A good friend sent me this article from PDN, about the General Mills Photography Studios in Minneapolis, with the comment:
“We try to get the best food photographers we can, then we have our poorly paid staff photographers ‘learn their tricks’and emulate them all year! Everybody wins! LOL We always give our favorite photographers a lot of free ice cream to show them we appreciate their efforts!”
That was my initial read as well (without the thinly-veiled sarcasm), and I’m sure a lot of photographers feel the same way. But the situation is much more nuanced and it reveals a lot of truth about the nature of commercial photography.
In-house studios are an easy target because of this perception that they take work away from freelancers. Well, sure they do. But that’s because they employ full time photographers who themselves are looking for opportunities. And some clients need a lot of photos of the same thing. Products and more products. It isn’t glamourous work, in fact it can be downright crushing to do the same variations every. single. day. They’re also shackled to the client’s vision, and are forced to use a muted style. And using the same lighting setups for each shot, there isn’t a lot of room to grow. I don’t envy in-house photographers – they’re essentially technicians. All the negatives of commercial photography but none of the freedom.
So here’s the setup: freelancers come in and shoot, while the in-house team watches over their shoulder, takes notes on their lighting, equipment, technique, etc. Then the client never calls the freelancer again. This actually happens all the time. The nuance is in how much everyone agrees that this is an educational process. General Mills was very upfront about the whole thing and the photographers were (I imagine) happy to be in the spotlight. They were paid standard rates and usage. To me, this is the main issue. A teaching experience like that is worth waaaaaay more to the client than any images they get out of it. Presumably it will pay dividends the rest of the year, with staff photographers putting new tricks to use. They should have charged a lot more as a consulting fee for an event like this. In the end it is a great idea – the most effective studios do this regularly, assigning the staff to work as a digital tech to more established photographers. And if you do that often enough you don’t create ill will because a) it is expected and b) you’re still hiring the freelancers. The MSLO studios come to mind – they’ve produced some talented people already, but still call in the big guns for the important features/covers.
Last year Big Leo’s own Susan Spungen spent a week on set for a client, who had brought in freelance photographers and stylists to do the same thing, as a teaching experience for the staff. But the entire time she was there, she never felt like anyone was looking over her shoulder or taking notes. The main reason for that is because what she does as a food stylist goes beyond technique – it has more to do with the craft, and the art. You can’t write those things down. If all you are as an artist is a bag of tricks that can be made obsolete by a few staff photographers taking notes – you better learn some new tricks. It all comes back to developing a visual voice, a style that is entirely your own. Something to set your work apart.
In commercial photography there is always going to be the pull to become just a technician. But you have to resist that urge, no matter how many bills can be paid with that one product shoot. Sure, those are great, but then you’re just one small part of a team of people that are asking you to recreate their vision; in the arch of a long career, that is unsustainable because you’re competing with everyone who can learn to be a technician. But an artist? That takes creativity. And you can always charge extra for that.
