Pat Miller talks with award-winning fine art and commercial photographer, Christina Peters, about protecting your photography aspirations. If you're serious about turning your passion into a sustainable business, this is one episode you can't afford to miss.

Episode Highlights 🎤💡:

(16:54) - Photography Business Regulations

(27:46) - Photography Contracts

(38:55) - Copywriting Your Work

Connect with Pat Miller⬇

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Connect with Christina Peters⬇

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I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. As you know, podcasts come in all shapes and sizes. Ones that you laugh at, ones that can be on in the background while you're doing the dishes, ones that have famous people lounging on couches with terrible posture. I mean, just awful. How is that even a thing? And then, there's this podcast, or at least this episode of The Professional Photographer. This one, it's gonna be hard work, like a pen and paper and really paying attention, hard work. Now I know as soon as I said hard work, you went, ugh, hard work. I don't wanna do hard work But this is for your own good, and let me explain. You're working so hard to build a photography studio and business that you can be proud to operate now and into the future. But if you're not running a solid business, you can make a seemingly simple mistake and damage your outlook. Sometimes that damage could even be fatal to the business, not to you. But you're not alone on this journey because today we are bringing in someone to defend you and look out for your interests. Christina Peters is going to outlay 20 questions that you must ask yourself to protect your photography business. Now is it really 20? I don't know. It might be 18, might be 23. But 20 sounded really snappy. Okay? So she's gonna challenge you to think about your business and the important aspects you must guard to stay open. We're gonna talk about your money, your clients, and your intellectual property. And, boy, does she have that down. You gotta hear that part. I'm telling you, this one is going to be so good for you. So get that notebook, get a cup of coffee, and get ready to work hard because we are diving in to protect your business. We'll be back with Christina Peters in just a moment. Christina Peters, welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

Hi, Pat. Thank you so much. Doing good. Doing good. Happy to be here.

I'm glad you're here. I love the way that you look at business, and this episode is not some high-minded pretty picture kinda episode. This is get your notebook out. We're gonna ask you the tough questions, and we're going to get some stuff done. But one thing you talk about, and I think it's hilarious, is your BFD. That's where it all starts. So what's the BFD?

So the BFD is pretty important, and what that is is the big fat disclaimer. So Pat and I are not attorneys. We're not accountants. We don't even play them on TV, but it's really important to recognize what we're talking about today. We're just hoping to give you sort of some hints and clues for what you need to do for your business, questions you need to ask your sort of business team, and we'll talk about what that means later. But everyone's business is completely different. We can't answer specific questions for you. We can't tell you exactly how to set things up for yourself. But with today's conversation, hopefully, by the end of that, you're gonna have a better understanding of what questions you need to start asking for your own business, basically.

Yeah. That's a great reminder. And hopefully, you'll take away at least 1 or 2 things to go ask somebody who knows. Not an accountant. Certainly not an accountant or lawyer. So thank you for that reminder. With that in mind, we have so many questions to get through. I thought it would be good to break them down into chunks. So money, clients, and intellectual property are the 3 different areas that we will talk about. And I'm sure we'll, you know, go down some rabbit holes into some other stuff too.

Always.

But let's start with money because it always begins and ends with money. But sometimes it can depend on where you live. So when it comes to money, give us an example about where we live and how it might affect our money.

Right. So everywhere you are in the world, where you live radically affects how you run your business, the type of fees you can charge, and what sort of custom and standard in your area. Now I worked in Los Angeles for many, many years. I've also shot in various cities in the country, and I've also shot in a very small town. Very different animals here when we're talking to clients about money. In small towns, usually, the budgets are a lot smaller. And so I always suggest for photographers who are in a small town, if you are finding that clients in your area aren't, I'll just say in air quotes, willing to pay your fee, you're gonna have to start looking possibly outside your area to the next largest city, that kind of a thing, in order to get paid what you feel you should be getting. In big cities, usually, there's a higher overhead. So there's a built-in understanding that the photo shoot's not gonna be a couple $100. There's always exceptions to this. You're gonna get the clients who think you should shoot for free, you know, for exposure.

Oh, yeah.

And then there's, you know, the type of clients that get it. And, you know, if they have a small business or they have a nice home in that area, they're paying a lot of money for that as well. So they know you are too. So everyone's overheads are bigger and bigger cities. And so there's sort of a sliding scale of fees, if you will, when we're talking about your specifically your location regarding the amount of money you're gonna be charging as a photographer.

When you say that out loud, it's like, well, of course, cost of living is different in Los Angeles or Lincoln, Nebraska where I lived. Go Big Red. But it's something we can easily forget. And when you see people talking about their business online, wow, I had a $15,000 photo shoot, and you're in Lincoln, Nebraska thinking I must be terrible. Well, no. Your $15,000 photo shoot might be $9,000. I mean, that's the right way to think about it?

That is. And there's a lot of other things in play with money, of course. So who is the client? How much do they make? Where are they based? How are they gonna be using the image? In the commercial world, that's huge. So my background is commercial photography. I very rarely am working with civilian, though, you know, so it's more B2B, more business to business clients is the type of work that I do. So number 1 is how are they gonna use the image? Where is it gonna be seen? For how long? How many eyeballs are gonna be looking at that thing? Because the more eyeballs that are gonna be looking at my images could potentially make the client more money. We don't get paid royalties and residuals as commercial shooters usually. So if more people are gonna see an image in an advertising format, potentially there's more money they could make. So, therefore, the photographer who shot those images should make more money as well. That's sort of the general sort of rule of thumb about commercial pricing for your fee and for licensing and things like that. And then, of course, there's your own personal experience. So I also call it like the sliding scale of experience. So if you're a beginner, you're not gonna be charging what somebody like myself has been doing for 35 years. Right? You're gonna be on the lower bracket. And then I and I say beginners are in between like 1 and 5 years, and then in the middle intermediate, 5 to 10 years. And then after 10 years, you're solid. You should be a list shooter at that point. You should be charging the fullest rates that you can get.

I love it. Alright. So we've got 20 questions to get through, and I already distracted us because I wanted to cheer on the Huskers. Okay, second question. We talked about where we live and how that might affect our money. What about our personal situation? Like, we're married, we're divorced. How might that affect our money?

Right. Now this is where you need to actually start talking to a business attorney and also a family planning attorney who understand small businesses. I specifically work with a family attorney who specializes in helping entrepreneurs, people who run their own business, non-staff people, to set up their sort of family trust and things like that. So are you married? Do you have assets? Do you have children? Do you have things you need to protect? If you don't have any of those things, you know, your, the fear of what you could lose if there was a lawsuit is reduced. But if you are married and you have kids and you have assets, there's a lot at stake. There's a lot at risk, and you need to protect those things. And so, a really good family attorney, a really good business attorney can help you navigate what is really good for your situation. And this really is like a customized suit. Right? Every physical body is different on this planet. Well, guess what? Every business is different on the planet based on your situation, who you are. Do you have some crazy eggs flying around out there who wants to take you down? I mean, you know, there's all kinds of situations that you have to really prepare for and be careful with. So I run my business very conservatively. I am probably overinsured, which is a topic I know we're coming up on. But I rest easy at night, and I also have things in place to protect my clients with insurance and things like that on jobs if we go on location and things like that. A lot of times, the clients aren't even aware about, you know, certain situations that could potentially happen on a photo shoot. But yeah. So talk to your business attorney. If you don't have one yet, that's okay. Reach out to some colleagues of yours, some friends of yours, and just get a referral. You can also reach out to if you have a PPA chapter in your area, there's a nice referral, you know, for you there. And so a small business attorney, a family attorney, to really figure out, should your business become an entity? Should it be an LLC or an S Corp? I'm personally an S Corp. That doesn't mean that's right for you though. There's a lot of different ways to structure your business to really protect, you know, protect the home court, protect you and your family.

Well, that conservative point of view makes you the perfect person to answer all these questions. So by now you've got the feel of this episode. We're gonna ask the questions. And if you're O for 2 thinking, wow, I didn't think about where I live. And, man, I haven't really thought about my family relationship and what I should be doing, that's good, because you should be taking notes and really asking yourself these tough questions. So the next one is taxes. How do we manage them? How do we save for them? How do we pay them? Talk to us about taxes as we're doing our business.

So this is one where I'm very actively talking to my accountant. So I have a CPA. I actually do my own books, which for some of you might that might sound crazy, but I use an online bookkeeping system called Xero, and that's xero.com. I'm not affiliated. They're not paying me to do this. But, I was using QuickBooks, and they weren't as friendly with all of the different types of payment accounts I needed to set up with QuickBooks. So I switched over to Xero, because I have multiple PayPal accounts for my different photography businesses, and that didn't work with QuickBooks so well. So I do my own books because I like to know where my numbers are. I wanna know how money is flowing through the company and flowing out of the company. I need to watch that. So I talked to my accountant, and we sort of work out on a quarterly basis what I need to be setting aside for taxes. I'm an S Corp, and that means I have to payroll myself. And don't freak out. You're like, oh, my God. She does all that. My accountant, my CPA does all that. I don't do my payroll paperwork. And so it's a part of the cost of doing business. So there's a lot of photographers running around out there with clients who are not licensed. They're not insured. They're not setting up entities to protect their business. There's a lot of things you're not doing to protect yourself, and that's part of why we actually are coming up with this whole conversation today. So, yeah. So regarding taxes, I work with my CPA as the year goes on. And then if I get you know, with my work, I'm not shooting every day. I get a big chunk of money coming in from a big job, hopefully, on the regular, but it's not very regular. Right? So some months I'll be in the gravy, and other months, it's kinda slower. Right? So I'll let her know, like, hey, the payroll is gonna be pretty big this month. You know? So I don't take, like, a regular paycheck every week kind of a thing. I sort of do it on the quarterly. But, again, every business is very different. So for some of you, that might be stretching it too much and you wanna do something maybe every 2 weeks with your accountant where you figure out what your payroll should be and stuff like that, if you're doing that sort of a system. So, this is where you're, you know, I call them your business team, your business family. They're helping you run your business. And when you're working with a really good CPA, they know your business and they care about you, and they're watching your business with you, but from their perspective, from a tax perspective. Hey, this just happened. You know, this new law came into effect, or this law is now phasing out. So that's gonna affect your bottom line, that type of a thing. And so that way, when you're working with a professional like that, you don't have to figure all that out yourself. I don't want to, furthermore. And so, you know, I work with my CPA to sort of plan together what the year might be like. The year I incorporated was my biggest sales year, and I literally saved not $8,000 or $9,000 on my taxes that year. And I knew I had a bunch of jobs coming in all in the same month, so I called my tax guy. I actually called my tax guy and I said, hey, I'm gonna make a lot more money this year. And so he was like, alright. Let's run your taxes as a sole proprietor, and then let's run them as an S Corp. And let's see if this amount of money that we're going to save you this year will pay for the expense of actually incorporating. And boy, did it.

Yeah. Yeah.

And forever moving forward. Right? So that's the type of relationship you wanna have with your tax attorney and your CPA. And again, if you don't have one yet, reach out to your colleagues, friends, PPA, you know, and find some for your business team.

Now, did this happen to you during her last answer? Talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. And if you don't have a license or a permit, what? Ooh, wait. License or permit? What are you talking about? Licenses or permits? What do you mean licenses or permits? Because I don't have a license or a permit.

So, you know, I always, I explain it like this. Many people who are getting into photography, there's a few things going on in your mind. You have imposter syndrome. You're not 100% sure you're gonna dig this. Maybe you're testing it out. You're thinking, alright, I'll do a few jobs and I'll see how it goes and then I'll get legit. And a lot of people are in that stage where they're going to get legit, but it's been a few years now. I don't know if that's ringing any bells for anyone listening to this. Right? So, and I talked to a lot of you at the PPA conferences, by the way. So, the first time I learned this, I was teaching a business class in my studio in LA, like, over 20 years ago. And it was a general business class, and I was basically just going through the nuts and bolts of how to set up a business. And I asked everybody, okay, everyone in this room, how long have you been shooting? And some people were like 5 years, 10 years. And then out of that same group, how many of you have your license? We were in a very specific city. I knew where they were, like, where they were based, and they were all supposed to have a license and no one did. Even the dude had been shooting for 10 years. So it's easy research. It's not scary. And there's so many like, so many cities have, they want you to be licensed. If you are making money, there's some entity on the planet that wants to know about it. Why? They probably want a portion of it. That's how it work. Right? They wanna know who's making money in their city. When you are a business in a city, you are using city services. You are using their streets. You are using their roads. You're using their buildings. You're using the city. There's a price for that. So, different towns structure this very differently. In Los Angeles, my business license was thousands of dollars. It was based on gross sales, not net income, and it was very expensive, but a large portion of that went to public services. The towns need businesses. Running a city is a business. Right? So pretending you're a photographer with clients and you're not in business yet is sort of a dangerous road to go down because there are penalties, fines, and interests that they could charge depending on where you are. So the question you need to ask and you find out if you have a city hall, you just find out if does a photographer need a business license in the city? And then, if you're running your business out of your home, you might actually need a home permit as well. And then there's sort of some rules and regulations about what you can and cannot do in your home as far as a business. You need to find those out as well. And, you know, again, it's just a conversation. So I'm a huge fan of getting to know your, you know, if you have a chamber local chamber in your city, there's gonna be a wealth of information there for you. And usually being a member is a very nominal fee on a yearly basis, and you might actually get some clients out of it. So it's something that's really important. You just have to make sure that you're running your business legitimately, just again to cover your bases. So, you know, if somebody trips on your property as you're having a photo shoot with a client and they trip on your property, you just opened up a whole can of worms. So, you just need to make sure that everything is in place so that your assets and your business isn't jeopardized by that.

We've got 2 more sections to get to. I gotta keep us moving because we're gonna fill up YouTube at this point. We've got so much good information that we need to share, and hopefully, you've still got room in your notebook. You mentioned risk people tripping on your property. Let's talk about insurance because it is something that we need to protect ourselves. What are some of the questions we should be asking around insuring the business?

So there are many, many, many companies running around calling themselves, like, photography insurance agents and things like that. Not every insurance agency insures photographers equally. And, you know, the PPA as a member, you do have an insurance package. It's a good beginners package, but it might not cover all the things that you need for your business. And I'm pointing at the camera. I'm pointing at you. Again, we're all different. Right? Everyone's different. My business is totally different from yours. Do I have clients coming to home? Occasionally. So that's a whole separate insurance issue. Do you own the home? Is it a rental? Do you have a studio somewhere else? So these are all things that are taken into consideration for insurance. You have to insure yourself as a business. I'm trying to get the word. It's just dangerous not to be insured. You are letting so much on the table, and you're actually exposing your client as well. People don't realize that. So I'm a food photographer. Right? So many times, I will be in a location or at a restaurant doing a photo shoot. If Johnny, the track star from high school, comes into the restaurant and trips on my tripod and pulls a hammy, his full scholarship just got yanked. Right? Who's gonna be responsible for that? If I don't have insurance as a photographer, well, where did the event happen? Oh, inside this restaurant. We know they have insurance. They have to have insurance to even have a permit, I think. They're gonna go after that client of yours. That's not gonna, that's gonna put you out of business fast in that town. So there's just things like that that you just have to prepare for. So there's liability insurance. There's all different types of insurances that cover specifically what you do, with your type of business. Are you, you know, as a fine art photographer, are you, like, hanging out of a helicopter photographing aerials, you know, pretending that you don't have, like, a drone or whatever. That's a whole another thing. Are you flying a drone? You need insurance for that. So every little thing that you're doing with your business could need some insurance to just help protect you and your client with that. And a really great insurance agent will be asking you those questions. So just be prepared when you call someone, like, all of those websites you see online, like, oh, get us an instant quote online today. No. That's not going to interview you about you and your business and your needs. The online quotes are just sort of a lead magnet to get your email, and then you're gonna be hounded by somebody calling you every day, and they, oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a great photo insurance. It's not a photo insurance policy. It's just a general liability policy, and a lot of them don't have some of the addendums that we need as photographers. So, make sure that they really do have a legit photo insurance policy, and it's gonna be an interview. And that interview can take about 30 minutes. That's a thorough agent that's making sure that you're gonna be properly insured.

I knew this was going to be a full-contact episode, but I didn't anticipate pull a hammy would come out during the conversation, which is fantastic. And I'm also glad you referenced the PPA insurance packages that are there because definitely check your PPA membership to get yourself started. How much insurance is enough? How do we know? You mentioned, you're perhaps overinsured. How much is enough?

Okay. This is something that my first insurance agent had me do, and I was so glad they did. I had to make an Excel spreadsheet of every piece of business equipment that I owned and every piece of office equipment that I wanted on that policy. Again, every insurance agent and policy is gonna be a little different. For most though, if you don't list out your equipment, sometimes they call it a schedule. I don't know what it's scheduling, but they're calling it a schedule. There's a list of equipment. And if it's not on that list and something burned down, then you're not insured. So it's a yearly review for me with my agent, and I go through my schedule. I look through, like, what computers maybe I'm no longer using. I can pull that off the policy. Did I get new gear? I mean, hello. Yeah, always getting new gear. And so I'll put the newer gear new gear on, and then the older gear that is no longer being made, it's not valuable. You know, it's like, you know, the first Canon 5D. Like, first one, that's not on the policy anymore. You know what I mean? So I kind of do the math on that and just make sure it's insured for replacement value. How much is enough? Once you do that schedule, you're gonna be actually shocked at how quickly this stuff adds up. I mean, I was, like, at that time with the big studio and a ton of gear, I was like over a $120,000 just in equipment.

Sure.

So I was like, oh, jeez. Alright. And I was only insured for $50,000 on my policy. You know? So it was like, oh, that was not enough.

Yeah.

When I'm renting equipment, that increases my sort of equipment costs that could potentially get ruined from something. So, I might have to add a small addendum that's a 30-day equipment increase, you know, whatever they call it. So some people, they have different names for it. So it's just in a 30-day addendum or, you know, you could just maybe have it for a week or whatever. So if I'm renting, like, one of the some of those, you know, digital backs that are like $40,000 each and I need two, I'm running 2 or 3 sets, that's gonna way increase my insurance value and I have to make sure that it properly insured. So I'll just call my agent and be like, hey, I just need to up my policy for a month. This is what I'm doing. This is what it's ensuring. Blah blah blah. Yeah.

Got one more question when it comes to money because we gotta get on to the other two sections of clients and intellectual property. But in general, from a 30,000-foot view, what about business formation? LLC, S Corp, and others, how do you make that decision and what is the effect on the business?

Here's what I usually suggest, and this is another conversation with, you know, an attorney. But when I first started out, I didn't own a house. I had a really crappy car. I didn't have that much equipment. If someone wanted to sue me, they weren't gonna get anything. You know? So I waited until I had enough money coming in to make sure it was gonna be covering the yearly cost of maintaining the LLC. I think I, so I was an S Corp first, and then I also created a couple of other LLCs. I used to hold, I used to have some apartment buildings as investments. And so it was really about every, protecting each asset from each other. So if someone fell down the stairs in the apartment building, that was in an LLC. They couldn't come after my corp. So separated. And then that being said, proving they're separate. You have to do that. Separate bank accounts for everything. Personal bank account, business bank account. Don't commingle. That means monies are planned together. Don't do that. But the time to do it to look at your business, they call it a tax status actually because it really does hugely affect your taxes. You know, when you should sort of look into that, is when you start owning things that you'd be kind of upset if somebody tried to sue you and get them.

Yeah.

Right? And especially if you have, if you're married and you have kids, you wanna protect them as well. So, you know, it's all about separating assets for protection. Yeah.

This whole first section of the interview, the BFD really is in effect. Almost every one of the questions would be really served by having a CPA or a lawyer or an expert of some kind on your team. So, Christina, started the conversation, if you found a gap in your business, go talk to an expert and make sure that you are protecting the business. And it's easy to think, I don't wanna think about what might go wrong. No.

I know.

You need to think about what might go wrong because the beautiful business that you're building is one trip away from going away if you're not protected.

Exactly, and, unfortunately, the state of the cultures that we live in now, it's a sue happy time right now. You know? Someone thinks they're hitting the lottery ticket. It's just a scary and sad way to look at it. So I just, I sleep well at night. I don't have to worry about it. I know I'm protected. Scott's protected. You know? Our family's protected, and my clients are protected as well. And interestingly, when I am doing a job with a client, I tell them, so I have a large insurance policy. You're very protected. And I have to say, unfortunately, half the time, they're like, you're the first photographer to tell me that.

Yeah.

And so I just remind them, don't ever hire any vendor without making sure they're properly insured. So, yeah.

Absolutely, Alright. Let's move on to clients. Okay? So when it comes to our client relationships, what about contracts? I don't feel like having a contract. Are they important?

I am always fascinated by how many photographers I meet who kind of brag that they never use a contract. It's like this righteousness they have, like, I've never needed one. It's like, that's amazing. I've never not used one. And I think contracts have a bad rap. Contracts are a written agreement of what we're gonna do. You're gonna give me some money. I'm gonna take some photos. And this contract is writing up how and where that's happening, how much it's gonna cost, what you can and cannot do with the images, etcetera, etcetera. A contract is extremely important. And for all those photographers running around bragging that they've never used a contract, the argument I get back is, well, I have so many jobs. I can't do all those contracts. And they're just like little headshots. Like, I'm not gonna do a contract for a headshot. Okay. Cool. So then when that client becomes a famous author and wants to use your image that you took verbally agreeing it was gonna be for their house for display purposes only. I'm sure you didn't say that in any of your verbal contracts. And now your image is now plastered all over the LA Times. It's the author's portrait. Ooh, okay. You should have been paid for that, and it should have been licensed separately from the little headshot that you took that you don't have a contract with. So I sort of say it to people like this. Do you think restaurants and grocery stores like giving us a receipt every single time we go in there? Yeah. They do. It's how you keep track of it. And then if you go home and you don't like the thing that you bought from the grocery store, you can take your receipt and go in there and say, hey, I bought this thing. It's awful. It's expired. Whatever. You get your money back. Right? Look at that as a contract. Sure. It's not like a legal definition of a contract, but it's sort of, and on the back of them, sometimes it's terms and conditions of what you can and cannot do for returns and things like that. So you don't wanna have a contract? That means you don't have systems in place to make it super easy for you to make a contract in 5 minutes because that's what you should have set up.

Yeah.

I can literally put together an estimate and terms and conditions for the 5 different types of clients that I have within 5 minutes. I have templates in place. I just switch out the name, the amount, and the really important paragraph that says, basically, what is this job about? It's the definition of what we're doing. You need to have a contract in place to let the client know and let you know what your mutual understanding is and what expectations are going into the job, period.

But what if we don't have a contract and we're moving to have a contract and it just kinda feels weird to force our clients to sign a contract before we take a photo? You know that feeling? People that don't use them, I don't wanna make them, and it just feels awkward. How do we get over that?

I get that. And it's something you have to practice and, honestly, practice with family and friends. I'm not kidding. So people have a really hard time talking about money and people have a really hard time talking to clients when the clients start changing their mind on the job. You have to be very comfortable calling something out when it's happening and having that conversation with the client. So I always talk to them way in the beginning. I just let them know, you know, so I work with contracts, and I'll be sending you an estimate. Now if you don't need an estimate, it's very clear you're gonna be charging $500 for the headshot period. That's what your deal is. Cool. You just let them know, this is just a signed agreement where, you know, it defines what you can use the image for, and it makes it clear who owns the copyright. You need to have this language with your client because you might be the first photographer that they're working with. Let's hope you're helping train that client so they understand they don't own the copyright. They can't do whatever they want with those images. Right? So this is an education. You know, a lot of times we're educating our clients how it is to work with a photographer, you know. And we're gonna be talking about intellectual property law in a little bit. But copyright, I'll you'd be shocked at how many businesses do not understand copyright to the point where they're getting sued and they don't know why. So,if you feel awkward, you gotta practice this. So, you know, do role-playing. You know? Just come up with a contract, and you can email it to them. You can have a conversation with them on the phone. Very rarely am I having a contract signed in person. I usually have everything done via email first before I even, you know, and like doing anything with them. So, and you can explain and educate them why you need to have a contract. And you're gonna get the, our last photographer didn't make us sign a contract. And then you can say, that's really unfortunate. That photographer hasn't learned yet the proper way of running a business. I have no problem saying that, and I say it often.

Few more quickies on our clients before we move on to intellectual property. Speaking of contracts, can you think of a nuance or a clause that sometimes isn't included that you think needs to be in every one?

Yeah. I'm learning with a lot of my students, they are not addressing the definition of copyright, who owns it, what can and cannot be done with the image. Many clients immediately have an interpretation that when they give us cash money, but not just cash, but when they give us money, they own our images. They own the copyright. They can do whatever they want with it. And some of them get a little righteous about this. And, again, it's client education. So you, if you are not even addressing that in your contract, you don't have a complete contract. So I have an estimate page with the numbers, and then I have terms and conditions that are on a page and a half. It's not a 10-page document. You know, I review contracts for some of my students, and some of these contracts are, like, 10 pages long for a very small photo shoot. And it's like, that's inappropriate. You know? So I don't know where they're buying these templates from and stuff like that, but, you know, and I'm gonna be working with the PPA with their commercial agreement, stuff like that. But we do have some estimates and some templates in place at the PPA that you're welcome to use as a member. So, it's just something you're just gonna have to become part of business. The estimate is the first thing, letting them know how much the costs are gonna be, find out how they need to use the images, find out the parameters of the job, and then that becomes part of that document to define what we're doing. So we both have an understanding what the job is, how they can use the images, and, you know, moving forward, it should help protect you and help protect your images as much as possible.

One thing that gets overlooked because we exchange money differently now than we used to. So if we're setting up our business, do we have to have a bank account that takes credit cards? Or can we just go down the Venmo, PayPal, Cash App route? Which way should we go?

You can absolutely use some of the online paying companies out there, PayPal, Venmo. A lot of our accounting software programs now have, sometimes for an additional cost, you know, if I'm making an estimate in Xero, I it's hooked up to my PayPal account. I can literally send them an invoice via my accounting software, and it's gonna use PayPal to pay it if I choose. I also have a Stripe account. I can send someone an invoice via Stripe if they wanna use a credit card that way. These days, a lot more people are familiar with digital ways of paying somebody. Way back, it was a little more difficult. But so I have a business PayPal account. I have a business Venmo account. I have business Stripe accounts. I have a business bank account. So if you are going to consider, you know, one of these digital forms of payment, again, don't commingle it. So if you're using a PayPal account for maybe personal purchases on eBay, keep that separate. Get a, yeah, business email and set up your business virtual payments through that business email. So you can have one business email and hook that up to Venmo and PayPal and, you know, and Stripe. So you can easily do that and just be set up. There's also a question of, well, who pays the credit card fee? So what I tend to do is I'm finding out if they're gonna be paying by credit card, and I don't tell them they're gonna be paying a separate fee. I'm just gonna be padding up my job a little bit. If it's a really big number, I will let them know. I'm just gonna just to let you know, there's a 3% fee that obviously I have to pay for that. So I will be rolling that in the job. And then I'll say, or you can pay by check, and you can save that amount of money. So it depends on the client. But, you know, think about it from your perspective. If someone you know, if you're paying for something from someone, then they come at you and just say, I have to charge you the 3% for the thing. I kinda roll my eyes like, really? Okay. It should be a cost of doing business, and you should have rolled that into your fees anyway. That's my personal opinion. Everyone has a different opinion about that. It's not really one way is right or wrong. But what is correct is business is business for your money, and personal monies stay away from the business. They can't mix together.

I had the pleasure of having dinner with Christina at Imaging earlier this year, and I've seen what you're going to see next, and it is—

Uh-oh.

It is just, mwah, I want you to picture we're in the bull ring, and I've got the red cape, and here comes the bull because we're gonna talk about intellectual property right now. And she is incredible on this topic. Okay.

Oh, my gosh, I used to say.

Should photographers, even those with smaller studios, really be concerned about their intellectual property? Go.

Yes. Like, if I can make my hair just go. Totally. You know, I think the biggest, biggest problem with copyright issues is simply education. A lot of photographers don't understand copyright lawfully. It's complex, and most of your clients aren't gonna understand it either. And it's so important to really, with what's happening now with AI, your images are being scraped whether you like it or not. And it's not a solution to say, I'm not gonna put any of my images online. That I mean, that's not an option. And I hear this in the loop, you know, in our community. I hear people say, well, I'm just never gonna put anything on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. And, you know, and some of these shooters have been shooting a long time, so they have built up a clientele that already knows who they are. They're known in their town. And I'm gonna say they can get away with possibly not having social media accounts. But for a new shooter, it's not an option. People are gonna look for you on Facebook and Instagram. They're gonna look for your website. You need to have a separate website. Instagram is not a website. And you don't even know in that platform. You need something you own. But, you know, your stuff is gonna get scanned, ripped off, shared, and all that. It's just the cost of doing business. And it's a problem. My stuff has been stolen thousands of times. And how do I know that? Because I'm using a software that or using a website, a company that, you know, you upload your images to them, and then they go and scour the web and find all the places that they're being used. And so I get this monthly report, which I hate opening that email because it tells me how many thousands of websites are actually using my images. And don't forget, I've had a website since 1997. So this has been a problem since day 1. It's important to protect your work, and you should copyright your work, and that means registering it with the copyright office. Yes. An image is protected by copyright law the moment you take the picture. However, you have to prove it's your copyright. That's the rub. That's the problem. So if someone steals your image and you didn't copyright it, there's a huge rumor going around that's, oh, there's nothing you can do. That is completely false. You can still register the image. It's called a special registration and then it's at a cost though. It's over $800. But if a company is infringing on your copyright, they should pay for that. And so you can do a special registration with a copyright office. Again, use an attorney to do this, and then you can officially go after them for attorney's fees and things like that. I have sued, I honestly don't know at this point how many companies I have sued, but the goal is not to go to court. The goal is to simply, hey, you're using my stuff. You got caught. Pay up. And so when your images are being used in a commercial manner where your photo could potentially sell stuff for them, that's an infringeable act that you can try and recoup some money for. And so I've sued a lot of companies. We settle out of court every time. My attorney gets, you know, he gets paid for a few letters, and then I either get a wire or a check in the mail. This could take months. I think the longest one took a couple years. They just thought we weren't gonna go away, and they finally paid up, a really huge seed company in the United States and people who sell things where they need photos to reference what's on the inside of food and things like that. So there's a seed company who got busted, using one of my images, claiming that they were, their seeds were gonna grow the items that were in my photo and which is complete false advertising. I don't know that the things I photograph were even organic, and they were bought in Los Angeles. They were made from their seed, you know, and it's a really huge old seed company. So you just gotta be, you know, really careful. And I wouldn't have known that if it weren't for this software that was, like, going around sniffing out my images online, so.

I wanna dig into that because this is super overwhelming. First, and this is just something that hit me. If you're posting photos online, you would wager that people are ripping them off. Yes?

Yes.

Okay. So that's happening. Your stuff is being used without your permission. Give us the cookie monster version of I do this and then this and then this to at least register my photos to set myself up for defense. Because you talked about websites and registrations and processes, and I just got confused. So give us the cookie monster version of what that is.

Okay. So the safest way to look at it is once you create an image here's my workflow. Okay, so I'm using a software called Capture One Pro. And so it actually can hook up with a company that I use called RightClick. It's a great company, and the owner of the company, he's even, like, emailed me back and forth and stuff. Really nice. They're all about helping photographers and protect our images. Again, not endorsed by them or anything like that. I just really love their service. So as I'm working through images, when I'm done working on that job, I will actually select very specific images and I will register them through RightClick. They make it so easy so you don't have to worry about creating the spreadsheet. They do all that for a fee, but it's a really nominal fee. And so as I'm shooting, so I have like, right now, I literally probably this week, I'm gonna send another batch of images through to get registered before I start putting them online. I know this is a different, like, timeline because you shoot something, you wanna put it online and share it. If it has value, if it could be, you know, used commercially by somebody or it's a really fantastic image, you wanna protect it as soon as possible. And again, not to say that you're not protected, but you have to prove you own your copyright if you wanna go after somebody for infringing your copyright.

Yeah.

So I take the picture. I register them. The moment you upload your images to the copyright office, that's your registration date. It's okay that it's taking a few months to get the physical piece of paper proving you own it. You've registered them already. That's okay. The document, the paper that they send you that it's registered, that's just like the icing on the cake to prove that you own them. So it's easy. And then once you register them, then share, go ahead and share, knowing they're gonna get taken. But, you know, at this point, you're protected. And then, if you do find somebody infringing on your rights, you can contact an attorney. The first question they're gonna ask you is, did you copyright it? Did you, do you have proof of copyright registration?

And I love that workflow because it is somewhat completely automating the items that you're choosing to put up online.

Totally.

So we get ourselves in trouble when we can't prove the copyright. Then I also remember, and this is something you mentioned at dinner, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, no one's talking about this. You can accidentally ruin your own copyright if you post a photo in the wrong place. Is that right?

Okay. So if you're using those websites where it's free stock photography, as soon as you upload that image there, like, kiss it goodbye. Because if you're putting your image on something like Unsplash and, you know, the free, all those free stock sites, they're beautiful and amazing resources. Don't get me wrong. I use Unsplash for my education content, when I don't have an image, you know, that's representing what I need. But anyone who's uploading images on there for free for commercial use, that's it. You can't, because the second question an attorney will ask you, was this image ever used for stock? And that's it. If it was, then the challenge is gonna be really hard that, you know, you're gonna have to try to get that person to prove where they found it. You don't necessarily have to prove where they found it. If so, you know, it's, be really careful how you are trying to get your work out there. Be very, very careful where you are putting your work if you have not registered it yet. And if you, like, I don't, I've never put my images up on any free stock site. In fact, I was with a stock agency a while back, and then Getty bought them. And then Getty was trying to force everyone to sign a contract that all of our images were gonna be used for royalty-free. And, so I actually pulled 100 of images out of stock, and I'm so glad I did. You know, and that's just a personal choice. But you could see the writing on the wall, like, okay. People are expecting images to be free, and I'm not okay with. I never will be. So be very careful where you share your stuff.

We filled up all of YouTube. There's no more notebook space left, but I will give you the last word. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you wish you could lovingly put your arm around a photographer and say, you really need to consider this to protect your studio?

I would say the two most important things would definitely be insurance and making sure your assets are protected by setting up your business properly. And that's sort of a global setting up properly thing. Do you need maybe you should be an LLC, maybe you should be an S Corp, you know, that type of thing. Be it become an entity. So insurance and business structure. Really analyze those things. I think that's a good start.

If you want more, buy Christina dinner at Imaging. I'm telling you, it was like the most mind-blowing dinner of all time. Christina Peters, thank you so much for coming on The Professional Photographer Podcast. I appreciate it.

Oh, thank you so much. It's been so great chatting, anytime.

I told you it was gonna be hard work. Right? But there was something in there that made you go, I hadn't considered that at all. That's what we're trying to do here on the show. We're trying to help you move forward as you build your business, and thank you for tuning in to this week's episode. Before you go, do me a favor. Like and subscribe the show wherever you're watching or listening, but also leave us a comment and tell Christina what she said that stood out to you. Like, there's gotta be something in there that made you say, I never thought of it that way. So put that in the comments. It'll help us understand what's vibing with you, and it will help us plan more episodes that you will love in the future. We also talked about it in this episode, but Professional Photographers of America has a bunch of business benefits and protections rolled up in the membership. If you're not a member yet, you're missing incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers like you who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at ppa.com. That's ppa.com. Again, I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community. I need a nap. That was a big one. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for being a part of our journey, and we'll see you next time.