Glossary
The words that get used on a shoot and in a brief, in plain English. If somebody uses one of these at you and assumes you know it, this is the page.
Barter
#Being paid in product rather than money.
Common in beauty, skincare and food, and not automatically exploitative — a creator who would have bought the product anyway is genuinely getting value. It stops being reasonable when the brief involves scripting, several reshoots, exclusivity or paid usage, all of which are work rather than a gift.
Ask what the product retails for and what they want in return. If the answer is three videos, two revisions and a month of exclusivity for a face cream, that is a job.
Buyout
#A one-off payment that replaces ongoing usage fees.
A buyout is the brand paying once so they never have to come back and pay again. It is not a bad deal by definition — it is simple, and it is money now — but it is only a good one if the number reflects what repeat usage would have cost.
Ask what they intend to do with the images before agreeing a buyout figure. A buyout for organic social is a different conversation from a buyout for a campaign.
Call sheet
#The document that says where to be, when, and who else will be there.
A call sheet goes out the day before a shoot. It should tell you the location with an actual address, your call time, the expected wrap time, who is on set, and a phone number for someone who will answer it.
If you have not been sent one by the evening before, ask. A shoot with no call sheet is not necessarily disorganised, but it is worth finding out which of those two it is before you travel across a city at seven in the morning.
Comp card
#A single card with your best photographs, measurements and contact details.
Traditionally a printed A5 card handed to casting directors; now usually a PDF or a link. One strong headshot on the front, three or four range shots on the back, and your measurements.
A profile on a site like this does the same job and stays current, which a card printed eighteen months ago does not.
Day rate
#What you charge for a day on set, before usage.
A day is usually eight to ten hours including breaks. What counts as a day, when overtime starts, and whether travel is inside or outside it are worth settling before the shoot rather than at the end of it.
A day rate is not the whole fee. Usage sits on top, and for advertising work it is frequently the larger half.
Exclusivity
#An agreement not to work with a brand's competitors for a period.
Real money should change hands for it, because it is you turning down work you have not been offered yet. The narrower the category and the shorter the term, the less it costs a brand and the less you should charge.
"Beauty" for a year is a very different thing from "sheet masks" for three months.
Look test
#A short unpaid session where a brand checks how you photograph before booking.
Reasonable when it is fifteen minutes, at their studio, with no usable images produced. Not reasonable when it runs half a day, involves hair and makeup, and the results appear on their feed a fortnight later.
If a look test produces anything they can use, it was a shoot.
Moodboard
#The reference images that show what a shoot is meant to look like.
Ask for one before agreeing to anything. It tells you the styling, the mood and quite often the wardrobe, and it is the fastest way to find out whether a brief you were told is "editorial" actually is.
If a brand cannot produce a moodboard, they may not yet know what they want — which usually means a longer day than the one you quoted for.
Ramp
#Runway work: walking a show rather than shooting stills.
Paid per show rather than per day, with fittings usually the day before and often unpaid. Height requirements are stricter than for print, and the work is concentrated around fashion weeks rather than spread through the year.
Rate card
#A written list of what you charge for each kind of work.
Having one saves the conversation where you are asked for a number on the phone and pick badly. It also makes it obvious when a brief has grown: three extra deliverables against a written rate is an arithmetic problem rather than an argument.
It is a starting point, not a promise. Everybody expects a rate card to move with scope.
UGC
#User-generated content: material a brand pays a creator to make, shot like a customer would.
The point of UGC is that it does not look like an advertisement. It is usually shot on a phone, vertical, by the person speaking, and delivered as finished files rather than as raw footage.
It is a different job from modelling even when the same person does both. A UGC quote is per deliverable — shoot, edit and a set number of variants — rather than per day, so the number of cuts moves the price more than the length of the shoot does.
Usage rights
#Where the photographs may appear, for how long, and in which countries.
Usage is the part of a fee that has nothing to do with how long you were on set. Photographs used on a brand's own Instagram for three months are worth a fraction of the same photographs on a hoarding in four cities for two years.
Agree it in writing before the shoot, in three parts: where (social, print, out-of-home, paid advertising), how long, and which territories. "Full usage" and "all rights" mean forever and everywhere, and should be priced accordingly rather than nodded through.