We were lucky to catch up with Andrew Bennett recently and have shared our conversation below.

Andrew, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

As a young photographer, one of my mentors gave me an amazing piece of advice on how to evaluate what projects to pursue, and whether it’s ever worth it to work for free. It has stuck with me ever since, and has been a great guide on how to accept, price, and market my work.

When you are first starting in the photo business, you may have a tendency to take whatever is thrown your way. That’s natural. You need to build a portfolio. You’re not established yet. You don’t quite know how to price your work and you don’t want to scare off early potential clients. Using this rule will help your decision making every step of the way. Here we go.

Evaluate every project based on
PEOPLE, PAY & PORTFOLIO.

And the trick is that you have to have two of these things for the green light. Let’s start with some definitions.

PEOPLE: Are the people offering the gig good to work with? Are they communicative and timely with their responses? Do they treat you well and ask for your input? Do they trust your advice and ideas? Do they give you photo credit when it’s appropriate? Are they folks that you would work with again? If so, then these are good people to work with.

PAY: This one is pretty simple. Is the time and effort you put into the project worth the compensation? If so, then this is a good price for the project.

PORTFOLIO: Are you going to be proud of this work? Are you going to immediately post it to social media and your website as soon as it’s approved? If so, then this is a good portfolio project.

If you find that all three categories are satisfied, then you’re in the presence of a golden project! Knock it out of the park. Go the extra mile. Make sure the client has a great experience and will come back to you with more work!

But what about the not-so-perfect projects. What if only two of these categories are satisfied? From my experience, this is the most common circumstance. You can’t have your cake and eat it too when you’re trying to build a business. So don’t worry too much if only two are satisfied – it’s still a great project. Here are a few ways you can move forward with a great experience:

Good People, Good Pay, Bad Portfolio: The client is great and fun to work with. The compensation is good, but perhaps the work itself is a little boring. If that’s the case, then this job is what we call Paying The Bills. If I’m being honest, this accounts for about half of my work. It’s usually corporate work or plain product photography. Things that pay well, but I’m probably not going to post on Instagram. Still good work!

Good People, Bad Pay, Good Portfolio: The people are great. It’s really cool work. But you’re getting paid peanuts…or you’re not getting paid at all! As a young photographer, you will encounter a lot of projects like this. You will also hear a lot of amateur photographers complain about how people don’t value their art. I’m about to say something very controversial…it’s ok to work for free sometimes! And to dig myself an even deeper hole, working for exposure can actually pay off.

Let me explain from my own career. I got my start in the Austin music scene, shooting live music photography, album covers, and press photos. As you can imagine, indie rock bands don’t have much of a budget to spend on photography or anything else for that matter. But they were super appreciative of good photos, and would repost them with proper photo credit. I would also proudly post my rock and roll photography on social media, which usually received a lot of interaction. I discovered that people like seeing photography of their favorite bands. Lastly, while most bands don’t have money, some of them do have substantial followings. And in those followings are business owners, magazine editors, and fashion designers, and so on. It didn’t take long in my career for fans of those indie rock bands to start asking me about taking photos for their businesses or projects too.

Bad People, Good Pay, Good Portfolio: Lastly, in this project: The people suck, but you’re getting paid well and it’s cool work that will go in your portfolio when you’re done. This one is pretty simple. Do the work. Get your paycheck. Put it in your portfolio. And then never work with those people again! Luckily, this has been a rare occurrence for me, but knowing when to break up with a client is an important (but difficult) skill that gets refined as you grow in your career.

So, should you ever work for free? My answer: Sometimes, but only if it’s for good people and good for your portfolio.

Now what if only one of the parameters is satisfied? This is where you proceed with extreme caution! Here are some examples:

Good People, Bad Pay, Bad Portfolio: The most common project where this is the situation is where you are working for friends, for free, on a project that you’re not excited about. Don’t do it. There’s a chance you will strain that relationship and not do your best work, and neither party is satisfied at the end.

Bad People, Good Pay, Bad Portfolio: This is a tough one! Would you work with awful people on a boring project for one million dollars? Well, probably. At the end of the day, it’s up to you how much money is worth working on a project that will suck your soul dry. Sometimes it’s worth the paycheck – sometimes it’s not.

Bad People, Bad Pay, Good Portfolio: Remember when I said it’s OK to sometimes work for free? This is an example of when you should NOT work for free or cheap! This is the ole’ “It will be great exposure” sales pitch. A good rule of thumb – if the person asking you to work for free is the one saying that it will be good exposure, run away. If you evaluate the project yourself and decide it’s worth the exposure, like shooting for an account with tons of followers who will post your photos and credit you in the first line of the description, then it might be worth it.

In conclusion, whatever the job offer, evaluate it based on People, Pay, and Portfolio. Always have two in your favor and you’ll have a better chance of doing your best work and enjoying yourself along the way.

Andrew, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got started later than some, but around the age of 25, I began tinkering with video and photography.

My first job out of college as a history major was doing sales at a study abroad company. During the summers we had more flexibility to work on pet-projects. I was inspired by the YouTube filmmaking of Casey Neistat, and started making little clickbait videos like, “What to Pack for a Semester Abroad,” and “Beating Culture Shock in 5 Easy Steps.” The content was a lot of fun to make, but very unrefined. So, I left the corporate world in 2014, and apprenticed with a commercial film director in Austin for several years, and that’s how I learned professional video production.

At about the same time, I was playing in a band called Shy Beast. I started bringing my Canon Rebel out to our shows to photograph the other bands in the lineups. The Austin music scene is really where I got my start with photography, and commercial work eventually followed.

Then, in 2016, I met my wife and business partner, Dorothy Bennett. She was also pursuing video production and animation. We got married and in 2018 started Bennett Creative, a content agency for video production, commercial photography, and animation. We had a handful of employees at our studio on South Lamar, and have been featured by Dell, Absolut Vodka, Adobe, Square, NRG, Brinks, Torchy’s and more!

Since 2017, my wife and I have been running Bennett Creative, a commercial photography and video production company. We have a lot more to grow and learn, but I’m proud of the things we’ve been able to accomplish in the last 7 years.

I got my start doing music photography. At the time, I had a day job to cover my bills and I was playing in a local Austin band. Almost every weekend, I brought my camera to our shows and took photos of the band we opened for, or the ones opening for us.

Musicians don’t have a lot of money, but some of them had a big audience. So, I would take photos of their shows, do a quick edit, and send them the same night, with a request that they could have them for free, but be sure to give me photo credit on social media every time they used them. That’s right – I worked for “exposure.”

The exposure worked. Musicians have all kinds of fans. Some of them own business or work as editors at magazines. After a short time of covering the music scene, people started reaching out about portraits, product photos, and then full blown lifestyle shoots. As my portfolio grew, so did my project budgets. I don’t regret doing those early shoots for free. In fact, they are still some of my favorite portfolio photos.

Weddings get a bad wrap in the photo and video world, but I’m going to defend them. Weddings were my first “big budget” projects. They taught me how to do market myself and close the sale. Weddings taught me how to do customer service and keep timelines. And most importantly, weddings taught me how to walk into a room full of strangers and confidently direct them through a creative endeavor.

These days, when I walk onto a commercial set with 30+ cast and crew, I can thank wedding for feeling comfortable in those situations.

Whether we like the free market or not, it’s the system we all have to operate in, especially in Texas where there is not a big union presence. A lot of young creative need to realize that the only true minimum wage is $0, and as a freelancer, you wake up unemployed every day. You set your price higher than your value in the market, and you just won’t work. When you’re starting out, you’re going to have to do some work on spec to just build your portfolio. No one is going to pay you well, if they perceive it’s your first time.

We make videos and photos that help you sell and inform.

A lot of businesses have a hard time consistently putting out good video and photo content. Bennett Creative makes that process easy by providing turnkey video and photo production services. We pitch ideas, write scripts, cast talent, scout locations, and offer a full suite of post-production services to deliver a compelling final cut, ready for your website or social media channels.

We make producing video and photo content easy, so that businesses can focus on providing great products and services.

We come from the business world. Before going full-time in the creative arts, I did corporate marketing and sales, and managed a national sales team. We speak the language of business, while providing reliable creative services. That’s why brands like Tesla, Adobe, T-Mobile, Schwinn, Square and Torchy’s have trusted us with producing parts of their brand story.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We have bootstrapped it all the way. Since the beginning, for every project we buy one piece of equipment. That has kept us from needing to rent a lot of equipment. Now, for 90% of our projects we don’t need to rent anything.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice

I don’t think NFT’s are a thing any more. Are they?

Contact Info:

• Website: www.andrewbennettphoto.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/andrewbennettphoto
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randrewbennett/