How Model's are Valued in the Freelance World of Modeling.

Here's a reality check to inform the misinformed about working with photographers as a freelance model and in the freelance world.

I may have mentioned this in a few blogs on how to value a model as a photographer and to models on how we as photographer value you.

We as photographers will look for a model... (and for photographers reading this is what you SHOULD look for)


As a male or female model (which is somewhat mostly mentioned here in more details) you'll pretty much need the following...

• Psychical Appeal (which includes age, height, weight, etc.)
• Posing Skills
• Communication Skills
• Professionalism (more details here and here)
• Type of shots you're willing to be photographed in, i.e. nude, non-nude, bikini, implieds, lingerie, etc.
• Customer Service Skills (working with photographers as providing them a service of you modeling for them)
• Public Appeal (fan base, public exposure [level of freshness of that exposure], tear sheets)
• Experience (basically number of shoot you've had, and number of different photographers you've shot with)
• And of course a solid portfolio (more mentioned here)

More Details...

• Public Appeal (fan base, public exposure [level of freshness of that exposure], tear sheets)
• What do I mean by Public Exposure?
• Basically being in very well known (to national/regional/international markets) magazines/website publications featuring you as a model.
• Tear Sheets
• Have this available, either on your website as a model or in a zip file to be ready to transfer to a potential client (photographer), these mean a lot to your value but note DO NOT put worthless tear sheets in these. Put in only serious publications, not a small digital only magazine, put int for example Maxim, Playboy, Men's Health/Women's Health, etc. These smaller publications will do much more harm than good, treat them like a very bad photo in your portfolio.
• "Level of freshness of that exposure"
• What I mean here is if you get published into Playboy or Maxim, or some other publication that has as strong of legitimacy your value weakens from the time that publication of you being featured and after. First it becomes very strong that you've been published into this level then it weakens until your next publication. For example, if your publication came out yesterday I could hire you next week for a premium value than say if you never got published again, and in 1-2+ years your value of being published is still worth something but not as much as the first 1-3 weeks being published because people are seeing your face. You are being seen by a lot of people at that point in time. So a lot of people will be looking you up because of being featured in "X" publication, but years past, not as many will be looking you up, only the first 1-3 weeks or whenever their is a promotion going on for that publication featuring you. 
• Fan Base
• Have social media purely dedicated to your modeling career. Such as create a facebook profile account and facebook page, one for communicating directly with fans in chat or commenting on your statuses, etc. and communicating with business related such as clients. Fans could be clients too, i.e. photographers or just another person interested in buying prints from you and of you. A page you can communicate too but I recommend a profile as its also not restricted to just 10% of what you post goes to your fans (people who liked the page) generally a profile would get a bit more but also more activity. Also a twitter/model mayhem and blog (like a tumblr account). The bigger the fan base the more lucrative that photographer may be interested in hiring you as for some personal projects they have they want as much exposure as humanly possible and it would be much cheaper than paying for exposure directly like actual advertising channels than word of mouth which I as a photographer would consider working with a model word of mouth and all their fans looking at the work we create or more which can lead to job.

The differences of a male model and female model are huge, especially in the freelance modeling world. Here's the difference.... 

Supply and Demand, not of models, but the photographer's needs. The photographer's needs (your client as a model) is simply primarily focused on women, and not any women but the one that gets the photographer most attention to their business from potential leads, the one that fits their vision for a personal project, AND from the photographer's clients needing models which are most of the time women.

As for the type of women go to this blog post here.

Disagree or Agree to the above content? Make comments here with questions, comments, concerns, etc. or send them to my email at Chris@ChrisAdval.com and I'll respond to them as soon as possible. Thank You and much appreciated!

Like this article? Did you learn anything, want more? Check out related articles in the following blog series articles... Photographer to Model Tips and Models and Photographers Tips.