INSPIRATIONAL: A Step by Step Roadmap to Setting Up a Photography Business in Australia

Recently I decided to get my butt into action and go pro (pun fully intended), turning my back on my fauxtographer/shoot'n'burn/tax avoiding brethren. Sad day indeed.  

So in the interest of demystifying the transition, so that the gap between the jump doesn't seem so wide and the pit at the bottom of said chasm is filled with fully ducks -more on that later- rather that vipers, red backs and a resurgent Kevin Rudd, I'll pass on my journey step by step.

1. Reality Check, Learning from the Best's Mistakes and Business Plans 

There is a saying learn from the best or teach yourself, I would add learn from the mistakes the best have made, rather than making those mistakes yourself. Case in point Zack Arias. Zack has been there and back again. Zack dropped some serious knowledge, like any good mentor in this presentation.

Do yourself a favour and plug your numbers into the NPPA cost of doing business calculator then take a few moments to process all the zeros in the expense column, that is going to have to be matched and hopefully exceeded by the income section. Once you start looking at numbers everything becomes real rather than fluffy ducks, bunny rabbits or puppies.

I'm assuming here that you already have all the gear you need (not the gear that you would want and would love to own or better yet rent it and bill it back to the client), a solid business plan (it's like catnip to successful bank loan applications), the technical skills of photography down pat and are creating some killer imagery that is standing you out from the crowd - like any good purple cow - of photographers, in your local and surrounding area. Although if you need a guide on a business plans here is a good start. All the major Australian banks also have guidelines on Business Plans.

2. Get an Australian Business Number (ABN) 

As much fun as it would be, to stay in the cash economy that meth cookers,  crack den bosses and tradies call home, to which party, the taxman is not invited to, I decided to take the road more often traveled because:

A: Nothing say I'm a professional, like an ABN on all your business stationary and legal documentation.

B: Businesses that even if they were willing to do business with you would be forced to withhold 46.5% of your pay.

C: If you ever want to do any assisting, retouching or other form of sub contracting - to diversify and increase your income- most of those business will request an ABN from you.

D: It's free!!!

The Australian Taxation Office have streamlined the process so you can Apply for and ABN, ACN, GST and (PayG) withholding and fringe benefits etc all in one go how nice of them at their business portal how nice of them.

Some questions you need to ask of yourself or your CPA accredited tax accountant is what business structure do you want? For me it was as a sole trader for you it may be something else depending on how big you want to grow the company or if you have partners or will require a healthy supple of lowly paid minions (hello PAYG withholding and fringe benefits tax) working offshore to do all the work for you whilst you sip pina coladas on some deserted beach in Bali.

Do you think you are going to earn over 75 grand in a year? Me hell no. Although if so then you need to apply for GST and charge it to clients and what ever you do don't blow that money on an end of year junket to the Maldives.  

You need a business address so are you going to work from home or setup a studio to base yourself at (this can always be changed at a later date). So I decided to work from home (which thanks to the parents is rent free). I shoot on location and if I ever need to see a client Mohammad can go to the mountain.

 If you plan to work from home just check with your local council about any potential planning laws that may involve you from parking, noise levels to hours of operation etc.

3. Get an Australian Business Name 

You don't need to get one, although if you don't want to trade under your own name i.e Tim Macauley Photography, you will have to take out an Australian registered business name, through The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) website. Although this is not free :(.  $AU76 bucks for three years or $AU33 for a year, if you just want to just dip your toes in the water.

 4.  Get a Business Bank Account 

Another old saying goes never mix business with pleasure. I'm sure whomever said it, was thinking about setting up a business bank account, at the time. In short, it makes it easier to balance the books and come tax time know what was business expenses and personal expenses,  if you are a sole trader and have to include both on your personal income tax return. Additionally having a dedicated bank account gives you a clearer sense of how your business is going financially.

This can be done through either the bank that you currently do your personal banking through or if you really want to shop around for the best range of services, at the lowest price, then by all means choose someone else. I just set my up with the Commonwealth Bank, since I already do my personal banking there.

5. Fill the Bank Account with Money and Proceed to Spend/invest it wisely...

 

Best part of spending money on business expenses is most of it is tax deductible just speak with your CPA accredited tax account to find out just how much. Tied into this is keeping track of the income and expenses otherwise known as accounting the Australian Tax Office is a great resource for best practice on the matter of record keeping.

6. Get a Domain, Hosting and Design a Website 

 

I went with Go Daddy because it's a one-stop-shop and for me that makes life easier although I'm sure you could find things a bit cheaper, if you looked for the best deal on each separately.  Plus some website templates are free on the interwebs so you could save some additional money there by not having to design the website.

I took out both  the .com and .com.au domain and then use domain forwarding to refer from one site to the other. Given that I am operating my photography business in Australia, having the .com.au signals to clients that is where I am focused.

The Go Daddy website templates are quite varied and once I selected a template, the editor was word processor like in nature -no html in sight- and relative intuitive to use, when altering the look and content.

Some pointers with designing your website:

    - Website Screen Size Resolution  

•  Choose the screen size resolution everything you put on the page flows from this then size all your images and content relative to that. I wanted my website to look good on a laptop screen without any scrolling so sized it accordingly taking into account the screen real estate taken up by browser buttons and the windows start menu strip. end result was 1079x748 but you may want it optimised for bigger screens most creatives don't view a website on a small resolution screen.     

    - Resizing and Saving Images for Web

• Resize all your images rather than letting the code in a photo gallery do it for you. This will greatly reduce the time required to download the image.

• When saving images in Photoshop, use the save for web option. Nobody wants to be staring at a blank screen whilst your megabyte heavy images are loading. It's amazing how much you can crunch an image, before you start to see compression artifacts and image degradation.  

    - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

• Listen to anything  Matt Cutts has to say. He works for Google. He knows the Google Algorithm, better than anyone talking smack about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on the interwebs.  

• Ditto for anything Steve Souders from Google says

      - Test the Website 

      Test it for.....

• Spelling and Grammar (man my first draft was rough, as a number of reviewers noted).

• Download speeds.

• All the links work (both internal and external links). 

• Easy to use. Nobody got lost on the way. 

• How it renders in different browsers, on different resolution screens.More people are accessing websites through smart phones so check that out as well. 

7. Setup Google Analytics  

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”
~ H. James Harrington

Amen to that. Google Analytics is the answer to your measurement prayers.

8. Register for Google Webmaster Tools 

Do this, to make sure Google will actually crawl and index your website, in a more timely manner and fashion.

9.  Profile Pic as Pseudo Social Proof

It's becoming more common, although the odds are, if people are deciding between 10 different sites that Google has spewed up, chances are that they are going to click on the link, with a face beside it or at least goes the theory of social proof. whilst on the topic of social proof having client recommendations of you works just as well so put them up as well .

That is the theory. Here is the practice 

I don't think the feature will work as well once everyone has caught onto this trick.

Here is how to make that happen...

   

 10. Business cards  

There is no point printing business cards, unless you have a website on a personal domain, with an associated email address for that domain, if you want to appear anything other than professional. a Tumblr/Flicker/Deviant Art/Photobucket address, with a Hotmail/Gmail email account, doesn't quite give off the same vibe.

The argument can be made, that if you have made a genuine connection with someone, you'll remember who they and vice verse, or put their details into your phone and hence no reason for printing cards in the first place. Business cards are just so impersonal. Although, given how cheap they are produce a stack of 500, when the chance, that a single sale hinged on the fact of the person trying to remember who you are, it's already paid for itself.

Associated with the business card is the elevator pitch.

Here is mine only cut down to 15 seconds and used more as an introduction that selling something:

"Hi I'm Tim. I graduated from the BA(Photography) at RMIT a couple of years ago. I mainly focus on abstraction of architecture and other inanimate objects when I'm not geeking out as an engineer."

If you introduce yourself first, it shows that you are confident enough to approach people you don't know. People like confidence just ask any woman. The RMIT part shows both that I've studied and have some knowledge depth in photography. This gives people a chance to ask you an expert question they have about thier own photography to keep the conversation going). The abstraction of architecture gives them something definitive about you that they can further elaborate one like "Oh my uncle is an architect....". The inanimate objects part is ill defined and gives the respond-er an opportunity to clarify it "so what kind of inanimate objects...?

11. Insurance 

Before you take a paying job, get insurance first. Work out what insurance coverage you actually need (and what you are preparing to risk, not to take), to save you money on paying for things you don't actually need. Plus if you join the, National Association for the Visual Arts, there are membership deals with insurance coverage included.

At the very least you will need public liability insurance, no matter if you shoot in a studio, or out in the field.

12. Professional Membership

Nothing says I'm committed to the photographic cause and continued career development to a prospective client, like a membership with a professional body, irrespective of whether you actually attend meetings, workshops or make any efforts to network and give back to the organisation. Each has different levels of membership with different benefits, so do your research and take your pick.
Association of Commercial and Media Photographers (ACMP)
Australian Institute of Professional Photographey (AIPP)
National Association for the Visual Artist (NAVA)    

13. Documents 

It's not a good look if you deliver an invoice to a client scrawled in red sharpie, on the side of a cow with your terms and conditions on the other side. Although this would be somewhat amusing, as a novelty cheque. Dido for: 

• Invoices (if you are not GST registered) and Tax Invoices (if you ware registered for GST) 

• Licencing agreements 

• Model and property releases 

• Quotes and estimates 

• General correspondence

The ACMP provide sample templates, as part of it's Better Business Bible  

If there is one area of advice worth paying for it's legal, preferable well before, you actually need it.
Lowensteins Arts Management is a good place to start, using both accountants and lawyers who specialise in the creative and design fields. Legal documents should always be water tight.

14. Folio 

You should really have had a body of work built up by the time you need to put the folio together, with each presentation of the folio varied slightly depending on the client. The general rule is only present your best work. no more than say 50 images for a printed folio and in digital no more than 15 images. the work should be varied if you only have 50 images all of the same model from the same shoot then probably time to get out there and shoot other models in other cloths in other locations.

If in doubt consult Sally Brownbill [link]  

Basically the folio comes in four flavours that can be deployed depending on the situation:

- Web Version  

This will typically be peoples first port of call to viewing your work the work if they hear about you from someone else and Google your name or follow-up on that business card you gave them the day before (see tip No.10). The work you show in your physical or tablet version should be different to what they see on your website to give them some added value and can go into more depth than either of those allows. 

 

-Smart Phone Version 

The thing I love about smart phones is that you can have your folio on there and just bring it straight into a conversation, when people ask what you do for a living or what you love doing.

- Tablet Version 

In relative terms the best bang for your buck based on how many different series of images you want to put on there to tailor it to the client you are showing it to. Plus if they bring up another theme you can just open up another folder on the fly not something you can do with a physical folio In my case using a iPad but there are much cheaper tablets out there that do the same job.

- Physical version 

A physical folio is going to set you back some serious dough although when you see the finished product from mobs like Irwin and McLaren [link] the buyer's remorse subsides pretty quickly. Humans are both tactile and visual, so when you combine those two things, it can be a magical experience, viewing a physical folio. If you are serious about getting represented by an agent then this is the price of admission, something they can present to potential clients. Like any good book the first and last image have the greatest impact and there is no room for o.k images to slip in it should be crème de la crème all the way with a subtle rhyme and spacing that all adds to telling a story of who you are as a photographer.  

15. Hustle

 

Don't expect the business to come to you. You have to go after the business. Now with everything in place, start to hit the pavement and meet face to face, with your potential clients. Build relationships up with the people you identified as potentially in need of your photographic services and learn to love the gatekeeper

Build your brand by winning competitions, creating or featuring in magazine articles and ads, create some visually viral content comment on social media or a flash mob. Basically be present where your customers are both in the virtual and real world and god forbid start up a conversation. So get out there and hustle.

I'm still working on that part ....

I'm sure I missed a few steps or glossed over others. So feel free to comment and fill in the gaps. Also what are other peoples elevator pitches?   

INSPIRATIONAL: My Top 11 List of Photography Books for Students

Over the course of three years undertaking the Bachelor of Arts (Photography) degree at RMIT, I scowered every nook and cranny of the Swanston St Library (between the Dewey decimal numbers of 770 and 780), looking for photographic gold. The kind of stuff that would turn my flailing amber tinged candle wick of a knowledge base, into an accelerant fuelled bonfire that even Jonathan Storm would quip wasn’t half bad.

 

I came across the good, the bad and the questionable as to why it was ever published. As an ode to Spinal Tap detailed below, for your future reading pleasure (and hopefully take prime position in your photographic pool room) and without further ado is my top eleven:    

Photography by Barbara London, John Upton and Jim Stone [link] (now in it’s 11^th incarnation and fresh off the press for 2013) is THE introduction to photography tome that makes any other digital photography for dummies guide et al seem like a TMZ spot on Jason Russell. Like any good tome it covers pretty much everything you can think of in photography history, equipment, composition , colour theory, lighting, photographic genres in enough detail to get your feet wet, point you in the right direction to take your learning to the next level and never lead you astray. Peppered throughout with interviews from the best in the business and unlike most how to photography books where the author just ends up using their (often inferior images) to make a point, London, Upton and Stone opted to actually pay some usage fees to have amazing shots all throughout the book. One of my credos is learn from the best or teach yourself. This book is the celluloitic incarnation of that credo.

You pretty much have to be a particle physicist to fundamentally understand light. Light, Science and Magic: An introduction to photographic lighting (4th edition) by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fugua [link] will bring you as close to particle physicist, as you will ever need, to tackle any situation you are required to light. It isn’t your standard book on lighting, with lighting setup after lighting setup, after lighting setup that if you don’t set it up in the same ways described, you won’t get the same result and still left wondering why. The book answers that why, through helping you understand how light interacts with all the surfaces you will ever have to light metallic, glass, liquids, non-reflective surfaces as well as those tricky situations of  black subject on black background and white subject on white background and to top it off a whole chapter dedicated to portraits! This is the only book you will ever need on lighting. Period.     

Digital photography wouldn’t be complete without a stop in the old digital darkroom whether you like it or not. By the end of working your way through Photoshop CS6: Essential Skills by Mark Galer [link] and all the goodies packed onto the accompanying DVD you’ll never find yourself in the RSS feed of Photoshop Disasters………hopefully. Having said that checkout the RSS feed of Photoshop Disasters [link] there are some shockers. If Scott Kelby [link] didn’t have his own Photoshop-how-to book to pimp, he would fully endorse this solid undertaking in pixel pushing.  

God Bless Dane Sanders’ [link] cotton socks for penning Fast Track Photographer with Richard Bolles[link] and Fast Track Photographer: Business Plan with David DeChemin [link] for three reasons; his Christian, as Yankee as they come and the knowledge contained within will help you form a solid base, from which to build your photographic/creative/videography/fusion business to come. The only down side is the tax, accounting and legal side of things differs a bit in Australia from the north American audience to whom it was aimed, so the ACMP better Business Bible is your go to for that stuff. The business plan walks you through step by step in the process and frankly I don’t mind a bit of spoon feeding from time to time.

Which brings me to the ACMP Better Business bible. Get it. Beg, borrow or download it from pirate bay, either way with it, you are armed with a condensed little book who’s contents will keep you on the right side of the law and operating well within the black. Armed with budgeting, accounting and tax advice as well as a whole litany of legal documents model releases, licensing/usage agreements et al, that you can use as is or bend to your own whim (pending further legal advice). 

If you are a gear nut, tech head that is peeping at every pixel, then look no further than Basic Photographic Processes and Materials by Nanette Salvaggio [link] . Spanning both the analogue and the digital realms of photography in all their scientific glory does make for heavy ready, so fine art photography students need not apply, least you want to enter the dark side of photography.  

If Photography (11^th Edition) is part historical tome, then Photography: A Cultural History (3^rd Edition) by Mary Warner Marien [link] is a bloody monolith. Hewn from the same stone but bigger and more encompassing in scale. This picks up the ends that were left by London, Upton and Stone solidifying them and highlighting a number that never dangled in the first place and segweying well into to Charlotte Cottons The Photograph as Contemporary Art.

I don’t really get art. Let alone photographic art. The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton [link] helped me get my head around it and all the genres from deadpan (surely people in animals mask are going to die a horrible horrible death soon?) to places between places (all that low-to-no-contrast-urban-landscapes that more often than not are vacant car parks). Though as Darth Vader found the dark side is hard to let go of but in doing so he got to come back as a ghost (who’s original ghost was digitally replaced, after the technology became good enough to do so (or something like that I imagine)) which is kind of cool I guess.     

If The Photograph as Contemporary Art helped me understand photographic art, $12 million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson [link] helped me understand why Gursky’s Rhine II made a cool $4.3 million. If you didn’t already hate Damian Hirst [link], this book will probably give you five more reasons.      

 

It wasn’t only a few years ago that Facebook pages for photographers were the domain of moms with a camera and shoot and burn fauxtographers, poo pooed upon by anyone who would dare to call themselves professional firm in the security of their Wordpress styled blog. Oh how times have changed. Social media is here to stay The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to grow your business by Paul Chaney [link] will help ensure that nobody is stealing your cheese and grow your business. Detailing a brief history of networking, Search engine optimisation, then proposing seven strategies to grow your business including blogs, e-mail news letters, microblogs (twitter), Social networks (Facebook, Linkin,)  online video (YouTube, Vimeo) podcasting and multimedia news releases. Always remember it's not the quanity of viewers it's the qaulity.         

Short of having Sally Brownbill [link] working her magic on your hodge podge pile of images that somewhat resembles a folio, Designing a Digital Portfolio (2nd Edition) by Cynthia Baron [link] is probably the next best thing. It goes through the whole process of what people in the industry look for in folios to what is the best kind of folio to use based on the people you are trying to target, to how to select your images, ordering, flow, layout design and then how it is finally all packaged and presented. whilst there are no tutorials on Indesign or Photoshop this is more of the grandmaster approach big on concept, not so much the nitty gritty of which other books would be better served in doing so. Peppered throughout are example folios from some of the best in the graphic design /photographic/creative industy giving you a signpost of where you need to be to really standout and shine. I’m looking forward to the third edition that no doubt will be looking into the use of novelty thumb drives and tablets as the second edition was published pre iPad and frankley there are just not enough novelty thumb drives [link] .    

So there it is. What do people think? What would you add to the list and why?