On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA February-March 2016 | Page 23

accept for use of one of our images. In my case,
it’s been stuck at $125 for more than 10 years. I’d
like to raise it, but given the downward competitive pressure in the market, just sticking to my
base rate is challenging enough. (I wish my stock
agency partners wouldn’t cave to these market
forces, but they’re out of my control.)

So, we know that big buyers, overall, understand
that photography has value and bigger uses are
worth more than small ones. We have a base fee
we always quote as our minimum. But buyers
from small businesses complicate things, at least
for me.

The problem with small business folks is that they
aren’t accustomed to licensing photography.
They often want to purchase all rights, giving
them permission to use our work any way they
want, forever. They usually don’t even know what
they’re asking for, equating getting photography to hiring a strong back to build a stone wall.
You can certainly choose to enter a work-for-hire
agreement, in which you do all the work for a set
price and hand over ownership of everything at
the end. But that’s not standard business practice
in photography, and I have avoided work-for-hire
contracts in my career, losing some jobs because
of it. Since her landscaper clients don’t understand what they’re asking for when they ask for all
rights, Connecticut photographer Karen Bussolini
says, “I always sit down wi H