Photographers be wary
I was recently contacted by a client who wanted a portfolio made for her application to an agency.
She was in the belief that the business would pay for her photo shoot, which is not the case. Having read through a massive FAQ on information overload I found some little bits of information which some photographers maybe aware of or blind to.
As we know shooting modelling portfolios we great the use for commercial gain for the client. What we DON’T offer is for the commercial gain of the ‘agent’ business or websites.
Looking thorough the website, I found a number of clauses and some research into the business revealed a money making company at the expense of the client, which of course they would not really be aware.
What we found was that the model would submit images to the website, if they were approved they would be featured on their website and paid £322.
Once this happened the business would have full ownership and rights of the images.
Not only is this underhand for photographers and the models, but it gets more and more worse.
- The site is paid access ( money going to the company)
- They make books and videos from the submission of the models ( money going to the company)
- They sell the images to other websites ( money going to the company)
- They use the images for promotion and advertising ( money going to the company)
- The models receive no other payments over the initial purchase
From the research into the company I found that they were not so great about what they said they did and also were in violation of the CAP codes.. AKA they lied about business and what was offered and undertaken.
There is confusing information about photographers payments and of course there is promotion for ‘staff photographers’ I had to enquire as there was two bit of information (that were not close together at all) to find out about the photographers payment. I found out when I had to email them, that they buy the images outright for £45.00.
On the basis of figures that were available the company make in the region of around £50,000 from each of the clients who are asked to send in around 75 images and the maximum return for the model is £367.00.
This is one of the first scams of this type that I have seen, the usual modelling scams are that they hold a meeting and hold photo shoots that cost around £300.00 which is done on the day and paid on the day by these pay and run fake agencies. I believe the new you pay and supply and give us everything for a small return is fairly new. However I have not been involved with this industry for some time and it seems to have been around for about 4 years.
While we do advise models to be careful and that there are more scam’s that honest businesses. As we know that many of these girls will willing send photographs into agents to be approved, clearly it is no the intent for photographers to have the clients agent make considerable amounts of money, esp if its TFCD… The model isn’t going to tell you where they send the images!
Related posts:
- Photographers and their websites
- Websites for photographers
- City Photography
- How does National Photographer work?
- Photo shoot costs
