Setting up photography stuff in France

Hi all,

Wesley here. Just an update about how I am doing with the photography stuff here if you are wondering how you can start up in France (or somewhere else in Europe):

I haven’t shot for anybody here. Really. In fact, I haven’t been taking pictures. We came here in Feb 2005 for 2 weeks, showed our stuff to some folks. Came again in July for 3 weeks and Sept for 2 months, showed our stuff to more people. This March trip is our last trip, moving lock, stock and barrel to our apartment.

I am not bumming. We have been looking at photography and art here. It is REALLY different. Jo has been great helping me analyze some other folks’ works. I feel that I am taking off Singaporean glasses and putting on a European one, not only in photography but in lifestyle too. We are generally more relaxed than Singapore. Living here, I get the feeling that there is a lot more to life than just working our butts off.

There really is a lot of paperwork to do. The paperwork is about to end soon (I hope!), we just got our 1 year visa to stay legally, set up a French subsidiary of our company in Singapore, got it registered and now, we are waiting to get our commercial visa in a month or 2. You HAVE TO get a visa specialist to do the paperwork. If you don’t have a visa specialist and you don’t speak French, you will spend more time, more money, shed tears and blood to get your visa done. We also had to get our documents, birth certs, wedding certs, company stuff, everything translated by a translator approved by the French Embassy.

Living standards here are high. For rental in Paris central, it’s about 20-30€ per square meter, not including the electricity bill (which could range from 60€ to 100€ or more). Internet is cheap, 29.90€ for 24MBPS with VOIP phone with 200 channels of HD TV. Café food is about 8-10€ for a decent meal. For McDonalds, it’s about 5€ for a normal meal. If you cook, it’s about 3€ for a meal. Don’t stay in a hotel if it’s more than a week. You might go crazy. In all, it’s about 2000€/month for 2 persons if you cook 3 meals for nearly everyday. Tax on income is 40%. Medical is free for French people. Heard the French footballers try to live out of France because of this.

Everything is in French. American movies and sitcoms on TV is dubbed into French, bus, train, metro, food labels, emergency instructions, everything is in French. However, some theatres show VO (version original) movies. Lucky us.

What is the professional photography scene like? Got this from a French art director. It’s crowded. CROWDED. More crowded than Singapore. There are bad photogs and good photogs and superduper good photogs. The superduper ones can make 10k€/day + loading. There are lots of rentable stuff, not cheap but nearly everything can be rented, lights, lightbanks, good lights, super lights, trucks to carry the lights, models, stylists, gaffer people, everything. Biggest rental studio in Europe is here, called Pinup Studio. Clients will pay for rental of equipment for fashion photography. For other types of commercial photography, you pay rental if you rent. B&W paper, developer and other stuff are still widely available.

Note: If we add tax and S$1=1€ math, 10k€ works out to be about S$6k, so the figure is not so crazy. And when we throw in 2 or 3 days of meetings and recce, 3-5 days of laision, casting and logistics with at least 1 salaried producer working on it besides the photographer, it doesn't look so glams anymore.

So how do we get work? Go this advice from a German photographer I met here - If your work is good and TRULY UNIQUE you will get picked up by good agents who will groom you, love you, take care of you, and market you in Europe and the US for about 25% of your fee. For TRULY UNIQUE work, look at http://www.artandcommerce.com. Nearly all of the photogs in the site are TRULY UNIQUE. If your work is not TRULY UNIQUE, be prepared to do the marketing, loving, grooming yourself. Btw, it can take up to a week or more to schedule a meeting with potential clients here.

How much is this going cost? S$60,000 (I debated putting the figure out but I wanted to be upfront with this thing)