Running a Professional Photography Office (Part 1)

Many of you who will read this column are already tried and true professionals making a living at selling your images. Still, I’ve found that no matter how much we think we know, we can always learn something new from everyone. This column is intended to be for those serious amateurs that are just getting started and want to move their photography passion into some kind of entity that is actually making some money to at least support their hobby

What you'll need to get started:
Computer with lots of hard drive space
Back-Up Raid Array or External Hard Drives
PhotoShop, Lightroom, Microsoft Office or equivalent
Fast connection
FTP site or free web based file system
Archival storage system (DVDs, hard drives, online storage)
Website
Fax machine
Printer
Letterhead & Business Cards
Quiet space to work uninterrupted
Telephone with answering machine or voicemail
Getting Help

First of all you need to find a quiet space where you can work. Most people have some kind of home office scenario, an extra bedroom, the den, or maybe in the garage.

Seriously though, you need some space where you can work on your images and business processes without a lot of interruption. Processing images takes quiet time to make sure you take care of all the steps with the IPTC File info, metadata captioning and keywords which are so crucial to selling your images.

Get started with a good computer with a lot of capacity for storage of images.
Talk to experts about the right configuration of main memory, processor speed and hard drives to suit your needs. You should start with at least 600 gigabytes of storage and select a tower that has a few extra slots for additional drives as you need to add them. Just know that the more images you shoot and the fewer you delete, the more space you’ll end up needing in the end! Next come up with systems for backing up and archiving your images and your business data.

Pay for a fast DSL connection from the beginning because when you find you’re trying to send images to clients, you want them to transfer quickly. The dial-up connections often have problems and can’t send large files. We limit anything we send in an email attachment to 5 megabytes, as we’ve found most offices and even home offices of freelance designers and editors can take a 5 megabyte file.

Get yourself set up with an ftp site that you can post images to for clients to pick up. This is especially important if you’re sending more than a few images at a time. Many photographers have found the portal sites of Agpix.com and
DigitalRailroad.net very beneficial for this reason. They have viewing platforms where images can be posted for clients to review and their pricing is quite reasonable.

Of course you need a printer and a fax. With the fax you should add a separate telephone line that is dedicated to the fax only. (The old-fashioned fax/phone combos are a pain for everyone). With a Dedicated Fax Line you can still be on the telephone and a fax will come in automatically.

You’d be surprised how much a fax is still used, especially when signatures are required and you don’t have an electronic signature set up on your computer (which you should have anyway). Some clients will take an electronic signature via email, but the fax or regular mail is still the most often requested.

My recommendation would be to have your own telephone line for your business. Make sure your telephone has voicemail attached to it. Clients don’t really think your kids’ cute little messages with Mommy in the background are very professional. Those kinds of messages also give a clue to the level of “professional” they’re working with too.

The more you come across as an organized professional, complete with letterhead and business cards, your own logo, etc., the more serious people will take you.

This brings me to Letterhead and Business Cards. They don’t have to be real fancy—just come up with something simple that is representative of you. Some people like to use a favorite image they took—ask a few friends their opinion of several shots before you commit to one. Photographers are often drawn to a very personal nature photo that speaks to their style as well, or maybe just use an element of it in their logo or on the card.

You can often find freelance designers just starting out that will work out the logo and design for a reasonable price. You can also go to Office Depot on-line and put together your own cards and letterhead from templates they have. My son did a simple business card recently (he’s 18) and came up with a handsome two colored card—he got 500 cards for $35.00. Not bad. It looked professional too. He’s still trying to figure out what his business is...but that’s another story.

I think that this might be a good time to talk about getting help. Many of us are not as computer literate as we’d like to be. I know I’m still not, although I’ve learned a lot from my younger staff over the years! This brings me to the value of high school and college students. They are computer savvy, can set up all kinds of computer scenarios, can do research on the internet for you, and can even help you by typing in the IPTC caption and keyword info (with you sitting by their side while working together on images).

They’re much faster than some of us 40+, and really don’t cost that much. You could probably pay them $8-10 bucks an hour and really get your money’s worth—especially if you’re not a great typist. Look for kids at local high schools (contact the main office) involved with photography or graphic arts programs. All the schools have technology centers these days and you might even contact someone in the media department for recommendations for kids looking for part time after school work.

Later on, when you’re at the point that you can use some serious help with Photoshop and processing your raw images, look to the local colleges and graduates from photo oriented programs around the country. They are right on top of the cutting edge of digital imaging and have quite a bit of experience with Photoshop. Not only can you hire them to help you process your images, but they can teach you some of the tricks they know in Photoshop that will benefit you in the long run.

I’ve recently hired graduates from Brooks Institute and Seattle Central Community College’s Commercial Photography program and they are outstanding! I’m sure RIT in NY has talented graduates looking for work as well. Don’t discount location too—often one can figure out how to work with people remotely. There are many options these days with the on-going advances in technology! I had one gal doing keywording for me in NYC and later in France while she was going to school at the International Center of Photography in NYC.

That’s it for this column. In the next few issues I’ll address the actual business of preparing images and finding clients, among other things. Until then, Happy Shooting!

This article first appeared in the Fall 2007 Issue of NANPA's Currents magazine.