Before asking me for work...

I receive an average of 2 proposals a week from people who have "no budget" for
photographs. Book publishers, magazines, newspapers, charities, corporates and
start-ups nowadays all believe that photos are cost free, or that they are doing me a
favour by offering to use my work and giving me a byline.

I no longer reply to such inquiries except by linking to this text.

Let's be clear about a few things:

"No budget" is a euphemism for "we think photographers are mugs". This offensive
interpretation can easily be verifed by trying the phrase at your local restaurant, eg "I
have no budget for dinner but I'd like to eat". Adding a promise to tell all your friends
where you ate will not deflect your head from the kerb as the manager throws you out.

Now imagine being a restaurant where most people who come through the door try this
on. The answer is NO, and I am being excessively polite.

If you didn't really mean it and your "no budget" claim was just an opening bid, the
answer is still NO. I want nothing to do with greedy opportunists who try to commence
a negotiation with a lie. You have already demonstrated you cannot be trusted. You
probably won't be honest about usage, and will try not to pay.

And if you were one of those promising lots of better, paid work later, if only I can help
you out now, offer a contract else I'll know you're talking bullshit and the answer is of
course NO.

You see I don't want your stinking "exposure", I want mutually beneficial, productive
relationships with clients. I try to behave with integrity, honesty and fairness, and
I expect clients will do likewise. Exposure is the end of that process, not a means.
Similarly with bylines. I don't require applause earned by being a sucker. If free matters
more than good, ask someone else.

Like most people I work because I need to pay bills and support myself, my work and
my family. The fact that I love what I do is why I have spent 40 years persevering
whilst going without stuff most people take for granted. Vocation is not an invitation to
disrespect.

Unsurprisingly I will not support parasitic business models that rely on exploiting
photography, or me, to extinction. With very rare exceptions (small charities run by
unpaid volunteers that I choose to support) I have no budget for subsidising other
peoples' work and profitability. Supporting my own is next to impossible thanks to the
current vogue for passing off exploitation as opportunity.

When I can afford it, I will drop a few quid into a charity box or give to a homeless
person on the street. I regularly work for charities at a discounted rate. I look after baby
birds that have fallen out of nests. I am a generous, kind and loving human being. But I
make an exception for salaried beggars who ask me to stuff a bundle of tenners in their
pocket. They just piss me off. Especially when they insult me by telling me my life's
work is jolly nice but worthless.

I have had the most amazing conversations with numerous chancers who think decent
photos are just some sort of serendipity that they should be entitled to freely earn off
because electrons don't cost much. One woman, a CEO of a £3.3m/yr organisation,
explained that they like to use photos on their website because readers tell them that
images communicate on a more accessible level than the text she commissions from her
paid writers. So the value of photos was not in question. But she could not understand
that perhaps she ought to use some of her £160,000 year website budget (I looked up

their accounts on the web) to pay for photos. She could not understand that the photo
she wanted to use only existed because I had invested time and money and learning
in creating it. "Most photographers are happy to let us use their work for free". Oh no
they aren't. They just didn't go and look at her accounts and see that this woman was on
£66k a year salary and ask why she didn't work for the same rate she was shamelessly
demanding.

Supply without payment is, of course, only viable for hobbyist photographers who don't
need an income from their photography. They have salaried jobs, pensions or private
incomes, or perhaps suicidal romantic tendencies. I do not. They have a selfish attitude
to destroying the sustainability of photography as a profession which they call "beating
the pro's at their own game". Moreover a byline might appeal to their idiot vanity. I
suggest you ask one of them. Alternatively find a new graduate or student to exploit
- they are desperate and naive, and you have the opportunity to add to their crippling
student debt by saving yourself a few quid.

If all this means you can't source the images you want, that is just tough. I can't source
free cameras, computers, software, food, housing, fuel, either. If it's all so damn easy
and cheap, go and make your own photos.

If all this offends you, best stay away from mirrors too.