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"If you reward the screaming toddler with a cupcake, you are punishing the entire creative industry. You teach the client that whatever an independent artist quotes, it can always be sliced in half."
The Terrible Creative is a storytelling podcast for photographers, designers, and creative professionals working through the parts of the creative process no gear review or business course ever covers.
Each episode is 30 to 40 minutes. Solo. Story-driven. Built around mental health, artistic identity, and what honest work costs in a career rewarding performance over truth.
This is not a photography podcast about cameras, presets, or client strategy. This is a podcast about the inner experience of being a creative professional, made for the mid-career photographer or designer who has mastered the technical side but lost the thread.
Hosted by Patrick Fore, commercial photographer, author, and former lead photographer and brand designer for Taylor Guitars. His work has appeared globally for clients like Nike, Petco, and Verizon. He built this show because none of the podcasts he found addressed the real problem.
If you are a photographer or creative professional who feels competent on the outside and quietly lost on the inside, you are a Terrible Creative. This is your podcast.
Patrick & Shelly
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Shelly:
Intro: Money Shame & Pod Swap
---
Shelly: [00:00:00] Whether you're tuning into Creative Campfire or you're tuning into Patrick's show, which is The Terrible Creative,
Patrick 104: Yeah, this is like a partnership now. I'm so excited. like we're just like joining forces,
Shelly: Patrick reached out to me and said, "Hey, Shelly, let's do something." And I said, "Hey, let's do a pod swap." And we came up with this great episode idea to talk about money, and really money shame. Is it weird to say I'm excited to talk about this?
Patrick 104: I'm excited to talk about this. let's get into the shame of money. no, it's not gonna be... and it's not all about shame. Do you know what I'm saying? It's not, it doesn't have to be that deep, which
Shelly: think,
Patrick 104: I think we'll get into
Shelly: Yeah, I think this is, like
Origin Stories: Where Our Money Beliefs Come From
---
Shelly: to kind of kick it off, I would love to know from your standpoint, did you grow up in a household where you guys talked about money?
Patrick 104: only when it became an issue. You know what I'm
saying?
Shelly: like when there was like a hardship?
Patrick 104: yeah, I remember, when my dad got laid off from [00:01:00] his factory job and, think probably I was like 12, and that was a big deal. And I just remember just a lot of tension in the house for a long time, and he went back to school, and got a second master's degree to teach.
But during that time, there was just a lot of tens- I mean, like, like we were a blue collar family in the Midwest, so we lived in between this land between, poor and doing okay. You know what I'm saying?
Shelly: There's a
Patrick 104: we always had groceries, but it was like, not much left over.
I really think that kinda shaped it, it formed patterns in my life for how I think about and how I spend money, for sure
Shelly: Oh, there's no doubt. I wonder at what age did you start to recognize that's part of your past?
Patrick 104: Oh, probably in my 20s. Yeah, early in my 20s. especially because of my career, [00:02:00] like dad especially, had a lot of anxiety around jobs. And so I remember, I left college. I was living in Dubuque, Iowa, 'cause I took this job randomly, and I was working for, like a newspaper, but they made like a magazine and like a bunch of newspapers for like regional whatever.
I was like a junior graphic designer. I was making a whopping $7.50 an hour. And I worked there for about t- year and a half, and I told my dad, "I'm gonna quit this job and I'm gonna move to California for the first time." And he could not understand that because for him, I worked in an office, I had a desk, I had a job to go to every single day.
I had a stable income doing what he perceived as like a good job and he understood it. and why the hell would [00:03:00] I leave this job to go to California to like, travel and just experience my 20s? that was the first time where I'm like, "Oh shit," yeah, like I can tell he's projecting his own fear and his own anxiety around money and career to me.
Shelly: Yeah, that leaves a big imprint as a kid.
Patrick 104: For sure.
Shelly: my kitten is being
Patrick 104: cat's attacking you
Shelly: she's was crying outside. I had to let her in. Yeah, I think this is something that don't realize is happening, and then at some point there's a moment where all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, this thing in my past or this memory pops up and it's like, "Huh, maybe that's why.
Maybe that's why I have these beliefs or ideas or emotional response to certain things." like I grew up in a very, I- m- both my parents were teachers and, They taught at different schools, but they both taught at their, [00:04:00] respective schools for 30-plus years. And so very much like you saying your dad's "Why on earth would you- Kittens. Kittens, they're
Patrick 104: Cat's making an entrance
Shelly: she's full of
Patrick 104: to be part of the show
Shelly: okay. both my parents were teachers. They worked for 30-plus years at their independent schools, and, t- very much like your story of your dad, like, "Why are you leaving to go to California?"
Like, "Why would you leave this job, this, like, secured thing?" m- my parents had a... I don't wanna say they had a hard time, but they definitely were like... My brother was in IT, and they didn't understand after two years why he would wanna leave this good IT job. And then I wanted to work in pro sports, and they were like why would you wanna work in sports?
It's very volatile. But at the same time, they were super supportive. They never actually came out and say that, said that. but I quickly learned, like, oh, right, [00:05:00] there's... Like, I can't eat and pay rent in the same month when I work in pro sports. and living off Top Ramen is not advised.
yeah. So there was all this things that I learned as a kid growing up. My dad was very much about you got a check or money for your birthday let's go to the bank and deposit it in your bank. And there was always questions around "What are you saving for?" "What's this money, what are you gonna use it for?"
they weren't very much, gonna let us run out and buy a bunch of candy with it, although sometimes they did. but as I got older, I watched my brother have his bar mitzvah and come into a fair amount of money. And then couple years later, I had my bat mitzvah, and my dad and mom were really like, "So what, you know, what do you really wanna save this for?"
Or, "What do you wanna purchase with this?" And I was like, "I want a fish tank." "I want a bicycle." and my parents were like, "Okay." And "What do you wanna do with the rest of it?" And I was like, "I don't know. I wanna save it." 'Cause I grew up with this idea of you save money to put towards something, or [00:06:00] you put it towards charity.
My parents were always volunteering their time or volunteering food or giving back to our community in some way. So that was, like, instilled at a really young age, is this kind of give back mentality. And I see that now. Like, when I went to school, I was like, "There's no way I'm being a teacher.
I don't wanna be a teacher. I see all the crap my parents deal with. And now I'm like, "Oh I could teach people."
Patrick 104: It seems like listening to you talk, like you have a very reasonable set of parents, who taught you some good
Shelly: yeah,
Patrick 104: stuff,
Shelly: I learned very quickly in college that this is not the norm.
like I learned how to balance a checkbook by the time I was five. we talked about money pretty regularly and honestly. Like my dad would say, "Hey, you wanna come in and like we'll talk about, you know, what the, where the money goes," and like how I set up my accounts and how we save for vacation.
And, most people I know never did that
Patrick 104: So can you draw a through line between [00:07:00] how you grew up thinking about money and now how you talk to photographers about money and
their business?
Shelly: I think if I go back... So I started my photography business in 2009, and before I hung my shingle or went to the city building and got my license, I was like, I can figure out the photography bit," like the actual taking of the photo
my mom was an art teacher, and we had cameras around as I was a kid But I was like, "Let me figure out the business side," and I actually went to a business class through PPA.
And when I was telling people about this, they're like, "Why would you do that? You gotta learn your craft." And I was like, "No, I actually have to learn how to run the business." my background degree is in economics, so I'm an economics, major in college. I spent 10 years as a financial analyst at Citibank.
I've spent a lot of time with numbers and spreadsheets, and I figured if I could figure out, what is the business plan and what does the model look like and what do I have to charge for things I knew I could [00:08:00] make a living out of it if I could meet, if those two things could meet up.
So when I started to meet photographers, like I'd go to WPPI, that's the big conference in Vegas for those that don't know. It happens in the springtime every year for wedding and portrait photographers. And I would meet photographers, and they had no idea. They'd be like, "Oh, man, I gotta get off my friend's couch."
This one photographer in particular, some folks may have heard this
Patrick 104: No way
Shelly: He had just moved back from Japan, and he was couch surfing, living on a friend's couch, and he's "I gotta get off my buddy's couch. I gotta figure out how to make money doing this wedding thing. I don't even know where to start."
And I was like, "How do you not know where to start? like how much rent, what's the average rent right now for renting a room from somebody? Do you know?" He's "No." I was like maybe you wanna start there." let's figure out what XYZ is right now and put some answers together, and then you get a number, and then that number you can work backwards from.
And I've always been really practical like that. and then, fast-forward a few years after that, he was running a very successful [00:09:00] wedding business that I, helped him over, in the beginning, helped him figure out how to network, how to talk to vendors, how to set a price list, how to defend his price list.
And then I was like, "Oh, this is interesting. I could coach people on this." and he gifted my services to his girlfriend, who was a wedding photographer, and then I went and studied under a business coach for, 18 months. And she's "You sit at this apex of analytical and creative that most people don't."
And I was like, "You're nuts. People are running businesses. They have to know this stuff." She's "You're gonna find out really quickly." And years later, she's totally right. I was very naive at the time
Patrick 104: you do really have a sort of, unique brain in that I think... and I don't have any proof of this, but for a lot of creatives, but I might even a lot of humans, we attach, shame, trauma, emotion to money. Like, when you look [00:10:00] at money from my perspective, you just see data, right?
You're like, "Oh, okay. Like, how much does the room cost to rent? how much do you need to survive to live? what's the going rate in your area for people who do what you do?" You're looking at all these variables, these data sets, and you're like, "Okay, we can take this data and we can produce a number."
And you take that number, right? And you then can build a life and a career around that number. Most people aren't thinking about it like that because they have all of this, junk that they've lived with for so long it's hard for them to separate the emotion and the shame of money to what they need to do, right?
have you ever seen this podcast, this guy named Caleb? He's, he's pretty fam- he's TikTok famous [00:11:00] and y- YouTube famous, where he will dissect people's finances,
and
Shelly: love
Patrick 104: through... He won't actually, 'cause there's no kindness or compassion, right? He'll
be like,
Shelly: yeah "
Patrick 104: you spent 200
Shelly: Oh
Patrick 104: on DoorDash last month."
but there's a psychology and a shame around why they spent that much money, right?
Shelly: Yeah, and she's The Budgetnista. That's how she's best known. and she talks a lot about her journey with money and shame around money, and getting out from this really ugly place. And she grew up in a household similar to mine, where her dad was very much about teaching them about money and saving, and she was a teacher, and she wasn't making a lot of money in the South as a teacher.
And then she got herself into really bad debt, and she could not tell her parents about it. and she just kept spiraling downward and downward until finally, I don't remember if it was her best friend or her sister or whatever, was like, “You need to tell [00:12:00] Dad.” and it was-- she was like, but I saw myself as someone really good with money.
Here I had all this education. We had money Saturdays." and it's a really interesting look at people who have that data, right? The personal lived experience to show them that they're good with money. and the same story goes for Profit First, if you're a fan of the book "Profit First," which I totally love and adore.
He was a big fan of money. He was very good at money, and then he sold his business, and he literally overnight became bankrupt, and his daughter at one point was like, "Daddy, do you need my piggy bank to pay the bills?" he was like, "Oh my God. I gotta get out of this. This is really bad." And then he figured out this methodology, which is what became of Profit First.
even if you grew up in a household similar to mine, and you grew up with the data set of this is data, not emotion, there's still a lot of other factors around, if you make a poor choice or you lose your job, right? That rattles the [00:13:00] foundation. And for me, last year, I had a big rattling of my foundation. not so much from, like, a money standpoint, but from, like, a confidence standpoint. I had some really no good, horrible things happen to me, and I wasn't sure how I was gonna come back from that. at first, it was all about revenge to be honest. but secondly, it was about oh, how do I rebuild that foundation that feels like it's been completely upleveled, it's been completely rocked, by this earthquake?
one from, a confidence standpoint and, identity standpoint, but one from a money standpoint 'cause it was, a big chunk of my pie that I was making was now gone and I wasn't sure how I was gonna get it back, and I'm still in the rebuilding of that. but thankfully, I have a partner and a husband who loves me to no end and lets me around with ideas and try to find my way and super supportive, and [00:14:00] we have our money Saturdays, and we sit down and do all the banking together.
even yesterday, he's like, I know we're really busy. We have all this family and friends coming to town, and you've been traveling, and I've been traveling, He's "We gotta sit down and do the finances." I'm like, "I know. I know. We'll do it. We'll sit down.
We'll do it." but it does allow you to get a better understanding of, where that money going. Am I spending $200 on DoorDash? Should I be cooking at home? and I am a big believer of I remember there was a time, it's still now, there's still people who preach it now don't go buy your $5 or $6 latte.
But I'm also a believer of if that is something that brings you genuine joy you look forward to that coffee every day, it gets you out of the house, it gets you interacting with people, you get to talk to your favorite barista, you just love the smell of it or the ritual of it, then it is worth every damn penny.
I am not gonna tell you to cut that out of your budget. I'm gonna tell you [00:15:00] that there's gotta be other things that's gotta flex, or you gotta find somewhere else to bring in, that extra five or $6 or $30 habit of the week. Or maybe instead of every day, maybe you do it four days a week, and then you have a cup of coffee at home.
but I don't think you should cut out all that joy and bliss and social interaction.
Patrick 104: I think, I wanted to bring it back to photographers and creative specific. but I do think one way to look at it where you're like, yeah, if you need Starbucks to improve your life, go for it, right? But let's just think about it rationally and let's budget it in.
I don't think, that's most people, right? I view it as the reason why a lot of people smoke cigarettes, right? they're not doing it for the pure relaxation of it. They're doing it to like de-stress and it's habit, right? I [00:16:00] think that we live in a very, especially now, in a economically stressful time, where a lot of people are thinking about money constantly and like how to pay for groceries. And so the Starbucks, the s- the $7 Starbucks whatever drink no rational mathematical economic sense. Why the hell are you buying that drink when you are struggling to make rent or pay for groceries? But it's that one drink, it's that one time of the day where they like, they can control, right? It's like a, it's a hit, right?
it's de-stressing. it's, not about "It just makes me improve my life." It's "It's the one thing I can control. It's the one moment of joy in my life that like makes me happy." And I feel like a lot of times people default to these financial decisions that are not good for them, [00:17:00] it's all they got sometimes, right?
Because they're so stressed, they're so worried, that, they feel like they need it. And if you take that away from them, taking cigarettes away from a person it's just gonna make it worse, 'cause that's all they got, right?
Shelly: Yeah. I think this gets to the point of, like, how
Are you running your life on vibes, or are you running it on data? And this gets back to that emotional part of it, which is as an artist, we get very Attached to our work. And, like an example from like the portrait world is I used to have a portrait studio, in the Bay Area, and I was a partner in it.
My partner Tiffany and I ran the studio, and she had way more of a fashion flair to her work, and we would shoot a lot of stuff, indoors with, high school seniors. so she would do the indoor portion, the formal portraits, these like beautiful painterly portraits. And I, way more lifestyle, would [00:18:00] shoot them outdoors.
And then we would come in for an in-person, reveal session. And a lot of the times, not always, but a lot of the times my photos might be picked a little bit more than hers. And I don't mean like a lot, maybe there's five more photos than her photos, and
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: would get so upset.
She would be like, "Why don't they like my images? Why do my images never get p-" Right? It was super emotional. It had nothing to do with me. She was never mad at me. But she always internalized it as that she wasn't providing like her artistry wasn't, the best. Her artistry wasn't connecting or her artistry wasn't going through, and therefore when we made the sale, whatever, however big or small the sale was, she was so upset that her art wasn't basically generating this money.
And I'm like, "It's part of a package." Like we do these packages. It includes this whole experience. It's so much bigger than whose photo did they [00:19:00] choose.
and it took a long time for her to turn that corner. A long time for her to realize like isn't about her, it's about them,
it's not about what photos end up on the wall or in the album. It is about the experience and these great memories that we're creating for these people. But it was like we would have ad nauseam conversations about this for years, because of that emotional like attachment that we have to our stuff.
So you can imagine if that was just the work, that had nothing to do with like the bill or the money coming in the door. And so I was usually driving the money. Like I was usually part of the like, "Okay, how are we gonna price this? Are we making money on these albums? Are we making money on the wall ar- are we making money on the session?
'Cause I have to pay for her. We have to pay for me. Gotta pay for the studio." We also had a studio manager. and then we'd bring in a hair and makeup artist. and our studio manager doubled as a stylist. So there was all these numbers that had to add up. And a [00:20:00] lot of times she'd be like, "I just wanna give them," in the blank. And I'm like, "We're not giving anybody anything. Like it's gotta be built into this package price because we have to... At the end of the day, you and I like have to make money." Like I'm leaving my financial analyst job to become a full-time photographer. Like I need to be able to swap I need to swap paychecks.
where, she was doing it for different reasons. It wasn't always about making money for her. A big part of it was a tax break for her. and so when you're approaching business with two different ideas, right? Then money became an issue because it was like, she's I need to spend so much money in order to make this tax break for my family."
And I'm like, "But I need to make this much money in order to afford my life." there was, like, kind of a natural ending to it because I moved to LA, and we had to close the studio. So that was, that's kinda how that story ended. But the whole point of that is this attachment, right?
We have this attachment to our art. We [00:21:00] sometimes just wanna give it away, because either we're excited about it or we wanna over-deliver, and we're not really thinking about the ramifications. and this is a discussion I just had with a photographer that works for Nat Geo. I just, had him on my podcast, Michael George.
He was talking about this project he shot 12 years ago, and how still today different organizations license the images that he shot for this project. And he goes, "I..." He's "If you would've told 20... young 20-something me that these images would be licensed 12, 15 years later," he's "I would've told you were crazy."
He's "Because at the time," like he goes, "Yes, it was a personal project," but he goes, "Even some of the projects I shot back then, you just look at the dollar amount, you're like, 'Oh my God, that's amazing. You wanna pay me that much money? I'll totally do it. Here you go. Have the rights to it.'"
And he's "Now I realize that images that I never thought would have longevity or wanna... people would want to [00:22:00] license are being licensed." And he's "And I'm coming home with an extra maybe a couple hundred bucks, maybe couple thousand dollars every month because of this of this licensing" that has really helped with his Starbucks habit, in this case.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: it's an interesting thing to talk about, like the hidden things that are in there, both from an expense side, but also from an income side.
Patrick 104: Do you think though there's like, it's like a bifurcated thing, which, to borrow from an economics term, where like you, when you reach a certain level in photography, you can start to think about licensing. the wedding photographer in Ohio, who's charging 500 bucks for a wedding or 1,000 bucks for a wedding probably isn't thinking about licensing.
You know what I'm saying? probably ever. I'm just gonna say that. I'm just gonna be realistic,
Shelly: Yeah. They might get burned and then realize that something's gotta change, but they don't know the name of it yet. Anyway, Go on with your [00:23:00] example
Patrick 104: So I'm just saying that once you reach a certain level of commercial photography, for me, a lot of my clients, the moment that I talk about licensing, their eyes sort of glaze over. So I've had to be creative, in how I bake in licensing, and how I talk about it, and I fold it into creative fees and that kind of thing.
and that has worked out better for me. so I'm still charging for it, I just sometimes have to be creative in how I charge for it.
Shelly: Of course.
Patrick 104: Right? 'cause clients don't understand it. photographers don't understand it. I guess my point of going back to there's a little bit of like, you know, once you reach the Nat Geo level or you're working for, a Nike or a Peloton or something like that's when okay, like I can start to like fully take advantage of licensing.[00:24:00]
But that's not most photographers. Most photographers aren't gonna collect 30% of their revenue from licensing year over year
Shelly: most photographers are not collecting that. license, usage and licensing is very different than what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. To your point, I didn't know about licensing and usage. I was a consumer photographer. I took family pictures, I took pictures of kids, and weddings, and, the occasional headshot.
and I really didn't know much about usage and licensing, and, this national magazine came to the studio and wanted us to do, these pictures for them, every month, and shoot for the magazine, and I was like, "Wow, this is really cool. yeah, totally, we're down to do this." It was like a tween magazine, and we started shooting for them every month.
It was very fun, and then I found this editorial photographer that was in the Bay Area, and I reached out to her for some advice because, I'm kind of a newbie. I don't really... this is two years maybe three years into doing photography, and I was just like, I [00:25:00] just wanna know if she has advice on stuff I should be looking for, like contract-wise, or money-wise, or...
licensing-wise, which I didn't know was a thing. And that was, like, the first time I had heard this idea of, oh, when you shoot for editorial, you own the images, and then they license it for the issue or whatever, a certain period of time, they have an embargo, and then you get to use the images however you want.
And I was like, "What are you talking about?" and then I went to a PPA meeting, and there was somebody there talking about a wedding photographer, right? You go, you shoot the wedding, very common to give your images out to the vendors 'cause that's who you're trying to be friends with, so that they recommend you for future weddings.
And then he was like, "But then I licensed a bunch of these images to these magazines. and I was able to then, reach out to this, wedding dress designer, and then I worked with her, on a small project with her." And then those, [00:26:00] similar to what you were just saying, Patrick, like, you bake in the usage or, your fee is encompassing of some kind of usage, and then it's in your contract actually what the usage is.
And that was, like, an eye-opener for a bunch of people in the room of oh, I shoot direct to consumer, but this is an instance where those images are being used for commercial purposes. and that was like a, this was like a slow burn over a lot of years. probably about, like four to six years of me starting to hear these little things and going what is that?"
And how d- what? What is that? I don't even know what that is. I don't even know how that works. I don't even know how I would use that in my business, to your point. and then it was if you go to a portfolio review and you meet with these people from agencies or magazines or, photo consultants, whatever, they might wanna hire you to do this type of work to, make an ad.
Patrick 104: I will say, and this has gotten me into some hot water, but I [00:27:00] have a lot of... we're just gonna make it spicy here. I'm friends with a lot of wedding photographers. In fact, I'm probably friends with more wedding photographers and, B2C photographers than I am commercial photographers these days.
and a conversation that I've consistently had with them is around the idea of a second shooter, and I would love to hear your take on this
Shelly: Ooh, I love being a second shooter. What's your spicy take?
Patrick 104: so here's my spicy take. Let's say you're shooting a wedding,
Shelly: Okay
Patrick 104: And you hire me, Patrick Fore, be your second shooter.
Now, that dynamic is now a B2B relationship,
Shelly: Yes
Patrick 104: Your company is hiring me,
Fore Photography, shoot for you. There is a licensing question now, right?
Shelly: is
Patrick 104: I'm using my gear, it's my insurance, I'm showing up. you book the job, but you hire me to provide you images that you will [00:28:00] license. It's a personal license, but you will license these images the wedding client to make prints and whatever.
But me as a Patrick Fore Photography, I'm licensing the images to you for purposes of,
Shelly: Booking no more weddings
Patrick 104: and retail and like you can use these to sell to the client, albums and that kind of stuff. But let's say you wanna take one of my images that I took, let's say it's a banger image, right?
Great image, taken on my camera with my eye. And you take my image and you wanna use that as a part of a Facebook ad campaign,
Shelly: Yes
Patrick 104: Or you wanna run an ad in like a wedding conference flyer. That's, that, you don't have license to do that,
Shelly: depends on the contract that I sent you
Patrick 104: right? something that I've talked to, second shooters about is like you need to make the wedding photographer sign your contract too [00:29:00] so that you are protected, right?
So that they can't take the r-
Shelly: to be a mutual contract written for both parties.
Patrick 104: Sure,
if that's
Shelly: and the
Patrick 104: do it.
Shelly: and I think the discussion up front really is about, like, how are these images gonna be used
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: and who holds the copyright, So if I'm hiring a second shooter, I actually would license, I would say that the copyright is shared.
You wouldn't have the job if it wasn't for me. We share the copyright. You can use the images however you like, and I can use the images however I like, and that's how I used to run my second shooter business. Now, I used to pay my second shooters a premium rate to be there
Patrick 104: both those things are not typical,
right?
Shelly:
As you said, Shelley's not typical.
However, the thing is, what should be typical is that there is a contract. You should have a contract for your second shooter. If you are the primary and you do not...
Patrick 104: would you agree that the contract, the person who benefits from said contract more is [00:30:00] the main shooter,
Shelly: Primary.
Patrick 104: a
Shelly: Yeah, because usually the primary writing the contract has their own interests in mind
Patrick 104: Yeah. So usually, and this is a whole other topic, we should probably get back to the main point, but this is just... i've gotten into so many f- like, arguments about this. and
Shelly: s- the second shooter.
Patrick 104: I'm fighting for the
Shelly: the...
Patrick 104: shooter because
Shelly: Yeah
Patrick 104: photographers, right? I think second shooters are often treated as "Oh I own everything that they take, and I just give them the memory card, and I own every image, and I can use it for how-" No, that's not how it...
by law, that's not how it works, Unless you sign something, unless you make me sign something,
Shelly: That says it's a
Patrick 104: is
Shelly: transfer
Patrick 104: you, yeah, just copyright transfer of everything, which is stupid, right?
And then on
Shelly: There's no point, especially for second shooters. Most second shooters get into second shooting to build a portfolio.
Patrick 104: Yeah. I've met a lot of wedding photographers justify it like, [00:31:00] first of all, I take all the risk, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." I'm like, that's just the nature of the work."
Shelly: reason is, I don't know what you say back to them, but yes, it's nature of the work. But yes, you're getting paid a lot more money than your
Patrick 104: Correct.
Shelly: you're doing all the admin, you're doing all the marketing, you're dealing with all the brides and grooms and whatever,
You're dealing with all of the people, and all of the problems, and all of the stress. You should be making more money. But you wanna hire a second shooter to make your life
easier.
Patrick 104: I'm gonna bring it back to the main conversation. then it comes down to my second shooter just loves to do it, right? They work for 10 hours and I pay them 500 bucks. They go
Shelly: Oh, poor thing
Patrick 104: and it's like easy money for them, right?
They just show up, they shoot photos, they go home. I pay them with Venmo 500 bucks. They're happy, I'm happy, So bringing it back to the conversation, 'cause I think that
this is important. how people see themselves, right? The story that we tell ourselves about worth [00:32:00] and how much our work is worth.
people don't value their eye, don't value their work. They don't value their experience. So they're like, "Yeah, 500 bucks. that's great. I love it. 500 bucks. I just worked 10 hours for you, and I gave you 4,000 images. 500 bucks is great." and that comes down to, I think, the value that we, you know, like how we see, ourselves and how much, what we do matters.
And two, it's just like how much we see the industry, right? Yeah, 500 bucks, that's plenty for photography I think that sucks. I think there's such a bad... and here's my hot take. I think wedding photographers especially capitalize on it, and they shouldn't. Like that, that's the worst, part [00:33:00] in, photography right now, is when photographers, capitalize on the ignorance of second shooters.
Because it's like photographers screwing other photographers, and I think that's what makes me most angry about that whole issue, It's one
Shelly: Yeah
Patrick 104: if you shoot for a corporation and they like nickel-and-dime you, and they like don't pay you. They're a corporation. They're gonna do that stuff, right?
Shelly: It doesn't make it right. Let me
just
Patrick 104: make
Shelly: put, let me just put that in there. pay your effing invoices
Patrick 104: but it sucks even more if I hire you and I use your ignorance and your lack of experience into signing a contract that gives me every single right to every single one of your images, and you get nothing for it.
And on top of that, you can't even use it on your website
or social feeds.
Shelly: I think
there's
Patrick 104: all the time
Shelly: So I've been there. I've seen it. I think that one, to your point, is that you have to lead by example, [00:34:00] two, this gets back to this whole so how do we educate people that there is a different way? That you can say no to that contract, that you can say, "No, I'm shooting these photos.
However you wanna negotiate. Maybe it's a shared copyright. Maybe it's you could use my photos for personal use. You can't use them for any advertising. if you wanna put it in the highlight slideshow, fantastic. You wanna sell them to the client, fantastic. But, you can't run an ad with them. and I can put them on my website. If you want me to do a three-month embargo, like depending on the wedding, and the privacy, and all of that jazz. there's so many little caveats that can be in there. like I remember a wedding I second shot for, and the lead photographer, I worked with at the end of, my first year, I basically had three main photographers that I second shot for.
and they were all similar Like in a lot of ways they were really similar in how they ran their businesses. one of them was way more seasoned than the other two, she was awesome to work for, and I [00:35:00] loved working for her. And I shot, I don't even know, anywhere between 10 and 15 weddings a year with her.
and we worked really well together, and it was like shared rights, shared things. I never felt taken advantage of. I got taken care of, things like that. But you kinda don't know until you work for other people or start having these conversations, like you're, like what you're bringing up, about, no, that you're getting screwed.
Don't sign away your rights. and I do think a lot of people get into it as a side hustle, right? It's "Oh I have a camera. I have a pretty good eye. I can make a few hundred bucks this weekend. Let me see if I can make this a go." And they don't really know. They don't know what they don't know, and they're kinda doing it in the dark, and they are kinda happy for that $500 'cause they're, need it to fill the coffer because they've got all this other stuff going on. And look, for those that are out there that need that job because money is the priority right now, there's no judgment on this side of the camera. I have no judgment.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: you gotta do what you gotta do. You know, we were just talking about, like, making money [00:36:00] to put a roof over your head, and pay for groceries, and, take care of your family, So I just really wanna take a moment to be like, we see you. You do you. If and when there's an option, this is what we're talking about.
Patrick 104: Yeah, brings up a question that don't you think though that the onus is on the main shooter and not the second shooter,
Shelly: Oh.
Patrick 104: And I feel like it's if you reach the level where you're charging 15 grand for a wedding and now the second shooter has to negotiate that, because honestly and I've heard this from wedding photographers.
They're like I just wanna hire you." If you came to me with your own contract, and if you came to me and said, you want to be paid for me to use your image in a Facebook ad or a campaign or, "I just wanna hire you," would go find another second shooter. And then I think that sucks.
I will always say that. [00:37:00] That sucks. because I feel like we as photographers, and this is maybe idealistic, should look out for each other and make sure that we are leading by example. and I think what you said was true, like we need to, put our money where our mouth is, right?
yeah
Shelly: I do think that if you are hiring somebody It is really slimy to take advantage of them
Patrick 104: Do you feel like that happens more in wedding photography than other areas?
Shelly: Probably. Yeah, I really had to think about it there for a minute, but probably because I think on the commercial side of things, when you're bidding a job, like I just bid these two big jobs for these other photographers, we ran through a whole set of like scenarios. You know, like, "Oh, you're gonna need this crew person," right?
"Here's your crew list. You're gonna need a digi, and [00:38:00] you're gonna need a food stylist, and you're gonna need a prop stylist, and you're gonna need a hair and makeup, and we need a talent, we need talent casting, and we need these three talent." And it's okay let's reach out to these people and get their rates.
What are... Let's not decide what their rates are. Let's go ask them what their rates are.
Patrick 104: 100%.
Shelly: and then we have a rate sheet. Casting, what are we doing for casting? Are we getting real model, like real people, unsigned, everybody's a real mo- we're not doing AI models, let me just state that.
Like unsigned talent, right? Versus, signed talent, and there's a going rate. You kind of roughly know what that going rate is. and if you don't, you could always ask. or if the client has a budget, the client might say, "Here's what I have to spend."
Like I just worked on a job and the client said, "I know in the past I've paid $200 an hour, for three years usage." I'm like, "Great. So you happy with that budget still today?" He's "Yep." I said, "Great. Now I know how much you have to pay for casting. We're gonna have four models on set for four hours.
Here's the budget." Great. I think in wedding photography, people don't ask [00:39:00] that questions. They make an assumption when they build their package that their second shooter's gonna cost X And that X number has not moved in 10 or 15 years, right? So when I was shooting in '09 to '18 weddings, so that nine-year period of weddings as a second shooter my rate barely changed.
think in the beginning, I was a third shooter for some of them, and I was getting peanuts. Literally $200 for a wedding and lunch that I had to bring. And that was a really awful time. And I did one wedding as a pure shadow. I just shadowed to see what was going on and get the feeling, 'cause I'd never, ever had been a photographer, and I had never been at a wedding as a photographer.
So I actually was willing to kind of volunteer to kind of get the lay of the land and, like, see how things work and see how people talk and, like, absorb, be a sponge. I think if roles were reversed today and I had someone come and be a sponge on my set, I still would pay them a minimum [00:40:00] wage to be there and make sure they were fed. I use the word mentor very loosely here, did not. didn't make sure that I was fed. She didn't really give a damn at all. but moving forward I was making that $500 mark, and then I started earning a little bit more. Somewhere between 650 and 800, kinda is where I capped out. And now, when I talk to my friends that are still shooting a lot of weddings I'm like, "Damn, that rate is still at $500?
And we're in '26 now?"
Patrick 104: And wedding photographers are getting paid more, right? They're charging more, which I have opinions about how much they're charging. But, I should probably keep a lot of them to myself. but you know, I do think with commercial, There's, more transparency around it these days.
For me, let's just talk numbers. I don't care if you're a second assistant, if you work for me, like, if you come on set, you're making at least 600 bucks. don't care if that's
Shelly: Yeah.
Patrick 104: hours[00:41:00]
Shelly: You're making a day rate is what you mean.
Patrick 104: potentially, I would say a minimum of 600 bucks. if you help me out for two hours, it's 600 bucks.
If you work for me for half a day, it's 600 bucks. If you work for me a full day, gonna go up to, between 800, 1,000, depending upon your role, right? And I just think that
Shelly: But I will put a caveat on that for a second. It highly depends on the market you're in
Patrick 104: It's true. But even, yes. If
Shelly: I-
Patrick 104: again, if I'm in small town Ohio, right? But
that
doesn't-
Shelly: are, your rates might be a little bit less. I just know from being... Like, I worked in LA and San Francisco.
Rates were High. As high, on par with New York. Chicago is right up there too. But I had a friend in Arizona who built out a studio, and man, could she get a food stylist for a third of the rate that we were charging in LA or San Francisco.
and that guy was ecstatic to [00:42:00] work at that rate, and it blew my mind. I was like, "There's no way he's working for that amount." No, he was super happy to do it.
Patrick 104: Like, you know, whenever I, like I've worked in Dallas. Like, I remember I had a shoot in Dallas and I over-budgeted production costs 'cause I was like, I'm thinking LA costs and LA costs are not Dallas costs. You know what I'm saying?
Shelly: Yeah. I
Patrick 104: I, I don't wanna get...
like I'm not sure who... I just wanna take a
Shelly: Yeah
Patrick 104: I just wanna do a check-in and make sure that like, this is good and make sure that like we're being productive with this conversation.
And then two, maybe if we need to get back on track, 'cause I, I don't wanna to waste time and get off on tangents
Shelly: Tensions sometimes are the best information
Patrick 104: Yes, they are. I just wanna make sure that, how you feel about it and just make sure that if we need to course correct, we can do that
Shelly: I think money and usage are kinda hand-in-hand in the fields that we're in.
Patrick 104: I'm not sure who your audience is, which is why I'm, getting
Shelly: They're just [00:43:00] creatives.
Patrick 104: Okay.
Shelly: they're mostly photographers.
Patrick 104: Okay
Shelly: But I think, like, when it comes to usage, whether you're a graphic designer, an illustrator, a painter, a photographer, the conversation we're having is still applicable.
Because you could be doing personal art personal portrait art for... You could be doing it as a graphic designer. You could be doing it as a digital illustration. You could be painting it with oil paints, or you could be a muralist doing commercial buildings versus a mural for someone's bedroom.
Licensing, Usage & Second Shooters
---
Shelly: Everything we're talking about is transferable. And the same thing goes for when you're bringing in an assistant. So let's talk about for instance, I got into pottery. The last couple months here I've been going to pottery, and the woman who owns the pottery studio now has brought in multiple teachers, and I'm very curious about how does that work, How does the model work? And it kinda is this idea of you're bringing in, an associate teacher, an associate photographer, an assistant photographer, an assistant potter. [00:44:00] Like, all of that kind of stuff, it transfers no matter what genre you're in. If you can listen to what we're talking about and then apply it to your own business there's still a lot of transferable information.
Patrick 104: For sure.
Shelly: I think it comes back to this idea of, why there's no market rate for what we do. Because, your circumstances of living in San Diego and the life that you live and the needs that you have, your circumstances are gonna be drastically different than mine, so what you charge a client and what I charge a client probably won't match. and to this example, I have a client right now, or a potential client that came to me back in March and said, "Hey, Shelley, I've got this event coming up June 21st. Do you wanna shoot it?" I said, "Yeah, tell me about it. What is the event?" tell me the scope, the details. What are you looking for?"
And he's it's event photography." How many times have you been told, "Oh, it's just event photography"? And then you come, you don't ask the question 'cause maybe you didn't [00:45:00] know to ask the question, and then you get there and they're like, "Hey, we need a team photo of these 50 people, and we need you to take it on the roof, and then we need you to shoot a step and repeat, and then we also need you to be in this room and shoot this breakout session, but then you only have about two minutes to get over there to shoot the details for lunch before everybody comes in and we really need all the detail."
It's if you don't know to ask those questions, you don't get the information, you don't find out if you need a second shooter 'cause you can't be in two places at once, all that good stuff. So I asked all... i'm fairly seasoned now. I know to ask all these que- questions 'cause I've had my fair share of mistakes.
And so I ask all this stuff, and he said can't you just give me a ballpark?" Oh, man. What I've started to say about the ballpark is how big is the ballpark and how many bleachers do we need to, put in it?
Patrick 104: that is a good response.
Shelly: Like how many people need to be at the ballpark?
Do we need to have night games? Does it need to be lit?
Patrick 104: Yeah.
Shelly: there's all this like
stuff.
Patrick 104: is this, the Chicago Cubs?
Shelly: and then he was like what do you mean?" And I said tell me about the event. Is there speakers?" "Oh, [00:46:00] no, it's an orchestra thing. there's three different acts.
There's three different orchestras. We have three different conductors." I'm like, okay, in my head I'm like, okay, this is way more complex than just an event where I show up and I'm just documenting what's happening. This means I'm gonna have to be in certain places at certain times. I'm gonna have to hit certain lighting.
I'm gonna have to hur- hit certain emotions with like hands, and the bows are gonna have to be in an upward striking position to be really dynamic. And yet I have to shoot portraits in between the change-out, which means I need to run into the basement of the building to like grab these quick portraits of people, and I need to shoot BTS of the entire film crew that's filming this.
Oh, and did I mention that there's three different parties that need usage in perpetuity, by the way? Awesome. Okay, cool. Now I have a better scope of what's going on. You sent me a creative deck, but silly me, when we had a conversation, I gave you some rough numbers that I said, it starts at this number and depends
Patrick 104: I don't do that anymore
Shelly: and technical [00:47:00] abilities.
So what happens now? Fast-forward, I put the contract together. Mind you, I live in London. I send this over to him, and I get... whatever. I had to wait a long time. Anyway, I get a response that is, "Shelley, this would all be great.
Can you do it for basically half of what you've estimated with all of the usage that we asked for?" And so then you basically sit there and go, "No I am not gonna back down." What you're willing to pay me is just to show up with my camera. This has nothing to do with actually getting there and the, all the prep and the post and the license. You literally have negated three, three-fourths of the rate.
I wrote back a nice email pulling out things from the creative deck saying, you asked for this and this, and then it shows that you're gonna use it for these things," and literally it's a quote from the deck of how they were gonna use it, "and you want it for these three companies."
and I use the word [00:48:00] companies lightly. They're charities, but to me, charities are still companies. and then he wrote me back and he said, "No, this is capped at this rate." "I went to the CEO. We can't give you any more money." And basically it was like a take it or leave it, and guess what?
I walked away today.
money desert right now. I said that at the top of the show. It's getting hot in the desert. but a huge compromise. How could I
Patrick 104: It is
Shelly: at double that rate and tell them that this is what I can do, and this is why you need somebody at this rate with this amount of knowledge to do this job?
And let me tell you, this was not a lot of money. We're not talking, we're not even four figures here, people.
Patrick 104: Oof
Shelly: So for them to come back and say it's half of this, I was like, this is crazy. I'm not doing this. So I put it out. So here we go. So I type out my little thing that I'm gonna write back, and I say, "But before I do this, I wanna leave..."
even though I'm mad. right? I'm like, but someone's gotta shoot this, and [00:49:00] I would rather it be somebody in my network who might need the money. And this might be an okay thing for them because, again, my circumstances, their circumstances, not the same. They're apples and
Patrick 104: Right
Shelly: So I put it out to a network that I'm part of here, and within not less than five minutes, I had nine people, texting me their portfolios and email addresses, and I wrote every single one in a private DM, "Just so you know, this is the scope that I know.
This is the rate. It's a capped out rate. There's no negotiation. If you're okay with this, I'm gonna put you in a Google sheet. I'm gonna send it over to the client. I'm gonna let them take it from there." They're, "Yeah. Yeah. This is fine. Great." And this is people who shot for Adidas, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue.
They've done really big campaigns for... they're commercial photographers. They also shoot events. They've shot really big activation events. I'm like, am I the one with egg on my face here? Am I the idiot here that's missing something because I wanna do this for half of what I put out there?
And I had to sit with [00:50:00] that for a minute because I was like, wow, maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe this is a, quote-unquote, "decent rate" for the area I'm in, and I'm naive little blind to what's happening here. And then, you know what? Just can't do it. Because my biggest thing that I lead with is integrity, and if I go back on what I originally said, then I am myself for my values and my integrity.
Patrick 104: You're not just punishing yourself, you're punishing the industry. Because what happens then is that trains that client to be like, "Oh, if I hire a photographer in the future, whatever they come back with, I'm gonna half it,
Shelly: Yes. Yeah,
Patrick 104: and I'm gonna see what they say." Because you said yes, you're now like, oh,
Shelly: Yeah
Patrick 104: You just, rewarded the screaming toddler with a cupcake, right?
And I think that does harm. To me, you had no choice to say no. And
as
long as...
Shelly: I did [00:51:00] go back to try to negotiate, right?
Patrick 104: Absolutely.
Shelly: went back and I said
Patrick 104: yeah
Shelly: if we do this little less or this a little less, or we change the usage to
Patrick 104: do.
Shelly: I can knock a little bit off the top, but I can't do it for what you're asking for, full stop."
Patrick 104: But I wanna, let's just sort of like kind of extrapolate that moment because I feel like, for your listeners and my listeners, you and me too, we've all been in this circumstance. Like everyone can relate to the fact that we... Somebody contacts us, we quote out the job, they come back, and we have a choice, right?
Do we like work for way less than what we originally hoped, or, do we say no? And maybe some, you know, we say no and we need the money, right? Like we have bills. Like even if it was 1,000 bucks and the original quote was 3,000, you're like, it's still 1,000 bucks. I kinda need the 1,000 bucks," right?
that's a tough [00:52:00] choice in the moment that everyone faces on a daily basis, right? And, that's a hard thing to confront,
Shelly: oh, yeah. I didn't wanna send that note or email or however I sent it. and I even had dinner with a friend over the weekend who works with this person, and they're like, "Oh, do you want me to reach out to him?" And I was like, "No, I do not need you to be in the middle of this." And I said, the sad part though is that this person works in their creative field. He does video. He used to be a photographer. You know what you're asking for, buddy. This is... So part of me is this gets back to our whole thing about photographers screwing photographers, and at the same time of you don't know what you don't know. I do think some photographers not purpose, screw people over, [00:53:00] right?
And then maybe they get burnt at some point and they're like, "Oh yeah, that's not that wasn't cool. I shouldn't do that anymore. I've learned. I'm now gonna be a better person or change that decision." but it just kinda sucks because I've been on the flip side where, you bid too low and you lose the job too.
that is a real thing. I know people don't usually think that's ever a thing. I had a friend, I helped bid this big commercial job, and I looked over her numbers and looked over her deck and gave her some feedback on things and asked a lot of questions for her to just kinda go back and see if she needed to ask more questions of the client.
And it turned out, even though her bid to her was quite big, it's the largest bid she'd ever put out- Did not compare to the bid that won. the bid that won was probably, a good 20% higher. and I think it's interesting also, if we dial it back to like portrait photographers and wedding photographers, right?
You have the gamut of people paying different [00:54:00] rates. You have those high five-figure wedding photographers, but you still have the $3,500 wedding photographer. friends of mine got married not that long ago, and the mother of the groom reached out to me to say, "Hey what do you think like the going rate for photographers is right now?"
And I was like, "I don't know. I got married 23 years ago. have no idea." and I always said, "I would imagine that the average for a wedding photographer, depending on what you're looking for, would range somewhere around five to seven, depending on what they're giving you and what you're
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: But that would be, I think, a fair rate to like..." You don't need the... Sorry, Jerry, I'm gonna throw you under the bus here. You don't need the Jerry Ghionis to come to your... I love his work and I love you,
Patrick 104: I don't know who that is
Shelly: he's an amazing photographer out of Australia, lives in Vegas, does fashion and weddings.
basically runs WPPI now. you don't need the Vanessa Joy of the world. but at the same time, [00:55:00] what they ended up going with was someone who was significantly less than that, and she was, mother of the groom, was pissed at the end, right? She's "They didn't do this.
They didn't do that. I didn't get this photo. I didn't get that photo. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." They were not like the nicest people to work with. They were really bossy." And I'm like I'm not gonna say like you get what you pay for,
At the same time, maybe that just wasn't the right fit.
And if you were paying for it, then you got to have a say. But if you weren't paying for it you don't get to really have a say
Patrick 104: Yeah. Yeah, I don't wanna get into wedding photography too much 'cause I have a lot to say about it. But I to me if somebody came to me... they probably wouldn't, right? But if they're like, "Patrick, can you shoot our wedding?" I'm like, "Okay I don't know, like 5K.
Does that sound good?" Yeah, that's pretty good. I'm pretty experienced, right? I've shot for brands all over, right? To me, I'm like, paying 11K 'cause... This is gonna get me into trouble, [00:56:00] Shelley.
Shelly: It's
Patrick 104: It's really just a...
Shelly: a vanity
pr-
tax
Patrick 104: it's like event photography on steroids, right?
'Cause you're just covering it. you're taking what somebody else created and you're making it, pretty, right? And if a client a really expensive floral designer, a really expensive, I don't know, set designer, and there's a wedding planner, and it's at an amazing venue in some vineyard somewhere in Italy or California, Napa, it's not hard to get good photos, right?
and then on top of that the couple, they're attractive, like they could be models, right?
Shelly: And they're
Patrick 104: It's not
Shelly: gorgeous attire
Patrick 104: photos. And they're in gorgeous at- Everyone is styled to the nine. And to me if I showed up and all I had to do was point my goddamn camera at any direction and get a good image, are you serious?
That's like a cakewalk day. I know I'm
Shelly: There's, more to it than that,
Patrick 104: There
Shelly: I get your point.
Patrick 104: I don't know... You know what I'm saying? [00:57:00] Like, and there's the pressure aspect, which it's so funny 'cause I... People are like, "But the pressure.
Shelly: There is a lot
of pressure
Patrick 104: there's one kiss, you can't repeat that."
Shelly: Actually, you can. We've done it, "
Patrick 104: That's so funny. But I'm like, yeah, but I've shot $130,000 campaigns where, people are flying in from, everywhere for the shoot. I can't. I could, in theory, re-repeat this. We could. But it'd be
Shelly: Yeah,
Patrick 104: work again,
Right?
Shelly: the difference is that people think about it as "Oh, I gotta get that first look shot, and it only happens once." And honest to God, I think that shot you cannot replicate.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: the first look with you know, if there's, like, a dad or a parent and the other the person getting married, right?
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: especially grandparents. Oh my God, grandparents, right? You can't replicate those moments. The kiss, 100% you can replicate it. Don't be fooled. You can
replicate it.
Patrick 104: about that though, that's just the nature of professional photography
Shelly: But I think that's also, yes. You [00:58:00] should be able to know where to be, know where to position yourself, know when it's coming because you've asked what is happening in the ceremony. "Oh, you're doing this and this, and then they're gonna read this, and then getting up and saying that, and then they're gonna do vows, and then they're gonna
Patrick 104: Sure. Absolutely
Shelly:
And then when the person who's directing the ceremony says this, that's the, "Okay, I'm gonna, my second shooter's gonna be here, and I'm gonna be here, and we're just gonna blast the shit out of it, and we talked to the videographer so nobody's in each other's way."
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: Okay,
I've had some crazy shit happen at weddings where it was like, the bride will come and say, "Hey, so my stepdad is here, and my dad doesn't like my stepdad, and we can't take pictures with them, and they can't be in the same room at the same time."
Patrick 104: See, that's where you lose me. That's where that's
Shelly: And then you have to start
Patrick 104: so much more sense to me.
Shelly: you start- you have to, like, manage people. Or, like, I remember a group photo, and one side of the family hated the other side of the family, and everyone was like, "Just do it for the bride and groom. Just do it for the bride. You gotta stand here." And, like, [00:59:00] Mom is, like, elbowing this person over here, and this person's elbowing...
and I'm, like, yelling at the crowd so that the lead photographer can
Patrick 104: my
Shelly: the shot.
Patrick 104: you couldn't pay me enough to deal with that kind of
Shelly: Yeah. So there's that kind of shit that
Patrick 104: Yeah.
Shelly: all the time.
Patrick 104: Yep
Shelly: you have the groomzilla or the bridezilla. I had a groomzilla. We've had bridezillas. You have couplezillas. I think tensions get super high.
People get very anxious about family stuff or money stuff, right? Since we started with money, right? "I've spent all this money on the wedding." in my personal opinion, when my husband proposed to me, we had only dated for six months, and I actually said no. And then, a couple hours later, I said yes, but it was because I was like, "I'm not..." I said, "If you're looking for the commitment, I could do that. If you're looking to run out and have a wedding I'm not up for that right now. I wanna wait and actually save money so that my parents aren't paying for the whole wedding." And guess what? Marriage is a lifetime, wedding is a day. and again, this gets back to my very [01:00:00] practical, sense.
we had an idea for how we wanted to have our wedding, and my mom was like no." we wanted, It was gonna be semi... It w- I would say it would be dressy, but then the minute I realized I have to wear a dress and I have to get all fussied up, everybody's getting dressed up.
Everybody's in black tie. But I just think that is those are the stressors of the day that come out, that the photographer has to deal with, which is why the photographer probably makes that money, in a lot of sense, is 'cause they're the ones managing a lot of that. And a lot of times now, to save money, people don't have planners, right?
Wedding planners help buffer that. They're almost like your producer on set.
If you don't have that, and you are the photographer-producer now, which happens on the commercial side and on the wedding side, you should be making extra money.
Patrick 104: especially if you're producing the wedding or you're planning the wedding. Yeah, absolutely
Shelly: I know so many photographers who are like, "Oh, I put the [01:01:00] timeline together. I told them when to send out their save
Patrick 104: Which is insane
Shelly: when we have to do this. It goes on and on. And I'm like, "What?" I was like, "You're basically being the planner."
They're like, "Yeah, 'cause they don't wanna hire a planner, and as a photographer, I need the plans in order to execute
Patrick 104: Okay,
Practical Tactics: Getting to the Number
---
Patrick 104: I wanna bring this conversation back to money, and I wanna make it really practical for people. I wanna ask the Shelly Waldman, question: Why do you think people undercharge?
Shelly: there's so many reasons
Patrick 104: let's just,
Shelly: You wanna start with one?
Patrick 104: top reasons. Yeah, let's
just talk about
Shelly: it's
Patrick 104: reasons
Shelly: I think it's, a lot of it is fear that you don't think someone's gonna say yes to that rate. that you're gonna get more nos than you are yeses. And I know I've been there. "Oh, I can't charge that." What do mean I can't charge that?
I could charge it. [01:02:00] Maybe somebody will say yes. Or I've coached enough photographers now to know... there's one photographer in particular where I was like, "Wow, your rate is pretty low. Like, how often do people say no to you?" And they're like, "Never." I was like, "You have 100% acceptance rate."
I said, "You need to s- every time you get a new inquiry, I want you to raise your rate $50 or $100," right? In this case, I went $50 'cause I kinda knew where they were mentally, and the answer was like, I don't know if I can do that." I s- "Just try it." Lo and behold, four or five inquiries, six inquiries later, they're charging $300 more, and they're still getting yeses, right?
They only now have had one no, and I'm like, "You need to keep going until you start getting a couple nos and still getting yeses." That's gonna show you where that gray line, the wiggly line starts to be. that's a good place to be, but if you're getting yes after yes after yes after yes after yes, it means you're not charging enough.
People are willing to pay more. You're leaving money on the table.
Patrick 104: [01:03:00] Yeah, on the commercial side, when I first started, I got the advice from a photographer that, and I love this.
Why Photographers Undercharge — & How to Fix It
---
Patrick 104: you should give a number that makes them have to go back to their boss for approval. they have to like, "Oh, let me check on that." Okay, cool.
Shelly: Get back to me
Patrick 104: go... If they like say yes right away, you're like, "I just left so much money on the table."
Shelly: Yeah
Patrick 104: And I think for consumers too, it's the same thing. Although with consumers, like for wedding photographers, prices are pretty transparent. are they on websites these days? Do they post
prices?
Shelly: I think there's less actually on wedding plates now than there was.
it might be more like, you might find them 30% of the time, 40% of the time.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: or there's like a starting at rate. People will say "Oh, I shoot weddings and I start at X."
Patrick 104: Sure.
I do have on my website the scary go away number, and
this is actually tr-
Shelly: mean?
Patrick 104: this has, transformed my business. 'Cause I was getting a lot of [01:04:00] leads that were not qualified.
Shelly: Oh.
Patrick 104: and,
Shelly: you product if you shoot this for me?
Patrick 104: no, it was more like $800 to $1,500 jobs that for me in my market is doesn't make sense, right?
Just doesn't. I can't... I live in, and I realize that's privilege as hell, 'cause there's a lot of photographers that are like, "Man, 1,500 bucks for a job? I would love to do that."
my rent's,
Shelly: yes/no scenario
Patrick 104: my rent's 3,500 so, like, it doesn't make sense for me to spend, 'cause it's not just shooting time, right?
it's like planning, it's conversations, it's emails, it's post-production, it's, it's just all that stuff. So I'm just like, I start at a certain number, and that has scared away people that I want it to scare away.
Shelly: So it worked
Patrick 104: it, yeah, it does work. I
Shelly: How,
Patrick 104: this
Shelly: did it take you to put that on your website?
Patrick 104: after probably a year and a half of [01:05:00] freelancing I got really frustrated with having conversation. It was really exhausting having conversations with people, and then it would get to, like the conversation would go really well, and then I would ask the question, and you're a commercial photographer, you understand.
so let's talk budget." and we can get into strategy here, but like for me, I try to take the emotion out of it, and I've had to be really intentional about it. And this is one thing that I recommend to every photographer or creative is do your best to take the emotion out of it.
In fact, for me, I gamify it, right? like a game.
Think of it like if I put it in my head like it's a game, like it's not like money value. It's just a game. It's a competition. It's back and forth about whatever. who is gonna win, me or the client, right? that's helped me take the emotion out of that conversation, and it's taken the fear out of that conversation. 'Cause we're just having a game, it's a pricing game. I got really tired [01:06:00] of clients having a 30-minute conversation and brainstorming and "It'd be really great if we did this."
"Okay, let's talk budget."
We,
Shelly: we have $500.
Patrick 104: Oh my. And that happened a lot where I just got defeated and I just was like, "Oh, sorry man." And I would have to go back to him and be like, "Yeah, I'm sorry. Like my day rate, I start at 3,500." That's just that's just to get me to get the camera out of my camera case.
"Okay, we can't afford that." Okay. So then they're disappointed and I'm disappointed, so now I'm like, it's let's just take the sticker shock, put it on the website. And that's been really helpful for me. but that still happens though, man. It's still like the fear happens.
you know, maybe I can get some advice for you for this, 'cause I feel like if I'm dealing with it, other people are dealing with it. I'm okay when they throw out numbers. I'm not okay when, it's really open-ended, right? Like
Shelly: the--
Patrick 104: I just had a conversation with a client [01:07:00] recently.
it's a B2B company. They make technology products for wireless, stuff that I don't understand. And they're a company doing pretty good, and they gave me the scope and they were like, "I don't know, like we've never had a photographer before.
Let's just throw out a number. Let's just..." And I'm like, "I have nothing to go off of." so at that point you're like, "Okay, this could be literally a $6,000 job or like a $40,000 job. Where am I at with this job?" You know what I'm saying? 'Cause you're like you don't wanna leave money on the table, but they can pay some money.
You know what
Shelly: Yeah,
Patrick 104: happened
Shelly: do you ever say to them "Oh, this job that I have on my website, cost $25,000." and then you kind of get the reaction of like, "So are we thinking somewhere around there or are we thinking, you know, something else?" Like, do you ever just give them an example from your portfolio[01:08:00]
Patrick 104: no. 'Cause it, I don't wanna, I feel like that's doing the same thing as potentially scaring them or underbidding them. 'Cause they're like, "Oh, you did that for 25K, but we were
Shelly: Okay, so what you could do is you could say are you thinking 60K or are you thinking 16K?"
Patrick 104: Because, this is something that I think everyone deals with. Because the people have a budget in mind.
Shelly: Yeah, sometimes.
Patrick 104: I disagree. Because here's the thing, like, if you have a client come to you, right? Bob Smith comes to you, Shelley, and says, "Hey, I have a project that I want you to shoot."
New product launch, whatever. "I don't have a budget." And you say, "Okay, I want a million dollars." And he's "What? A million dollars? No way." Okay, you have some idea of a budget. It's not a million dollars, right? So let's just go back. $500,000? "No way." [01:09:00] $200,000? "Okay. No, but still," So I feel like everybody has some
Inside
Shelly: I think
Patrick 104: they're willing to pay
Shelly: Yeah, if you follow Andrea Stern of Ask Stern Rep, right?
Patrick 104: Yeah, I do
Shelly: she has this idea of, you know, like, you feel 'em out. You say "This could be a $50,000 job," and then you wait, and if you're on Zoom with them or if you're on the phone with them, you either get the or the , right?
if you get the , it means that was too much money. There was no way they were even thinking that amount of money. And if they're like exhale, they're like, that's, they're like in that ballpark. You're close to the ballpark. Again, the ballpark that they've imagined.
Patrick 104: this is really good 'cause I feel like this doesn't get talked about enough, is that like subliminal non-verbal cues when you're on a phone call, which most of the time it happens on a phone call, right? Where it's like we're just starting the conversation, we're talking about budget.
You might not get those non-verbal cues because we're just on a phone call, [01:10:00] right? So it's I feel like this could be a whole podcast topic in and of itself, but understanding psychology. You know what I'm saying?
Shelly: Oh, yeah. And then there's so much to it, but I also think this gets back to knowing your numbers. If you know on average what you need to make per shoot, then you have a number in your mind that makes it worth it for you to do the job, right? And of course scope and usage and all of that stuff may be adjusted on top of that number.
But you have a baseline number that you're like, "My baseline number," like you just said, Patrick your day rate is 3,500, right? You know at a minimum, there might be, like, the occasional job that you might take on 'cause of a non-tangible or super passion project, that might be a little less than that.
But the most part, this is gonna be your... that's your stepping stone. And then you're like, "You know what? This job is super complex. It's gonna require all of these things. I'm gonna have to manage all this stuff." Now your rate just went up because of complexity, and then on top of that, you've got your production fees, you [01:11:00] have your usage fees, whether you're baking them in or putting them on top, and then you have all your crew, and then you have your post. So-
Patrick 104: Yeah, and for the record, just to get really practical, I don't lead with my $3,500 a day rate. I don't... 'Cause sometimes, like, I've charged companies $6,500 a
day.
Shelly: I'm just saying getting back to the photographer and, like, where do you start
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: I'm Shelley Wallman. I've got this new-fangled thing. I've never worked with a photographer before. I came across your website. I absolutely love it because of X, Y, and Z thing that I saw that you shoot. And if I come to you and I'm like, "Oh my God, I totally love that shoot that you did with this company," you know in your head what that cost. So at a minimum, you know that's what it costs to do it. if you're talking to the newbie business owner that's never done this before, you might say, "Hey to produce something like that, it's gonna be around 25K.[01:12:00]
Do you have that budgeted?" And they might go, "Oh, no. I got about 10." Now you have a number to work with, right? And so then you could say I know it costs around 25. They've got 10. Can we bridge the gap? Is the gap too wide, or can we bridge the gap?" And sometimes you get that person up to 18, 19, and you take a few thing...
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: away or change scope or whatever. But
Patrick 104: One thing that has helped me frame this in my mind is especially for the commercial, people, you are dealing with budgets, not emotions. I feel like this needs to be communicated more. But if a company comes to you, you might be talking to Jane Smith or Bob
Shelly: Smith.
Patrick 104: or whoever.
Th-that is a person, right? We often attribute a human-to-human [01:13:00] conversation with emotion. There is like a,
Shelly: Emotional exchange?
Patrick 104: them.
Shelly: Yeah
Patrick 104: When you are dealing with a business, you aren't dealing with
Shelly: people's personal finances.
Patrick 104: are dealing with a budget, right? So it's just numbers.
It's do the numbers work within their spreadsheet or not? And if it works within their spreadsheet if they can afford it, you're good, right? And if they can't, they'll tell you, and it's not personal. It's just numbers for them. And I feel like when I started to think about it that way, even though I'm talking to Bob Smith or Jane Smith, it's not their money. It's their company's money, right? And that's a very different thing than talking to a
Shelly: A wedding client, yeah
Patrick 104: Which is another hard part of the wedding industry. if there would be a couple that came to me right now and they were like, "Hey, we [01:14:00] don't have much money," and, they told me a story, I'd be like, "Yeah, I'll do it for 500 bucks." I would lose so much money on, just 'cause I'm a sucker. but for business, it's is your business making money? Does it work within your budget? And I think if photographers had that perspective more, they would be more apt to be like, "I'm just gonna throw out a number and see what happens,"
Shelly: I think this gets back to your question that you asked me, right? why do people undercharge? Is it a confidence problem? Is it a fear problem? Is it they have all this emotional attachment to money? Is it an identity issue
Patrick 104: Yeah, I think it's all of those things. Like for me, like one of the stories I talk about in my book is my first job that I actually got adult money for, adult photographer money for. This
Shelly: to be c- confused with photography.
Patrick 104: No, not adult photography, adult money, like grown-up [01:15:00] money. grown-up photographer money, where I was talking to this guy, he owned a company Irvine, California.
And, we were talking and exchanging emails for a couple weeks, and he wanted to talk in person. He's like, "Hey, I'm kinda old school. can you drive up to Irvine and meet you?" And he even offered to come down. I was like, "No, no, no, I will drive up there." And we went to, a Starbucks Coffee, and we just had a conversation.
this was the first time in my freelance career, really my entire career, that I charged like money. he was like, how much are you thinking that this project would cost?" this is after he talked about all the production, the scope. And I was like, "Oh, okay.
I'm thinking around 37K." And in that moment I was like panicking.
I swear I never charged that much money. Like the most amount of money that I charged up until that point was
Shelly: wow. [01:16:00] Okay, so this is like
a,
Patrick 104: this is,
Shelly: this is more than four times what you were comfortable
with
Patrick 104: shortly after I left my corporate job, right?
And so like I remember he like took a drink of his coffee, he looked out the window, and then he looked back at me. This is all within a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. He's "Yeah, that works. What's the next steps?" And in that moment I realized, it was like a, like an epiphany.
I was like, "Oh, it doesn't have to be weird." It d- right? It doesn't have to be like emotional and "Oh my God, it's gonna be good. I don't think we can do it." It can just be what it is. It's just a number. And that really defined how I talk about money with clients, and it gave me confidence to throw out crazy ass numbers.
And I-- Sometimes I've thrown out crazy [01:17:00] numbers, and they're like, "There's no way. there's no way that we can do that."
Shelly: Yeah, in New York, someone just told me, a story about shooting a book cover, and, this is a super-duper seasoned photographer. and I was like, "Yeah, book covers are, like, tricky, right? 'Cause sometimes you get $500, and sometimes you can make more." And
I said, "I haven't actually researched recently what's the going rate." And he's that's funny. So I asked around, and a lot of people were telling me 'Oh, man, you're gonna be lucky if you get $1,200.'" He's "Anything between 1,200 and 2,500 that's pretty good money." And he's "No way.
I'm not doing it for that." So he threw out... He's, he asked for 14 grand, and he got it. Wasn't like... It wasn't weird. They didn't push back. There was no craziness, and it like in the same vein of "This is what it takes to get me to shoot your book cover."
Patrick 104: Yeah "
Shelly: Y- yeah." I was just like, "Wow, that's seven times more than what people were telling you."
Patrick 104: It will only be [01:18:00] weird if you make it weird. You know what I'm saying?
if you make the conversation around money weird, if you come in and you're not confident and you're awkward about it and you hesitate you're cutting your chances down of getting a yes.
But even if you have to, I will tell everyone this, even if you have to perform, you put on the mask of somebody who's confident as hell, and you come in and you say, "10 grand." And give them the opportunity to say yes or no. And if they say no, it's not the end of the world, 'cause you can negotiate.
You're like, "Okay, how does eight sound? Ah, I can do it for eight." It's not personal to people as much as you think it is. and I think that goes back to the stories that we tell ourselves about money. It's personal to us, right? But for somebody who's making [01:19:00] $700,000 a year and has two businesses, it's not personal.
They deal with money every single day. Just money, it's constantly coming in their checking account and out of their checking account, right? So you know, you might have this underlying, anxiety of, "Oh my God, like I... groceries and my mortgage and my kids' braces payment." And they're not thinking that.
They just pay for cash, right? So you should have the confidence to come in and be like, "20K, 15K," or "$1,500," depending upon what the budget is or scope is. So
Shelly: I'm curious about this emotional regulation, right? how do you regulate... So if you are in this period of need, And maybe you're in a very scarcity mindset right now, right?
'Cause we are living through some pretty tough times. and [01:20:00] I think it can be really hard to be bold, right? To put on that mask and be bold and say "This is gonna cost you five figures. This is gonna cost you high five figures." you have any advice for people to help other than is there anybody that you personally look to that you think right now is someone where you're like, "Ah," you should pretend to be...
Who comes to mind? Like Chris Do, right? You could look to Chris Do, and you could embrace his philosophy and pretend like you're him in negotiating. Or, is there somebody out there to give people, an idea of, who could they be that persona of when they're not feeling it right now?
Because they show up right now that scared person who, they just need to pay their grocery bill. They need to pay that, for their car and their phone
Patrick 104: Christo's great. I've learned stuff from him. I think what I would tell people is, Whatever you have to do to not think [01:21:00] about, and this is really hard, but you can't think about the fact that you have $12 in your checking account. That is not a part of the equation.
that you are dealing with somebody who has the money to pay you. You know what I'm saying? And if you understand that if they have the means to pay you, that they aren't thinking about the groceries, they aren't thinking about the mortgage payment, they're not thinking about the kids', braces payment.
They're not thinking about these things. Then what? Yeah, just charge them whatever you want. Even if you have to be a little vindictive about it, whatever energy you can muster to be like, "I'm gonna charge this," I think you do what you have to do. For me, again, I go back to I gamify it.
that has worked to take my own anxiety and take my own trauma, take my own story out of it, [01:22:00] right? If I treat it like a game, that it's not real, right? Then that takes me out of that anxiety space and it puts me in a different mode. I'm trying to win the competition, and that works for me. I think everybody's different here.
but it's something that you have to figure out. but I think, again, I think the thing that I wanna underscore is not as personal to the other person as you think it is. And so once you fully start to understand that, that it's just a number, You know, one thing that I tell my daughter a lot, I have a kid, she's 13, you're, you've been a 13-year-old girl, you know this.
Shelly: Yes, at one time.
Patrick 104: kind of the marquee trait of a 13-year-old girl is anxiety, right? Just worried about everything, just constantly, Like, every day she invents new things to just
worry
about. There's, like, new things. And one thing that I always go back to her is I want you to think about it's actually [01:23:00] more of a stoic principle.
What's the worst possible thing that could happen here, right?
Shelly: Yep, I've played this game
Patrick 104: and then she's like, "Oh my gosh, well, if this happens," like, "she won't be friends with me anymore, and then I'll be embarrassed and I'll never to her." And then I'm like, Okay, you said all that stuff, all right? What's the best possible thing that could happen here? If you take this risk, if you do this thing-"
Shelly: the positive
outcome?
Patrick 104: What's the positive outcome? What could happen then? And she's "I've never, I don't, I've never even thought about that." Most of the time we don't think about that,
Shelly: Yeah
Patrick 104: right? M- we're just catastrophizing, which is bullshit because if we look back on our life how often has the worst thing that could happen, how often did that happen?
Shelly: very, rarely.
Patrick 104: not very much,
right?
Shelly: like most of the time when you ask an adult "What's the worst that can happen?" And you go through all of the steps, they end up homeless in a [01:24:00] cardboard box somewhere on the street, right? you're like, "But there's
Patrick 104: there's a big
gap.
Shelly: to get to that point."
Patrick 104: So
Shelly: That you flip the script, right? That you say, "Okay if you do this thing, what is the best thing that can happen?" And my friend's house that I stayed at in New York, she has a poster on her wall. On her office wall, there's a little, maybe an 8 by 10 card, and it's on her wall, and that's exactly what it says.
"What's the best thing that can happen?"
Patrick 104: Yeah.
Shelly: like a constant reminder of
Patrick 104: it's so good
Shelly: we're always going down, but what if we go up?
Patrick 104: 1,000%. And I think when I look back on my own career, it's those times when I took the risk and I ignored the catastrophe. I ignored the lizard part of my brain that said, "Oh my God, I have the grocery bill and the car payment and all the this. I just need to get paid." And I was like, "But what's the best thing that [01:25:00] could happen?"
The
Shelly: I make four months worth of rent. Yes.
Patrick 104: I make four a month and they love the images,
Shelly: Yeah.
Patrick 104: And they tell their
Shelly: for next campaign.
Patrick 104: they bring me back the next quarter I'm gonna focus on that.
Shelly: And then I get... yeah
Patrick 104: Way better things happen
Shelly: I think this is where, we see a lot more people talking about kind of like the step away, the touch grass, the, get in the right mindset when you sit down to have those calls. so if you're someone who is like, you like meditation, that really centers you or calms you, or some people like the power pose, right?
Stand in a power pose for five seconds before you go into a meeting. You know, stand like Superman. or even like your hands on your hips, or like, you know, athletes have like walkout songs, right? So it's like whatever that is to you, if it's meditation or going for a walk or just like a quiet moment or reading poetry or whatever it is.
to your point, if you can get yourself in that [01:26:00] mindset of putting away the personal and talking about that number, the business number, the gamifying number, like almost like you're playing Monopoly,
Patrick 104: Yep
Shelly: right? Can I land on free parking? I think is really a good methodology that we need to embrace more as creatives because we're overall a pretty negative bunch
Patrick 104: It's true. I will say something else that has helped me too is, and maybe you've done this too if I write out things beforehand, if I write out what I want,
it's a game changer for me,
right?
Shelly: blank check method. You ever
heard about that?
Patrick 104: it's not just that. It's like I will... if I'm gonna have a call with a client and they're a big deal, I will pre-write down potential objections.
okay, if they give me an open-ended question about budget, what am I gonna say? I don't wanna be caught off [01:27:00] guard. And I know sometimes if you ask me the question, and I feel like we're all asked this question all the time,
We don't really have a budget for this. you know, what do you think, Shelly? But if you write out the response to that question, if you write out that response the night before, right? When you like have clarity and there's no anxiety, you're just thinking about it and you write it in a Google Doc, and then you look at that response and you just read the response, you're probably good.
I've done that before, and that's helped me so much
Shelly: I'm usually an, I'm
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: an after-the-fact person.
Patrick 104: Are you really?
Shelly: yeah, I'm usually like, I'll think about all those things, to your point.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: and I try to not make any assumptions. I've been caught too many times in the assumption game.
So if I have assumptions, I write those out.
"Here are my assumptions. Are these true?" and I wanna fact-check basically against these assumptions while I'm on the call. [01:28:00] And then once I have all that data, I say, "Okay, I'm gonna go back and look at all of this that we've talked about, and I'm gonna write you up a proposal." And I will tell you about 90% of the time I do not give numbers on a call. because the scope may be way different than what I thought, or the client comes out and says something and I then have a lot of clarification questions, or the goals that they initially told me are not the goals anymore. You can't change the goalposts and have the same answer.
Patrick 104: So your process, I'm just curious. So you collect all the data, you collect all the information, the scope, and then you email them a proposal
Shelly: I put together, yeah, a very beautiful proposal.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: yeah. now I'm in a better habit, if it's over a certain price point, then I will do a video of me walking through the bid and explain why certain things are
Patrick 104: that's a good [01:29:00] idea. Yeah
Shelly: to them.
Because a lot of times you can't get that second call to, let's walk through the bid together."
Patrick 104: Yep
Shelly: make it a little bit faster and have them understand my methodology of, why things were priced the way they were, that's what I do. And I will send the video along with the bid, and it'd be like, "Hey, watch this video.
I walk you through the bid. Sometimes it's, three minutes, sometimes it's five minutes.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: and then they can come back to me and be like, "Hey, that was really good. What if we
This and this?" Can you
Patrick 104: you
Shelly: the choose
your own?
Patrick 104: that's watched? Is it
Shelly: Oh
Patrick 104: of the time?
Shelly: yeah, about 75% of the time.
Patrick 104: really good
Shelly: most of the time if I get to the point where I send them a bid, they're looking at it.
They'll look at the bid. A lot of times it also depends who it is, right? So if you're dealing with, the non-decision maker, right? You've got some gatekeeper in there. The gatekeeper's almost always watching the video then they're going and they're talking to, their manager or the decision [01:30:00] maker and saying like, "Okay," got Shelley's bid.
This is what it is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." But if you're talking directly to the decision maker, and depending on how you wrapped up that call, they might just look at that bottom number and be like, "Yeah, cool. Let's do that." or not. I've also had calls where I'll send them the video.
They'll immediately write me back and say, "Can we jump on a call?" I had one job where we went through... We had the initial call. We did the bid. This was with a production agent, like a big to-do thing, right? Me, the production agency, an agent, and I put my initial numbers together.
I had that production company kind of cross-check my numbers and add in all of the stuff for the UK, and then we got on a call. We walked through it. Part of that was creative, part of that was numbers. Then they came back to us 'cause they changed the goalpost, so then we had to redo everything. I then gave them a video with the producer.
Me and the producer did the video together, my [01:31:00] producer.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: and then we had another call to be like, "Okay, so here's where we're at now. There's this... been this slight change, the slight timeline things. How is that gonna adjust these things?" And then I said, "What do we have to do to win this bid?"
I was like, we've moved the goalpost now twice. This is where we're at. I'm not really gonna put a new treatment together." And it was really tough 'cause they also wanted us to do a lot of art directing, and it's hard to do a treatment when there's no art direction, and you don't wanna put all your eggs in the basket and all that kinds of stuff.
needless to say, that was a case where I presented it in person, on a video chat. I did a video of it, and then in the final, it was just like, "Tell us what we have to do to win this." Like, how do we tip the scales in our favor? And that's now been my new favorite ending question, especially when you're in a triple bid.
Patrick 104: to wrap this up,
Coaching Corner: Advice for the Scared Photographer
---
Patrick 104: I wanna ask you a question. What would you say to a photographer right now who's listening to this and is scared [01:32:00] talking about money, asking for more money? They might be charging right now, but it's not very much, and they know it's not very much, but They're terrified of the no, and they're terrified of, if they raise their rates, no one's gonna hire them again, and they need the money, right?
they have that scarcity mindset. How would you coach them?
Shelly: I think this is gonna touch on all the things that we just said but one do you want this to be your full-time gig? That'd be one. Two is if the answer is yes this is not a side hustle, right? If the answer is yes, then what does it cost you to live your life and run your business?
And then how much are you currently bringing in to do that? Because that may be your answer of why you have to ask for more money, because you're not bringing in enough, and that makes it a very black and [01:33:00] white situation. There's no more gray. it's scary, but rip the Band-Aid off. You gotta push the number up and as I said earlier in the conversation, and it may just be like, hey, you know what? Baby steps. Baby steps still t- lead you up a mountain, right? So if you're at one price point and you're like, "Oh my God, if I raise it so much to what my friends are charging no one's gonna do"... Your friends are charging.
There's proof in the pudding. So that's one. Two is you could still do the incremental thing, right? Today you're charging $500. Tomorrow charge 550, and the next client that comes in, it's 600. The next client, it's 700. Then it's 800. Then it's 850. Then it's 900. Then it's 1,000. You just keep doing it incrementally until you hit up to that no, 'cause actually you wanna look for the no.
Celebrate the no. Make the no the game. Gamify the no.
Patrick 104: of
Shelly: my me-
Patrick 104: I love it
Shelly: I used to run a mentorship for four years. The whole purpose was to get 100 noes. Do you know how hard it is to get a no? most noes are not a no. [01:34:00] They're a maybe or a not yet, right?
So what people found out... Typically, we would start it in, like, February, and it would run for about three months. you had about 90 days or so to do it. And people were like, "Oh, that person that I contacted in f- first week of February, it's now April. They just came back to me.
They wanna book a gig." I'm like, "Ah, check that out. It wasn't a no. It was a not yet." So if you can gamify the no and make it a little bit fun, make yourself a grid of 100 squares. Mark off every time you get a no. When you get 10 in a row, you're like, "Yes!"
Go get yourself that Starbucks coffee.
Patrick 104: I think it'd be fun. I want you to ask me the same question
Shelly: you ready?
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: So if you had a photographer come to you
Who's in a really mentally scared place to raise their rate, and they're really like, "Oh my God, no one's gonna hire [01:35:00] me if I raise my money. I need more money, but I just, I can't raise my rate." What do you say to them?
Patrick 104: I would take a totally different approach, and I feel like this encapsulates the beautiful chasm and difference between you and I, and how I think we're both needed, is I would say to them: Why aren't you worth it? W- I want you to identify it. it your work? Do you not think your images are good enough? is it your gear? Do you not think your gear is good enough? Is it because your, parents were poor and you've never had money, and you don't think that you deserve money? is it because you've only been doing this for six months? And then once we actually figure out what the core identity or trauma or story that you're telling yourself, "Oh, my work is just really shit.
No one's [01:36:00] gonna pay me for what I make." Okay. Let's talk about that. All right? look at your portfolio. Let's, let's talk about your fears of maybe your work is amazing. Maybe it's worth eight times as much as what you're charging. If it's scarcity mindset, let's talk about that, right?
let's talk about, you know, your parents were poor, but does that mean you have to be poor? This whole lie of the starving artist is bullshit, right? you can be successful and have money and produce really honest, good work. There's a ton of photographers out there doing it. You don't have to be poor to be good.
I think a lot of this is really emotional for people. It's tied to our identity. It's tied to our stories, and I feel like once we get to the root of that, then we [01:37:00] can talk about the spreadsheet. but you can't change the spreadsheet or it won't last until you begin to rethink and reframe your perception of money, your work, your worth.
so yeah.
Shelly: Yeah. It is the stories that we tell ourselves
Patrick 104: Yeah.
But, and
Shelly: I
Patrick 104: I would send them to you, and you would help them walk through, 'cause I'm not very good at it. Dude, I've had my own struggles, you know what I'm saying? Like, I just tell a story in my last episode, where in twenty twenty-five was my worst year, and it came off of my best year, and that was incredibly confusing.
So my first year freelancing was in twenty twenty-three. I did okay, but then twenty twenty-four, like I brought in 123 grand.
I was like, "This is amazing. [01:38:00] Freelancing is easy." What are they talking about, right? and then twenty twenty-five, about February, March, it's like somebody turned off the tap.
No bookings literally till January of this year.
Shelly: Oh,
wow
Patrick 104: It was, insane. it was economy. It was a combination of everything. I had a couple like e-commerce jobs, like nothing substantial. When I say job, I mean an actual,
like good job. And I tell the story in the podcast, but I'm like, I had to sell my backup camera.
I had to sell my backup R5, and that was incredibly hard because it felt like an indictment of my worth. It felt like I'm failing as a photographer, I'm failing as a business person, I'm failing as a husband, I'm failing as a father, and that's bullshit. 'cause it's just a camera. It's just money, right?
it'll come back, and I think the goal for all of us, and I feel like we can wrap it up here, is like [01:39:00] sometimes the goal is just to survive, right? It's to survive another day, right? If you have to take the shitty event job or the shitty headshot job or the job that you don't take or the job that I-- Or, there's some jobs that I don't tell my friends about.
Like I would never admit to you that I took that product job for 600 bucks because I needed to make my car payment, and I just would like, "Man, this would be really good if I had..." would never tell anybody, but I did it. But it, I'm still here. I'm still freelancing. I'm still surviving. I'm, and I f- I feel like that deserves merit.
if you can do this, if you can be a photographer in twenty twenty-six and survive, good on you, man. That's really hard, and I feel like
Shelly: I think you just,
Patrick 104: gold star.
Shelly: I think you just touched on, what I've been seeing, Photo Dump, Ren and Jen over at Photo Dump, they just did a whole episode on If you were to start all over today, day one of being a photographer, would you do it again in [01:40:00] 2026?
Dawn Human, also a commercial, food, beverage, lifestyle photographer, she did a thought, piece on this as well, listening to after that episode. And I think, it's been a very weird ride the last couple years. It's been very up and down. The tap has turned off for a lot of people.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: The world's kind of gone a little haywire. and so yeah, I, I agree. Like, you get a gold star if you're just
Patrick 104: If you're doing it, man
Shelly: But I do think... I think my closing thing is, one, like I totally agree with you. It's the stories we tell ourselves, so pay attention to what is going on in your head.
and maybe it's don't feed the gremlins after midnight.
Patrick 104: good
Shelly: and two, I learned this many years ago, and I always forget the order, but order of operations of why you do certain things from a business perspective changes almost every day, or can change every day, right? And so your priority [01:41:00] one day might be money.
Your priority the next day might be prestige, might be being an industry leader, might be flexibility or time. And at any given moment or time, you are moving between those priorities. and so like for me right now, like I'm living in a thing where I need to be location agnostic.
I would say that's like at the top, like flexibility, time, that piece is sitting at the top right now. Money's probably two. but I also really wanna be an industry leader and an expert and give back and all that stuff. So like on any given day, it's like which one of those items are leading?
I'm trying to be more aware of what is that priority? Which one is at the top of the heap? And I know for a lot of my friends right now, it's money. Money's at the top of the heap, and that's okay. That's the priority. That's the focus. This gets back to, the stories you tell yourself, getting through the emotional baggage that came with you from your childhood or your college years, that maybe family or, friends or partners have shat on you.
and you can peel that onion and get to the [01:42:00] center or just let it re-bloom. If anybody's ever seen onions re-seed, they're actually very beautiful flowers. So can shed all of that and turn into a beautiful flower.
Patrick 104: I can't think of a better way to end it right there, you bunch of onions,
Shelly: You bunch of onions.
Patrick 104: go bloom
Shelly: Patrick, this is awesome. We went down a lot of curves and areas and knocked on a lot of doors
Patrick 104: rabbit holes. but this has been, such a fun conversation. this is strange 'cause I don't know, should I end this? Like, where should people find you? Like, wh-
Shelly: let's do an double outro.
Patrick 104: Yeah.
Shelly: Okay. So Patrick, where should people find you to follow along? How can they find your book and your work?
Patrick 104: You can go to, terriblecreative.com, or terriblephotographer.com. It goes the same place. and my podcast, "The Terrible Creative," comes out every single week. we talk about identity, and, sometimes mental health and, really it's the part of [01:43:00] being a freelancer, a creative that you're just surviving, right?
then I have a book called "Lessons From a Terrible Photographer." It's out now. I just released it for, audiobook. It's on Audible. I'm really excited about that. The audiobook is pretty fun, so you can get it on Audible right now. so yeah, if you just Google Terrible Photographer or Google my name, you can probably find me.
Shelly: Oh, fantastic
Patrick 104: my business is patrickfore.com. What about you, Shelly Waldman?
Where can people find you?
Shelly: find me at shellywollman.com if you wanna see my portfolio of photography work.
Patrick 104: is really good, by the way. Like,
I wanna say this, it's so good.
Shelly: I am actually working on a fun new personal project to get back into photographing more people. I really miss photographing people. So I am doing a six degrees of separation project later this year.
the idea is to photograph five different people in different genres, and then they will refer me to the next person I will photograph, and I will [01:44:00] go out six times until I hit 48 people because it is my 48th birthday
Patrick 104: That's really cool
Shelly: I'm working on that, and I'm saying it here so that it actually happens and I have to hold myself accountable.
Patrick 104: You Gotta do it, man
Shelly: so shellywalman.com, that's my portfolio. Creativecamp.pro is where all the education stuff happens. you can find creativecamp.pro on Instagram. ShutterShelly is the flip side of that.
or hit me over on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time there. So yeah.
Patrick 104: just wanna say I highly recommend her podcast. It's really good.
Shelly: Oh, yes. My podcast,
Patrick 104: Yeah, yeah.
what's The name of your
Shelly: whole reason we're here.
Patrick 104: Yeah
Shelly: the podcast is Creative Campfire. We're just slightly over a year. after podcasting for five-plus years on another podcast, I decided to start my own.
Patrick 104: was your previous podcast?
Shelly: it was all about telling the journey story of women in commercial photography.
you can find it over at Focus on Women, and [01:45:00] that is the name of the podcast. I did 220-plus episodes before I handed over the mic.
Patrick 104: But your new podcast
is called Creative Camp,
Shelly: fire.
Patrick 104: Creative
Shelly: Creative Campfire. So the whole idea is the more people around the fire, the better the stories get. so you can come, listen, learn, and just feel a little less alone
Patrick 104: Love that, man. It's been so much fun, Charlie. Thank you for your time. We had a really good conversation. we'll talk to you later
Shelly: Yeah, I say the same thing, Patrick. This has been really fun. I really appreciate you reaching out. And guys, we gotta put the fire out for now, but we'll be back again real soon
Patrick 104: Put the fire out. Love it. All right, guys