What a year it has been so far. After being featured on the PFRE-site, I finally dared to enter a photo (see above) to the PFRE Photographer of the Month contest for the very first time and believe it or not I won. I am the first Belgian ever to win the contest.

For those that aren’t familiar with PFRE, this means Photography For Real Estate, the website receives on average between 50.000 and 60.000 visitors a month. It is probably the biggest PFRE-website that is around.

The theme of this past February contest was “living room or family room”. Definitely a theme were there is a lot of great competition, which was also visible after a couple of days in the entry period. In the end there were 35 entered photos by photographers from all over the world, from the U.S.A. to Australia to Belgium and so on … You can still see all of the entered photos in the Flickr-group.

The winner was chosen by a Distinguished PFRE Jury, a combination of past winners and experts in the field, who all voted on the photos in 2 rounds due to the high number of entries. The Jury awarded my photo (see above) a total of 45 points, 9 points more than the runner-up.

What did I get for winning?

1. The honor of being recognized by my peers
2. An entry on the PFRE Best-of-the-best page that contains your winning photo and a link to your web site.
3. A PFRE post that features your business.
4. A free 1 year PFRE real estate photographer directory listing
5. An invitation to participate on the PFRE Jury.

And what did it do for me personaly?

It has motivated me to continue improving, learning and developing my skills and become the best photographer I can be. And maybe I can win this again somewhere in the future.

So this was one of the first long exposure shots I captured in Paris, France in 2011. It cost me € 8.596,70 to take this photo and it has gotten close to 50.000 views since then.

Green means GO | Champs-Élysées Lights by Nick De Clercq

This is how I arrived at the cost:

1 Getting to the destination:

Driving from my home to Paris and then home again cost me € 180 in gas. The hotel cost me another € 1000 for the trip. It cost me € 50 to get all the right documents to be able to shoot on a tripod in Paris. I spend € 32,70 for the parking that day. I took me 30 minutes to persuade the cop to let me stand still for more than 5 minutes in the middle of the street, price € ???

2 The equipment:

The camera I took this photo with cost € 2500. The lens was another € 649. The CF 16GB memory card cost € 105. The filter was € 90. The Tripod was another € 150. The shutter-release was another € 50.

3 The processing:

When I got to the hotel, I copied the photo to a MacBook Pro that cost me € 2940 and a Seagate external harddrive, as a back-up, that cost me € 150. I imported the photo to Lightroom 3 which I got for € 200. I then exported it and tinkered with it in Photoshop which costs about € 500.

180 + 1000 + 50 + 32,70 + 2500 + 649 + 105 + 90 + 150 + 50 + 2940 + 150 + 200 + 500=

€ 8.596,70  

(That is 11.029,57 US Dollars)

That doesn’t even take into account the time it toke to process the photo – and what about experience or talent? What price do you put on that?

So …

If you’re a magazine, website, corporation, sports team, or advertiser who wishes to use this photo, please don’t come and ask to use it for free, or in exchange for credit or “exposure”. You found my photo so obviously I have “exposure”. You have an advertising budget, and this is what it’s for. You obviously don’t expect your writers to work for free, or your secretary, or your boss. No one is going to publish it for free. Just because the picture is digital doesn’t mean it was free to make.

As most will be thinking, THIS single photo didn’t cost me  € 8596,70, but if you wanted to create it, from scratch, that is what is involved. So I consider it to be the replacement value if it’s stolen, or how much my lawyer will send you a bill for if it’s found being used without my permission.

If you give your photo away for “credit” then the best possible scenario for you is someone will see your photo, contact you, and ask if they could borrow one of your photos… for credit. Try this… next time you’re at dinner, tell your waiter you’ll tell all your friends how good the service was if he gives you dinner for free.

This article is based on the article “This Photograph is Not Free” by John B. Mueller. I wanted to try his method on one of my photos, so I adapted photographer John B. Mueller’s recent article and have  re-written it to reflect my own expenses and situation. Thank you John for giving permission to adapt your piece.

Here is another photo that I took in Ghent, Belgium.

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Here is a quick picture that a took on my walk through the “Zuid”-park in Ghent, Belgium of my dog.

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Here is another HDR from a single RAW-photo, that I took in Ghent, Belgium.

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