Personally, I do not believe in giving free photography services to a commercial company for whatever cause. If it is for charity, then the terms and conditions should be clearly defined and must benefit the charity & the photographer; whether directly or indirectly. Also, the name of the charity organization and their intentions are make known to all and be transparent. Most importantly, the photographer should be allowed to retain the copyright of his work even though his work may/may not be published.
Having said all these, budding photographers having invested time and resources is trying hard to enter the world of professional photography. They need real experience and good portfolio to even think to step into this trade. More to that, being new to this trade, they may have very little or no information in which professional photographer offer internship or attachment. With no one to turn to, they resort to offer free services or 'work for free' in order to get some experience; hopefully some commercial companies appreciates their works and land them a job or a career.
What I see is a vicious cycle;
- budding photographer needs experience
- commercial entities need to lower cost
- very little existing professional photographers offers internship
- budding photographers offer free services in order to get exposure and experience
- commercial entity see this low cost opportunity, engages these low cost service, may or may not pays for the photographic works
- budding photographers dont see returns. Tries harder to get into the trade by offering more freebies
- commercial entities sees more and more cheap opportunity, thus they eventually controls the prices
- when years goes by, existing pro photographers retires one by one due to old age
- young photographers finds it hard to raise prices because they offered free or cheap services in their initial years
- tries harder and offer even more freebies to get experience
- some will give up, some ended up dead while trying, some may succeed but find it hard to maintain prices
May I offer my suggestion.
- Existing professional photographer publish their intention to take in interns or helpers in CS. This is different from free service as the main purpose of the internship is for knowledge transfer and eventually benefit the photographic community
- Terms and conditions are clearly defined. Budding photographer may keep a copy of those works done during internship, by its use is only for personal references.
- Doing these will remove the opportunity for budding photographers to offer free or cheap services to commercial entities that may eventually spoilt market. Market price breakdown will affect current pro photographers; sooner or later.
- Budding photographers joins in there internship to gain experience, thereby creates a self learning community to boost the standards of skills.
- Hopefully, this would be seen by others as a profession, and people pay the necessary to get their photographic works done.
This will only work if both the teacher and learner have a clear conscious of their role during the internship, and hopefully reduce or stop those freeloaders.
My stand - I support anti-exploitation
