1. Equipment: When hiring a photographer equipment can or cannot tell you how well the images will come out. Such as if any person who buys $10,000 worth of photography equipment does not mean they will produce very high quality images. It only means they have the opportunity to create high quality images. You will need to know based from the portfolio images presented that is the quality you want to hire for, so you will need an experienced eye to help you hire the right commercial photographer.
2. Education: Honestly in the photography industry we have “officially” educated and the “non-officially” educated, both are irrelevant because it comes down to skills shown in a portfolio. It is only relevant when photographers hire other photographers for some photography studios.
3. Rights:
a. When hiring a commercial photographer it is understandably assumed you’d “own” the images as you hired them to do a job. Unfortunately that isn’t true unless it is clearly mentioned in a written contract before the production of the photos. But in most cases is you hire for the labor and production of the photos and then talk about rights. Automatically when a photographer clicks the button on their camera they own the copyrights to that photograph. That photograph, either worthless or worthy images, is considered intellectual property (IP). Just like every other uniquely designed pieces in the world, like car designs, buildings, a person’s face, a logo, or sketch and many, many other types of art. Some photographers could care less about their IP, but the serious photography businesses in the photography industry takes rights very seriously when its mishandled especially when it’s their own work being abused.
