Photography Business Insurance for Professional Photographers How - To - YouTube

Hello everybody, my name is Daniel and I am the photographer here at thesmashcake.com

and today you're gonna hear a lot of noise in the background and that's because we are

feverishly getting our website ready to be launched. We got a lot of people behind me working and

So yeah

If you hear some bumps and thumps that's all them working really hard to bring you the website that you didn't even know you needed.

Speaking of things you didn't know you need today,

I wanted the first video on the site to be about the one thing that you guys

need that perhaps you don't know you need and it's my number one pick for the first thing

You should buy when you open up a photography business

And no it's not made by Sony or Nikon. It is not a camera body

It is not a piece of lighting gear. It is an insurance policy

Now if you guys don't have an insurance policy

There's really no excuse. It's cheap

it's easy and it's gonna save your butt when you need it. As example, if you have a client that you're photographing and they hurt themselves,

you're liable for that. That's on you.

And if they hurt themselves badly you may have to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills

And I personally I don't have that. I can't just write out a check for

$300,000 that's a little above my paygrade.

So I have insurance and the beautiful thing about insurance is it's thirty - forty dollars a month

and I know my backside is covered and

most importantly

I know that my client is going to be taken care of the way

they need to be taken care of. As

well as I know I'm

protected the way I need to be protected so that my family doesn't have to suffer because I was lazy and didn't, you know,

get insurance, so..

yeah, definitely Google search that or just add it to your existing auto or homeowners

policy it's not hard find an insurance agent.

Ask some questions and within the day you can have yourself a policy that is going to cover your backside so definitely

definitely think about it.

Now the other reason that I like to have

insurance is that I go out on each job and I'm wearing about six thousand dollars of camera equipment around my neck.

Now that's not counting what's in my bag. That's just what's around my neck.

I've got a I've got a Sony I've got a 70 to 200 and

yeah, I've dropped my cameras, I have. And

if you're new to photography and you're just starting out, I want to stress one thing to you guys,

it's not if you drop your camera, it is when you drop your camera. You are going to drop the camera.

I've been doing this about 10 years and I'm very good with my equipment

I'm very careful with it, but we lose equipment at least once or twice a year,

it just happens. Now when

$6,000 falls off my neck because my camera strap fails and shatters onto the concrete below me,

normally, I would get that sick, you know feeling in the pit of my stomach,

I'd start to cry, you know, the shoot would be over.

Literally, it's it's no big deal. It's a bummer,

but you scoop up the pieces you call your insurance agent. You answer a few questions and within a couple of weeks

you've got a brand new camera.

And again

that kind of protection that level of protection is only going to cost you roughly what you spend on Netflix and Hulu combined every month.

So I mean, why wouldn't you do that?

Now the final reason and this is the cherry on the top. This is the best part

well, maybe not the best part, but it's definitely cool,

I carry a copy of my insurance policy in my camera bag.

Now if I come across a cool location that I want to photograph somebody in like a

rooftop of a theater or a museum. All I have to do is go in and talk to the managers

And the first question they ask me is do you carry insurance?

Well, if the answer to that question is yes

And you can quickly whip out a copy of it you'd be amazed at how quickly you're gonna get access to that location

so if you want to get access to the locations that maybe 90% of the photographers in your market can't

buy insurance. That's the key.

So there you go guys. There's just a couple of reasons why you have to have insurance. I

appreciate you guys watching. I hope that you all will add photography insurance to your shopping list and then follow through with it.

Please protect yourself. It's hugely important. But more important than that, please please please protect your clients.

So I'm Daniel for the smash cake calm. Thanks for watching and I will catch you guys in another video.