I’m going to go down a bit of a rat hole. I’m even going to give it a name: value.

You’ll already be wondering why a post that begins “I’m going down a bit of a rat hole” might have anything to do with Focus for Humanity – a newly launched foundation aimed at giving grants to aspiring photographers and to help under-funded NGOs afford world class photographers  – but stay with me for a couple of paragraphs and hopefully you’ll see why.

I’ve never quite understood why photographers struggle to sell the value that they bring to organizations. Well perhaps it would be more accurate to say I have never really understood why organizations won’t pay for the value that photographers can bring to their organizations.

That’s value with a capital “V” by the way – the intrinsic benefit that we recognize that great images can bring to a brand – and also value with a small “v” – because I think most photographers are undervalued and charge too little for what they do.

Why is it that an organization will pay an IT technician $70 an hour or a lawyer $200 an hour but not pay a photographer $100 an hour?

Perhaps it is because there is an association between complexity or certain required qualifications or proven experience and a market price.

Or perhaps it is that, for a profession such as a photographer, the need for creative vision, emotional intelligence and expressive story telling often outweighs the need for bachelor, graduate or professional qualifications. Yet because those qualifications are optional it becomes – especially for the uninformed buyer – more difficult to arrive at that market price or critically, to measure the value delivered.

It is of course further complicated by the proliferation and pervasiveness of digital cameras that mean many organizations don’t even to begin to create a business case for an assignment because its just too hard, right? Instead that same organization will thrust a Canon Ixus into the hands of the nearest intern and say, “get on with it”. (though I’ve nothing against Interns or Canon Ixus’!)

Now let’s add a layer of complexity. Let’s go further down that rat hole.

Imagine now that you are a business that is underfunded or does not make a profit, like an NGO. How do they afford someone like Matt Brandon or Gavin Gough? Or what happens if you are a talented semi-pro photographer looking for your first proper client and someone approaches you. How much do you charge without losing that first job or undermining that all-too-difficult-to-judge market price?

Many of the larger more established NGOs have multi-million pound marketing budgets and regularly use the likes of Karl Grobl, Matt Brandon, David duChemin or Ami Vitale on highly structured and well funded assignments. And long may that continue.

But the issue is more with the new, fledgling or underfunded NGO and also with that individual semi-pro photographer who is wanting to make the leap to full time – both of whose activities are more localized or more specific to a particular campaign.

Often, that new NGO’s need is greater, but their budget is smaller, resulting in a prioritization of funds away from hiring that top photographer. In the case of the semi-pro, they opt for doing pro bono work in the hope that it will strengthen their portfolio, but all that happens is that it undermines their value with the client going forward.

The first stage of resolving this is that the NGO needs some form of Damascan road experience to help understand how to budget and monetize the value of the photographer’s work and the semi-pro photographer needs the courage to value their own work and stand firm on their price so as not to undermine the market.

So how do we break this vicious circle? How do we climb out of this rat hole?

Well, one answer it to try and remove the barriers that are stopping each of them. In the NGO’s case that barrier is usually a lack of funds. In the semi-pro photographer’s case it is often a mix of lack of confidence, lack of knowledge in how best to price or a lack of experience with customers.

And this is where an organization such as Focus for Humanity (FFH for short) starts to make a difference. We see our role as bridging these two communities who have shared needs and common goals but perhaps different perspectives.

So as to not leave you hanging, here is a brief summary of how we tried to create a solution to help everyone climb out of that rathole!

Focus for Humanity created assignment grants to allow underfunded NGOs to win the services of established photographers such Matt Brandon, David duChemin, Gavin Gough, Karl Grobl, Jeffrey Chapman or Edoardo Agresti. For free. The NGO gets a full assignment undertaken by a world-class photographer with no strings attached. Well, actually a couple of very minor strings, like agreeing to budget for the following years for similar services; being willing to take some mentoring from FFH on digital marketing and acting as a reference for future NGO applicants. The established photographer gets a new client and is paid the right market rate for his work.

And for the semi-pro looking for that final leap to full time photographer?

We have an annual scholarship that provides the funding to allow them to work with their first client – probably an NGO – and to be mentored into how to approach and further educate clients in the value of images. In addition the grants cover travel, upgrading their equipment and some project expenses.

And for those of you still a few years away from being ready to apply for this scholarship there will be a series of mentoring and workshop grants that will help you to work on your craft and vision.

We fund the Foundation solely through donations, and we run the organization as a virtual online foundation to minimize the costs. Our current target is to allocate 93% of funds into grants each year.

But we can do with your help in three ways:

Firstly tell everyone one about it. Add a blog badge to your site HERE, follow us on twitter HERE, join us on Facebook HERE but, most importantly, become our advocates within your own network and get others to sign–up or donate.

Secondly we need your pledges and donations and those of your friends. It can be a one-off donation of $10 or a monthly recurring donation of any amount you like. But if, for example, we got a thousand of you to give, say, $50 each we would then be able to meet all our commitments for this year. So if you want to help, then help us to reach more than a thousand people willing to give just that little bit.

Thirdly, If you work for a company in the photographic industry then you can help with sponsorship too – although we prefer to use the term partnering as we believe that this is a two way relationship and we need to give those partners equal benefit in return for their support. Every lens, body, bag, filter, tripod, plane ticket or item that we don’t have to buy for our grant winners, is money that we can re-allocate into another grant. We’ve got great ideas on what else we want to add to our grants in the coming months and years, and sponsorship or partnering is one way of making that happen.

“Be the change you want to see in the world”, said Mahatma Ghandi. Perhaps you can help us make real change in how NGOs and other organizations value the work of photographers to help humanitarian causes.

Our thanks to Matt for allowing us the platform of his blog to reach out and share with you all about Focus For Humanity. Thank you for reading this far and for showing an interest in what we are trying to do. You can read more detail about Focus for Humanity, our grants, how to apply and how to help by checking out our website, http://www.focusforhumanity.org.

Marco Ryan was born in the UK, but now lives in Cairo, Egypt with his wife and young family. His professional career as an eCommerce Strategist, Digital Marketing expert and speaker is covered on his work blog, www.marcoryan.com, but it ensures endless travel but sadly insufficient time for one of the more creative forces in his life – photography. Contact him through this blog for commissions or prints.

His passion is for travel and reportage photography, especially recording the more humanitarian aspects of life. Being based in Cairo has allowed an unparalleled and privileged view into the lives or ordinary Egyptians. This led Marco to follow the work of many humanitarian photographers like, yours truly, David duChemin, Gavin Gough and others. Once hooked by the humanitarian side of photography, Marco quickly saw the problems. He saw very talented photographers unable to express their vision. Not being called on by NGOs, that actually needed these photographer’s images. He wanted to both help the photographer as well as help the NGO. So, Marco along with his friend, Loren Roberts, decided to go out on a limb and start a grant organization that would provide photographers with the needed funds to provide a leg-up in the field of humanitarian photography. This was the beginnings of Focus For Humanity. You will be hearing more on this in the interview below, as well as in next Fridays blog post. I know you will find this interview as interesting and challenging as all the Depth of Fields. In this interview Marco not only speaks about Focus For Humanity, he also give us a free seminar on marketing and SEO for the photographer. This is a valuable listen.

That’s me, (not in the picture, in life) movin’ like crazy. I have a lot going on over the next few weeks. Not the best pan shot ever taken. But I thought it was fun, and I like the pastel colors. Taken in Hardiwar, India.

In other news, be looking for the unavailing of two key websites if you are a humanitarian photographer or even have a bent towards it. The first is the International Guild of Visual Peacemakers. This is the website that will be creating a community for people like us. Meaning, humanitarian photographer that feel the world can be a better place if we start taking photos of the good in culture and stop stereotyping everyone. Then the other is a sister site, in a way. Focus for Humanity is a grant foundation that is set up to help humanitarian photographers make it. They will be handing out grants, (read money here), as well as other awards. I am really please to be associated with both of these organizations. Be sure to check them out as soon as they announce on twitter @IGVP, or send a notification request to info@visualpeacemakers.org.

Over the past few weeks, I have been having several conversations with photographers about sharing images and about copyright. I will be sharing two of these with you in upcoming Depth of Field interviews. The first is with Marco Ryan with Focus for Humanity; Marco explained in simple terms the principles and philosophy behind  net traffic and building up blog readership. The second is with Trey Ratcliff, a photographer and author with Peach Pit Press about his work, his website (Stuck in Customs), and how he has managed to gain millions of readers. The thing that kept coming up again and again was building “Internet trust,” that is building a community of online readers that trust your content and link their sites to your own. Building Internet trust builds up your readership through outside links and it also increases your Google rankings.

Marco and Trey discussed several approaches to doing this but it was Trey’s counter-intuitive approach that got my attention. It appealed to my creative bent to think “out of the box” and, as Hercule Poirot would say, it “exercised my little gray cells.” Trey’s philosophy is “create it and give it away… up to a point.” He does this using the Creative Commons licensing model which is an approach that lets you share your creative work in a way that allows others to share and build upon it but with certain restrictions that you specify. This is different than the “All Rights Reserved” approach that you probably have used and might sound a little scary. But scary as it sounds, I think the benefits outweigh the risk.

Here is how I understand the approach and it seems to be working for others. On a regular basis, I post one of my images as a part of the blog post or just a single image posted to share with my users. The image is large, an average of 950 pixels wide. I invite anybody to use the image for anything they want subject to certain conditions: They cannot use it for commercial purposes and they have to link my website. This gives my readers something to look forward to and establishes a regular flow of information across my blog. And, when the image gets used and the link to my site is established, it builds Internet trust.

Now, I can hear the skeptics moaning, “What about the people who take the images and do not link them?” According to Trey and others, those people are in the minority and most people follow through and link their images. It’s a matter of trust and integrity. Trey says that, using this approach to image release, he gets dozens of licensing requests a week. I can honestly say I don’t get that kind of requests for my images.

Another question is, “What does this mean for your clients?” of course, those images remain “All Rights Reserved.” And I just don’t post images that I shoot for my clients on the blog.

Do I have this all figured out? Not yet. It is an experiment. I’m going to give it a year, maybe two and we’ll see what happens. I feel I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Spread the word: The Digital Trekker shares well with others.