[Closed] Professional Portrait Photography = Blackmail

Do you have a typewriter?

My wife is a professional portrait photographer. She is wonderfully talented , works really hard and has trained in it for years . She makes a nice tidy sum from people like the OP 🙂

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I've taken 10,000 photos in the last 10 years.

You're not even trying! I took 3000 this morning shooting a single hockey match!

A photo every 1.5-2 seconds. 😯
There should be at least one decent shot in that lot.

A photo every 1.5-2 seconds.

10/11fps frame rate

There should be at least one decent shot in that lot.

Hit rate is about 1 in 25. You get a lot of scenes obscured when another players runs in front of the action and blocks the view / steal the focus and a lot of scenes never come off and there's nothing worth shooting in the end. Very much a numbers game....

Best of the bunch here https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/albums/72157673924468051

In case anybody is in work on a Saturday, poah's link is NSFW

Hit rate is about 1 in 25. 😯 You get a lot of scenes obscured when another players runs in front of the action and blocks the view / steal the focus and a lot of scenes never come off and there's nothing worth shooting in the end. Very much a numbers game....

Best of the bunch here https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/albums/72157673924468051

In case anybody is at work on a Saturday, poah's link is of a lovely lass with a cracking arse and is well worth looking at later.

There's some decent shots in there.

Cheers, ought to be getting the hang of it by now, must have shot about 100 matches...

it wasn't all tits and ass

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also used to shoot film with an EOS5 and a bronica ETRS

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Anyone need any heart bypasses doing? I'm not a surgeon, but I've got a scalpel from the craft shop, a GCSE in needlecraft and I've watched Casualty. Bosh

1. A trained professional will do a better job than someone having a go
2. Some tasks are more complicated than others
3. Some tasks are more safety critical than others
4. Some tasks an amateur can have a decent go at

IMHO Photography covers both 1 and 4 so decide how much you wish to pay for 1

Heart surgery is most definitely 1,2,3

Its not really a fair comparison

In much the same way I could paint a wall I cannot paint a Banksy or a da vinci

We had some family portraits done, and very nice they are too, which they should do because they were powerfully expensive. My wife and I felt at the time that my probably would actually have spent more if the pricing model had been different. We payed £x00 for 4 framed shots in the end but that's because it felt like the sweet spot for value, not because that's the budget we had in mind (we didn't have a budget really).

Personally do not care for studio portraits, which does not help...

There's probably something out there you would like molgrips.

Certainly would not like a portrait of myself on my own wall!

"Yup. Get her a hot girlfriend."

Should I take intimate photos of them together myself or get a professional to do it?

🙂

I've started a fork and shock tuning service.

It's taken a while to really get to grips with, but for a tenner a time, I think it's good value.

Unfortunately, I can only tune them to G# at the moment, but I'm much cheaper than those shysters at LOCO, TF etc.

Anyone need any heart bypasses doing? I'm not a surgeon, but I've got a scalpel from the craft shop, a GCSE in needlecraft and I've watched Casualty. Bosh

Overqualified if you ask me. Plus Theresa May is looking for big cost savings in the NHS, you're probably just what she had in mind.....

FWIW, I've taken photos at two weddings, one was my cousin's registry office wedding, she just wanted some photos to remember the day. I was a bit worried about disappointing her, but she was thrilled to bits with the results.
The second was an ex-girlfriend who is also one of my best friends, who's first wedding had the reception at a fairly s****y location in Castle Combe, with a bunch of her Chinese relatives flying in from Malaysia, and she wanted some photos of the day that were less formal for them to take back home.
I took a bunch at the church, then more at the formal reception, took the films into Boots for their 1-hour processing service, had a load of sets run off, then dashed back for the less formal do.
The relatives, and the bride and her immediate family were beyond chuffed with my efforts, because the photos showed a more relaxed and playful side, and were available to be taken away on the day.
The professional photos are there to be treasured, but as the couple are now divorced and my friend has re-married, it's possibly fair to say the memories are somewhat bittersweet, regardless of who took the photos.
Anyone who things all you do is chuck a RAW file into Ps or Lightroom, hit F1 or wherever you have a set action stored, and bingo! Robert's your mother's brother, you have a perfect image is sadly deluded.
I saw my job as a scanner operator and Ps retoucher in print prepress disappear almost over night with the advent of digital cameras and cheap desktop scanners bundled with Ps Lite, because, armed with those tools, and a couple of books from WHSmith, everyone became a bloody expert!
And the results were painfully obvious in magazines I saw on the shelves in Smiths.
You want a good result? You pay someone to produce it.
If you only want to pay peanuts, get a chimp to do it.

Wtf was wrong with that photo, it was a link and it's not porn. :boggle:

Sorry, I'm still wrangling with the concept that you have a dSLR, have taken 10,000 photos (an average of three a day) and by your own admission "know nothing about photography." I can't get my head around that. You'd be better off with an iPhone.

As for the assertion that you could do as well as a professional yourself because you've had photos published, either you're being modest and selling yourself very very short, or you got lucky once and are deluded and overgeared.

A dSLR in and of itself takes higher quality images but does not by any stretch of the imagination take good photographs.

Rubbish, a film SLR cost a fraction of what a DSLR does now.

In fact without DIY post processing, my £20 film SLR produces the better images (because someone at the printers is doing the post processing).

I really don't think that either of those is true. I think mid 1970s an OM1 was about £250 and an OM 2 was £350. £3,000 a year was a wage back then?

The Nikon F4 was released 1988 and cost it cost about $2000 dollars

On the second point if you go through our albums I'd say that even my first 4mp camera produced better prints than the film prints we had before. You could argue that the digital ones still have faults

Once I'd bought a DSLR and lens (6mp) and started doing mu own post processing I was wiping the floor with the film stuff every time

I had one of my pictures as double page spread in Velovert magazine a few months back. I guess that makes me a professional?

Oft said that photography is 30% skill, 30% equipment and 30% luck (the other 2% is maths- you need to know the rule of thirds).
10,000 shots to 3 published falls short on that one. I'd aim for a 75% success rate and have 3 or 4 published per week.

As for the film vs digital argument, I'd say that digital being an improvement is subjective and depends on the type of image. What is beyond critisism is the fact that more skill was required to take good film images, unless you had an endless pot of money. It was mentioned earlier that a bucket load of photos can be taken at an event for next to no cost or nearly [url= http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-x-KODAK-PORTRA-36-EXPOSURE-35MM-FILMS-ISO-400-FRESH-UK-STOCK-TRACKED-POST-/162228535180? ]£300.00 in film alone[/url]. It's no contest.

Anyone who things all you do is chuck a RAW file into Ps or Lightroom, hit F1 or wherever you have a set action stored, and bingo! Robert's your mother's brother, you have a perfect image is sadly deluded.

(the other 2% is maths

Is that irony?

I used to do a lot of gig photography.
Pre digital, getting money out of musicians was virtually impossible.
Post digital, it's a complete waste of time.

I've had so many nicked and reused by others I just don't bother anymore, even for free for mates and relatives.

My only claim to fame as a photographer is getting punched in the face at a party by Elaine Constantine.
And I'd completely forgotten about that 'till someone reminded me at a funeral yesterday.
🙂

Is that irony?

We had a professional shoot done as it was given to us as a christmas present, I hated all the staged shots so we only ended up with the photos that were included in the package. Then I bought a DSLR and spent a lot of time learning how to use it, now get to take as many shots of the kids as I like and end up with plenty good enough to hang on the wall, I can also update them as often as I like.

I do admire the work of some of the professionals, but there is no way I could afford any of the ones I would be prepared to have hanging on the wall.

OP, I think the angle to take with your wife is as follows:

"look all those photos will cost £500, why don't we have a fantastic family day out/ weekend away and I'll take my big camera and loads of photos of the kids. If none of them are any good we'll go back to the pro"

How could she say no? And if you actually have a holiday the photos you take with attached real memories will bodyslam the fake studio shots.

Wtf was wrong with that photo, it was a link and it's not porn

Maybe not, but certainly NSFW as I pointed out - and some people might not want pics like that popping up on their screen when they innocently click on a link whether or not at work. FWIW I didn't have a problem with it and didn't report it - though I'm not really sure what it added to the thread.

Professional photography mostly existed because of technical and cost barriers that have long since gone

Hilarious.
As a photographer I'm so glad I don't have to hawk my skills to the general public as on the whole they are a nightmare!
Owning a violin doesn't make you a violinist etc etc.
That said a lot of high st/social photography is dire and I wouldn't pay a penny for it, the good ones (photographers) tend to charge enough that the tight arses don't bother asking and those who can afford it don't ask either 🙄

We had a gift card for a local photographer a couple of years ago. Booked him he turned up at our house and took some photos. All good. A couple of weeks later we asked what was happening with the photos. Photographer in New York atm will get in touch when he's back. 3 weeks later. Where are the photo's we ask after a call to his office, Just sorting them out he says. 2 Days later get a phone call, no photo's the memory card is corrupt. (yes of course it is). Can you re arrange for another shoot. Sure how about next weekend? That's fine. Next weekend comes, but the photographer didn't. Ad infinatum. Never did tell my my mum that Phil Garland Photography from Longridge stole from her.

MrSmith - Member
Owning a violin doesn't make you a violinist etc etc

Spot on.

My wife cares little about photographic equipment and less about formal theory.
Yet her images are usually excellent.
She has a very good eye.
My pictures are usually technically spot on, yet lack soul, compared to hers.
In terms of composition and spontaneity, she's a natural, whilst I have to work at it.

We hired a pro for the eldest daughter's wedding - a newbie with excellent people and compositional skills, but little technical knowledge.
Fortunately, the student she'd brought with her as an assistant, shy young lad who was a bit nervous ordering people around, turned out to have a wonderful feel for light and exposure and knew his kit backward.
They made a very effective team.

The camera has little to do with it - it's a box with a hole in it.
Creating brilliant images requires a knowledge of how to pick the most suitable kit and get the best out of it, but if you can't organise yourself and others, recognise and capture that crucial moment, you might as well not bother.

That's what you pay for.

Rusty Spanner

The camera has little to do with it - it's a box with a hole in it.
Creating brilliant images requires a knowledge of how to pick the most suitable kit and get the best out of it, but if you can't organise yourself and others, recognise and capture that crucial moment, you might as well not bother.

That's what you pay for.

As well as creating images with often overlooked attributes like focus, lighting and composition a pro will also be relied upon to show up on time and produce images of events that may not be repeatable. Everyone understands the importance of their wedding photographer getting the job right, but that pressure and those demands are applicable to most shoots.

I'd love to see a wedding photographer hand over a few hundred out of focus, under lit badly framed shots and explain to the client that the quality doesn't matter since it's all about memories.

We hired a pro for the eldest daughter's wedding - a newbie with excellent people and compositional skills, but little technical knowledge.
Fortunately, the student she'd brought with her as an assistant, shy young lad who was a bit nervous ordering people around, turned out to have a wonderful feel for light and exposure and knew his kit backward.
They made a very effective team.

I have a DSLR and a reasonable lense. I can't help but think that a decent book on composition and a half day taking a lot of images would give equally good results.

I though we only had plumbers on here, apparently there's a load of professional photographers as well. What a talented bunch.

captainsasquatch

If only we could find a person with both these attributes rolled into one. They'd be worth a fortune. 😕

Yeah but only if they used their talents for evil, like making money. That's basically blackmail.

Yeah but only if they used their talents for evil, like making money. That's basically blackmail.

Porsche Macan.

captainsasquatch - Member

If only we could find a person with both these attributes rolled into one. They'd be worth a fortune.

I didn't book them!
Wedding planning?
Bugger all to do with me.
The photographer knew her technical limitations, which is why she had an assistant.
Turned out well in the end, some excellent images.
🙂

jimjam - Member
Porsche Macan

[quote=jimjam ]I'd love to see a wedding photographer hand over a few hundred out of focus, under lit badly framed shots and explain to the client that the quality doesn't matter since it's all about memories.

Strangely enough pretty much all of the pics of memories I've taken on my phone are in focus, well lit and I usually manage to avoid cutting off people's heads. I'm certainly not claiming to be a professional photographer, but then you list a load of requirements I'd expect the average amateur with a DSLR to be able to manage.

"As a photographer I'm so glad I don't have to hawk my skills to the general public as on the whole they are a nightmare!
Owning a violin doesn't make you a violinist etc etc."

I've heard a lot of ignorant nonsense about the 'value' of photography/photographers, and the reality is that we are living in a world where access to photography is a lot easier for more people, but I really don't think this has led to an increase in quality. If anything, technological advances have led to a situation where technical competency isn't as important; you don't have to get it 'right' in camera, when you can Photoshop it afterwards. What we are left with is 'imaging technicians', not 'photographers'. People who can produce an acceptable image that fulfils a brief, rather than being able to produce anything truly unique, or of significant artistic merit. Which is fine if all you need to do is illustrate an article, but not so great in terms of the evolution of photography as an art form. I see increasing exhibitions of artistically poor, yet technically good work, which leaves me cold. And social media is full of crap photos that have been put through some cheesy Instagram filter, with peoples' friends gushing 'what an amazing photo!', without knowing what an amazing photo actually looks like.

I decided to never bother pursuing photography as a 'career', as I just didn't want to end up doing what other people thought looked good. So I just carried on doing my own thing, honing my craft in the way I wanted to. I get the odd commission through friends and that, but I only accept to do jobs that I will find challenging and interesting. I get the odd bit of work based on merit; people choose [i]me[/i] to do some photos, because they like [i]my[/i] work. Fortunately I don't have to make a living from photography. But if I did, I'd find it soul destroying that some pompous arse thinks my time isn't worth a decent rate. £200 for a set of studio pictures is **** all; a decent studio set up will run to many thousands, then there's rents, rates, insurance etc. If I didn't know you, I wouldn't give you the time of day if you didn't think a big chunk of my time, not to mention countless years spent trying to become a better photographer, etc etc etc, wasn't worth £200.

So, go and buy yourself a camera and DIY. While you're at it, why not buy yourself some woodworking tools, make your own furniture; can't be too hard to make something better than what you can buy in IKEA, for less money, surely?

not so great in terms of the evolution of photography as an art form.

is that really peoples intention when they purchase a camera? a quick search of the internet would show that sunsets/cats/progeny/your gear laid out on a table to appease your peers and show your disposable income/narcissistic selfies are the main reasons for using a camera.

becoming a future icon of photographic art doesn't seem to be on the agenda.

"a quick search of the internet would show that sunsets/cats/progeny/your gear laid out on a table to appease your peers and show your disposable income/narcissistic selfies are the main reasons for using a camera."

😆

Maybe I'm a bit behind the times; I got into photography because it fascinated me as an art form, and I loved the work of various iconic photographers. I've never seen myself as a 'future icon of photographic art', but I'm always trying to be better and to take better photographs. Seems an increasing amount of 'photographers now aren't actually too bothered about the actual craft of photography, and more interested in expressing largely unoriginal ideas. Given the technology available, I'm surprised we aren't seeing a lot better than what's often on offer.

But then, perhaps that speaks more of a crisis in art, than just in photography alone.