By Paul Gerrard, 1729337819
Hi All
Just been reading the "Level playing field" thread from yesterday on the topic of paid / TF shoots and it brings up a couple of questions that have been on my mind for some time...
Brief background... I shoot almost entirely TF but do most of my shoots in Italy as the model photography scene here in Ireland is somewhat limited and between dismal weather, limited daylight for many months of the year and lack of studio or suitably photogenic home I don't really have anywhere to shoot much of the time. Italy works for me - I go for a long weekend, book a nice apartment in a city where models are located and I can generally find models happy to shoot TF. But I am increasingly finding that the models I really want to shoot with work for pay only and also any of the top UK/international models on PP that tour Ireland are expecting to be paid too so I haven't been working with any of them.
I totally get that photography is a hobby and most hobbies cost money (glad I'm not into golf!) and if I'm willing to pay for cameras, lenses etc. it shouldn't be out of the question to pay for models and/or locations too. The problem I have right now is that I don't really feel I have any outlet for my work that justifies expensive shoots - I post a few photos on PP and also Instagram but I'm not really doing anything else with my images. PP has a good community, and it's great to get an occasional FPI but at the same time it's definitely a limited audience and it's geared towards single high quality images rather than sets of photos which also limits usable output and the reach from any given shoot. Instagram meanwhile has declining engagement, increasing censorship, shadowbans, etc so feels a lot less rewarding as a place to share work than it once was. And both platforms have low resolution that often disappoints after editing photos on a large 4k monitor. So spending a lot on money on a model and/or location for the final output to be a few small, low-res images than get viewed for a second or two by a handful of people on social media doesn't really feel like money well spent!
So my question to all photographers who are regularly paying models for shoots is how do you feel you're getting your money's worth from it? Are you just enjoying the creative process of the shoot, the editing etc. and the personal satisfaction of looking at your completed work? (this is probably what's keeping me going above anything else!) Is sharing on PP or Instagram with the associated engagement your endgame? Or are there any other sharing sites, Flickr, Twitter etc that are working well for you? Or other outlets like prints, photobooks, exhibitions, magazine publications, that are perhaps more satisfying as a final output?
And actually I have a second question! Are any photographers getting income directly from their model shoots? e.g. selling prints, paid sites like Patreon etc. I'm sure there's not too many people using model shoots as their primary income but even something like £50-£100 a month would create a budget for an occasional professional model shoot. I'm not asking what anyone earns but would like to hear from anyone that is offsetting the cost of model shoots with some revenue stream. Or how many people are earning money from another genre of photography (commercial, family photos, weddings etc.) that is creating a budget for models / locations?
I find myself at a bit of a crossroads, increasingly disillusioned with the social media side of things and I'm trying to figure out whether to just keep doing what I'm doing or should I be upping my game somehow and getting into doing paid shoots but with some other output/input to make it worthwhile
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