[Leica] volunteer picture taking

[Ted Grant <tedgrant@islandnet.com>]

Tina wrote:

<<<<I get so many phone calls from non-profit agencies saying,  "We would like
>to use your photographs but we can't pay you anything."  My response to the
>caller is, "Do you receive a salary?  If so, why do you expect me to work
>for nothing." >>>>>

Hello Tina,

After being burned several times by "well meaning salary receiving " people
in "NON_PROFIT" groups in how they used my photography, I use the same type
of question/answer you do.

Some of these people think you'd love to go to other countries to take
"some pictures" that we can use to raise funds. You say OK the first time,
seems like a good gig, only to find they have taken along a number of
others who are free loaders with all expenses paid and merely along as
"image makers for the group"

Mean while you the photographer, are working your ass off at your cost
maintaining photographic integrity, "after all these people need good
images to raise money, I can't let them down!" It isn't just the trip that
costs you money, it's all the time and lab costs after you get home.

This volunteer stuff is great for big corporations, but when you are a one
or two person business it makes a major difference on an overall cost
factor.

The real burner is when you deliver the images and later, like maybe
several months later, you receive a form letter thanking you for your
contribution and they'd love to have you do it again!  That's it!

Until you open a magazine or newspaper to a full page ad of your picture or
pictures...without even a creditline!....Once burned you get it twice!

So folks without sounding sour grapes and cold hearted, "I don't do
volunteer" anymore, simply for the same reason Tina has stated...."Do you
get a salary or get paid?"  Somebody in every non-profit organization gets
paid and as long as their fund raising is "anchoured on photography" yours
or others, they should pay for the best photographer/photography they can
get.  Heck some of us would go for half our fee, at least it would offset
some of the loss.

After all, it's the images of wide eyed starving kids that tug at the heart
strings to "give" and the better the picture the more money it raises!

Like Tina, I get lots of calls to "go on a junket" as a volunteer and take
some "good snaps for us to raise money."  "Snaps, volunteer and free" are
words I don't hear very well any longer!

ted

Ted Grant
This is Our Work. The Legacy of Sir William Osler.
http://www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant