Hmm yes and no... Magazines give a general budget for the production of shoot. Which includes studio rental, equiment, transportation, catering etc.
This budget, if the people involved avoid to spend too much money, can have a bit of money for themselves. So when Lachan said he has to put his own money, it means that he just reached the budget allocated for the shoot.
The issue, for many years, is that these photographers did not adapt themselves to the fact that magazines have less and less budget. Therefore, the same things they used to request for their shoot (sometimes ridiculous things) have to be paid by themselves. To sum up, you can not getting paid yet not spending your own money if you are reasonable.
Last but not least, the commercial fees they have thanks to the exposure of these editorials are so insane that it is worth doing it. So, Lachan is just complaining for the sake of complaining.
Years ago, when I was a stylist assistant, I made 3500$ for a 1-week commercial job with my boss. This latter made 40k $.
Right? The majority of his work is on location and with cream of the crop hair stylists and MUAs yet he wonders why he's out of pocket?
I do sympathise with them but the reality is that magazines simply don't have the capacity to pay high rates, they can hardly keep the lights on as it is. When you look at print magazines, ads are obviously paid and certainly advertorials, but in 90% of cases, the shopping section you see in the front section of the magazine, the snippets, the interviews with celebrities or designers, the editorials are not paid for by advertisers. A resort or tourism board may pay for the stay expenses and such for a writer to do a feature, but that's as far as they go. They don't pay a daily/hourly rate for the writer.
That long editorial with designers across America in the current issue of Vogue, I can assure you the brands would not have paid to feature. In fact, I'm sure Vogue got away with paying the photographers very little to nothing because most were done by the designer themselves or their partner/family/friends. Also, just remember that when Chanel pays for a 4-page ad they still end up getting featured in sometimes 2 editorials in the same issue which they won't pay for.
So ultimately there's a lot more that the magazine must do out of their own pocket or in good faith to keep PR on side and if you factor in the shrinking page count (due to lack of paid ads) and still tack on high rates for the likes of Lachlan, it no longer becomes a sustainable model even if you are VP.
At least with digital advertising, you have a clearer handle on advertising overheards. A digital campaign or advertorial created by the magazine would include a ballpark figure for photographers to create content. That's part of the pitch. But it must be within reason. You can't pitch a digital campaign shot by Lachlan Bailey or Meisel, no brand would pay those rates. So the work eventually goes to smaller photographers.
Photographers will have to reform the way they make money on their own, it's not in anyone's interest to do it for them. I hope this lockdown gave them a collective rude awakening when they saw celebrities shooting their own editorials and artists painting content oftentimes better than them. Some magazines are even continuing in that vein.
Because let's face it, this idea of 'let's take the crumbs from Vogue because it may well lead to exposure' isn't working. It's working for Lachlan because his work for VP is still what get's him campaigns from Massimo Dutti etc. But it's not helping the ones who are coming after him.
When you look at it without your personal opinion of his work, Tyler Mitchell has been shooting a lot of covers for US Vogue but he's not swamped with offers from hf brands to shoot their campaigns when in theory he should be. Yet you have Rafael who is virtually unknown and made a name shooting for irrelevant magazines like Vogue Brazil, yet here is, booking Dior Men campaigns.
