To celebrate the launch of my new PDF ebook ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ and because July and August are top travel months worldwide, I’ll post 10 tips from the book over the month of July. In this third tip, I’ll tackle a question I get a lot: Should you pay when you make somebody’s portrait? Find out my take on this after the break.
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Money can’t buy you happiness
There are many ways to pay for a picture
This is tip #25 from the book ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’: Money can’t buy you happiness… There are many ways to pay for a picture.
One of the frequently asked questions about travel photography is ‘Do you pay for portraits?’ You could write quite the philosophical essay about the subject, but I’m trying to stay pragmatic on this page: you’re the one who wants the photo, so if the other party wants money for it, that is their good right. So I have no problem paying for a portrait, if I really think it’s worth it. If I put a sadhu on a boat on the Ganges for half an hour to make his portrait , I would even find myself quite stingy not to pay him for his time... The same goes for portraits in the Ethiopian Omo Valley. They won’t let you take pictures there if you don’t pony up. And I don’t blame them. I’d ask to get paid, too if I looked that photogenic! It’s just a matter of supply and demand. Besides paying explicitly with cash, there are many other ways to ‘pay’ in a less transactional way, however:
One of them – the Instax print – even has its own tip (number 11). Although I don’t really see it as payment, more as a thank you.
What I also often do, is buy something from the person I was photographing. For example, I bought the bubble blower from the man on the left after I took his picture. He was happy, my son was happy and I was happy. Triple joy for only 50 rupees (less than one euro).
There are also quite a few occasions where I don’t pay, because the situation just feels that way. A simple, heartfelt ‘Thank you!’ is something almost everyone understands and often is enough.
The payment for the travel portrait on the right page, that I made during a bicycle trip from Georgia to Armenia consisted of purchasing a far too heavy bag of carrots.
“I’d like to add one tip to the 101 tips: buy this book!”
Did you like this tip? In my new ‘101 Tips for Travel Photography’ you can find 100 more! This PDF ebook is available in two editions: with the Standard Edition, you get the 252 page PDF ebook as a download but 90% of buyers opt for the Deluxe Edition. The Deluxe Edition is currently on sale (US$39.95 instead of US$59.95). So, for only US$ 10 more than the Standard Edition (US$29.95), you’ll also receive access to a 3 hour video tutorial in which I show you how I photographed and edited 10 of my favourite images from the book.
Here’s a sampler of the layout and the contents of this 252 page PDF ebook.
Included in the Deluxe Edition is this three hour video tutorial in which I explain my approach to and the editing of 10 of my favourite images from the book.