A HALF-DECENT Q&A
On this page, I attempt to answer some basic questions about my half-decent business model, explaining how I intend for it to work, why I expect it to succeed – and how, all being well, I hope to develop and grow this approach in the longer term. I also explain my transparency policy, which ensures that every charitable donation I’ve committed to make is publicly announced and therefore, publicly accountable. Finally, I answer some questions about me, my background and how I got here!
HOW CAN THIS “HALF-DECENT” IDEA POSSIBLY WORK?
I’ve been told that major corporations donate, on average, about 1 per cent of pre-tax profit to charities and non-profits. In this context, it may not seem wise for a self-employed sole-trader, like myself, to give away HALF his net income! I’ve already been asked some questions about this. Wouldn’t my prospective customers rather I just cut my prices by half? Won’t other photographers quickly compete me out of business, by charging much lower rates?
The only way I can answer such questions is to explain that photography isn’t a typical service, in a typical market. It’s an art form – which means that its value is highly subjective; sensitive to our judgement of intangible things like meaning, context, artistic style and fashion. This is why there are plenty of highly successful, distinguished photographers who are able to charge a great deal more than I do – and they’re not unduly troubled by aggressive competition at bargain-basement prices.
Now, I don’t claim to be a uniquely gifted, artistically fashionable or ineffably stylish photographer – but I can produce reasonably good work, at a fair price. Furthermore, I believe that from a customer’s point of view, my half-decent approach may take everything I give them up a level or three. The link between my work and charitable donations to good causes adds meaning and significance above and beyond the quality of the work itself. It turns a nice-looking portrait, for instance, into something which, in a small way, has helped to make the world a better place. And many people, I think, if given the choice, will see that as highly desirable .
In my view, this doesn’t just give my customers a good reason to hire ME as their photographer. I also think it gives them a really compelling reason to bother hiring a professional photographer in the first place – as opposed to just doing the best they can on their own, with a smartphone!
This is why I’m optimistic that my half-way decent approach will work out quite well for me. Prior to the Pandemic, when ordinary photography work ground to a total halt, I did reasonably well, most of the time – but my schedule was seldom any more than half-full. With my new, half-decent approach, I expect to be fully booked, all the time. And for a professional photographer, that’s pretty good going.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY “AT LEAST” HALF?
I simply mean that if I do really well, I hope to be able to donate more than half my net income. I don’t yet know how well this project will turn out for me, but if I find my self making unexpectedly large amounts of money for myself, then I would feel obliged to raise the share of revenue that goes to the charities I’m supporting.
Of course, I really want to invest in my business, buy exciting new camera gear, travel to beautiful places for photography and so on. But if these opportunities come my way, it will almost entirely due to the attention and interest I’ve gained, because of the charities I work with.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY YOUR “NET INCOME”?
Put simply, it means total revenue minus tax liability. Whenever I receive a payment from a customer, large or small, I set aside a proportion of it to cover the amount of taxes I’m obliged to pay, relating to that small part of my total annual income. In any given month, this amount will depend on an estimate, or projection, of my total tax liability over the current tax year.
Unfortunately, I have to do this. A self-employed person, like me, can’t claim charity donations as a business expense - and don’t think I could afford to pay taxes on my entire, pre-tax income and give away half of it! However, If I find that the funds I’ve set aside for tax purposes exceed my tax bill, I shall donate half the remainder to charities I support.
Furthermore, my “net income”, as I call it, is much, much more than my “trading profit”. This is because I don’t make any deductions to allow for:
My substantial investment in photographic equipment, computers, software and other tools of my trade.
Marketing expenditure, insurance, and other operating costs and expenses incurred in running my business.
What’s left, after deducting all such expenses, is my trading profit – on which I have to pay taxes. I other words, the more I invest in my business, the lower my taxable income, so the higher my net income will be… and the more money I donate to charity.
WHY THESE CHARITIES? AND WHY CHARITY ‘GROUPS’ ?
There are many thousands of charities, in the UK alone – around 169,000, as of September 2021, according to one source I checked! My choice, of course, is bound to be personal and subjective, but for what it’s worth, I’ve thought through these selections very carefully.
I wanted not only to curate a varied list of excellent charities, which do important, valuable and diverse work, extremely well – but also, where possible, to draw much-needed attention and support to small and specialised charities which are not terribly well known, and deserve a bigger audience.
My approach, as explained on my charities page, is to ask customers to choose a group of charities which share a common theme, rather than picking out a single favourite. I fear that if I did the latter, most people would find this kind of choice very difficult - and many would tend to pick the more familiar charities which they’ve already heard about, so the smaller charities would tend to lose out.
I hope this make sense!
IF THIS VENTURE SUCCEEDS, WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR IT?
If all goes well, I hope to be able to turn this one-man operation into a team-effort – collaborating with other photographers and creative partners in order to develop and extend the half-decent business model. I would aim to do this locally at first, but perhaps, in time, making half-decent photography available in other locations around the UK, or even overseas.
If this proves to be a possibility, however, I’m wary of attempting to expand this project too quickly. I think it’s probably best for it to develop organically, at its own pace, so to speak. My first goal would probably be to work locally at first, seeking to extend the range of half-decent services available – to include popular specialities like wedding photography, videography and so on.
Of course, my half-decent photography approach needs to prove itself first – so I’m not expecting to announce an major new developments for a few months, at least. That said, photographers and other creators who are interested in exploring these ideas are welcome to get in touch!
HOW WILL YOU GO ABOUT GIVING MONEY TO CHARITIES?
My procedure for making charitable donations is as follows:
When clients hire me, I ask them to visit my charities page and choose one of my five charity groups to receive donations.
Whenever the client pays me, half my net income will be allocated to the charities within the chosen group.
When I receive payment, I will announce the donation to be made on social media, my weekly half-decent bulletin and half-decent news.
I will also report monthly revenues from all sales of fine-art prints and other products, specifying the charities or groups to which donations will go.
For any given month, I will make all of the donations due to each charity, by bank transfer, on or before the first day of the following month.
An account of these donations will be published in Half-Decent News.
I think this approach will prove to be practically manageable and reasonably efficient – as well as being clear and verifiable, both for my clients and the charities involved. Should I feel the need to alter this procedure in any way, I will update this page accordingly, so that both my clients and the supported charities are fully informed.
HOW CAN WE TRUST YOU TO KEEP YOUR PROMISES, AND MAKE CHARITY DONATIONS?
Would it be possible for someone to use the concept of “half-decent” photography as a lucrative scam? Could they successfully attract a steady stream of customers by making the charitable claims I announce on this website – and get away without making the appropriate donations? Not for long, I believe – especially, given the commitments I’ve set out above, to regular, transparent and public documentation of revenues and donations.
In my view, anyone who tried to abuse this kind of venture would surely be found out, very quickly – and more than likely, prosecuted for fraud! Such a reckless escapade would, of course, be morally reprehensible – but it would also be immensely foolish. Exposure and public disgrace would surely be inevitable – and I can’t see how anyone could rebuild their career and livelihood afterwards, given the lasting damage this would do to their reputation.
In due course, I would hope to receive regular testimonials from charities to confirm their receipt of the donations I’ve made. In the meantime, while I’m starting out, my approach to documenting revenues and donations, as outlined in the previous section, is designed to establish a basis of trust, by making it impossible for me to do anything other than what I’m supposed to do. I just hope no one seriously thinks I’m stupid enough to do anything else!
WHO ARE YOU, AND HOW DID YOU GET INTO PHOTOGRAPHY?
My name is Andrew Clifton, I’m 59 years old, and I’ve been ‘into’ photography for ages – but I only decided to make it my profession a few short years ago. Before that, after studying psychology at Durham University, I spent most of my career working as an editor for a small commercial publishing company, which later evolved into a marketing business. This was the right move for the company, at the time, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting as the editing work. In my early 50s, I started to feel like I needed a change; I wanted to do something more creatively satisfying.
I started by moving away from London, to the small country town of Bradford-on-Avon, in South-West Wiltshire – this being just three miles away from where my parents lived. For a while, I continued to work remotely, for the same London company – but eventually, I made the decision to quit my job and set myself up as a professional photographer. Family and friends, of course, saw this as the equivalent of a sensible, middle-aged man abruptly losing his mind and running away to the circus. They weren’t far wrong.
It was, indeed, very difficult to begin with, and it took me a long time to build up a decent portfolio and start to obtain regular work. One thing that really helped me, about a year later, was an invitation to move in with my recently widowed father, who was now living alone in a spacious and very beautiful house, and he welcomed both my company and my competence at home cooking. It was an arrangement that worked well for both of us, and photography work gradually started to pick up.
In late 2019, I was finally in a position to invest heavily in equipment, buying myself one of the finest professional cameras ever made and a good collection of lenses, as well as top-quality lighting gear and all the essential requirements for a practical, productive home-studio. I was all set to take my fledgling photography business up a gear, or six! What could possibly go wrong?
When the first Covid-19 lockdown began in March 2020 , all of my appointments had to be cancelled – and it soon became clear that there would be no chance of obtaining any new photography work, for many months. This was a situation I just had to accept, but I desperately needed something useful to work on - and after a while, I came up with an idea.
I reached out to Dorothy House – a wonderful hospice charity, based just a few minutes walk away from my home – and proposed the idea of creating a collection of landscape and wildlife photographs, all to be taken within about three miles walk of the hospice itself. My idea was to produce a series of fine-art prints and offer them for sale, donating half the profit to Dorothy House.
It took me quite some time to complete this project, and even then, I didn’t want to set up a sales campaign, until it was possible to organise a launch event, in a public place. I had to wait a long time, of course – but that exhibition is now finally about to happen, at Winsley Village Hall on April 29. In the meantime, I came up with the notion of taking the idea of donating half my income to charity, and applying it to all of my photography services.
So, that brings my story up to date – or at least, up to origins of my new, half-decent approach, and the creation of this website to promote it.
Let’s see how it goes!
WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO GET OUT OF ALL THIS, ANDREW?
I have three separate answers here – but they’re interconnected.
Firstly, I’m hoping that my business will flourish and grow, to the extent that half my income, from this point forward, will amount to a good deal more than my entire income, pre-pandemic! This isn’t exactly a high bar – but it will allow me to accomplish some fairly modest, but highly desirable goals, such as:
Taking care of some pressing family responsibilities and duties; buying myself a new car, good enough to last me a decade or so; investing in a second camera (every pro photographer needs at least two!) and adding few more premium-quality lenses to my collection; and maybe, just maybe, eventually reaching the point where I can afford to take a holiday every year, as opposed to one year in five!
Secondly, I’m hoping that it will give me endless opportunities for creative photography, which I’m confident I will find highly enjoyable and immensely rewarding. I think it will seriously raise my game, professionally speaking – and I hope that as time goes on, it will allow me to expand my creative freedom, so that I can do much more of the kind of work I enjoy most.
Thirdly, I’m sure it will be incredibly rewarding and satisfying to generate a significant income stream for all of the charities I’ve chosen to support with this venture. The better I do for myself, the more I will be able to support them – and vice versa. The more I think about it, the more excited I’m to get started, get to work and make this project a huge success.
And if you’ve read this far, I hope you’ll be following along, to see how it all turns out!
ANDREW CLIFTON
April 4, 2022