My first photo job

I thought I'd share a few of the thoughts I had after completing my first real job as a freelance photographer. I will touch topics like getting the job, working out the assignment and price with the client, the actual photography, and the post-production, so this might be a long thread. Bear with me, as I hope it will be informative for others in the same situation, and fun for you who might have done what I did.

Getting the job
I was lucky, and got contacted out of the blue by someone who had found me on-line. He had had a look at my Flickr account and my website (currently only in Norwegian, sorry). He also did a quick search on Google, and found my name associated with his field of work. (I have worked with kids with disabilities for several years.) This is what made him want me for the job. Not my superb photography skills (although he found them adequate), but my skills with kids with disabilities, as that's who he wanted me to shoot. I was in 7th heaven, as this is a major opportunity for anyone just starting out.

Fleshing out the assignment and price
Kim, the guy who contacted me, runs a magazine and website for and about people with disabilities through some Norwegian semi-university, semi-private enterprise organization. What he wanted was 50 photos of kids with disabilities, doing normal school activities, outdoors activities, and just "normal stuff". I was not to focus on the disability, but the person. Fair enough, as they are people too, just like you and me. He wanted to give me "somewhere between 15k and 20k NOK (Between $2.500 and $3.400) for the job". After a bit of discussion, where we made the deal that my name and web-address will be in the photo credit every time one of the photos are used, and we also understood that if I did good, I'll have more assignments from them, we ended up on 17.500 NOK (approx $3000) for the job. But then he started changing his needs. Now he suddenly wanted all the photos, both in 300 and 72 dpi, and only in the *.jpg format. This is when I decided to write a contract with him. Yeah, I know... that was very late in the process. The next time I do an assignment with this guy, I'll have the written contract with blanks to fill in (pricing, how many images, etc) with me the first time I enter his office. This is one of the things I learnt from this assignment. Paperwork is king!

I made a deal with a school for disabled children, and they sent a model release form and a letter describing the reason why we were doing
the shoot to the parents. It was of course I who dictated the letter,
as I wanted to make sure I didn't do anything illegal. It's not in your best interest to get sued by some parents because you've taken photos of their disabled kid and put it on the Internet. At least not when you're starting out as a freelance photographer. The turn-in was amazing. The parents of 24 children signed the model release form, and I set the date with the school.

The actual photo session
On the set date, at the right time, I went to the school and asked for the teacher I was supposed to talk with before starting shooting. He's the one with the model release forms, and he's also in charge of all the teachers that deal with the disabled children. Of course, he wasn't in. Actually, he was away all day. So, I actually pestered the secretary into finding someone else. She had to call the first teacher to make sure I was who I said I was, and then she found someone I could talk with. Thankfully, this first teacher had sent an e-mail with the names to all the other teachers, so I was free to start. I hope this is more an exception than the rule, because we spent almost two hours sorting out what should have been right from the start. If only my contact had been there!

The next two days, I spent walking around shooting the children on my list, while chatting with them and listening to what they had to say. A lot of these children are much smarter than you'd first think, so you tend to get pleasantly surprised a lot. Here are a few things I learnt during the two days: Remember to take breaks when you wander around like this. My "camera arm" elbow hurt a lot after the two days, because I only had one break a day. Also remember to drink a lot! When moving from indoors to outdoors, remember to change the ISO! And vice versa. And if you think your photos looks weird, check if you've got the spot meter on. I shot half a day before I noticed that my spot meter was turned on. After I realized my mistake, I had a much easier time inside. Don't be afraid to move objects around, or to talk to the subjects, because you might not be able to do their photo if you don't.

Post-production
After finishing the two days, I left for post-production. I had planned on doing this during the next two days, but that was way to optimistic. Due to the spot meter error, and the ISO-forgetfulness, I had to spend almost a week with Photoshop in order to salvage the worst photos, but in the end (with the help of a lot of actions in Photoshop) I could burn the images to a DVD, deliver the DVD to Kim, and send my bill.

All said and done - when I found almost $3000 on my freelance account, I was very happy. Both because I had fulfilled my first contract, but also because I know that I'll never make those same errors as I did this first time.