They have your back

I am biased. I can't think of a more important thing to do than join your professional society. They have educational programs to get you up to speed in best business practices, and they conduct essential advocacy for us as a class.

A story. I have been a general member of ASMP for over 20 years. Years ago, the printer for a job I shot lost the slides. With the backing of my client, the printer fessed up. I had paperwork, thanks to what ASMP taught me. I collected a lost slide fee, $1500 per slide, for three slides. There was no argument. They just paid.

This would never had happened without a professional society that had made this lost slide fee the standard.

Yes, the national politics of ASMP have always been petty and annoying. So what. It doesn't matter. They still have my back. With all the assaults on copyright and ownership and access, it is more important than ever to belong to an advocacy group.

Join the society that fits what you do.

American Society of Media Photographers

North American Nature Photography Association

Professional Photographers of America

Wedding and Portrait Photographers Association

Comments

[David Adam Edelstein]

I think I need to form my own organization. Where's the society for amateur flaneurs?

[Doug Plummer]

You know, this is actually a serious issue. The profession is becoming less "professionalized," like with fly-by-night wedding photographers who think they know what they're doing because they have the same camera as the pros, and MWCs threatening the portrait studio business model. I don't mean to suggest that you're trying to pretend to be a pro (I had to look up the word "flaneur", and I bet you all did too), but the issue is, the lines are getting blurry.

[Mike C.]

Look it up?? Mon Dieu, you mean you've never read Baudelaire or Benjamin? Suddenly, I feel so very European...

You're right to be concerned, though: look what word-processing and DTP did to typesetting as a profession. Everyone can make a page of type now -- badly, of course, but not so badly that anyone but a connoisseur of kerns and leading would care. Of course, go back a few hundred years, and look what the typesetters themselves did to the scribes and scriveners...

Photography (as in "still images made with a camera") will inevitably go the way of old "reproductive" technologies like etching and engraving, and become the province of amateurs & artists. Luckily for you guys, I can't see the demand for compelling images doing anything but increasing -- I guess pros "just" have to keep ahead of the technology curve, deliver quality and reliability, and -- as you suggest -- organise effectively in self-defense. Lots of luck!

[Doug Plummer]

I'm an uncouth American, what do you expect? It's a French word, for crying out loud.

You're right, though, being a pro now means being nimble and embracing insecurity. But it always has. There is no five year interval in my career where the beginning and the end of that time at all resembles each other. It's always about reinvention.