Photographers who specialize in fashion, glamor and portraiture photography often showcase their work through various social media avenues, web sites and self-promotion. This can often lead to unsolicited requests from models who would like images for their portfolio for trade. In short this is called TF or Time/Trade For work. There is nothing wrong with this concept as it can often lead to further portfolio development for the model, photographer and other participants such as stylists and makeup artists. This can be a win/win situation for everybody involved in a perfect world. Alas, not everything is perfect in this world. Things can get derailed when a model makes a request with language like "Looking for a photographer to do a TF shoot with a studio". On the surface this appears to be genuine request, so where is the misunderstanding.

In the past five years the transition to digital technologies has been rapid. The influx of digital technology has also heightened the competitive pressure within the creative community. Business clients have also changed their business operations and processes which has led to the abandonment of in-house photography departments and the explosive rise of stock agencies. Photographers have also had to change their methods of operations. One of the big casualties was the studio. Many photographers have now closed their studios and instead they have moved to studio rentals when the work is available. Why have they done this? The major reason is that all costs of running a studio are considered to be overhead from an accounting perspective. These costs usually never vary and can present a serious cash flow challenge when client work slows to a crawl in uncertain economic times. A studio rental is considered to be an expense from an accounting perspective and the cost can be charged back to the client or worked into the quotation for the project. The overhead vs. expense issue was brought to the forefront many years ago when corporations decided to outsource work to other countries or sub-contracting companies. These business driven economic factors have now invaded the creative community and led to the considerable decrease in the number of private photographic studios.

Now back to our model TF photo shoot. From the model's perspective he/she just wants to show up at a studio for a couple of hours for a photo shoot. But if a TF shoot is supposed to be about fair trade then he is contributing most to an artistic shoot and portfolio development. The model is giving up a couple of hours. The makeup artist is giving up his/her time along with the costs of providing the makeup. The stylist is providing the clothes at his/her expense along with their time. The photographer is giving up his time to do the shoot, time doing the post-processing of the images and in today's business climate expenses for a studio rental. We all want fairness, but the photographer is quite often getting the short end of the stick. So for the models, wake up to the new business reality you have to give to get. Time is just one part of the equation.

Watsonphotography.ca creates unique images of fashion, models, people, travel, nature and racing sports by Toronto photographer Peter Watson.