Freelancing in the Age of Coronavirus: A Survival Guide

“Coronavirus be damned! The shoot must go on!” read the meeting agenda.

This was last Tuesday, March 10, 2020. A grid of somber faces stared back at me from the Zoom.us video conference. We should’ve been smiling. We’d just days earlier received notice that we had won a significant grant for our next film project, a grant that unlocked a second matching grant. It should’ve been a good day.

Instead I stared at grim faces. Some of us were more concerned than others. I had just come back from two trips, and though I’d seen more face masks and a greater love of hand sanitizer on the last trip through the airport, things hadn’t seemed that bad. After much discussion, we continued making our plans, mapping out the shoot and agreed to revisit the idea of postponing in a week. I don’t have to tell you what came next. We’ve all been to the grocery store. We’ve seen the shelves where toilet paper used to be.

Since that call, I like many of you, have experienced a domino of jobs dropping out or postponing — first a presentation, then a shoot, a work trip, another shoot. Two other shoots will likely cancel before I post this. In the period of just a few days, I grappled with the loss of about 50 percent of my spring income. There might not be another paycheck coming in until June or July.

For those of us freelancing full-time or running our own businesses, few safety nets await us. We don’t qualify for unemployment. Even with a second income from a spouse or partner, you can quickly find yourself strained, not to mention the pressure that builds if you’re also a parent. I personally live in a humble income home. My husband just started a job with the National Park Service. He had to move to another state to do it, that means double rent/mortgage, double utilities, double everything. The upside is that when his health insurance kicks in, we’ll at least have that.

While preparing for this blog, I sent out a call to my cohorts at the International League of Conservation Photographers and the Conservation Photographers facebook group. I wanted to know how they had been affected. How they were coping, and what advice they might have to share. What follows is a selection of their responses, some helpful resources, as well as a few of my strategies for survival, especially if, like me, you’re coming into this with a rather modest savings account.

CANCEL CULTURE

The most obvious conundrum we face is much like what I’ve outlined above. Gigs are being canceled left and right. “Flatten the Curve” and social distancing echo from every corner.

iLCP Emerging League photographer, Lauren Owens Lambert photographs corporate events in addition to her conservation work, and has just cleared her calendar for the month of March. She says that while the “conservation and journalism work is still chugging along,” she deals with the cancellations by working as a ski instructor.

“I’ll just have to spend more time at the mountain, while we have some snow left,” she writes. Hopefully that income hangs in there. Over the weekend, Colorado Governor Jared Polis ordered the closing of all ski resorts for a week, and in Oregon Mt. Bachelor, Mt. Hood and Timberline ski resorts are closing until March 22.

Not all of us have snow, or a second gig to bridge the gap, and this is not a prime time to seek a second job. When gigs cancel, quite frankly, it’s hard to grapple with making up that lost income quickly. I look at this as triage. You’re going to limit expenses and work on creating a buffer for what could come next. If you don’t already, start building in kill fees into contracts. Conservation photographer and iLCP Associate Fellow, Doug Gimesy, who spends much of his time photographing wildlife care and trauma, writes, “I’m asking to have put in contracts an ‘all bets are off if….’ and any agreed expenses already paid by me will be reimbursed, even if the job can’t be done in the planned time frame.”

Step one, get in the habit of working with contracts or Memorandums of Understanding (MOU’s) in place. Include kill fees, which may be a fraction of the income, or have a reimbursement clause in place to cover expenses, regardless of cancellation or postponement. I work a few contracts each year for Lindblad Expeditions, and have a trip in early May. While they haven’t cancelled the trip yet, they have a policy that will pay part or all of my paycheck if a trip doesn’t happen. The level of anxiety that this relieves at least with respect to this one assignment cannot be understated. 

If you don’t have those things, I recommend taking stock of your finances right away. Budget out what you need for essentials, food and shelter being at the top of the list, and then look at trimming costs wherever possible. Buy foods that will last you a while. Use utilities more efficiently. Embrace the bulky sweater. Luckily more states, and hopefully all states soon, will ban utilities shut-offs during the national emergency.  Besides that though, check out this handy resource for freelance artists, COVID-19 Freelance Artists Resource List.

Some of the things they outline are better than others. For example, this page recommends Rev.com, a transcription service, as a possible income source. I have been one of those Rev.com people, and I can say it’s a return of pennies on the time, a lot of tedious work for not much income. But this resource does have links to an updated list of state-based relief grants. Last I checked, my state of Oregon didn’t have one. (There is a resource for legal assistance in Oregon.) But this list alone makes this resource worth your time. Several of these grants are crowdsourcing funds. What you do is you fill out a pretty simple form, and then wait to see if you are chosen for assistance.

ART SHOWS & TOURS/WORKSHOPS

Art shows are the epitome of the public gathering, and one of the first to feel the crunch as we isolate and quarantine. Jennifer Leigh Warner, founder of Experience Wildlife, who relies heavily on art show sales and tours, has seen many cancellations. It’s unclear when the art show circuit might pick back up. There’s little you can do about the art show world, except work on bolstering online sales, putting more effort into advertising virtual galleries, and stock — though let’s face it, stock is not what’s going to save you.

Now’s the time to use mailing lists, (if you don’t have one, listen to this podcast about building email lists). Reach out to businesses directly that may be in search of art for their buildings, such as hotels, restaurants and larger corporate buildings. I realize this sounds obtuse, but as long as there are some businesses open, and not a total lockdown, it’s worth at least exploring the options. Look for places that are under construction. If you can net a few sales during this time of need, that’s better than nothing, and this is work that can be done virtually.

Tour operators are being hit really hard. Roy Toft, Paul Harcourt Davies and others have had to cancel trips. I also have a trip that I’m trying to fill, and that puts me in a very socially awkward situation. I mean like, “Hey, you guys, there’s a global pandemic! Who wants to sign up for a workshop in August?!….” voice dwindles away.

My guess is that that trip is going to be postponed. You may have to postpone or cancel, but you can help by assuring tour attendees that they can transfer their slots to a future trip, and you can reassure them of refunds. Toft and Warner have worked with their operators to either make sure clients will receive refunds or can do the trip next year. This may prove especially helpful in preventing cancellations of trips later in the summer. I realize this does not help you in the short term, but it can seriously help reduce the amount of legwork you need to do to make sure you have trips filled once things calm down.

GEOGRAPHIC LIMBO

We all know that in this line of work, there’s a lot of travel, often internationally. Jak Wonderly writes that “India cancelled all visas for 30 days.”

Kyle Obermann who lives in China, perhaps experienced the worst of geographic limbo when he returned to the United States early in the coronavirus outbreak. “I left China in Jan because of the coronavirus on a one-way ticket thinking the US would be better,” he writes. “Now I’m looking at being stuck in the US as things get worse here and face a mandatory 14-day quarantine if I go back to China, which is now looking safer than the US.”

Another conservation photographer, scientist and National Geographic grantee, Paula Iturralde Pólit, is working for three months in Germany. Her visa is currently in a no man’s land. She was set to fly to Germany in days. Pólit writes, “If at the end I get my visa, and my flight to Germany, I will probably have some days of ‘home office,’ in some way wasting my stay in Germany because I won’t be able to go to the institute.”

(UPDATE: As of today, Pólit is still waiting on a visa. Her life she says is in limbo and her belongings remain packed in suitcases.)

Multitasking in the time of COVID-19 and new motherhood, filmmaker Katie Schuler is luckily able to rely on homebased editing work until travel opens back up. (PHOTOS/Nick Rogacki)

Katie Schuler, founder of Coral & Oak and the brilliant mind behind all those pangolin films you’ve been seeing, and Jason Houston, an iLCP Senior Fellow working on environment and culture projects, worry about travel being impacted, either getting to the field, or getting home. This will likely lead to job cancellations. Schuler deals with it by focusing on pre and post-production work, such as video editing, distribution and proposals. Kika Tarsi Tuff, founder and CEO of Impact Media Lab, has eliminated all travel for work during this time, and shifted focus to her digital products, such as website building for scientists, design projects and grant consultations.

French photographer and iLCP Associate Fellow Denis Palanque deals with the travel restrictions by working locally. Seems like an obvious solution, right? So many of us travel for work, but if ever there was an example of why it’s important to cultivate local projects, this is it. That doesn’t mean you have to exclusively work locally, but having that as one of the things you do is going to help in times like this.

Photographer Jaymi Heimbuch explores her local nature to shoot conservation projects in her hometown of Newport, Ore. Use this time to explore local issues of conservation concern to stay motivated and save money. (PHOTOS/Jaymi Heimbuch)

KEEP DREAMING

Once the “Oh shits,” have calmed down, enjoy this forced “down” time for what it is. A lot of to do’s have been taken off your plate. So use the time to plan new endeavors. I’m diving deep on a species and issue I’ve long thought about, but hadn’t acted on. I’ve conducted phone interviews, am reading books, making lists, writing pitches. I’m not just writing pitches for this project, but several future assignments.

Like Palanque before me, I’m cultivating some of those local ideas that had been on the backburner. I’m excited to plan some shooting days just for something I care about that’s close to home. It will get me out of the house, allow a break from the anxieties, and remind me to spend time seeing. When I come out of this, I plan to hit the ground running. This is prime time to lay the foundation for those dream projects. You’re in the shit anyways. Let’s have some fun with it.

DON’T PANIC

Speaking of fun. Don’t panic. I know it’s hard. Hopefully we’re dealing with just a couple months of upheaval. If not, we deal with it as it comes. There’s going to be a lot of things that everyone is going to have to sort out, you, me, the global economy, the government. You can only control and prepare for so much. One thing freelancers, especially those working in conservation, are good at, is scrounging and scrappiness. That’s going to help you.

Know that you’re not alone. So spend time on those group forums, whether it’s Conservation Photographers facebook group or the International League of Conservation Photographers of North American Nature Photography Association pages. Think about joining a skills development class like those offered by Wild Idea Lab, or a business or other skills class that’s offered through an online community college course or sites like CreativeLive. Remember that any money spent on memberships or courses can be written off as part of your business. Edit that backlog of photos. Prepare your instagram posts. Binge listen to Impact: the Conservation Photography Podcast, Projects for Wildlife and The Wild that will keep you connected, growing and motivated during these trying times.

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Most of all practice self care. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to take care of yourselves. Eat as healthy as you can. Get some exercise everyday. Give yourselves a luxury item or two. Mine is a bottle of whiskey and a video game. My dog’s is a couple squeaky balls and some bones. Take time for yourself each day, even if it’s only 15 minutes. And stay in touch with each other. Don’t bottle your concerns inside. We help each other by listening and comforting. This alone will help press pause on that panic button.

ADVOCATE FOR YOURSELF & EACH OTHER

Lastly, but perhaps most pressingly, we can be advocates. As conservation storytellers, we’re advocating for the environment all the time. Now we need to advocate for ourselves. I was so impressed when I saw Colorado-based filmmaker Amy Marquis step up and raise her voice for freelance filmmakers. She wrote a letter to her congresspeople reminding them that there is a whole field of people out there who need to be considered in the government relief fund efforts. With her permission, I’ve pasted it below, and you can modify it for your situation and representatives.

Raise your voice to support things like a temporary universal income, like the one being called for by Alexandria Octavio Cortez, Tulsi Gabbard and…Mitt Romney?! Other things you can advocate for include no penalties for unpaid mortgages or loans, or penalty-free deferred tax filing during the national emergency.

OK, here’s the letter from Amy, shared with her permission:

From Amy: Here’s my letter– feel free to customize it so it fits your own experience, or use it to inspire other perspectives and ideas you feel are important to share.

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Dear Senator [Bennet/Gardner], (insert your representative here)

I’m an independent documentary filmmaker living and working in Boulder County, and just yesterday, I lost a $15,000 gig when a shoot in Lebanon got canceled. This is nearly a quarter of the salary I was hoping to bring in this year– and I’m one of the lucky ones. My neighbor and colleague, a photojournalist, just saw $50k go vapor when his international assignments were canceled. That’s 2/3 of his annual salary, and these gigs will not get reassigned. We’re both parents, supporting children, working hard to build careers that make a difference in the world, trying to make ends meet in one of the most expensive areas in Colorado.

I’ve read a lot of news about the government’s plan to help small businesses in various ways— but I have yet to see how small, independent businesses like mine and my friend’s fit into those scenarios. The fact is, when our work is supported, we stimulate the economy— I hire cinematographers, production assistants, sound recordists, editors, colorists, composers. We spend production funds buying local supplies, renting shoot locations, paying fixers and guides, fueling ourselves at local cafes and and feeding ourselves at local restaurants. We offer critical video marketing tools to local Colorado businesses, and are amplifying some of the most pressing stories of our time. Mine is a small-scale operation for sure— but when my work dries up, there is undoubtedly a ripple effect.

Freelancers— journalists and filmmakers especially— are a strong and resilient breed. But what’s happening to the economy right now could devastate careers we’ve spent decades building, and make impossible our ability to survive the most basic financial demands of daily life. As you consider the economic rescue package next week, please keep constituents like us in mind.

Thanks for all your hard work, and stay healthy!

Very best,

Amy Marquis

It is a long, tough road ahead. But as mentioned earlier, we are a hardy bunch. There are many times in our lives where we’ll face gaps in income. Hopefully these tips will help you weather the storm a little bit better, or at least make you feel like you’re not alone in the struggle. Keep fighting. Stay safe, and know that this too shall pass.

FINAL NOTE: Please share your challenges and ideas for helping with them in the comments below. I realize that everyone’s life, money, family situation are going to create different conditions which require different approaches. This needs to be a living document. And regardless of your situation, do everything in your power to do something for yourself each day. It is our emotional well-being and personal constitution that is going to be a huge factor in dealing with everything else COVID-19 will throw at us.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

• Coronavirus and Your Business FAQ (webinar), Thank you Jaymi Heimbuch for highlighting this!
• How Freelance Photographers are Dealing with the Economic Effects of Coronavirus, an excellent Petapixel article by Allen Murabayashi
• ASMP: Potential Business Ramifications of Coronavirus, (webinar) Thank you Karin Hargrave Saucedo for sharing this one.
• COVID-19 Freelance Artist Resource List, Thank you Katie Schuler for highlighting this one.

Many thanks to Katie Schuler, Kika Tuff, Roy Toft, Jennifer Leigh Warner, Lauren Owens Lambert, Denis Palanque, Doug Gimesy, Jason Houston, Amy Marquis, Jaymi Heimbuch, Paula Iturralde Pólit, Kyle Obermann, Jak Wonderly, Paul Harcourt Davies and the many others who provided information and images for this blog post.