Another great post over at APE on how turning down certain jobs can indeed benefit a photographer’s career.

As agents, we have to help point photographers in certain directions and assist them (or outright tell them) in deciding what jobs to accept or turn down, both for creative and money purposes.  (And 99% of the time we have to turn it down for them…and the number of ways we can do so creatively are many).

This agent had to say “no” once to a cover story for a very prominent magazine.  Mostly, for logistical purposes, we had to decline…given the scope of the shoot and the time frame it would have been very difficult to accomplish and finish the project (and for this magazine you do not want to risk doing a bad job!). 

Afterwards we still couldn’t believe we had to say no to the project.  But another factor, honestly, was that the story itself didn’t really fit in with the photographer’s overall body of work.  We really weren’t sure what we would have done with the story afterwards. 

I’d argue that for a fashion photographer, this is even more important.  Sometimes, depending on where you want to go with your career, you have to say no to certain magazines if you hope to eventually shoot for other ones. Or if you are already shooting for a certain magazine it leaves other ones off-limits.  And of course you have to be realistic in considering which echelon of magazines you are likely ever to have a shot at!  Some of these magazines you’ll only get one shot at so you’ll want to make sure you’re coming at them with your strongest stuff.

Anyways, APE makes all the right points.  Like any freelance profession you have to pick your spots and every photographer should say no sometimes to certain projects.  A client wants unlimited buyout for a thousand bucks per image?  I hope someone is saying no to that, for everyone’s benefit.