LSU #7 burns the UNC defense in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game.

LSU’s #7 burned the defense of UNC a few times that day, so they defeated UNC.

Editorial Note: This is written to help photographers, and I hope this helps you to learn from something I do when I am in a difficult situation.

I have just been burned again by a client.  It happens and will probably happen again. I am writing about this because I have watched not just other photographers screw up in these situations, but I have as well.

Why?

In this business, I have seen that you can still get burned even with solid business practices and doing everything right. , you can be right and exercise that right only to burn yourself.

Micah Solomon’s blog today talks about “Digging in your heels… to destroy the customer experience.” I have stood up for certain principles and was right, but the customer was wrong. I lost some of those customers.  It would be best to be very careful when you dig in your heels.

There are times when you must think strategically. Where do you want to go in your life? How will you grow your business if you are always right?

Just like the football game photos, if you get burned once, you can still win the game; get burned too many times, and you lose.

My latest experience

I have a couple of agencies that call me for work. This works because they get a cut of the gross. After all, they booked the job and found the client.

The agency was courting a new client. They contacted me before they had a signed contract to see my availability.

They then sent me a terms and conditions document that outlined the Usage Rights last Friday. I agreed to these terms.

I get the contact names and times they are available Tuesday afternoon.  I then shot the assignment on Wednesday morning and transmitted the images late Wednesday afternoon to my agency.

Within a few minutes of the images being transferred to New York, I emailed them that everything was there, including the photos and model releases. I get this email:

Hi Stanley,

You are great !!! Made us look good.. here..:)  I finally landed this corporate account, hoping she would give us more work; they want to try us out to see how we do regarding our services, good photographers, and professionals.. !!! She is talking about another round of 4 or 5, fingers crossed.

Re:  Rights
The client couldn’t do __________. . .

There was a change in the agreement after the images were delivered. I was furious and steaming mad. I had to get up from my desk and take a walk outside.  I knew from past experiences like this I needed to calm down and think this through before formulating a response, which was required.

I told her the rights change needed to be compensated typically and was very disappointed.  Then she responded to my email:

You are right.. this just came to me last night before we signed the contract; we did not sign it as of yesterday, so either I pulled the plug or took the job.

In the future, with this client.. this is the right!

I can and still have the right to say they cannot use the photos because this is not what I agreed to in the terms.

My choices and possible outcomes

I have the right to say they can not use the photos. The terms and conditions that I agreed to are still in place, but if they do not live up to them, I can refuse to use the images for their purposes.

I can say nothing and take the deal. For many struggling photographers, this is where they are often caught.  They have bills to pay and don’t have much room to turn down any offer–at least, that is what they think.

Phone call

Robin Nelson

I picked up the phone and called my good friend Robin Nelson, a very talented photographer. Both of us work for similar clients, and when I am booked, and someone calls for an assignment, Robin is one of the names I give to my clients.

Robin and I need each other as sounding boards.  I think without someone like Robin, whom I can call and who helps me think through the scenarios, I would have screwed up even more relationships with clients than I have ever done.

This is why it is so important for photographers to join organizations like the American Society of Media Photographers. This is where you find colleagues who can be your sounding board, and you can be theirs.

When a photographer calls you, you will soon realize you can see the solutions that when you are the one in difficulty, you cannot see. You have nothing usually at stake, and you are not emotionally involved.

Who is to blame here?

The client isn’t the real problem here. It is the agency where the ball was dropped.  They had time to communicate with the photographer.

I think it’s essential to understand what relationship is at stake here. The agency needs two things to survive. They need clients, and they need photographers to do the work.

I have lived long enough to understand how negotiations take place now. I have accepted terms and conditions that I usually wouldn’t do because I just had a car repair I didn’t expect or an unexpected medical expense.

I talked with the agency and wanted to be sure they understood I was pretty upset with the change in the terms. I also let this one go because I want an ongoing relationship with the agency.

Perfection wanted–Mercy needed.

The agency hires me and expects me to deliver every time, which I do for them. However, I have had cameras fail me in the past.

I had a Hasselblad camera screw up a photo shoot in the days of film.  The lens had been left in a car and got so hot that the oil that lubricated it became like a liquid and flowed onto the aperture blades and made them stick.  All of my photos using studio strobes were overexposed.

We had to reschedule some portraits and shoot again, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Friends of mine have shot weddings, and the film was dropped off on a Monday at the post office and delivered to the lab.  The semi-truck of many photographers’ weddings was on its way to the lab that week and caught fire.  Hundreds of weddings were lost that week.

Thank goodness for digital. Both scenarios can’t happen now, but other things can go wrong.

If you want some mercy extended to you in the future, you must be careful about how you deal with forgiveness yourself.

The agency apologized, and while I still am disappointed, I can move on with my life.

“Burn me once, shame on you, burn me twice, shame on me” is what my good friend Tony Messano reminded me a few years ago.  He, too, gets burned by clients. There is a certain amount of trust that you have to have in a business relationship.  Tony said I will take a risk once, but not twice.

Next Time

I understand that I will not allow changes in our terms without compensation.  If it happens again and I do not take action, I will communicate that I can be bought at any price.

I do not believe I have sold out by letting my agency slide on this one, but I would be a fool if I continued this behavior.

When it happens again, you will be better prepared. Football teams watch game footage of the teams they will play so that they will have seen most of the plays before. It is one thing to be beaten by a new play and another to lose by something you have seen before.

Got to be flexible

While you can try to run your business by a set of rules, everything is not so black and white. When you are flexible, you communicate your willingness to work with someone. You are considering the situation and not selling out but trying to make things work.

By sharing this with you, you know that negotiating is an art, not a science. You have to use your heart and mind and, as I often do, a community of other creatives to be my sounding board.