Another Sad Sign of The Times
TweetTalk-A-Phone Co. needs quality photography of our products in the field. We manufacture the emergency phone towers and wall mounts that can be found on thousands of college campuses, hospitals, and parking structures. We need someone local to the Newberg, Oregon area with a good camera (over 10MP).
We need them to travel to George Fox University and take 20-30 photographs of a few of our units. Good work will make us consider you for more work in the future. We require no post work, just the photographs (we will do post work). We expect this job to take 45min-1hour of your time.
We are offering $50 for this first job (very easy work) and possibly more if we choose to use you for more work in the future. Please reply to us via email and we will go over more details.
eBay Classifieds – 17 hours ago – save job -
When good photographers require expensive equipment to create ‘quality images’ as this posting requires, insurance, gas to get there, and enough money to ‘have a life’, assignments like this wont get you there nor keep you in business. When clients ask me for ‘quality images’ then that includes lighting gear and the tools to create quality indoor images in locations that often have poor lighting, I light the product and create a quality image. 20-30 shots would take all day!
During 32 years in the business shooting exactly this type of assignment and on occasion being promised more work if I did this first assignment on the cheap, I can only recall getting all the gravy stuff once. Most of these offers never happened and it was not because I provided inferior work since the images I shot were all published and on some occasions, published widely. It is a ruse to get things cheap by making a beginning or hungry photographer ‘hope’ for more.
I think I will call United Airlines and offer $50 for a flight to Maui (it’s freezing here) and promise them I will fly United again.
Would you accept this assignment?
Related Posts: The Photo Recession, Non-Profits, and Requests for Free Photography
Sounds like a few music gigs I’ve been offered. Looks like it happens in the Photography business too. Some people are completely clueless… and cheap!
Yep! Sounds familiar. I was looking for some extra cash once and inquired about an ‘insurance inspector’ job that involved photography. They wanted photos of homes they insured along with filling out a check list of items from an outside inspection. It said that it paid $15 average. That was gross and included the mileage. You had to pay all your own insurance, Soc. Sec. and other taxes out of it because you were an independent contractor. When I inquired how it worked I found that they paid a flat amount per inspection plus mileage between sites. I live in a rural area and it didn’t take much figuring to realize that with 10-30 miles between sites I wasn’t going to see anything like their average which was already lame. I’d have been lucky to see minimum wage.
Of course those bozos won’t “choose to use you for more work in the future” — they’ll just use the next hapless respondent and pay them 50 bucks. The appropriate response is to ignore such ads — and of course publicize the cheapskates on Web sites such as this one to warn others off. You know what your time is worth; don’t sell it for less.
Or if you want to aggravate the advertiser, which they may well deserve, ask them how many other photographers have gotten more than one assignment, and request their contact information so that you can talk to them yourself.
I’ve taken some damn good photos with a 10 Mp camera! This ad is pathetic.
I hate seeing those types of jobs listed, but hey, $50.00 can buy you a lot of shares in American Airlines these days.
Either enjoy the ride or find another amusement park to play in.
If you used to shoot film, you remember hearing this; “Will you shoot for free if I pay for the film and processing? You’ll get great exposure.”
SSDD!
Have Fun,
Jeff