As of March 14th, everything in the United States has changed. Within just a few days the economy has ground to a halt and it's taken the majority of photo/video jobs with it.
Most of my friends in real life are photographers and I have literally thousands of Facebook friends in the industry as well. Everyone is saying the same thing; all of the jobs have been postponed or canceled and no new jobs are coming in. Once the virus is under control in a few weeks/months will everything simply go back to the way it was before or are we heading into the next big recession?
I'd like to know what you think. Below, I've come up with a few simple questions for you to answer.
In the comment section below, I'd like to hear your thoughts. Where do you live, what is the photo/video market doing in your area? Does anyone have any new work coming in? How long can you ride this out and when do you expect this to be over?
The more social distancing we practice NOW, the less of an impact the coronavirus will have on us. If we do that, we will still suffer some economic decline. BUT if we act now, I think this will be over by mid-summer.
For those of you who depend on photography for a living, many jobs are just being postponed. I suspect you will be very busy in August.
I am a University professor in microbiology. As such, I am very fortunate. My work patterns have changed significantly but the financial impact is minor - so far. I just worry about family, friends, and neighbors getting sick.
Based in N. Africa. The world over reaction driven by USA media and election year politics is wrecking havoc on the rest of the globe. People get sick every year and most recover. Most of my work is local but EEUU business is having some impacts. Have had to cancel some work in Europe. Biggest problem are western world travel restrictions. Need to unplug CNN and US congress so that we can get back to work.
Talk about months. The situation in Belgium is evolving to an Italian scale - due to the fact that we don't follow well enough the regulations. France, Spain, Germany - all taking more or less the same measures. Trying to stop the spreading while reducing social contacts. UK is keeping +70's in house.
In Belgium one of the ministers said - "stay in your house".
The virus is bad - really bad. Take it very seriously - and take measures. Take a lockdown for 2-3 months into account for your financial matters - no matter where you stay.
The EU isn't well enough prepared, the US, i believe is even in worser condition - while the structures for such a massive scale disaster have been hurt by less finances. You'll be hit - and it'll be hard.
Stop watching Fox News - the real information is on the WTO-website. Go there - read the stats - view the maps.
We at work - have canceled all courses for students - and are switching over to e-courses. All personel that can work from home has to work from home. We have to take precaussions - when being ill we have to stay home.
Do you US-citizens really think we do this for pleasure in the EU?
Look at the dramatic numbers. We in Belgium are on the same course as in Italy - moving to a total lockdown, and we're trying to keep things under control to slow it down. In the US you have still some time to react - but time is very short! It's a matter of days not weeks anymore.
The most dangerous fact on this virus is - that it stays 5à6 days under the radar - when it breaks out - one person can already have given it to +200 others. 80% of those will get a mild form - 20% of those will be hospitalized.
I'm amazed on how little information you've all gotten! Go to the BBC - there's a specific overview in English on Corona. Read that for good information (news.bbc.co.uk). Learn that in the US the news-sources are all biased. Fox news shouldn't be considered as a news source. Social media are no sources you can trust.
Numbers are going down now in Southern Korea and China - due to very stringent procedures. But it's far from over! The EU is now the center - and it'll come to the US. The travel-ban is a first step - to keep some of the virus out.
With all the bad information you receive over there - some of you still believe it's a hoax (i've seen it myself on fox!) - you'll be hit with a heavy peak. Where people die because there's no place and no medicals to treat them. Hospitals 'll become a triage like on a battlefield (that's what's not being that explicitly written about Italy but it's happening there - and it has occured in China too, there's no doubt about that). We've even seen on fox there aren't enough testing-kits. Now they move on to a quicker commercial procedure - we'll see how that goes.
Even in our country they have to monitor - and take measures. But at least we do it on a federal scale. That took a few days in Belgium first trying the gentle way - where you're now in the US. After a few days it can become more obligatory - to move into full shutdown when it doesn't help. Do as you're told to do! Try to avoid this shutdown scenario as is happening in Italy.
This is a harsh posting - i know - but it's the way i see things evolving (and i do have contacts in Italy - whole places are cut off of the outside world). There's no need to go like crazy after food - that's all fine - even in Italy!
I really 'd like to slam all those tuning it down. It's not what you should do. Take your responsability. Do as you're told. And when you cannot go to a restaurant or a pub into your own state - don't drive to another state where you can. You can spread the virus that way (they did that in Belgium - going to Holland or France to have lunch or have a beer)!
As a photographic safari lodge manager/owner this is financially a disaster..... We are trying to get back home to Africa from Germany - already first flight was cancelled - to open our lodge for the season. Bookings have slowed to a stop. The season is really (in terms of international guests) from June onwards so while we are not seeing cancellations as yet we no doubt will... People are sitting and waiting. We are planning ways to survive as a business. It will for sure involve letting staff go. Which is terrible. I have personal savings enough that my wife and I will be okay for a year or so. But as for the business only time will tell. Really terrible times across the whole world.
I'm from Brazil and just moved to Portugal exactly on month ago after a very expensive immigration process that took over a year and is not over yet. In a couple months I have an appointment with the immigration office to show that my company is making money and that I have enough money to pay my bills for 6 months. And guess what? My business focus here is tourism/travel photography and all my photoshoots were cancelled.
Today I have enough money to live for 4-5 months and there's more money in Brazil but the brazilian Real (R$) has lost so much worth that it would give me just another 3 or 4 months tops.
I'm FREAKING OUT.
Oh wow, that's just a shit situation, man! I feel you. Have had someone close to me who also moved from another country and had to go through the same process. Add this situation and economy to it I understand why you're freaking out!
Thanks man. That's really shitty.
The impact has been tremendous for me and I am worried a fair bit. So far I have only had 2 cancelled jobs, and 3 jobs postponed, but I feel like next week is when things will get "serious" in Canada. Even though the cancellations and postponing has not been severe on my end, new bookings have been slowed to a trickle the last 2 weeks. I would estimate I am down a good 80-90%.
My biggest issue is my massive overhead. I need to make at bare minimum 10k/month just to cover expenses of running my studio. I have some savings/credit I can use to keep the place afloat for a while, but with overhead like that, it only stretches so far. If things don't improve by the summer I worry about keeping my studio.
I'm not a professional photographer so my experience might be different. The work I do is required by law. They might push stuff back a month or two if things get bad but with the fear has made it difficult to find people to do my work. If it doesnt get pushed back I'm pretty much going to be making as much in 3.5 months this year as I did all of last year just as an incentive to go out and get the job done. From a photography side of things I'd say now is the time for people to start learning other skills to go along with their photography work. Learn the video side of things if that is a weak point. If you are doing product photography maybe download something like Blender 3d (its free) and start messing with that. The more options you can provide your clients the better off you will be in the future. Lay offs happen and the thing is once they know they can have one person doing what 3+ people were doing before they will never go back to having 3+ people doing that job. With my line of work I can basically save them close to a million in wages just because I do have the skill set to take on multiple roles. I also prefer less people working under me since the job is dangerous and less people means less stress with managing people.
Let me begin by stating that I'm semi-retired and adding that I have a lung condition that puts me in the high risk category so I have already self-isolated. However, I'm sure I'm not alone in having many many photography related tasks to do that I've been putting off for years. Coincidentally I received a £100 voucher towards a book print offer and as I have been meaning to create a book to cover the many aspects of my work over the years I have taken this opportunity to make this the first of my isolation tasks. Rummaging through 1,000s of files certainly took a lot longer than I first imagined and I estimate it took the best part of 18 hours a day for the first week ... time that I would never have been able to allocate under normal circumstances! The book has already been uploaded to the printer and I only had to add a further £100 to make this a luxurious leather bound print with acrylic cover and supplied in a matching box. Now I'm ready for the many hours of sorting, sifting and editing - a task "I had always meant to do"!
I'm trying to turn a negative into a positive :-)
A .pdf of the book is here if anyone's interested - https://blingshot.co.uk/BlingShotBook.pdf
It's humanity that is the virus. We have all but wrecked the planet in the name of greed. The best thing for the planet would be our total and utter extinction.
If you listen to the doctors, not the politicians, they say that as some stage we are ALL going to catch COVID 19 at some point. That's just how the virus works. All point to point and face to face business (and that obviously includes photography) is going to cease for months in an attempt to slow down the spread of the virus. People don't want to be photographed under the current conditions and their feelings are only going to strengthen. There is also nothing editorial to be photographed as every event and sporting fixture is going to be cancelled.
It's spread cannot be stopped, only possibly slowed down. The USA are way behind the curve on the number of tests it is conducting compared to Europe and Asia so the current status of how many people in the US already have the virus cannot be known. But it is already in the US and banning flights from everywhere won't change a thing. It will spread and it cannot be stopped. Photography just like most other business will cease very soon and will not be the same again for a very very long time.
This is what the doctors are saying who are the people to listen to, not the politicians.
Hi Guys - I am in Patagonia at the moment to shot and now I stuck because from today on ALL the parks are closed ... for me it makes definitely NO sense I am out there alone with my cameras and my tripods and even when I had Corona I don't meet nobody out there. So I have to decide to break up and go home to Germany - BUT very difficult to find a plane and if what's then ??? I am a freelancer as the most of my friends and I also had a job in Mexico and in California - everything is gone ....... I don't know how to handle this situation at the moment.
Stay healthy my friends out there - I think we have to deal with this crises for a long time. Hopefully not with the virus but with the recession. All the best.
I live in Portugal and I work as a dentist and my clinical work is currently on hold. The problem with the virus is not the fact that it might kill you. It simply because it spreads so fast that the hospital don’t have enough support equipment available in such a short amount of time to help all those who need it, and you end up having doctors getting the gruesome task off choosing who lives and dies(because you have to add the critical patients that suffer from this virus on top of the usual ones that end up in the hospital). In Europe we have the example of Italy, where doctors have openly said that they have made a rule that anybody above the age of 60 will not be put on ventilators, and have no more room for patients so they had to set up tents, like in war zones, to house patients. I’m not saying that you have to run to the supermarket and buy up everything, but you should take this threat seriously and understand that by limiting your social interactions you are buying time for science and research on the virus to progress. If not to protect yourself, do it to protect your family members of the off chance they might become a critical patient. I hope that this helps you understand a bit better the reality here in Europe and I’m certain that this is not going to blow over in just a few week here and everywhere else. The virus is here to stay it’s a question of how long we need before we have effective weapons to ward it off and how many are going to die before we get there, because just like the common flew it can and it will mutate. After all that I have said here please don’t think of me as an alarmist, I am just worried about everybody’s well-being. Thanks to everybody who took the time to read this post and I hope that it has helped you in anyway at all.
Good post. Well thought out and lucid.
Every ski area in Colorado shut down today, if you didn't already know that. Most are closed for a week and then they will re-evaluate. My guess: the ski season is over. The state is advising everyone over the age of 60 to only go out for necessities, i.e. food, perscriptions, etc. I'm afraid I fall into that catagory and I think I'll take their advice.. Our grocery store shelves are empty of toilet paper, paper towels, sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol, kleenex. It's is just crazy.
I would still consider myself to be in the early stages on my business, in a small market where creative work (especially for marketing/advertising) isn't something that is fully understood (The commercial photographers around here all make the majority of their income from out of town jobs). The first year and half saw steady but SLOW financial growth. The result is living gig to gig. Occasionally I'll get some emergency savings, but its usually gone pretty quick because of the wide fluctuations I see in my income.
I had one big event cancel the day of and a music promotional session get delayed due to lack of income (these young musicians have it BAD). I had a photographer friend pass one of his shows to me because he's a part of the high risk group. Interestingly, that event paid more than the one that got cancelled. However, that was it. inquiries dropped off, the radar looks bleak. I had already wanted to get a stable day job for a while so I could have a better financial position and work on my portfolio. I had applied to a bunch before this all started, got busy and haven't had a chance to look since. I have no idea what that outlook is now.
I'm lucky to have an amazing girlfriend with a stable job (emergency vet) and we are both in our mid twenties. We will be okay. Its just an unusually large bump in the road.
Lost all the gigs I had lined up for the next two weeks and next month... and it isn't looking like paid work is on its way again anytime soon... Like most Americans, I was living under the "damn thats crazy..." mood until it hit our shores and now NYC is one of the epicenters in the states for this virus... Like you guys it struck as quick as lightning! All gigs canceled almost immediately with no time to plan! Thankfully my spouse is still working, but my fear of this certain recession is more and more overwhelming everyday... Somehow, and sadly I find solace in knowing we are all going through the same thing.
I had panels at 4 film festivals cancel. (Not much money there to be honest, but valuable networking) Also lost a guest lecture gig at a University, and demo/workshop at NAB convention. Also had video/still shoots for two state tourism boards cancel indefinitely. Last remaining job is a shoot at New Orleans JazzFest, which I'm expecting on Monday to be at the least postponed until Oct. if not cancelled. As for the rest of the year, I reached out to the agencies and art directors I had started talks with, and 90% are dodging me like a bill collector. :-) Everything is very vague with them, my sense is they have no idea what is going on, so they are in a holding pattern. Only one lifestyle brand is actively moving forward right now. Thankfully it's a bigger contract, but nowhere near what I'll end up losing. Also hearing that they are now trying to push lower rates, using the rationale that there are many more people available. Haven't had that happen yet, but kind of expecting it. Last source of revenue - art galleries. Fairly new to me - just the last couple years, so my work is only repped in a few. So far none are closing, but traffic has gone down. If the economy is suspect, I would expect things like fine-art purchases to be one of the first things people will stop spending on. I didn't do galleries in 2008, so who knows? So far, it seems like the same downturns I had after the dot.com bubble burst, 9/11, and 2008 recession. The first two hurt, but I was newly freelance at the time, and stuck to lower end gigs which didn't suffer as much. The 2008 recession hit hard, but I was one of the lucky ones that hadn't taken on a 5000 square foot studio that I had to make rent/mortgage payment on. Plus I was much more established, so I made it through okay. Since most all of my work is done on locations, I've been able to live in a really low cost of living area, and have nearly no overhead, so I can hunker down here for a long time and be fine.
I am in Hong Kong, been in lockdown since Feb, Its a killer for my business and I am just taking the time out to get creative and work on personal projects in the studio. fix my portfolio and edit all those family shots I never get the time to edit.
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I live here in Seattle, which is ground zero in the US as far as deaths go in the US. The government might not allow the economy to crash meaning all those big corps / lobbyist that contribute large sums of money to election campaigns. But they have given a big Fuk you to all small business owners with making them all close up shop for the next 2 plus weeks.
Personally since my first love in photography was shooting landscapes I am wondering if taking a sabbatical from shooting events and things which were the money makers, getting an rv or a campervan and going off the grid somewhere remote and just shoot landscapes until things start to calm down a bit. Obviously not everyone would have the financial reserve to do this but it might be an option if you do. I don't own a house and I'm single with no kids so there is the caveat that I can scale down and go lean and mean for a while.
I'm currently in Spain, all restaurants, cafes, and bars have been shut by the government! the country is on lockdown no one is allowed to leave the house unless its for grocery store shopping or pharmacy/medical help. Police are fining people that try and leave the house for other reasons, no visiting people, no outdoor sports, not even walking your dog is allowed.
Most of my business originates from the Toronto area, I do mainly architecture, industrial and aerials. This year has been off to a slow start, not unusual considering that most of these projects can't be shot with snow on the ground.
While I don't expect business to be as bad as event photography etc. in the short term, no doubt this will inevitably tip the economy into recession which will definitely have an effect. I have been doing this for 45 years, so I have seen a few ups and downs along the way, they are inevitable whatever the cause. From the start I have run the business ( location photography, only rent a studio when required ) with little or no overhead, always pay as you go. If I had to borrow money, including a mortgage, I paid it off asap, bought mainly good used cars, equipment etc. for cash and at this stage of the game the days of mortgages, loans etc. are far in the past.
To those starting out, I would advise hanging in there, operate as lean as you can and be ready for the inevitable turnaround. When you become profitable again, don't blow it all, start investing for your retirement. The years quickly pass and you don't want to end up a Walmart greeter at 80 (unless you actually want to do that ) to put Kraft dinner on the table.
I am so over this coronavirus thing all the stores in my area Which is Garden Grove California have Just about nothing on the shelves.I have no jobs coming in just started my own production company for video and photography A couple months ago I had a couple videography jobs made a little money now everything stopped I had a couple of jobs cancel on me so yeah now I’m screwed.On YouTube I go by BadKarma714
Your discussing the stockmarket. I think that the SP500 will slide down to at least the 1500 area, Thats where I will be looking at oportunitys, but it might possible come down to the 8500 area that is the 2009 bottom. And Your "government" is not NEARLY doing enough. What will happen when all the people that cannot afford healthinsurrance continue to go to work, since they otherwise will loose their job
Dutch photographer here.
I”m from full booked to zero in a view day’s
All events, and other photoshoots are either canceld or moved to better times.
I have low costs and some savings to last me true this year but im well aware that is not for everyone.
Keep safe...
I'm from switzerland and just finished university.
Switzerland has declared emergency state as of 16.03.20. Everythings shut except grocery and drug stores.
So my chances of finding a job now are pretty much zero.
Unfortunatly I have studied health science / epidemiology, so I'm not too optimistc... DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THIS VIRUS. It is the scariest thing I've seen since the emergence of AIDS.
If you are under 50 your chances of dying of this virus, once you got it, are probably like 0.2%. So, what's the big deal?
The issue is basically if it goes unchecked everybody would get exposed, since unlike AIDS this thing is unfortunatly airborne, so it can spread like wildfire. If everybody gets exposed 30% get sick. Of these 30% approx. 10% would require medical attention. In the US this would mean 9.000.000 people requiering a hospital bed and there arent nearly as many. Which means mortality rate would go way up because people cant get treated. Aka disaster. Just look at the numbers in italy.
Right now I'd say, 2-3 months of drastic measurements will hopefully get the spread under control, so things can go back to normal.
These are unexpected hard times. For us as freelancers, most of our projects and events have been canceled or postponed. But this situation also opens new doors and opportunities. It's a good time to work on your craft and to try new things. I personally have been doing so for about the last two weeks, and have to tell you... The results are just amazing!. In recent days I have received more commercial proposals than in the last 6 months. This emergency situation will pass, and you should be prepared in advance for it... I'm based in Cancun, Mexico but all of my clients are from outside (mostly from USA and UK)
In Belgium Europe - we expect it to last for at least 8 - 10 weeks - and only when people do as they are told to. After that it won't stop. We'll have to watch out for the possible 2nd and 3th waves. It'll become better between - but not as good as it used to be. It'll take 1 à 1,5 years to full recovery of the economical consequences (until there is a vaccine that can be used).
Tourism agency for photographers in Peru. We organize tours specifically tailor made for photographers.
We're on day 8 of mandatory quarantine in Peru. Army and police in the streets. people can only leave for food shopping, pharmacy, bank or hospital. That's it.
I Live in Cusco, and the entire city has shut down. full lockdown. This city used to get 5k tourists EVERYDAY. so obviously a lot of us depend on tourism.
As for my company, i don't know if we will survive. What i know is that it is extremely painful to get new cancelations every week. Just today, 2 more cancelations for photo tours booked for May.
What do you value most? Your health or your economy ? I think health has to come first, no matter what. This is the time to hold on, do your part and hope for the best!
I have no idea how my life will be in 6 months time right now. And it is extremely frightening. I have invested years in my business and now i don't know if it will survive.
I'm Portuguese and i've thought about returning to my country, i won't lie. But that would be taking a massive defeat and i'm not ready to give in yet.
I don't know how, but that vaccine has to come faster than usual or we are all trully fucked... pardon my french.
Stay safe.
Here's the good news! the Quarantine does work! that is if everybody fully commits to it! Just look at the "curve" slowly being flattened slowly but effectively.