Tales From a Recovered Independent Contractor
Photo by Chris Hamilton. Sweetwater, Texas, rattlesnake round-up. ca. I-Have-No-Idea.
WARNING: This is long and rambling. And this is the NY Times article that spawned the rant.
11-years ago, my first job in photography was as a part-time photographer at the Arlington Morning News in Texas, a small suburban paper owned by the Belo Corp., which also owns the Dallas Morning News. I was laid off, after about a year, when Belo decided to absorb the paper into a zoned section of the DMN. It was subsequently suggested to me by some of the management that I should stay on as a freelancer and wait for a job opening, which was supposedly coming down the pipeline. So I did.
My cohort of freelancers and I at the DMN, of which there were probably 10-15 “full-timers,” often worked 7-days a week, sometimes for month-long stretches. Often we would pick up 3, 4, maybe even 5 assignments a day. And we did a great job. We produced imagery that was often on par with (dare I say, even better than?) the staff photographers. And we did this all for $75 per assignment and without vacation, health insurance, company equipment (more on that in a second), retirement matching, liability insurance, etc. etc. (Texas did have the one advantage of having no income tax.)
This is where the story begins to relate to the NYT story linked above: When all the photography at the paper was still shot on film (ahhh, the glory days) the newspaper gave us loads and loads of film in order to produce the imagery, just like they did staffers. We were also allowed to checkout specialized lenses, which mostly meant long, fast telephotos for sports coverage (imagine 2-3 high school football games) per weekend, maybe even per Friday night, just like staffers. Freelancers were required to come into the office after assignments to process film, have that film edited by staff photo editors and then scan those images using company computers and scanners just like staffers. Essentially, we did everything exactly like a staff photographer did it.
Enter the lawyers. In order to continue working for the paper, freelancers were required to invest in digital equipment in order to fit into the new work flow of the paper (I only recently paid off my debt from that initial investment in cameras) and, most importantly, they were requiring us to sign a new contract, which made it official that we acknowledged we were Independent Contractors in addition to signing away our rights to the photographs we made for the paper. The dreaded Work-for-Hire (mwah hahahaha). I’m proud to say, that for a brief period, some of us freelancers actually stood up to the management and rejected the contract. We had a month hiatus, which my friend Matt and I used to go on a crazy road trip through….Arkansas? Hmmm, that now sounds lame. In the end, we barely got any concessions (a little more money per assignment and co-ownership of the images), but at least we made a little stand.
For me, that was the beginning of the end of newspaper photographer. (sigh.) Eventually, I was denied a job when it came up. I yelled, ranted and ran away to Mexico for a bit. Came back. Held (hold?) grudges. Fell into the same routine, only for a larger paper, the NYT. And then wised up and realized that I was in a cycle of working my ass off and producing good photography for absolutely no money and no real appreciation. I finally broke the cycle, realized the value in my photography and told people they could piss off if they wanted me to sign away rights and undervalue myself and my work. That doesn’t mean I’m not guilty of still accepting the odd under-paid job or not negotiating terms to my best interests, but for the most part, I don’t.
In the end, I’m better off for never having gotten a job. It was a long and rough path for me to get here, but at least it happened when I was young, with no more responsibilities than feeding and housing myself and a dog. I never tasted a steady paycheck so I never got accustomed to one.
A number of years ago, I remember reading a column by the NPPA contributor Mark Loundy on the topic of increased use of low-paid freelancers in newspapers and how that fact foretold the end of the staffer as we knew it. And we’re seeing this come to fruition now in both photography departments and in the writing ranks. Why continue to pay benefits and taxes for staffers when you can get the same quality work for waaaaaay less? I’ve been approached by numerous newly laid off or bought-out photographers and writers wanting to pick my brain about freelancing. Or, even worse, I see them continuing to work for their former employers as freelancers for the same shitty wages that caused this whole thing in the first place (sigh.)
I hope that this crackdown on companies by the Obama administration will bleed over into the media world. Maybe if the media world had to treat it’s freelancers more fairly than maybe it might give them more incentive to hold onto their staffers. Ultimately, though, in the end it’s up to us as freelancers to understand the value of what we bring to these companies and simply reject their offers for terrible pay, treatment and contractual terms.
Oh and since this is a photography blog, I thought I’d just end with some pictures from those glory days:
