Ille de St Margarite Cannes, France - 2006

Even though we refer to every person/subject we photograph for our stock projects as "models", very few of them actually are. There are some professional models, and some freelance models in our set of frequently used models, but for the most part we shoot ordinary people, with ordinary jobs.

The thing is that the so-called "ordinary" people can display much better in concept imaging because they know the subject matter than a beautiful model, doing something wrong.

The problem is that many people do not feel comfortable or do not know how to "act" in front of the camera. The simple answer is, we don't want you to "act" we want you to be yourself.

As a general rule we work with new/potential models as follows:

STEP 1:
Contact us through the form on the website!

STEP 2:
Before any shooting begins, we have a quick sit down over a cup of coffee, and talk to the model about what they do, what they like, what their hobbies and abbilities are, and also explain what we do, and how we work.

At this meeting we shoot one or two headshots to see how our image buyers respond to your look. It also helps us to get an idea of what we will have to do in post process, ie: how much extra time we will have to allocate to editing.

(as a general rule we clean up the whites of the eyes (stains from smoking, alcohol and coffee, as well as stress colours the whites of the eyes) the same with teeth, lips, and general skin condition)

We also require you to sign a model release before we start shooting. We will give you a copy of this release on the day (or let us know, and we can e-mail you one beforehand)

STEP 3:
We shoot you. We set up a shoot according to your talents and abilities , either in studio, or on location. As a general rule we pay for all our shoots. For first shoot we pay R120 per shooting hour, or part thereof.

If we see you work well, and we can get quality images from you, we will most probably set up a second shoot in a different setting. From this point on we pay R150 per shooting hour.

If we have done more than 6 shoots with you, we move your rate up to R175 per shooting hour, at ten or more shoots, we negotiate a rate with you per shoot.

We generally make the images available to you after we have put them through post processing. This may be within a few days, or up to a few months after the shoot. We shoot thousands of images per month, and post processing takes about 2-3 hours per shot, so you can imagine how many hours that translates into, and that we cannot process everything we shoot.

NOTE: If you would like to work with us, please keep in mind that we do not always know where the images will be used and for what types of work. Our payments is a once off payment, and we cannot pay you more than the original fees negotiated on the shoot. We can also not guarantee that we will be able to give you any complimentary copies of work that features you.... if we find it, we will pass it on to you. We can give you copies of the edited images (on disk as High-Res JPEGs) for your portfolio.

We do not release any un-edited images. Either to you, or for sale. The images markets our work, and we would like them to be in the best possible condition when the general public sees them (either in your portfolio, or in our online galleries) Please also note that we own the copyright on all the images shot.