Re: [Leica] Payment for photos

["Steve LeHuray" <icommag@toad.net>]

> Steve;
>  Just curious, but how much do you pay writers and photographers.
> Jay

The base rate for feature stories is $400. I do most of the photography,
but, a few weeks ago I hired a freelance photographer for a 1 hour
assignment and paid her $200 plus film cost.

Steve
>
> Steve wrote
> "Also unemployed 30 years ago in California I accidently (the way most of
> the
> things in my life have happened) fell into free lance motor sports
> journalism, writing and photography. At the time the standard pay was $1
> per
> inch for story and $5 per picture published. Certainly not much, but by
> being good and hustling I started to get plum assignments which meant the
> inch and picture rate doubled. Wow!! Now $2 inch and $10 a picture, still
> not really very much. But I got by and after about a year I was offered a
> staff position at a salary that was barely over poverty level, at least it
> was steady. And as an assistant editor I had a lot of people call me up
> wanting to write for the magazine and when I told them the pay there was
> always silence on the other end of the line and a "let me think about it."
>
> Since then I have freelanced for a few national and international
> magazines
> and the rates are still pretty meager. As an example of somebody we all
> know
> and love, Mike J. former editor of Photo Technique e-mailed me last winter
> after I posted an item on the LUG about a photographer here in Annapolis
> who
> had taken the famous photo of John, John saluting his father, JFK, at his
> funeral. The photographer was now suffering severe depression. Mike J.
> thought that would be a good story and by-the-way take a picture. The pay?
> $25.
>
> I have a friend who is a free lance writer who does feature stories for
> the
> Baltimore Sun and Washington Post, been doing it for years, and has never
> been paid more than $200 for a feature story.
>
> So why bother? Well if you have a burning desire to be a professional
> photographer or writer this is what you have to do, start at the bottom,
> work for practically nothing, be very, very good (because there is tons of
> competition), learn the self-marketing skills that puts you in the
> position
> to demand a fair price.
>
> I never made much money as a freelance photographer even though I have
> photographed, homeless bums, many celebrities even a President in the Oval
> Office. I lost count at 1,000 of photos published, but, it has been a
> great
> trip. And along the way I learned enough skills so that now I OWN my
> second
> monthly magazine.
>
> So, it seems like it all depends on where you want to be in life. Just my
> .02 cents.
>
> Steve
> Annapolis"
>
>