Apologies if this isn’t allowed, it’s more of a rant. Just wondering how everyone deals with the whole family asking for free photos thing.
For context, I’m a professional fashion/commercial photographer so family portraits aren’t going to help my portfolio or anything. My schedule is incredibly busy year round, even more so during the holidays, and I’m also a mother of two young kids. So if I’m not in parent mode, I’m working- often until midnight, and then I’m awake around 5:30 with the kids. I know it sounds like I’m complaining and… well, I kind of am, but want to give an accurate picture of how little time I have available to be doing free photos.
So every year, my in-laws want a family session. Not just a quick snap but like a full session. And every year I do it because they’re my in-laws and I don’t want them to think badly of me. The one time I hinted at being annoyed at this yearly request they were flabbergasted, saying “I thought you liked photography? It doesn’t take much time, does it?” This year I feel like I might snap. I’ve been racing to meet deadlines for huge clients that I’ve worked hard to get and I keep getting sidetracked with all of these family shoots (it is also happening with friends, other relatives). It’s not just the shoot- it’s deciding a location, responding to lengthy texts about what to wear, doing the editing- you guys know. It’s never “just a few pics”.
How can I deal with this?! Do I need to just suck it up and be a nicer person? I’m just burnt out af. Help.
You need to explain the time it takes to do a shoot (prep, shoot, and post) and how it cuts into family time and professional paying gigs. Let them know your paying clients come first. Many people think photography is art-free, but it is artwork. And every free job is a loss of income and devalues photography as an art.
I get asked to do family weddings and such all the time, but I decline those and say you need a professional wedding photographer, and I can give you some names if you like. When asked for weddings and it to be the gift, I simply remind them that they just asked for a $2K-$5K dollar gift, or whatever you would charge for an event, and how many hours pre-, and post are included in that fee.
When getting it for free they placed no value on the photos. For years I covered an event and provided approx. two hundred photos for a non-profit, which I edited only to find out they didn't give the photos to the participants and that the board members kept them for themselves. I finally told them that if I have to use a third-party processor for editing it is ten dollars a photo and at two hundred photos it's like a two-thousand-dollar donation. They started getting someone else to do the photos and I got to enjoy the event when I could attend.
Our immediate family recently took a Disney vacation and all but one day I shot photos my adult son wanted with my professional camera. It was annoying since you can get Disney employees to take the photos and pay for them, but my son thinks mine are better. He also knows he going to be waiting a while for them as one of my parents lives out of town and is in the hospital for months while I run back and forth on pet duty, house-sitting, and hospital duty.