This is not gatekeeping, a controlling manifesto, clickbait or old man’s advice it’s just ‘best professional practice’ based on experience and knowledge from working as a photographer for many years and most importantly a commissioner of photography! Enjoy and implement! Or ignore! But don’t get angry or abusive at the end of the day it’s your call if you want to listen or not…

1. Editing is choosing an image or images not post-production.
2. Post production is image manipulation.
3. Pre-production is preparing for a shoot. Hence, post-production is after the shoot.
4. The person who helps you on a shoot is not a second. They are an assistant. You can have a second or third assistant.
5. Your subject matter is not a ‘niche’ it is a specialisation. Specialisation is important to evidence knowledge, not of photography but subject matter.
6. The client sets your fees. You don’t unless you are working for a client who doesn’t commission photography professionally.
7. You send a client the edit (the choice of images) as JPEGS for layout, TIFFS for reproduction.
8. Never send a client everything you have shot.
9. Never send clients RAWS. Send the RAWS and you lose control.
10. Get a contract signed with your client.
11. Never describe yourself as a ‘brand’. You are not! You are a person who makes photographs.
12. Also, don’t describe your work as a ‘style’. Dont keep looking for a ‘style’. Style is transitory work on creating a visual language.
13. Marketing is important but don’t drink too much marketing snake oil.
14. Don’t live on social media but use it professionally. Never ask questions you could answer yourself. Don’t think ‘likes’ means clients.
15. All photography that is commissioned is commissioned photography. It is not brand photography, content or commercial.
16. Be nice! Make friends, listen and engage.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building. Seven magazines. Sixty Years of Stories is on sale now.

© Grant Scott 2025