Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim_Gunn
I'll just say this- you never hear guys like Dean Capture, JustDaveXXX or myself complaining about a lack of work. And there's a reason for that. None of us are bragging about how reasonably priced we are either. It's not just about creative or technical skills, but business savvy as well.
A company owner complaining that he can't find any decent producers to work for peanuts should expect that the quality and reliability of those producer's work is worth only the peanuts you want to pay them. And usually not even that in by the time you factor in aggravation.
If you're a producer who has been dis-intermediated and replaced by your own clients or crew then you were lacking something in the first place, I'm not necessarily talking about talent as a photographer or director, but maybe business acumen or risk management strategies. I personally don't have all my eggs in one basket. There's no way a company could just hire some mope with a camera to replace me to recreate everything that my work encompasses.
I've been doing this since 1991 so I've seen more changes than most in this business and I'm always looking at the future and trying to figure all the angles and all the ways that I can improve myself and my photographic & technical abilities and add other services to make what I offer so unique and invaluable that company owners in North America, Europe and beyond are still hitting me up to pay top dollar for what I can produce.
The few times I did do some cheap productions because it was local or because the theme appealed to me or because I liked the client personally, it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth anyway since as many people in the service business will tell you, the people that pay the least are often the most demanding and unreasonable.
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I was shooting for Babes.com for Manwin in the beginning I shot over 30 scenes. When the condom law came up they told me they they were going to shoot their hardcore out of LA and mostly in Europe. I am sure Dean and Jay Allan got priority since they are under contract and I was told the reason they stopped ordering was not because of me but because they are shooting way less in LA and they already had 2 guys under contract. It was a great experience but kinda tough to compete with those guys their lights probably cost more than all of my gear LOL. And Dave, well we all know this guy have probably 500k worth of equipment. Good luck competing with that when the shooting porn for the newbie will only afford him an entry level consumer HD camera. You can bet guys like Jay, Dean, and Dave don't grow on trees it took years of profit, investment, & thousands of scenes fund their operations. Think about this how about the new guys ever going to be able to invest that kind of dough and attain that level of production? Those guys were around when porn was making great money and with their contracts they can maintain that status as long as Manwin renews their contracts. You can bet a lot of their competitors are not doing as well or already quit the business. It will be interesting to see how this plays out future. My guess is companies are going to have to buy all the gear and have guys like Dean to train cheap shooters to do what he does (my experience with Dean is he is pretty secretive about his techniques) I don't blame him though the company that had me train other shooters used that as an opportunity to save money by their own gear and get some younger cheaper guys shooting for them. I bought my gear from shooting solo sites which use to pay very well and it was very attractive for the model as well. I talked to buddy Mutt about shooting more solo sites and he is offering half of what he did back in 2007. That 50% less for the model and 50% less for the photographer. It is definitely not worth it to shoot for Met Art anymore they will approve a model for you to shoot a day of photo sets then only offer to buy a set to try the girl on the site before offering to buy the rest. They use to buy all the set unless the shoot was really bad. I shot 2 days of Met Art set of Malena Morgan and spend a ton getting the hottest sets I could only to be told we will buy one set and see how she does. After she became ranked #1 2 days later they quickly bought all of her sets and even signed her to an exclusive contract. So orginally they just wanted one set and turned around and bough all 7 sets. After that I feel its a huge risk to shoot for them with no guarantee that they will even buy it. Had she not been top ranked I would have not even broke even. Back in the days you could just sell them to magazines but that biz is dead also.