Dear Prospective Client
Thank you for considering my company to work for yours for free. We really need the work and will gladly assist. I have studied your proposal and thought I’d point out a few small problems with it before accepting. Please don’t view this as a criticism but as the start of negotiations.
First of all I noted that you don’t have a budget for the job and we would get great exposure from the project. It would round out my portfolio and make me so much more desirable as a photographer. I find this attitude perplexing. If I am not good enough already, why did you approach me? Are my skills lacking? Am I unable to take head shots? Maybe I haven’t done enough corporate work? I understand that taking photographs of people in a work environment is way more complex than shooting weddings, wildlife, children or landscapes.
Let’s get back to the budget issue. You don’t have a budget and I should work free, I note that you run a production company and that you are traveling all the way from the big city to shoot a local radio station. Am I too understand that you are doing this for no remuneration? Am I to understand that your client is cheap skate enough to pay you but not me? Am I too understand that everybody that works at the radio station is doing it for the love of their jobs? That they work full time with no way of paying their rent or mortgages? That they have no way of paying their kids school fees or feeding them because money is not essential in a service capacity?
Even charities pay their staff and their contractors, Why would a corporate company be trying to get a service for free?
I would like to point out that I have to pay my rent, water and lights, fill my car with petrol, pay my phone bills, for this internet connection, the people hosting this web site and more. That is before I can upgrade the computer I am using to type this note or the camera used to take the photo that shows my displeasure below.
I am guessing that if I strolled into Pick n Pay and told them I needed a trolley full of groceries free because I have no budget, they will happily just hand it over? If I drove my car into the garage and told them to fill it up free because I have no budget they will do it rapidly? especially if I tell them that they will get exposure or round out their profile?
I tell you what because you have no budget I will double my normal price and give you a 50% discount, so for the princely some of R 500.00 an hour less 50% discount making it the bargain price of only R 250.00 an hour I will do the shoot. PS any time spent processing the pictures will be charged at the same rate.
Either find the budget or piss off. I don’t work for freeloaders and scroungers unless I offer to.
Regards
Guy McLaren
Photographer
Tags: corporate scroungers, free loaders, Photography, Pro bono
July 19th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
I salute you! As a web designer I get this all the time “But you can put your logo there” – Do me a favour! Brilliant post@