I’m a salaried in house photo-video guy for a marketing agency. I recently asked about the idea of selling landscape prints at art markets or just selling photo / video services that are outside the scope of business marketing. Like senior portraits, weddings, landscape prints etc. Services the company doesn’t even offer. Just some light weekend work for a little extra income. Something fun to do, to keep learning and being creative on my own terms and time.
When I asked about it to avoid any conflict of interest the answer to it was met with “if you use company equipment we’d ask for a percentage of your sales.” “okayyy, I sort of get that, well if i just update my camera and use my own equipment then? No company resources at all. Cool?” “How can you prove you didn’t use our stuff? We’ll have to talk about this more.” There was more and the gist of that was basically “we pay you a salary so you don’t have to do that stuff.”
Personally I feel like building a following and an audience would only be beneficial to the company but I feel more like secret property now after that conversion and it’s making me a little frustrated. Anyone else who is salaried with a company able to do side work, market themselves, sell prints, have a website etc? How should that work?
Depends on contract, exif data will easily prove what kit was used. Outside your paid work, if your not using any resource or contacts, they have fuck all to do with it.
“we pay you a salary so you don’t have to do that stuff”
perfect opportunity to uno reverse card them
“well looks like you aren’t paying me enough because i have to do this stuff, maybe we should talk about giving me a raise so i don’t have to do this stuff…”
Do you on your own time and equipment.
I’m currently in a position but leaving on 15th December.
I was allowed to market myself for anything that wasn’t a conflict of interest. So the agency did corporate work - headshots, interiors, Events, some lifestyle and campaigns.
I was once under the impression that I could market to small and one-person businesses, but I was slapped over the knuckles as that was apparently still a conflict of interest, even though those businesses could never afford the big brand rates of this agency.
I’m in the UK and by my contract, no additional commercial work can be undertaken while under contract. But they had graces on that. Weddings were fine as well as a bunch of other avenues such as if I sold my prints. That literally isn’t their business.
So I stuck to weddings and I could market that as much as I liked. I still did the odd other shoot and even got referred by the boss for one! But those were word-of-mouth things I could keep on the down low. And I always used my own kit. That’s pretty important, tbh. They’d have no copyright claim or anything but you taking the risk of damaging it off work time.
However, marketing the weddings led me to hand my notice in. So it still worked out!
I am. Your mileage may vary.
They have to prove that you did use their stuff, not the other way around.
But a lot of contracts (not just photography ones) will have a clause about not working second jobs without permission.
My gut feeling here is that artistic photography - landscapes etc would be fine but more mundane stuff like portrait photography and certainly anything that overlaps with what you do at work would be questionable.
But obviously look at your contract.
My company is very particular about the verbiage they use in our contracts. Basically it comes down to:
- No using our equipment that we’re giving you to do your job in any of the freelance gigs you have
- Any content you produce for us can be used in your portfolio so long as you apply a small watermark to it
- Continue your freelance work if you want, but don’t let it affect your 9-5.
We’ll have to talk about this more.
No, we won’t. It doesn’t concern them at all. I do what I want in my free time. They have no say in that. If I want to photograph and sell landscape pictures, that’s what I’m going to do. If I want to make and sell jewelry, that’s what I’m going to do.
I have never mentioned it at my main job, it’s none of their business. Unless you have a contract that says you can’t do work for anyone else.
You guys are getting a salary?
Contact a lawyer and protect yourself before yoloing with any bright ideas from kids without salaries on the line.
Just ensure that the camera writes the metadata to the images. That can be how you prove that you are using your equipment for starters.
When I was at an agency there was absolutely no moonlighting. Now, working in a corporate role, they don’t care at all, just don’t do it on company time.
Your manager is an asshole.
Everywhere I’ve ever worked it was basically the norm for people to have their own shoots on the side outside of work hours. No one ever really asked permission because they only pay us to be there for certain hours, outside of that you’re free to do whatever you want.