Five thingsworth knowingbefore youcommission us

Every year a handful of commissions go wrong, and when we ask the client why, the answers are consistent enough to write down in advance.

It takes five weeks, in the literal sense

Not five weeks of availability with a delivery in the middle. Five weeks in one place, with nothing filed until the end, because a photographer who is sending pictures every night is shooting for the desk rather than for the place.

This is the single most common reason a commission is refused by the client rather than by us, and it is the one we are most often accused of underselling. So: five weeks minimum, silence in the middle, two edits at the end.

You will not get the picture you described

If you can describe the photograph you want, you already have it, and what you need is an illustration rather than an assignment. Tell us what you want to understand and the photographer will tell you what is there.

Some of what comes back will be better than the brief and some of it will simply be different from it. There is no version of this that avoids the problem.

A quiet assignment is filed quiet

We buy no stock and stage nothing, so when a place turns out not to be what anyone expected, the edit says so. About one commission in six comes back without the story that was assumed.

You are told in week three rather than in week six, and you pay for the weeks that were shot. Most clients say this is the thing they came to trust. A few find it maddening the first time, and they are not wrong to.

It costs real money

Fourteen thousand euros for five weeks, which is two thousand eight hundred a week with every cost in it. We publish the whole rate card with a note on what is and is not included, because the alternative is an argument about expenses in week four.

If the rate is the only obstacle, write and say so. Small titles, students and non-commercial shows pay half, and nobody is asked to prove anything.

Nobody can promise you the picture exists

We are asked a version of this at every meeting and the honest answer is no. What we can promise is what happens to the frames: captioned by the person who was standing there, kept whole in the archive, and corrected on the file if a caption turns out to be wrong.

What we can tell you is that the work is slower, plainer and more repetitive than most people imagine photography to be, and that the clients who come back tend to be the ones who found that appealing rather than tolerable.

Ask the archivist for a research folder first. It is free, and it answers more than this page can.