Latest / f/22 - Photographer Interviews by VSCO / S2.E6 – From Photos to Profit: David Godinez on Pricing, Video, and the Real Work
Transcript
- VSCO Team: You're not an artist. You're a small business so you need to kind of like make a profit. Like you don't even know what you don't know. Like you don't even know the value of your own work. Especially if it's a skill I want to learn. I always try to like hire somebody who's better than me and learn from them. Photography is my, is the starting point. I never feel like it's the end point. That's where I like to like Photoshop my work, manipulate it a lot more. ⁓ What's up? This is Greg Lutzi here with F22. Today we're hanging out on the streets of San Francisco. I'm with Bay Area photographer David Godinez. He is a photographer and videographer hybrid and we're looking forward to chatting with him. We met him through cameras and coffee, which is a great community organization you should check out. And he's also part of the freelance photographer community as well. Thanks for hanging out with us. Dude, thank you for having me. I only get out of bed for Bisco, because it's very cold this morning. How did you get into the photography, videography world? So photography and videography actually came a little bit later in life. How I first started off in the creative field or aspect of it was me being like a super nosy kid and bored at the house. We lived in like the studio apartment. And I knew my dad had all these cool things up above. So I was being super nosy, going through stuff. And I found this old college ⁓ journal. It's like blue canvas. And I remember opening it up, and there's just all these different artworks in there. And it turns out that it was my dad's old artwork. So it was just like, that was the creative spark. And I thought it was so interesting that somebody can essentially convert a blank piece of paper and essentially give that paper life. So that's where I really started in terms of my artistic desires and journey. It's in the genes, man. It's in the genes. guess so. But then later in life, as I grew up, I was more interested in technology and computers and cameras. And that's where the love of cameras came through. Photography is the starting point. I never feel like it's the end point. With photos, I always feel like it's my chosen medium. But it's the starting point. That's where I like to Photoshop my work, manipulate it a lot more. And how did you get into video then? So the video part, I did it as a teenager because I was vlogging. ⁓ And I made a few vlogs. I really liked YouTube at the time. And I wanted to be like a YouTuber then. So I had this old Sony Cybershot. I think it shot 720p or whatever. And I would vlog our family trips. I remember doing the cinnamon challenge. Like when I was Wait, what's that? What's that? It's like when you get a spoonful of cinnamon and you just eat it. So it was like me and my friend just did that. I have video of this somewhere. It's super dangerous. Don't do it. But it was like little stuff like that where like I was using the camera to mess around and I just essentially express like myself and create stuff. I vlogged like our trips to like Disneyland. and then I uploaded it to Facebook, but I used copyrighted L.M.F.E.O. music and it got taken down. I didn't know these things when I was a kid, but it was just that interest of editing and creating something that was always super aspirational. So a lot of brands are asking photographers for video content as well. And maybe not like long form content, but definitely things that they can post on social media. Are there any tips and tricks that you would give to photographers like, hey, how do I transition into adding video as part of my office? Yeah, I think there really is a need right now between transitioning to photos. And I mean from photos to videos. And lot of brands are asking, alongside these photos, can we also get video? ⁓ That's kind of a double-edged sword because the skills are similar but different. It's so different. Yeah, you still have composition, framing, but ⁓ with photography, it's just one still image, and how do you tell a whole story in one image? It's a very different mindset. It's a very different mindset. then you have like, can get, video can get really big. Like it get really big. Like you get, sorry, adding like a whole team to it. With photos, I feel like you're, you can do a lot of it yourself. When it comes to like video though, I feel like you, depending on the scope of the work, you might need to hire an audio guy. You might need to hire a second shooter, maybe an editor, cause you don't have that skill yet as ⁓ a photographer. ⁓ And for photographers transitioning into video. I would say, first of all, do you want to transition into video? Just because a client's requesting video, does that mean that you need to personally take it on? You could always hire somebody else who's a straight up dedicated videographer, and that's their passion. And you can just kind of like, hey, I have this other guy who's going to kill it with video, and I'm just going to kill it with photos. If you don't want to do ⁓ the video yourself, that's necessarily because it is a big skill to learn. because you still have to the editing software is just crazy. Like learning how to use like your editing software. Like I remember like editing my first video I was just like, it's so bad. Like it's, don't know what to do. Like pacing's all over the place. Music was super high. You couldn't hear anybody talk. So it's definitely like a learned skill, but you can transition as a photographer if you really want to. A lot of the skills carry over, but then there's still like extra skills that you need to learn. But my thing is always to like hire. somebody who's a lot better than you, if you wanna learn and have them be your second shooter. They're technically gonna be the first shooter. You can even hire them as the first shooter and you be the second shooter. So I always try to hire somebody, especially if it's a skill I wanna learn or I'm bad at, hire somebody who's better than me and learn from them. David, I'd love to ask you, for these photographers who are maybe at the stage of like, I love photography, it's a big hobby, maybe they're even getting like some jobs now. Any tips for how to help them take it to the next step of being like a professional photographer, like this is my thing? Yeah, I think that transition phase is super hard just because there's a lot of like unknowns at the time. Like you don't even know what you don't know. Yeah. So like you don't even know the value of your own work. You even know how to price it. You don't even know how many images to give. How do you value your own work? Because essentially you're business at that point. You're small business at that point. You're not an artist. You're small business. So you need to kind of ⁓ make a profit, which I feel like is a very dirty word for artists, to make a profit. But the thing is that it's what keeps you going. Honestly, you've got to pay the bills. It's a huge but important mentality shift to think of, yes, I am still an artist, but this is... What I provide is valuable to a client and I should make money from it. Yeah, it's definitely like... it's right in the middle. It's awesome. It's super unscripted up here. But yeah, it's definitely like that mindset shift of... As an artist, I want to give my client everything. You know what I mean? But as a person in SF, I to pay bills and especially out here being super pricey. It's one of those things where you need to have that transitional mindset of like, you have the artist brain and then you have the business side. The problem is that it's hard when there's no way to learn that. Even if you go to like art school for photography, they're just gonna teach you the photography side of it. Which is cool, it's helpful. And you do get hired for your skills, but like, it's that marketing aspect, like, okay, how do I talk to people, how do I reach out, how do I brand? ⁓ skills I would say is honestly this is not to be salesy but join the freelance photographer like it's honestly been a super great community. ⁓ It's one of those like courses that really teaches you the value of your own work. Yeah that's incredible I think that's so important there's so much emphasis on taking a good photo which is important and at VSCO of course we love that but there also has to be the education or the understanding of how to run the business side. And so I agree, think the freelance photographer is such a good resource for that. Yeah, also I just want to disclose that I joined the freelance photographer before I even knew it was related to VSCO. it was just out of my own thing. I just saw it was great value. It was a great community of other photographers in the same boat as me, learning, hey, what's licensing? How do I include that in the total? Because that transition part of like... I'm only gonna charge $250 because I feel like it's a four hour shoot and $50 an hour or like whatever is valuable to me. And honestly, like sometimes like early on when I was like, I'm making $100 an hour. That's a lot. And then you realize you're like, oh, there's overhead in business. There's like subscriptions that you gotta pay for that you need to use for your business. Like you need to use your editing software. You need to use your client delivery software. You need learn accounting, like you need to have your accounting software. So like learning how to price yourself really keeps you in the game longer. Pricing and that transparency over how much to bid for things to me feels like something that's not talked about. And I don't even think it's a matter of like gatekeeping. I think it's more a matter of like people don't even want to share. Maybe because they're embarrassed or maybe things aren't going as well as they want or maybe they don't know that it's good or not. And so they're just guessing. But I think having that transparency as photographers, it's so important that we are like, hey, we got to look out for each other and we are valuable. What we're providing to our clients is important. Yeah, I think it's that mindset, like you said, like it was not very disclosed and that's what I was like struggling with when I was learning how to become a photographer, like a professional photographer. I was getting like so many tips on the photo side, like I could Photoshop and do all this stuff. But when it came to business, it was just like... There wasn't much disclosed out there and I don't know why, but it just felt like for me, it just, if you can like educate your up and coming photographers, like maybe you can actually improve the whole, photography as a whole, right? Like it doesn't get so cheapened out where like you're just undercutting and that's your whole like marketing and business like, like a plan. Like I'ma just undercut and get the job. Cause you do get burnt out and then you also took like an opportunity. that could have actually been well paid from a different photographer. What's a project that you're working on that you're really excited about? So I just wrapped up a project ⁓ recently. It was a video project. It was very much a like off the cuff, literally from concept to execution to like editing. I think it was all done within like six weeks. ⁓ And the concept is for like essentially shooting a ⁓ little mini doc for this nonprofit called Lift Us. ⁓ Lift Us Foundation in Oakland and it's about... a group of kids essentially learning how to do Olympic weightlifting. And man, these kids are amazing. They're some real beasts. Yeah, they're actual national championships on there. These kids are amazing. When I filmed these kids, I thought, oh, I could do that. Because they're young 16-year-olds, man. But they're young men. If I put it like that, they're young men. And these kids are super aspirational in terms of what they're doing. They actually inspired me to start learning how to weight lift and do all that. Mike Jenkins is the founder of that and he runs Speed Power Strength in Oakland. And it's an amazing gym. It's a weightlifter's heaven in there. You go in and there's nothing but platforms. And your average gym goer would be like, where's the machines at? Where are the machines at? Yeah, but all the weightlifters are like, oh, this is... all the leco equipment and it's like, it's all beautiful here. ⁓ But that project has been super great. Right now we're like, ⁓ it's not released yet because we're kind of trying to do a film festival run for it. So it definitely took on its own life form of like, it evolved. Like it went from like, ⁓ we're just going to share this with the city to try to get more funding to like, hey, like, let's see if we can like try to get brands like see funding from brands to like, hey, how about let's just, let's just go full for it and. Let's do film festival runs. What's it called again so we can check it out? ⁓ Lift Us Foundation is the foundation that the doc is based out of. And Lift Us, the home is in Speed, Strength. What's the name of the film? The name of the film? Oakland Strong. Oakland Strong. Let's go. It ⁓ hasn't been released yet, so this is insight right now. David, thank you for hanging out with us on this chilly San Francisco morning. answering all our questions ⁓ from all of us at VSCO and F22 Podcasts. Appreciate that. For everyone here watching, how can we see your work? So my handle is David R. Goda ⁓ and my website is David Godinus. You'll have this text right here. Hopefully the editor puts the text right here. ⁓ But yeah, that's usually my socials across the board. And I'm super excited. so glad that I've made this relationship with VSCO. Like you guys actually care about the photographers. You guys are actually building tools for photographers. Appreciate you man. Yeah, thank you.