Ever wondered about having really good photography to promote your hand-woven, embroidered, crocheted or knitted textiles or craft products better?
As craftspeople we´re always being told how important it is to have great images of our work. And it is certainly true that the public will value your work higher if you present it professionally.
As a textile maker specialising in scarves as well as cushions it´s even more important; textiles need to be seen really well to be appreciated as their texture, drape and surface need to be shown. You may consider yourself to be a fairly good amateur photographer, having learned photography at school or developed your own black and photographs (yes, in the non-digital age) years ago in a darkroom. But recognising your own limitations – or those of your humble pocket digital camera, you might be interested to learn about the costs of a modest professional photo-shoot.
And here you have some interesting figures to think about as a craft maker too; for you may be working hard for well over a year to finance your publicity. Thanks to Ruben Vilanova (Photographer in Galicia, northwest Spain: T.616 736 992) for the below information which is approximate and accurate for 2014.
- Cost of hiring a model starting out who is not signed on with any agency and may not have any experience – 200€ – 400€ per day
- Cost of a standard model – 500€ to 1000€ or more
- Travel costs (for about 75km) – around 100€
- Hair and makeup – 400€ – 600€
- Stylist – (min.) 500€
… so you´re talking about between an absolute minimim of 1200€ (without a stylist) – 2400€ – and quite possibly more – before you even think about the photographer´s costs.
It´s a chicken-and-egg kind of problem. You need great photography to sell your work but your limited production and the hand-made nature of your work means that you have a very small profit margin and any spend on publicity has to be thought about very carefully.
These days image is so important but few individual craftspeople have any budget to spend on publicity. Or put another way, if each hand-made craft object costing 240€ to the public includes 7€ for publicity costs then the maker would need to make and sell, maybe, about 430 of these objects in order to recoup his or her costs. If every such object requires a total of 8 hours work – including making, designing, finishing – and not forgetting the other associated administrative work which every maker spends, on average, 2 days a week doing – then that means working solidly, with no holidays, for over a year to recoup the costs of the publicity. Think about it…… It´s only the kind of publicity that a craft co-operative or larger craft workshop can really envisage doing unless supported by government grants or supplementing their hand-made work – usually the least profitable activity – with teaching, lecturing or producing ranges of work which are not totally hand-made.
Other cheap d.i.y. solutions:
- Approach local fashion colleges to see if any last year students would like to act as advisory stylists as work experience (but be aware that they might not be able to represent you in a commercial enough way – if their creative urges get the better of them).
- Approach photographers to see if they work with propective models who need images to show to prospective clients or agencies.
- Try to act as your own stylist – find images of similar work to yours to show to the photographer and select your own props.
- Maybe link up with other makers whose work complements your own or who would like to share the costs with you.
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