If you’re a professional photographer for longer than five minutes, you will get asked to work for free. But before you say “yes” or “no,” you need to understand when and why you should work for free.

A piece of advice I’ve heard and read for many years is “Never work for free.” I think this is bad advice wrapped in a warm blanket of good intentions. It may be coming from a place of good intention, but advice that includes the word “never” should never be taken at face value. See what I did there?

I don’t know a single photographer who has not done work for free. No photographer that I know of has ever picked up a camera and started charging without first building a portfolio, doing styled shoots, arranging TFP shoots with models from industry websites or Facebook groups. There are plenty of times when it’s not only okay to work for free, but can be a really good idea.

Someone is always paying. 

The first thing we need to understand about working “for free” is that someone is always paying for the shoot, whether it’s us, our clients, our collaborators, or someone else. 

As a photographer, you’re paying with your time. You’re paying to rent a studio or buy supplies. You’re paying for transportation. You’re paying for your insurance. You’re paying through the use of your depreciable assets such as your camera body, lenses, lighting, vehicles. You’re paying for your image processing software and studio management system. You’re paying for your website.

Someone is always paying.

So, what is free work? Either you’re working for yourself, or you’re volunteering. I like to joke that I have three rates: my normal rate, pro bono for causes I believe in, and my friends and family rate, which is double my normal rate because friends and family usually come with double the headaches.

I’m not going to include friends and family here because that’s really a personal choice if you want to say yes to that university friend you haven’t seen in 15 years suddenly invites you to his kid’s birthday party and suggests, “Hey, maybe you can bring your camera.” As for family, either do it for free or do what I do and tell them it’s double your normal rate. No joke.

Portfolio Building

The primary instance where you’re going to be working for free is when you’re doing shoots to build your portfolio. I am not referring to “model calls” where you offer images for sale on the back-end. I’m talking about straight-up portfolio building shoots.

Let’s take a moment here to differentiate between TFP shoots and free work. TFP, which is an acronym that used to mean Time For Prints, in which everyone involved in a shoot would exchange their time for physical prints of select photographs for their portfolios, has now come to mean Time For Photos or Trade For Photos, since very few people have print portfolios anymore. 

SIDEBAR: Photographers, you should definitely have a print portfolio. But that’s a topic for a whole other episode.

When you are doing a TFP shoot, everyone involved needs to get images. 

If it’s your concept, say you’re doing spec shoots for a new genre in your business, you’re changing your style, or creating a mock ad campaign or proof-of-concept, then make sure you have creative control over the shoot.

What I do in situations like this, where makeup artists, stylists, models, and other people are all offering up their time for my concept, is I make sure to let everyone know that I will make myself available to them when they have something they need for their portfolio. That only seems fair to me. Their time for your time. Just make sure you stick to your word and follow through.

Conversely, if it’s not your concept, but you agree to shoot it, be professional and follow the creative brief. If it’s not my creative, and it’s not a favour I’m returning for work done on one of my creatives, then the shoot has to be something I would include in my portfolio, or I simply pass on the project.

Pro Bono

There’s a word people tend to use to describe free work, and that’s volunteering. The Latin phrase is pro bono publico, which is almost always just shortened to “pro bono.” It refers to professional work undertaken without pay.

As I mentioned earlier, I have my rate and then work I’ll do pro bono because I believe in the cause. Pro bono work differs from traditional volunteering in that it uses the specific skills of professionals to provide services to those who are unable to afford them. So, that does not mean I would work for Amnesty International or UNICEF or The Ocean Cleanup pro bono, even though I strongly believe in all of those causes, because those organizations, despite being not-for-profit charities, actually can afford to pay service vendors.

Something to note here is that I will not shoot pro bono, or even reduce my fee, simply because an organization is not-for-profit. If all of their staff get paid, they should pay their vendors properly. In Canada, we do not have non-profits, we have NFPs (not-for-profits), and an NFP can either have charity status or not charity status. For example, credit unions are typically not-for-profit, but they are also not charities, whereas the David Suzuki Foundation is both an NFP and a charity.

If the organization is a charity, invoice them your normal rate, but add a line item that deducts the full amount as a charitable donation, Then get a charitable receipt for that donation. Talk to the organization and your accountant about how to do this properly. Your work has value and that charity is being given a donation in-kind equal to your value.

So, when I offer myself pro bono it needs to be something that I believe in strongly enough to offer up my valuable time prepping, producing, and editing. In the past, I’ve done pro bono work for a local not-for-profit that I care about, a good friend’s portfolio to help her apply to fashion school, and I’m even going to be shooting my cousin’s wedding because I think his fiancé is awesome and he’s not going to do better so he needs to lock that down ASAP. Lock it down, Chris! Lock. It. Down.

Interning

Somewhat related to volunteering is interning. I’m only going to briefly address interning here because here in Canada unpaid internships are illegal unless the intern is genuinely a student getting credit as part of a school program.

Most college photography programs near me have an internship component that students are required to fulfill in order to graduate. The ones that I know of vary from 40 intern hours to more than 400 intern hours. So, the only time I would advise doing unpaid internships is when you are a photography student in a program that requires you to complete a set amount of intern hours.

Marketing Strategy

The way in which I think you can best use free work is when it’s part of a marketing strategy. A common lead generation strategy for wedding photographers is to offer complimentary engagement sessions to couples. This could be a limited number of sessions, or you could do it for everyone who qualifies based on your requirements, such as couples with budgets greater than $4,000 US or €3,500, or whatever threshold you decide.

For commercial photographers, when you’re meeting with art producers at ad agencies and marketing firms to show them your book, this is a great opportunity to talk to them about their pro bono work. Making yourself available pro bono to their pro bono clients is a great way for art producers and art directors to get to know you and to recommend you to their clients for paid work. Art directors want to work with people they know and trust to execute the job and pro bono work is a great way to show them you have the skills. And you better have the skills.

Create a Pro Bono Policy

The work you choose to do for free is up to you. I highly recommend making a Pro Bono Policy for your business and sticking to it. It could include the kind of work you are willing to do pro bono, and how much of that you are willing to take on each year. 

Newborn photographers might volunteer with organizations like Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep or local charitable child-care services. Family photographers could photograph their pediatrician and her family as a gift and provide prints for the waiting room walls to get their work in front of many people with children.

You can do this for any genre of photography. You are only limited by your creativity and your desire to help people, including helping yourself.

The great thing about having a pro bono policy is that if a request doesn’t fit your pro bono policy, then you can get on the phone and say, “Thanks for your request but we’ve hit our limit on pro bono projects for the year,” and then talk to them about their objectives and get them to realize they should just hire you.

Summary

In the end, the decision to work for free is ultimately up to you, not anyone else telling you not to do it. Make sure there’s some benefit in it for you, that you’re invested in the outcome. So, take a few minutes today to draft up a pro bono policy, or revisit it if you already have one. You could even include it on your website to show your potential clients how you give back to your community.

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