Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Last year Instagram announced the Reels Play Bonus Program, a program that allows creators to earn money from their Reels. Some serious sums were mentioned back then, but it appears that not everything is going as planned.
According to some reports, Instagram has slashed the payouts in the last couple of weeks. Some creators are seeing as much as a 70% cut, and to top it off, they reportedly need millions more views to get paid at all.
It’s not a secret that TikTok is one of Instagram’s biggest competitors right now, if not the biggest. As if copying TikTok’s features (twice… no, three times), Instagram is now paying creators up to $35,000 to post Reels.
Competition is fierce in the social media world, both between major platforms and people who use them. As an attempt to fight competition, Facebook plans to invest $1 billion in influencers as an incentive for using its platforms.
When it comes to negotiations, as a photographer (or any freelance artist, for that matter) you’ve got to master the art of not being emotionally invested in the outcome – something that is nearly impossible to do. But without it, you’ll never be able to break free of difficult clients and underpaid gigs.
Ever since SmugMug acquired Flickr, the platform has seen some positive changes. However, it turns out that SmugMug bit off more than they could chew. The company is losing money, so they sent out an email to Flickr users asking them to help by upgrading to Flickr Pro.
There are a lot more music photographers than there are music photography jobs — that’s just how it is in this corner of the industry. It’s a port of entry for many hobbyist photographers, and the result is saturation of the market. A lot of budding photographers are willing to work for free, making the gigs that are out there even tougher to get.
When most bands are composed of young people just out of (or still in) high school, is understandable that most aren’t able to pay photographers much. I used to charge local bands $100 for a band promo shoot. That felt like a fair price back then; I gained valuable experience and it was affordable for the musicians as well.
But a few years down the line when you have thousands invested in gear, $100 shoots aren’t going to cover your costs, not to mention your time. When you reach that point, you have to figure out other ways of simply financially maintaining your hobby. I want to shed light on a few opportunities that I’ve found and seen my peers succeed in, not just breaking even but actually making a living.
Money is a sensitive topic among photographers, and it’s especially tricky if you’re new to charging for your services. Many photographers don’t want to sound like “bad guys” when determining the price, so they tend to devalue their work. Also, sometimes it’s difficult to determine what exactly your services are worth. In this video, Photographer David Bergman will give you some precious tips on determining your value and talking about money with your clients.
‘Money doesn’t grow on trees’.
Try telling that to the kids who were shaking bills out of trees yesterday after a mysterious drone operator dropped one Dollar bills on a crowd attending an event at Great Rapid’s Rosa Parks Circle.
According to reports the drone dropped between $50-100 in total, all in one Dollar bills, but people were running to collect the cash as if it was, well… raining money.
Yesterday, the Bank of England officially opened up the process for the public to nominate a visual artist they’d like to see printed on the new £20 notes. According to the Bank of England, a visual aritst is broadly defined, but includes “architects, artists, ceramicists, craftspeople, designers, fashion designers, filmmakers, photographers, printmakers and sculptors.” But, the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) is determined to get a photographer’s bust to grace the note and is asking for the help of anyone who uses a camera or simply enjoys looking at photographs.
Michael Pritchard, RPS director general, says, “Photography has been the defining medium of the ninteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries and it’s inconceivable that a photographer or someone connected with photography would not be chosen as the face of the new £20 banknote.” RPS suggests[Read More…]
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