RANT - Photography Business

[mishele]

I would not want to be shooting anything other than what I want to.

But that certainly doesn't preclude you being paid for it.

I'm shooting Goo Goo Dolls, Daughtry and Plain White T's next week, and will be getting paid nicely for it. I freaking love concert photography...

Take me with you!!

 

[Steve5D]

I would not want to be shooting anything other than what I want to.

But that certainly doesn't preclude you being paid for it.

I'm shooting Goo Goo Dolls, Daughtry and Plain White T's next week, and will be getting paid nicely for it. I freaking love concert photography...

Take me with you!!

Get down here by noon, a week from today...

 

[unpopular]

competition is good. unless you're in competition.

 

[LCLimages]

I'm not saying its bad for them to establish, its just annoying me how many people are willing to charge, even though they are in most cases "in-experienced" and if they took the time to study the art. Maybe I wouldn't be so frustrated!

To the general public, photography is little more than just an app on their phone. Let that sink in for a little bit, then read on:

There is no such thing as a bad photographer, only a bad marketer. Togs who complain about amateurs all have the same thing in common...they're crappy salesmen. If you think your photos are so amazing that people should be lining up to hire you, you're wrong. If you think people will hire you over someone else because you're more experienced, you're also wrong.

I didn't read anything else in this thread, but I saw this post, because it was above mine.

"There is no such thing s a bad photographer" -- Totally, 100% disagree. There are BILLIONS of absolutely gut-wrenchingly horrible photographers.

HOWEVER... "Togs who complain about amateurs all have the same thing in common...they're crappy salesmen." Agreed.

"If you think people will hire you over someone else because you're more experienced, you're also wrong." Agreed.

Photo quality only plays a part. BUT... the part it plays, I feel is integral.

And here's why:

There are plenty of people who get hired over me, because they're "cheaper". Only difference is, I don't give a sh*t, because if they are gonna hire a photographer with lesser quality, because they're cheaper, they weren't my target client to begin with. The clients I *do* get are super chill and hire me because of the experience I give them and the quality of my images over the other choices they've seen. And I ain't cheap. But they heard from their friends what a great experience it was, and they've seen their friend's images, which is what causes them to contact me in the first place.

So you're right.

People who b*tch about this, are just jaded and probably poor salespeople. There are always going to be shoot and burners, your job is to figure out how to put value to what you're giving your clients in addition to handing them quality images, and then sell them those images when it's all said and done. :sillysmi:

I partly agree, and partly disagree. At least in my market, all the selling of myself I've done and promotions and facebook advertising and word of mouth hasn't produced much. And I am not full of myself, but I've been doing this 6 years and 5 before I even considered trying to make an income off it, and I know damn well I'm "better" in respects of image quality than any other independent photographer established in the area. Which has doubled lately due to photography being the "trendy" job these days and I am in apparently a very crowded market.

So I met with the enterprise facilitator for the region to see if she could spark any new ideas. She told me to look up another one on FB who's gotten herself verrry well established in her market roughly 1.5 hrs from me, shooting newborns and children and families, and see if there's anything I could take note of on her page. So I did. And they're cute, and some of them are very good, but they are ALL props and trendy poses and giant bows and you literally lose the subject in all the fluff surrounding them. And then about 50% of her shots have something important wrong with them. Missing fingers, or toes, or exposure or white balance or they're crooked or whatever. Everyone misses things sometimes but if I lost half a subject's hand, or something else that really sticks out and makes the image incomplete, that photo is not going to the client and certainly not the internet. Things are that photogs notice immediately because they're BASICS.

So I met again with the facilitator and pointed those things out. It's endlessly frustrating to me that someone who clearly hasn't mastered the basics of taking a picture could have herself so booked she's not accepting new clients. And let me state, I think cute hats and some props or blankets or whatever are fine if it's done well and not overwhelming. And the response I got was "yeah but nobody cares about the quality anymore. Look at all her cute stuff. That's what sells."

I wanted to slap her. It devalues all the practice I've put into my art and the care I take when choosing which images to proof to a client who paid me to be a pro. But unfortunately it rings a lot of truth.