Getting Paid

[nossie]

Oh Max we worship you and all your greatness. We throw ourselves at your feet and the mercy of your massive ego.

Now get your pinhead out of your ass and put your shots where your cakehole is. So far what you've put up is mediocre and how dare we mere camera owners that didn't throw bouquets in praise dare to comment.

Give me a break pffft! :thumbdown:

[This is the spot where you take a uber defensive massive fit (again)]

 

[Alpha]

Heck, I've wanted to see my portfolio.

 

[wildmaven]

Heck, I've wanted to see my portfolio.

Hahhahahhaah! Well, get cookin'!!! :lmao:

 

[Mike_E]

That short make you want to pay the man doesn't it?

LOL Hell yes!

 

[AverageJoe]

This is a free market economy, if someone will do work for a lower price that person will get the job. If the job isn't completed to the satisfaction of the individual who hired them, they won't work again, but that's just how it works.

 

[jstuedle]

This is a free market economy, if someone will do work for a lower price that person will get the job. If the job isn't completed to the satisfaction of the individual who hired them, they won't work again, but that's just how it works.

To say they won't work again is a little disingenuous. With a little advertising, any hack will keep a cash flow if the market is big enough. For instance, a dear friend came to me and asked what I would charge for senior portraits of her daughter. The young lady is a skinny bean pole who thinks she's the reincarnation of Pamela Anderson. A lot of work is on the horizon to make her look like she thinks she is. This friend gave me a flyer from another studio and his base rate is $25.00 for a sitting, a digital file for the yearbook and 2 8X10's. I don't work that cheap, so I find myself pissing off a friend. Now this guys work looks like it came out of one of those little portrait machines in the mall where you get 4 fuzzy prints for $2.00. But his flyer is nice, glossy color tri-fold with great examples of good quality work. He has been doing this for years. He IS making money. I don't want to compete, I WILL NOT compete with him. He is a poor example of our craft, and he does on a daily basis give his work away. But OTOH, he probably can't really sell what he puts out for a decent price.

All that said, Max is correct in his original post. Either you are offering stunning work with a unique style that the public is dieing for, or you are a starving amature in this day and age. About every house has a P&S digital camera in it, and most owners think they can do what you and I do for a living and do it for nothing.

I'll give you another example. As a way to get out of the house and pay for my entertainment I shoot live bands most Friday nights. My normal fee is $150 for a couple hours shooting, plus milage if it's a good trip. I edit on the fly and burn a CD at the gigs end and give a copy to the band, and one to the venue owner. My name and copyright is on each web size image on the CD. I also print my name and number on the CD and provide a few cards. Often a band will contact me after seeing my name on a bands web site or myspace page and want photos. For most startup bands, $150 is a lot of money and balk at my price. A few weeks later I may see there page and notice some new pix, taken with a band members girlfriends P&S. Sorry, but they are crap, and they know it. Some come back and some don't. That's OK. As a business man/woman, you have to understand that you don't want every client that comes along. Problem is, more and more are the ones you don't want. The ones who want it for nothing. And the fact is in todays world someone out there will do it for nothing. In another line of work, those people are called nymphomaniacs.

 

[Brotage]

This is coming from someone who still doesn't own a DSLR or have ever owned a digital, and am using a minolta for a photo class in high school.

So you have the amateurs with the cameras that take mediocre and undercut the pros.

Then you have "pros" charging more for better pictures.. The problem is most of these pictures look all the same compared to the other "pros"
When the consumer sees so many with the same quality from pros they think this is normal and anyone can probably do this. And I think that most of these "pros" think they are better than they actually are.

I could look at a million GREAT pictures but eventually I would get bored and wouldn't care.



If you're going to ***** about being undercut by amateurs it's because your work doesn't show. You need some kind of WOW factor that separates you from everyone else

And sometimes you don't need some super duper pro to do some pictures. I honestly think senior pictures are a waste. A lot of people aren't really pretty and they expect themselves to be when they get their pictures back and they end up getting frustrated.

If you go out to buy something wouldn't you want the option of having something "Do the job" "Do the job well" and "Oh my god I think I just crapped my pants that was so good"?

Oh and, I don't agree with doing work for free, that's just retarded. And were they strangers? I'd expect to pay my friends for pictures.

EDIT: got a bit more to blab
Another thing is skateboarding is a lot like photography.. or anything thats takes serious dedication to get good at.

If I showed you guys a usual part in a skateboarding movie you'd see the board flip.. flip some more.. and some grinds.. whereas a skater would see the switch/nollie/fakie/and other more difficult tricks. and theres a few guys where even the average person can agree that it's awesome (Rodney Mullen for example )

When the average joe looks at some pictures they don't see lighting, composition and so on, they just see whats in front of them

 

[jstuedle]

Brotage, we basically are saying the same thing. A pro has to be good, his work needs to stand out to make money. Nobody wants to work for free. And yes, there is a portion of the buying public that can't tell a Wal-Mart studio portrait from a Ron Kramer masterpiece. For those people, let them snap a shot with there Easyshare and post it in the yearbook. I don't need or want them as clients anyway. But the fact does remain the culture is changing. Most people are satisfied with so-so prints from there P&S, and those same people don't see anything wrong with swiping a copyrighted so-so MP3 quality song of the net. Or anymore than swiping a copyrighted JPEG compressed photo off the net. The culture has cheapened what we expect, and the professional photographer is one party that suffers in the process.

 

[Alpha]

This isn't about the demands of clients. Nor is it about amateurs intentionally undercutting professionals. It's not even about quality. This is about the fact that when the market is saturated with amateurs undervaluing their work because they don't know or don't care otherwise, then the market value of a photograph drops.

High end commerical work does not factor into this-- it's a different market full of people who pay well for good work, and people who work hard and get paid well.

 

[jstuedle]

Well said Max. But even in the high end stuff, I see/hear more and more are shooting "in house" catalogs and using stock images. Even that work has become more competitive/cutthroat than it ever was. My wife has a small embroidery shop and several of her garment catalogs have been shot in house where they used to be slik pro catalogs. Now they look almost whorish. With poor focus and blown out highlights using employee models. Really poor, low rez work that can't sell a sexy outfit in a way it should be. It's just getting tighter all over. But you may be talking of "higher" end work than this. That 1/100th of 1% still seems to be a well entrenched field served by a talented, special few.

 

[Alpha]

That's a good point. We even see threads on here all the time from people posting in the beginner's section who are shooting some stuff at work or who have been "commissioned" to shoot product work by some local business.

Why don't you shoot some of the catalog work? Alternatively, I know I'm ALWAYS looking for clothes clothes clothes for TFP shoots. Model, makeup, and hair are the easy part. But unless you're in an area that actually has real fashion artists, you don't get a whole lot to work with. I'm willing to bet that if you snooped around ModelMayhem and offered to lend out a wardrobe like that, a couple talented local people would shoot it for cheap or free at least once.

 

[Iron Flatline]

Photography is the most dis-intermediated industry at this point. The Internet has effectively killed the stock photography industry.

 

[LeSueur24]

On the same topic, would you guys think it's wrong to make friends pay for photos you take (take in count that I'm only 15)? They wanted me to take their prom pictures this spring, and I'd feel sorta bad making them buy prints, but at the same time I feel like I'd be helping myself because I've had to buy everything I shoot with and I feel that if they appreciate the photos enough they wouldn't disagree with buying them from me.

 

[Alpha]

On the same topic, would you guys think it's wrong to make friends pay for photos you take (take in count that I'm only 15)? They wanted me to take their prom pictures this spring, and I'd feel sorta bad making them buy prints, but at the same time I feel like I'd be helping myself because I've had to buy everything I shoot with and I feel that if they appreciate the photos enough they wouldn't disagree with buying them from me.

Depends on how much you invest in producing the photos time and money wise. If you snap a couple shots with your rebel, spend a few minutes post-processing each shot, and then print them on an inkjet or dye-sub at home, then no, I wouldn't charge. If you take the shots to some place like a Ritz camera to be printed, I'd ask them to pay for the prints.

On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time setting up and doing the shoot, then a considerable amount of time post-processing, and then have them printed by someone who actually knows what they're doing, then yes, I would charge at least something.

 

[LeSueur24]

I'd definitely spend some good time post processing, not doing anything extreme, just making sure the colors look nice and if any cropping needs to be done.