The money the photographers pay covers the cost to rent the location. The models and the photographers get paid in photos.

Models should get paid

That sounds super bizarre to me! Product = Experience / Content Employees = Models / Organisers / Consultants Customers = Photographers / Creatives Organisers should be paying their models and consultants a fair rate.

I model with my girlfriend for styled shoots so we’ve seen every price offered out there. We only keep higher tier prices now, but our number of shoots have definitely gone down because we reject a lot of invites. We’ve also worked with non professional models and there truly is a big difference. Photographers invest in your models because your work will suffer for it!

Agreed. Sounds like the greediness of the organiser or venue are to blame. All creative people can be undervalued or seen as an afterthought. Photographers as well. It’s a suits way of flexing at creatives. “Come along and do it for free cause it’ll be real fun and we’d love to have you on board.” Or “We can’t afford to pay you this time, but hopefully the next one, and we’d love to keep you in mind.” - oh yeah?! No.

So as a host for events, it really depends on what model wants and if they can really back it up. A model can get paid but then they shouldn’t expect any pictures at all because their time is being paid for. A concept I’ve used is a big brand would pay for the talent time and they don’t see the pics until it’s release to the public.

I just had this conversation with my friend - I think it’s because there are so many models willing to work for free & there are so many models who seem to pay “pay to play” to be models, so much so that businesses and clients assume they don’t have to pay them. It’s an exploitative system.

1. Because most models/photographer, actual work is done on the barter system come and most models accepted, and there’s not much reason to do anything different at such a retreat. The only thing I would say is that I would expect that transportation and housing or whatever food should be paid or taken care of by the participant, if everybody else seems to be doing it.

2. And if you’re not being asked to pay, have you considered that actually the retreat, rental, food, or transport is included in the cost of all the other photographers who paid money? It’s not just a matter of whether you get your hourly rate, but others may be paid for your ability to even show up there. do you know the details of the line items in the budget?