, and be licensed to use the image on their web site. Make them sign an agreement that outlines those limitations and the term of the license. One year is usually good. Also make them credit you and note your copyright any time the image is printed. If they later want to print an image on a t-shirt, they owe you more money. If they want to make postcards, they owe you more money. If they want to make a slide and project it on the building outside a concert, they owe you more money. They will have seen the breakdown during the estimation process, so it should be clear that they did not pay for license to utilize your images in that way.

Before you start shooting, get the signatures.

Before you hire any crew or rent or buy any supplies, get a deposit for 50% of the total estimate.

Do not be afraid to estimate $15 per person on the shoot to buy lunch.

It’s your art, and you have the only say in what happens to it.

It’s your business and you need to say “no, this is how professional photographers bill for services” when someone is trying to take advantage of you.

Note: This post refers mostly to advertising work. Editorial is handled differently than work for commercial clients. Often you do editorials more for publicity than direct financial gain. Editorial means your ideas make it on the page though. If it is called “editorial” and someone is telling you how to shoot, it isn’t much of an editorial for you, and that isn’t a very good promotion of your work, so you should probably charge regular rates unless the exposure offered is really really good. As with all things, negotiate your way to harmony.

All art, like science, is hypothesis. There is an innate desire in humans to understand the world around them. Art is one attempt at an answer. Just as science seeks to find explanations through observation and experimentation, so does art.

It could be argued that science is an art. It could also be argued that art is a science. Whatever they are, they both involve testing ideas and looking for answers. They both involve curiosity.

Science is an art, in that creative leaps of faith are required to hypothesize. Science is nothing if not creative problem solving and a way of working to understand the universe.

Art is a science, in that when one is creating, one applies rules to carry out an experiment which might produce a result. In the process of the creation of a work, one tests these rules. Each choice is a rule. Are you going to use light blue for the sky? That’s a choice, a rule. You or someone else can later try another color and compare the results. Each work of art one starts is an experiment testing some hypothesis. The outcome is always uncertain. There are always unplanned results in complex rule systems. When the work is complete, both the final product and the memory of the process add to our knowledge of how things work.

Science and art are both linked at fundamental levels.

I am always looking for formulas and keys so good performances can be repeated. Sure you hit a good shot once in a while, but often it’s on a test and not an editorial so I can’t send the images out. Serendipity is great for art, but it has to be repeatable to be profitable. There is less difference between performing on stage before an audience and walking into your own gallery show than one might imagine. In both cases you must attempt to pre-cognize the experience of others. In both cases, getting it right in the shower doesn’t count. Some artists prefer to satisfy only their own needs and leave the viewer on the wind. I have gone to far too many art galleries and left confused to not give a decently explanatory label to the viewers of my own work, even if I make them look around for it a bit first. I feel indebted to the audience for taking the time and energy to view my work, and therefore strive to satisfy both my own needs as an explorer and to communicate my experiences on the journey to viewers as a reward for their own curiosity. Curiosity should always be encouraged.

There exists a requirement in the fashion photography I favor, that the model should exist in the environment of the image and be somewhat connected to that world. Most often when I find myself believing my work on a constructed image to have yielded a failure, it is the result of an apparent lack of connection between the model and the other things in the frame. If that is not the case, the second most common culprit is having failed to control the light. Both can be improved with practice, as my own work has shown. What I refer to as the model being connected to the world, director Richard Donner calls “verisimilitude,” meaning “the truth of the thing” or “self-truth.”

There may be some universal formula for projecting how a model will play off a given prop or costume. I have not yet found it. Perhaps it is too complex and individualized to forecast. Possibly at least some generalizations could be divined, but then would their employment by an artist be detrimental to originality? I think such things are better left to instinct honed by experience, for my own work at least. Yet, still I wonder if there could be a primer written to guide outside of instinct. Can you bracket models and props like they do sports teams in a tournament?

I believe that tension, composition, and detail are the keys to a great image. The viewer must be presented with drama (or the equivalent), context, and a visual focal point in order to relate to most images. Drama is given by any notion of tension within a frame, whether that is interpersonal tension, spatial tension, or implied kinetic tension.

The story of the single frame must have a context, as all stories presented visually do. The context is revealed and highlighted (successfully or poorly) by the composition. In this use of the word “composition,” I mean the juxtaposition of complimentary and contrasting areas of color tone, hue, and saturation (or simply brightness in a black and white image). Void and filling shades and levels between them must be shaped to draw the viewer’s attention to your intended purpose in presenting the image. With multiple frames, a sequence of images, it’s a whole other ballgame.

The visual focal points are also of great importance, and without these details the image will appear totally meaningless. In photographing people, the visual focal points of an image almost always include the eyes. The detail need not be overpowering. It could be as simple as a green dot on two hairlines intersecting. What is important is the presence of an anchor of some sort. An image that is totally unfocused cannot ordinarily hold or even momentarily capture the viewer’s attention.

In most cases, a formulaic approach to fashion photography would be counterproductive. However, if one is conducting some sort of experiment to find the subconscious mechanics of one’s work, looking for patterns in the behavior of subjects would probably be useful. Finding such patterns would be a step in a long path to allowing for a conscious and controlled paradigm shift in production and visualization methods.