freelance

A survey of photojournalists found an overwhelming majority of them believe that freelancing is unsustainable.

Bloom announced a freelance client management platform that aims to help working photographers. Launching on Tuesday, September 5, Bloom promises powerful selling and content management tools.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has quietly signed a new law that exempts freelance photographers and some other types of independent contractors from the controversial AB 5 law that forced a huge range of freelancers to become employees.

Much of the photo industry has been crippled by the coronavirus pandemic, but the subset of photographers receiving the least pity for their woes might be paparazzi. As celebrities self-isolate, their business has dried up almost completely... but you won't find many people sympathetic to their plight.

As fears of coronavirus (COVID-19) balloon in the U.S., many freelance photographers have begun to contend with the economic impact of event cancellations and social distancing policies. Freelancers are accustomed to seasonal slowdowns or the occasional cancellation, but the uncertainty around the breadth and duration of this outbreak has resulted in anxiety, frustration, and anger.

A photographer whose photos have appeared on the front page of the New York Times over 30 times has filed a lawsuit against the newspaper. He accuses the Times of misclassifying his employment status, discriminating against him based on age, denying assignments due to an arrest, and retaliating against him due to making these claims.

I recently saw yet another story on Facebook where a retoucher got screwed by a client. It’s always sad to see this happen. Over the years, I have managed to build a ripping-off-proof on-boarding and payment workflow to make sure I never end up in that kind of situation.

Since being founded in 2012, Gameface Media has become a dominant force in amateur sports event photography. But in recent times, photographers shooting for Gameface have complained of payments being delayed by many months. Today there's a bit of good news: Gameface has raised another $2.6 million from investors and is now promising to pay photographers very soon.

The issue of businesses asking photographers to work for free has been a hot issue in recent years, and now we have some citable statistics that shed more light on it. According to a new study in the UK, 87% of photographers were asked to work for free in 2016, and 16% said yes.

In January, the photographer Zoe Strauss made a bracing plea on her Facebook page. The artist, whose work had been recognized by the Whitney Biennial and Magnum Photos, and was the subject of a traveling survey exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was out of money

You've probably heard the horror stories... they go something like this: photographer gets job, photographer does job, photographer delivers images to client, client disappears without paying photographer. It's a tale as old as time, and it's exactly what a new service called Fileship.io intends to stop.

Journalism is under threat from all sides. The last few years have been some of the most dangerous in history for journalists around the world; they have been killed, injured and detained in record numbers. But journalists are under threat from within as well, as some media companies seem content to eat their own.

Reuters has implemented a new worldwide policy for freelance photographers that bans photos that were processed from RAW files. Photographers must now only send photos that were originally saved to their cameras as JPEGs.

Freelance photojournalists traveling to rebel-held areas in Syria and putting themselves in serious danger of being kidnapped and/or killed will no longer be able to have their work published by Agence France Presse (AFP).

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if journalist Esther Honig has proven anything with her fascinating Photoshop project Before & After, it's that whoever 'they' are (it turns out, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford) is right.

Another of the photographers who had been bravely providing coverage from the front lines of the Syrian conflict lost his life on Sunday when a Syrian air strike dropped a barrel bomb on a rebel-held area of Aleppo.

A few days ago, we shared the tragic news Reuters freelancer Molhem Barakat, who some were claiming was as young as 17-years-old, had been killed while photographing a battle in Syria. Since then, Reuters ethics and business practices have been called into question by an outraged journalistic community that has even gone so far as to start a Change.org petition demanding that the news organization take responsibility for the young boy's murder.

Want a peek into how much freelance photographers get paid by Sun-Times Media? The issue is one that may be on many a photographers mind after the Chicago Sun-Times decided to fire its entire staff of photographers. Thanks to a "leaked" memo, we now have some idea.

"Deadly sniper shot through the lens." That's the title of a photoblog entry published over on Reuters last week by staff photographer Goran Tomasevic, who's covering the deadly conflict in Syria. The photo above was accompanied by the text, "A tank fired a couple of shells onto the top of the building and rubble fell down around us."

Scoopshot is trying to transform the way companies purchase photos and the way freelance photographers find work. In August, we reported that the startup had launched an app that allows smartphone users to easily sell their photos from their phone. Since then, the company has paid out more than $300,000 to participating photographers, and reports that over 60 of its users have earned more than $1,000 by selling their phone photos (one user has earned more than $23,000)

Now, the service is setting its sights on a different group of photographers: professional freelancers. It has launched Scoopshot Pro, a service that connects photo buyers with photo makers for commissioned projects.

When the web first emerged, web design knowledge was a scarce commodity, and developers were able to charge ridiculous amounts of money to create simple websites. Now that everyone and their mother knows how to do simple HTML, you'll need to learn a lot more and offer something unique to stand a chance in the freelance market.

The exact same thing is happening in the photography industry. As the cost of shooting, printing, and distributing photos goes down, simply knowing how to take "good pictures" is no longer enough.

Freelancers often have to deal with the difficult challenge of trying to satisfy vaguely stated requests from clients, and also the frustration of meeting new requirements that aren't revealed until after the work is "completed". The video above is an interesting social experiment by Don't Get Screwed Over that attempts to show people what these freelance horror stories feel like to the people getting "screwed over".

This may be a rare case in which a $695 class might actually save your life: Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is offering a safety course for journalists who cover war, conflict and disaster zones.

We've all been there. Anybody who has ever done any work in the creative industry has had to deal with clients who have no understanding of basic business practices, or photography, or a little thing called payment. The above video was put together by the website Clients From Hell, where creatives can go and upload their most entertaining horror stories anonymously.

It's worth noting that the video is from the perspective of a graphic designer (as are many of the stories on the website) but many a photographer has dealt with similar problems.

Here’s a pretty cool idea: StudioShare.org is a website through which individuals can rent …