If you are here seeking information because you find the industry confusing and mysterious, you are not alone. It’s not just you, I promise!

Few industries have as much confusion, variance and lack of information as the commercial photography industry, and I’ve been working hard to change that through The Image Crafters since 2018.

The industry has undergone immense changes in the last 10-15 years, which has resulted in a highly competitive arena where photographers bid blindly against each other, at the mercy of the behemoth corporations that contract the agencies that pay the photographers, the critical creatives who unfortunately become the ‘little guy’.

The corporations are truly the ones with the most power, and the less information commercial photographers have as a whole, the more those corporations stand to gain.

Every company that has any experience hiring and working with a commercial photographer knows full well the immense value of high-quality images to their company, but the problem is, many new photographers don’t.

This has resulted in a huge pool of low-priced, inexperienced yet talented photographers that have enabled the devaluing of an image, simply because the giant corporations take advantage, and the photographers don’t know any better. Those corporations more and more often intentionally look for talented photographers who lack experience doing commercial shoots, because the corporations know they’ll save a ton of money in doing so.

All of this has made it exceedingly difficult for any level of commercial photographer to make a living at their craft, craft that often results in millions of dollars in additional revenue for their clients.

It’s time that commercial photographers take their power back, and they will do this through knowledge and communal decisions. And that knowledge starts at the bottom, with those entering the industry, who will continue to influence it for years to come.

This site can’t influence communal decisions, but it can help to educate those new to the industry, and prevent the mass advantage-taking on the part of corporations and the agencies they contract.

Whether you are new to the industry, or have been a photographer for many years but are new to the commercial photography industry, you will find the resources on this website to be of immense value in your quest for knowledge.

And if you are one of the ‘old timers’, rest assured that everything on this site aims at properly educating the ‘newbies’, so that when you are up against them in a bid, it’s a much fairer fight.

If there’s anything you don’t see here that you think would add value to the industry, please feel free to reach out!