[Pho.Talk] Beginner's Guide: What is Freelance Photography?

Freelance Photography is an occupation that sounds really cool and this phrase gets thrown around quite a lot. In this article, I will walk you through the basic definition, day-to-day as a freelance photographer based in Hong Kong. You will also learn why we exist, and pros and cons of becoming one.

Freelance Photographers are legally self-employed, hired by various clients on a project, contractual basis. Clients can include individuals, agencies and brands or corporations. A wide range of of work can be involved, including weddings, fashion, products, events, and food etc. The photographer will be in charge of marketing his services, customer management, as well as administrative matters, alongside photography.

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Freelance Photography Definition

Legal status: Freelance Photography is a business run by a photographer. The photographer runs the incorporated business under the law governing the region he is based in.

Employment status: Freelance business owners are generally classified as self-employed. The relationship between the freelancer and the client is contractual. The photographer is not an employee of the client.

Clientele: The freelance photographer therefore usually enters contractual relationships with multiple clients at the same time.

Income: The income of a freelance photographer is the aggregate amounts agreed in the contracts with all clients. He will usually be taxed as a business rather than paying salary tax.

Day-to-Day of a Freelance Photographer

Photoshoots

Surely, as photographers, our job is to shoot for our clients. This is usually the impression people have as to the the exciting part of being a freelancer.

What: Clients pay us a budget for the job, and in exchange we provide a set of final, retouched photos from the shoot, in digital or in prints.

When:

  • Certain shoots have more flexible schedules than others.

  • For individual portrait shoots, it is usually a two hour session taking place at an agreed time.

  • For product shoots, it usually takes longer depending on the size of the batch of products and the complexity of the lighting setups.

  • Longer sessions would include weddings, which generally last for the entire day.

Where:

  • Photoshoots can take place literally ANYWHERE.

  • For outdoor shoots, I have shot at temples, markets, shopping malls, streets, just to name a few.

  • For indoor shoots, I have shot in studios, hotels, homes, cafes, etc.

Who:

  • Depending on the job scope of the project, the crew for the photoshoot can include 2 people up to 10+.

  • If it is a product shoot, photographers can manage it alone or with an assistant;

  • If it is a fashion shoot, we form a team of freelancers including makeup artists, models, stylists to put together a fashion concept;

  • For weddings, photographers usually hire second shooters, and work with a team of videographers to provide a variety of footages for the client’s big day.

How:

  • Photographers may be the organiser of the shoot under certain arrangements.

  • Sometimes, the photographer hires a second shooter, an assistant, and is also in charge of putting together a team of creatives for the shoot.

  • We bring the necessary equipment when shooting on location, including lights, stands, cameras and lenses.

  • After the shoot, the photographer is in charge of editing the set of photos and transferring the final files to the client.

Networking and Marketing

Freelance photographers are creatives and businessmen two in one. We do everything ourselves, including promoting our services to prospective clients.

What:

  • We showcase our best work and portfolio to demonstrate a consistent record of success in handling projects.

  • It is also important to give clients a feel of our personalities to show that we are fun to work with.

  • It can come in form of social media content, blog articles (like this one), networking events and active outreaching.

When:

  • Freelancers are never off work. We do what we are passionate about, and are happy to grind harder to reap better results.

  • Due to the trend of omni-channel marketing, freelancers need to take advantage of every single opportunity, to get our work out there in as many ways as possible.

Where:

  • Instagram and Facebook are mostly used to upload our actual production

  • Youtube videos is a good way to host tutorials and show some interesting behind-the-scenes

  • Blog posts capitalise on the power of Google search, which is the main search engines through which customers look for information

  • Networking events is where we meet with corporations and decision-makers in the field of the targeted clients we serve, to build connections and make an impression

  • Active outreaching can include pitching, through cold calls, Instagram DMs, cold emails, to brands that we want to work with

How:

  • Freelancers usually have a posting schedule that we follow to organise our social media content

  • We also have promotional materials ready, such as business cards, flyers, media kits, portfolios etc

  • To grow social media accounts, we take care of social media strategies as well, including the use of Hashtags, Instagram Analytics, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), just to name a few.

Business Administrative Tasks

Freelance photography is essentially a business on a smaller scale. Therefore, we will have to handle the mundane administrative tasks to maintain our financial health and keep our companies up and running.

What:

  • Book-keeping ensures that we have all the income and expenses recorded in one, organised, place. This helps us see clearly if we are spending prudently and pricing our services properly.

  • Legal safeguards minimises the potential issues we can have with a client in the event of any miscommunication, which, happens more often than most would expect.

  • Invoicing is a mechanism to request payment professionally from clients, that is legally enforceable in courts.

  • Responding to client enquiries through emails and DMs.

When:

  • Freelance photographers regularly go over these areas to ensure that the important terms are up to date.

  • Some documentations are part of closing every booking, such as sending out invoices and contracts.

  • Before and after the shoot, clients may raise various enquiries regarding the pricing packages and the delivery of our services.

How:

  • Regarding legal issues, it is best practice for freelance photographers to delegate to a licensed lawyer for a review. You might think that you have covered everything, until you show it to a lawyer and realise that it is full of loopholes.

  • Book-keeping might be done via online apps and softwares, or managed by the freelancer himself, or an employee.

Craft Building

Every successful freelance photographer is known for being exceptionally good about one thing.

As the famous photographer Walid Azami always preaches in his Youtube Videos, you need to be the expert in one thing, not the Jack of all trades.

Therefore, in order to build a brand around ourselves, we need to constantly sharpen our skills around a particular aspect in photography.

What:

  • Shooting personal side projects that allows us to exert as much creative freedom as we wish to

  • Set up collaboration shoot with fellow creatives to keep experimenting with people

  • Invest in better gear where necessary

  • Attend masterclasses and watch what other photographers are doing

When:

  • When it comes to freelancing, a strong personal brand is our greatest asset. So any time is a good time to brush up some skills

  • As simple as it sounds, the more you put into photography, the better you get.

Why is there a Market for Freelance Photography?

Specialisation:

Photography covers a lot of sub-genres, depending on how specific do you want to go. But the types of skillsets involved are so varied that it is hard for one photographer to be a master of all of them.

Each freelance photographer would narrow down their field of expertise to some extent. Some mostly focuses on weddings or families, others do products, I shoot mainly portraits etc.

But a client would have many needs. They may release a product and need photos for them, and they may host an event that they need to photograph, and they may update their website and need executive headshots.

For different occasions, there will be a different photographer that would be the best fit, which is why the freelance model works best from the client’s perspective.

Demand:

The demand for photos can be quite fluid. There might be brands that shoot all year round, but that is the minority.

Most businesses do not need photos on a day-to-day basis. Likewise, individuals mostly only shoot during an important life event like a wedding, or a graduation, or a birthday party.

I explained more in depth about the dynamics in the photography market in this blog post - Guide to Starting a Freelance Photography Business with No Experience.

But in a nut shell, photos are not an ongoing necessity for the majority of clients.

Therefore, it makes more sense to work with photographers on a contractual basis when the need comes up.

Cost Management:

Following from the point above, hiring a photographer in-house usually costs way more than a freelance photographer.

In terms of dollar amount, even if the two cost roughly the same per hour, the in-house option apparently will bill up to more hours than the freelancer.

Also, from an efficiency point of view, the in-house arrangement is not optimising how the client’s resources are used because probably around half of the time there are no photoshoots happening.

And apart from the wage, the client will also have to take care of overheads incurred due to having an in-house photographer for putting him in a studio, electricity bills etc.

By contracting with freelance photographers, the client is no longer in charge of these costs because the freelancer usually works in his own studio.

Perks of being a Freelance Photographer

Own your Efforts

The biggest difference between running a freelance business and working as an employee is whether or not you own what you produce.

In a corporation, its employees exchange their efforts with their salary. Once they got that pay check, the firm has bought out their ownership in the work they put in.

As a freelancer, or any business owner in general, you work to build something that belongs to you. No one pays you (because you decide if and how much you should get paid), but your efforts go into something you own.

You can manage as many client as you want as an employee, but on the day you leave the firm, those clients belong to the company, not you.

As a freelance photography, your clients are yours. Period.

Choose Who to Work With

Having worked as BOTH a freelance photographer and a corporate employee, this difference has shown me the value in being free to make decisions as to who to work with.

In a corporate world, I was no more than an executor. I take up jobs not considering what is in my interest, but what is in the corporation’s interests.

In the freelance world, I can make the ultimate decision as to whether I want to work with a client who approached me. I can shut difficult people down if I think they are not worth my time and energy.

The right to make decisions for myself is incredibly liberating.

Work on a Variety of Projects

We mentioned earlier that Freelance Photographers are hired by various clients separately due to this contactual job nature.

In the case of an in-house photographer, he probably gets to shoot the same types of products many times, over and over again.

For freelancers, since every job has different objectives, and the clients can be in many industries. So as freelancers, we have room to work a mix of projects.

Downsides of being a Freelance Photographer

Uncertainty of Income

As we have seen, most freelance photographers work with client on a contractual basis. In conjunction with the fact that demand for photos tend to be seasonal, there is no guarantee that each contract would lead onto another contract.

Plus, due to the abundant supply of photographers on the market, the client is constantly on the lookout for talent that could bring fresh ideas to the table.

Therefore, except for the most successful ones, freelancers are seldom sure about how much they are going to make next month, or if they are making any money at all.

Making Sacrifices

The freelance photography business is, for the most part, a one-man band.

Most of us, except for the very accomplished ones, have the bandwidth to hire assistants to help deal with the above mentioned day-to-day tasks.

Therefore, we do everything ourselves, which takes up a lot of time. To some of us, this freelance is just a side gig and we have a 9-5 on weekdays.

In order to make time to keep up with freelance photography, we are unable to do some things that we would otherwise be able to do with our spare time, say watch Netflix, shopping, hang out with friends every weekend etc.

Of course, a balance can always be maintained if something is important enough. But the bottom line is, some sacrifices must be made since freelance photography became a priority.

Feeling of Loneliness

This is an issue commonly faced not only by freelancers, but also business owners in general.

Most of the human race are content with working a day job. The people who want to create something and be independent from the employment system is indeed a rarity.

People might see that you are doing photography, but that is pretty much all they know - what they don’t see is all the work that goes into the photos.

So most of our friends who are not also a freelancer might be able to connect with us to the extent where our work is concerned, but not so much about the rejections, and marketing failures and the client handling parts.

It can feel like fighting for your dream while the world continue to evolve without you.

Summary

In this article, we talked about:

  • A brief definition of freelance photography,

  • The day-to-day tasks of a freelance photographer,

  • Why such a market exists,

  • and the pros and cons of being a freelance photographer.

More sharing coming soon!

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