How to Save Hundreds on Photography #2

Tip number one was a long post, and I apologize, but I think there was a lot of good stuff in there. Unless you've been working in photography for a long time or with photographers at a high level, you may not have been exposed to those concepts, simple as they may be. It's not a crime to lack experience. Having experience and not be willing to share it...?

Tip Number 2: Ask Around The Office
Whether you work in a design firm or the MarCom department of a major corporation, this is a technique that can help you or your company save money that's not necessarily being wasted, more spent as a matter of consequence.

When you have an impending need for a trip to your local commercial photography studio, check around the office. Perhaps you've got two executives who need updated business portraits, or you've got six products from a specific product manager. Make a general inquiry around the company. Does anyone else need anything photographed? If you tease just one more shot out from under the rug, you just saved your company, your business, your budget, a considerable amount of money!

Here's why. It doesn't matter how your photographer charges for his or her work. The first shot is always the most expensive. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up your first shot and so most photographers have a minimum fee. If you slide that extra shot into your scheduled shoot, you saved the need to book with minimum fee at some later date. No one else is thinking about it, but because you manage the photography acquisition and therefore the shrinking photography budget, this puts two feathers in your cap. You're looking for ways to save money on real professional photography and you are finding ways to get more great photography with the same money.

This is far more effective than the common way of dealing with the problem- -simply demanding the photographer shoot it for less. Then when the photographer won't (because the photographer can't), the scornful photo buyer shoots it "in-house." The products look soft and bluish, the CEO looks jaundiced and oily and everybody's business just got a little worse.

So the moral of the story is: get more for the same, not the same for less (or less for nothing). And don't forget to mention how you found ways to save the company lots of money at your next review!