Possible Professional Portrait?

[jonib101]

And you should really rethink charging people for photos, unless they're VERY reasonably priced.

I live in a VERY small town. There's no photographer here, and I charge low prices. For a photo shoot for one person I only charge $15.

 

[KmH]

rotate...camera....to portrait....orientation...losing...count...of horizontal head cut-offs seen...must rotate camera...restore foreheads...

I LOL'd

Uhh.. Thanks, but that's not helpful.

The best advice in the entire thread, because it's easy to do, costs nothing, and requires little in the way of added skills,

and you blow it off. (check out how many times Derrel has been thanked in threads. Even I pay close attention when he posts.)

Do you have a legal business (licensed/registered) and business liability insurance? Are you collecting sales taxes and forwarding them to the state, if your state has sales taxes?

You won't be old enough to sign contracts until you're 18.

That reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw once, when there still were such things. It said:

"Hire A Teenager...While They Still Know It ALL."

 

[Christie Photo]

Do you have a legal business (licensed/registered) and business liability insurance? Are you collecting sales taxes and forwarding them to the state, if your state has sales taxes?

You won't be old enough to sign contracts until you're 18.

Oh, common....

What she's doing is more like babysitting or having a paper route. I'm sure the state or code enforcement won't come knocking.

-Pete

 

[Steve Reddin]

Hi jonib101,

I've been watching this thread for a while; I wasn't going to reply as there had already been feedback on the work and there's no point in just repeating what others have said, however I've had to respond to some of the....less helpful....comments that have been put on here. Why? Because I thought this forum was supposed to be helpful to newcomers, I thought I'd finally stumbled across one that didn't operate as a click, I thought the replies (whilst being repetitive) were on the whole, fairly well balanced and to the point but, God help me, I think I've just be lured into a false sense of security...

First, just your initial question, can you call yourself a professional and charge for your work? The difference between pro and amatuer is that a pro charges for their work, there isn't a level of quality where you move from one to the other, despite people expecting it when they hear professional. What you should have probably asked is will your work be good enough to earn a living from photography? I'd say yes, it will be, against the common grain of the threads here I think your work is good for starting. There are certain points you need to read up on, DOF, affect of zoom etc etc etc, but they'll not take long for you to understand. You will need a pro camera, SLR, MF or whatever, but that's not going to make or break your work. If you're a good photographer you'll take a good photograph with your phone, if you're a bad photographer, you can mix a Canon EOS 1Ds Mk3 with Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 and a big, fat, juicy memory card and it'll not make any difference, your work will still be awful.

If someone is happy with your work and is happy to pay you, that's the real acid test, the proof of the pudding and the rest, not what someone here tells you about how they don't like your style....or that you're going to be sued.

Now...

Derrel, you're reply wasn't helpful and was, bluntly, incorrect. It wasn't helpful because, when I read it, it came across as unbelievably patronising. You're incorrect because (a) you don't have to rotate...camera....to portrait....orientation, it's commonly held that cropping up to half the forehead makes for a very good portrait and (b) Jonib101 didn't 'butcher' 5 out of 5 portraits.

KmH...what sort of 'help' is that? Yes, there are areas of photography business that are not to do with photography, people sort them out when they are required to. But in the vein of your reply; were you asked about them? Are you a professional tax / business advisor? Do you honestly, really, truly, think your reply was useful, answering the question asked, or leading the discussion onwards? I don't.

ivomitcats, do you cross a road at all, because people have actually been killed by passing cars. It's happened before. Do you fly at all, because people have actually been killed in plane crashes. It's happened before. Do you stick your face in a fan at all....well, I'm sure you know where this is going...like KmH, you're not really leading the discussion onward with this, all you're doing is scaremongering and making unrelated points.

Now before someone jumps up all bloated with righteous indignation and froths at the mouth typing a reply tellng me I'm wrong because 'he's been thanked 1,000 times in half a thread' or 'she's written over 1,000,000 threads in a day' or 'they've got a really long lens on their camera' read my signature and ask yourself is it worth it?

Steve

 

[Christie Photo]

I've been watching this thread for a while...

Gee, Steve.... a bit too much caffeine today?

I get your point. Now, what about the original question? Any response to that?

-Pete

BTW: Derrel really is a good guy. He was making a joke.

 

[Steve Reddin]

Well, my second paragraph starts as 'First, just your initial question...' so I think I've already addressed that one.

 

[supraman215]

"Happy clients buy more." I think everything else has been said here. If I've learned anything working in marketing for the past 10 years is that keeping clients happy is all that matters. SO use the money you make to buy yourself a new camera, keep reading and learning and take the initiative and drive you have and don't lose it. It's the MOST valuable thing you have. Making clients happy will do more for your ability to make money than anything else. But READ READ READ. As mentioned you do have plenty of time.

From my experience on this site KMH and Derrel have a very rough bedside manner. However they are actually trying to help, just in their own way.

 

[Christie Photo]

Well, my second paragraph starts as 'First, just your initial question...' so I think I've already addressed that one.

Doah! Honest... I read that twice and still missed it.

Thanks.

-Pete

 

[Steve Reddin]

Ha, Pete, you see, I'm drinking too much caffeine....and you're not getting enough...

 

[Derrel]

Sorry steve, but my reply was extremely good advice. I used to be a full-time professional portrait shooter, some 20-odd years ago. There's a really,really,really,really,really,really basic rule in portraiture,and especially professional portraiture: when the subject is taller than it is wide, the camera will be oriented in the vertical direction.

A head and shoulders "portrait" with the forehead lopped off and NO SHOULDERS is a floating head...it's a butcher job. Sorry Steve, but did you happen to look at the Google search results I posted, linking to "famous portraits"? Some of those famous portraits are over 450 years old, and you know what Steve, 99 percent of them are framed in the vertical or "portrait" orientation. Hmmm...I wonder why....

Until a 16 year old girl using a point and shoot learns the primal rule of professional portraiture, she is in no way headed toward becoming a "professional" at portraiture. She can't even get a head shot right, or a head and shoulder shot right because she's shooting in the absolutely,totally WRONG camera orientation for a portraiture subject in head shot, or head and shoulder, or half-body poses...so, Sorry Steve, your attack on my advice doesn't hold much stock with me. Every single one of her shots would have been improved if the camera had been rotated to "portrait" mode. Every shot.

Why do you think experienced photographers so often try and call vertical "portrait mode" when talking to newbies, and why has the use of the term "landscape mode" become popular as more and more untrained shooters hit the scene???

 

[Steve Reddin]

Derrel, I don't intend to get involved in an elongated debate with you. My comments weren't just on your advice (I don't agree with your assessment of her work and I certainly don't agree with your justification through stagnant rules and old ideas) but also on the manner in which you gave it.

If that doesn't hold stock with you or you don't believe I made any valid points...like my signature says...as usual...I don't care...

 

[assentingsilence]

While I agree with what Derrel is saying...I also agree with what Steve is saying. You guys are arguing different points.

Look...the simple fact of the matter is that you can call yourself a professional at whatever you want and NOT be a professional or produce professional quality work. This young lady CAN make money doing this. It's a very simple concept...the customer/client will buy whatever they like. If the don't like it, they won't buy it.

Now, this young lady should NOT take someone's money before showing them the pics she has taken. If they like the pics, they will pay her for them. If they don't like the pics, she doesn't print them and everybody goes on their merry way. Nobody has lost anything but a little time.

jonib101...take the criticism and advice of the people on here with a grain of salt. Learn from it, but don't be discouraged by it. Practice and learn and if you can get paid for your work, then do so.

 

[Derrel]

http://www.worldart.com.au/images/mona-lisa1.jpg

http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/iconic_portraits/dkmb86g_765ctzqfpcp_b.jpg

http://dcist.com/attachments/dcist_sommer/Washington_(3).jpg

http://pics.livejournal.com/christabel_daae/pic/0000k7ff

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/William_Shakespeare_Chandos_Portrait.jpg

http://www.artquotes.net/masters/vangogh/vangogh_selfportrait1889.jpg

rotate...camera..to vertical...understand compositional principles....dating back...hundreds and hundreds of years...give people a portrait of themselves, not 30% empty space on the left, 20% of them, and 50% of the frame filled with empty, meaningless space on the other side of the frame. Simple.

 

[bigtwinky]

If that doesn't hold stock with you or you don't believe I made any valid points...like my signature says...as usual...I don't care...

But yet, care enough to reply?

I agree with Steve's somewhat point about old ideas and old ways. Things need to be changed, old ways of doing things should be stretched, redone and molded into something new. This is how things improve.

However, in order to do that molding and changing, one must first understand where these old ideas come from. They are old, they have stood the test of time, why? Because they work. Should they be the only way? No, absolutely not.

Just like saying there are compositional rules in photography like the rule of thirds that someone should follow. Learn it, master it, then break it!

But know why you broke it.

 

[ifi]

Thank you everyone for commenting. I'm using a point and shoot camera.. no interchangable lens. All of these are edited, and I think that's why the DOF looks a little strange. So maybe I need to work on my editing rather than my DOF? Here are the originals

Great shots, especially for a point and shoot :thumbup:

You need more experience with various types of equipment and photography in general then you can be a professional photographer