Never work for free. Never work for cheap. Yes, I’ve done both and I’ve had some good and some bad experiences but I can tell you the negative experience has far outweighed the good. Here is an example of what I mean
There’s a lady who’s been wanting me to do a FREE newborn shoot (I’m new at it) for her daughter but my kids have been terribly sick and we’ve had to reschedule a few times and now my son got into a massive accident and she sent this really mean message tonight and I sent her a picture of the car just stating that you know I’ve been having a tough time and she’s being really rough on me about it and rescheduling on her a few times.. Just not sure what to do.. I told her I’d do it Wednesday but I’m in no condition to do it.. I know my work won’t be good and I’m just depressed and don’t know what to say to her.
From a recent Facebook post I read
I see these posts or their sister posts about doing a cheap photography session virtually every day and they are all very similar.
I know there are concepts of “trade for” where the photographer and the “client” work together with neither charging because they are exchanging services. I don’t consider that work for free. I also understand that some would consider the example above could be a trade for because the photographer may be able to use this as practice blah, blah, blah. But, you get into the problem of cheap customers will always be cheap customers, free customers will always be free customers. I tried the business of photography once in a half-assed way, but I wasn’t ready to be in business. I was horrible at collecting the money even though I always requested half upfront I rarely collected it and then had the experience of slow payers. The customers never got the product until the bill was paid but most of those I allowed to not pay upfront went months without an order of the finished product or payment.
The other concept I hear about where you work for free is to provide photography for a charity. Here is what I have learned about that. Charities, even those that are 501C3 charities have budgets to pay for some services such as printing, mailing, telephones, electricity, etc. I’ve researched some of the biggest name charities and all the big names pay huge sums of money to public relations and advertising agencies. To me, if I want to support a charity with photography I will donate money to the charity and request that to be used to pay a photographer.
I realize this post may irritate a few, it may even make some angry with me but think about the potential problems you can get before you work for free. For me, I’m not doing it anymore and I warn others to not work for free or for cheap.
Photographer Clay 