The questionswe are actuallyasked.

Why five weeks?

Because the first two are spent being a stranger. A photographer is noticed for about a fortnight, and almost everything worth licensing is made after that stops. It is not a romantic rule; it is what the contact sheets show.

Can I send a shot list?

No. You can tell us what you want to understand, in any amount of detail, and the photographer will tell you what is there. A list of pictures to reproduce is a commission to confirm something, and confirmations are cheap and usually wrong.

What if the assignment comes back with nothing?

About one commission in six does. You are told in week three rather than week six, you pay for the weeks that were shot, and the whole take is catalogued anyway — an archive that only keeps the successes is a record of our expectations, not of places.

At length: How a commission runs

What does €14,000 include?

Five weeks, one photographer, travel, insurance, fixers at a published rate, two edits, captions and consent records, and first use for eighteen months. There is no expenses conversation in week four because there are no expenses outside the figure.

Is there a lower rate?

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

When do I pay, and when is the photographer paid?

Thirty days from invoice. The photographer receives their sixty per cent in the month the invoice clears, not when the client eventually pays.

At length: The rate card

Can I crop, or drop the caption?

You can crop for the page. You cannot crop a picture into a different meaning, and the caption travels with the frame in every use. Neither is negotiable at any price, which is why they are not on the rate card.

Do you retouch?

Dust, dodging, burning, and a curve. Anything beyond that would make the caption a lie, and the caption is the part clients are actually buying.

What happens when a caption is wrong?

It is corrected on the file in the archive and sent to everyone who has licensed the frame, whether or not they would have noticed. The correction stays in the log permanently.

At length: What we will not do to a photograph

Who owns the pictures?

The photographer, always. The agency licenses on their behalf and takes forty per cent. Eleven of the eighteen also own the agency.

Do you do advertising work?

No, and not as a moral position — it is that a photographer who spends half the year making pictures to a brief stops being able to work without one.

At length: Who owns the agency