A few days ago, after a shoot, I got in to a conversation with my subjects about the economy. One of the subjects manages marketing for a nonprofit and hires photographers from time to time. She asked whether it’s been tough sustaining a photography business in the current recession, and we had a good discussion that got me thinking back to a couple blog posts that came out late last year, when the markets were falling freely and the fear was probably at its height in the freelance world. My nonprofit marketing subject said, “It must be especially hard, because there are always photographers out there willing to work for free.” It’s true: the photography market is pretty well glutted these days, and if an organization has budget constraints (who doesn’t these days) they can budget shop, often to the tune of free.

In December 2008 a couple of my favorite photography bloggers, Chase Jarvis and David Hobby of Strobist, posted their thoughts on when it’s appropriate for photographers to give images to a client for free. The conventional wisdom in the photo community is to *never* work for free, especially if you’re an established shooter like Chase or David. Price cutting not only hurts you, it hurts all photographers because it lowers price expectations in the marketplace, dragging down prices across the entire photo spectrum – that’s the party line. But Chase, David, and then many others came out and eschewed the logic, arguing that free has its place, if it gives you access to subjects that you wouldn’t get otherwise, if it gives creative freedom absent from assignment work, and if you believe in the people you’re giving the work to. And especially if you find yourself in the worst economic crisis in the last 75 years and need photo subjects.

It was a little bit of an aha time for photo blog readers, I think, and legitimized to a certain extent what most photographers work through early in their careers: doing things for free in exchange for contacts, or the chance to simulate assignment work when no assignment work is presenting itself, or to potentially add to your own portfolio. Particularly in today’s world, where social media like blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. provide marketing outlets where the only investment is time, in order to find relevance a photographer needs to be producing as much as possible. That means personally generated work, like my new snack series, but it can also mean hunting down pro bono situations, or trades of photos for other services.

I bought the sometimes free = good argument and spent a good part of the first quarter of 2009 on for-free assignments, which had its upside for sure, as advertised by Chase and David. I definitely wouldn’t have gotten in to the shooting situations I did without going free, and I feel like I grew as a shooter as a result. It was a completely necessary step for me to have taken.

But at a certain point, if you do *too much* for free, the danger is that a little bit of resentment can creep in; you start to feel undervalued, both because of the lack of compensation, and because often the pro bono clients don’t have the marketing sophistication to know how to use what you’re giving them effectively, so sometimes the images never see the light of day outside of your own blog. For me, this moment coincided with a conversation I had over coffee with a retired friend of mine. He had just witnessed me a couple days earlier shooting an event hosted by a mutual friend for free, and he said he wanted to kick me in the pants. He was coming from a purely business perspective, and his point was that regardless of your creative goals, you’ve got to be making money. Otherwise it’s just a hobby.

So there was my second aha moment. If you want to be a professional, you’ve got to believe that the service you provide has value. I’m now convinced that a good chunk of breaking through the ‘emerging photographer’ phase has to do with arming yourself with a fully-grown confidence that you can deliver the goods every time you strap on the camera and crank up the lights. That’s what prospective paying clients need: confidence that they positively won’t be throwing their money away by hiring you.

This story’s happy ending is that a couple of those for-free clients called me recently wanting to do another round of photos. I gently told them that I couldn’t do things for free at this point, but that I’d be happy to cut them a deal that we all feel comfortable with. I explained the importance of sustainability, and that I was doing myself a disservice giving away something that had value. And you know what happened then? They didn’t ignore me or turn me down. They asked for my price.