What to do? Discouraged and frustrated!

mc1979

No longer a newbie, moving up!
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So, I'm very discouraged at the moment. I'm a beginning in photography, and up until now have really wanted to focus on portraits. I've strived to learn, been hard on myself, and listened to advice given here. I feel I am a long way from charging for my work, but the ultimate goal is to get there one day! The problem is I live in a relatively small community and it seems that as far as portrait photography, there are just too many people doing it here already. There is one person in particular who has gotten a huge fanbase from Facebook. And I would say this person has this community, and some surrounding communities pretty much tied up. Then just today, I was on facebook and another friend of mine just announced, "hey I'm starting a business, here's my FB page, like me and I'll give give-a-ways, yada, yada, yada. She says this after posting a total of 3 and I mean 3 "sessions" she's done.
So, I guess what I'm trying to say is I think I need to start rethinking my creativity and go a totally different route than I wanted to take.
Any suggestions? I know this is a total whining post, and I wanted to vent, but I would like to know what you would do?
 
Screw portrait photography, every Tom, Dick, and AustralAsian, are doing it.

Go the fine art route!
 
Get better. Learn how to pose and frame like a real professional. Buy some BOOKS written by older, established professional people photographers, not people on YouTube. Learn what the TOP shooters have to teach you about composition, posing, and technical matters. I've seen a lot of Facebook shooters' pages, and not a single one of them has impressed me as a real,trained "professional portrait shooter". NOT ONE of them!!!

Loads of crappy horizontally framed, amputated portraits of standing people...man and wife portraits, framed horizontally....yeeeech....loads of dead, empty space surrounding tiny renderings of small children, with 60 percent of the frame filled up with out of focus park lawn grass, and 30 percent of the image frame the face of a kid...just total crap. THAT is what I see on FB fu-taaa-gruh-ferrrs's pages. That is pretty much what you are up against. If you buy some books and learn from upper-echelon professionals, you'll be exposed to ideas about posing, composition, and lighting that these self-taught people will have no clue about.
 
:thumbup:+++
Listen to the man.
 
Derrel,

I agree with you and that's something I already have been doing. But how do I put this without sounding snobbish? For the most part, I don't think there are alot in this community who really appreciate the difference or should I say understand it. Just since reading on this forum constantly and reading critiques, I am now learning to understand the difference, but before I didn't. I would have never really picked up on some of it without learning what makes a good portrait a good one. Am I making sense?
As long is it's done in natural light, and the eyes are dazzling, most responses around here are "Oh, great job! These look wonderful!"

How do you get past that?
 
Learn it and do something that just "sets you apart" from the rest. Quality, Service, Style and charge for being different.
-
Shoot well, Joe
 
The way to create a niche for yourself in a low-cost low-knowledge market, is to educate the prospects. By letting them understand the difference between a GOOD portrait (as Derrel said earlier) and a typical FB type shot, you create both a market for yourself, and a potential lock on that niche. Those are not low-hanging fruit, but cultivated carefully, will result in both higher earnings and higher satisfaction. Going upscale requires a different mindset. As Joe says in the preceding post "do something that sets you apart". Also, think out of the box - is there an unrecognized market? Chrysler did that with their minivans.
 
You mentioned that the area around where you live had been "locked up" but this other photographer, if there is one piece of advice I can pass on is that nothing in business is "locked up" there is nothing stopping you from taking business away from this other person, it may not be easy, but all you have to do is a couple of good shoots, add a little advertising and some word of mouth and thibgs will change. Don't get down before you give yourself a good chance at success, you can't self defeat or you have already lost.
 
It's nice seeing imagemaker turning over a new, more positive leaf!
 
When shooting portraits for a living, you, the photographer, need to create EXCITEMENT at the time of the session, as the photos are actually being MADE. THis is the kind of thing many people have never been taught because they have not worked in the portrait business. AS YOU SHOOT the images, you need to verbally SAY things like, "we're going to create a beautiful full-length photo of you, with you seen here in front of this XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX background item. What we are going to do is to put one big, soft light right up here on a 13-foot stand, and then we're going to use a reflector on the opposite side to fill in the shadows, and create just the most awesome, beautiful, delicate lighting on you. It's gonna' look totally sweet!"

As you are MAKING the photos, you are both selling, and educating. At least a couple of times per session, it's a good idea to take some incident light readings with a light meter, and to actually make the statement that, "I want to get my main light JUST, exactly "so"...it's gotta be just perfect!" People like and respect a photographer who has the right professional tools. People appreciate a precise, diligent tattoo artist, surgeon, accountant, and photographer.

Anyway, creating EXCITEMENT as the photos are being made involves showing enthusiasm for the kinds of poses and lighting that you are committing to the camera, during the shoot. Every shoot! When you trigger off a shot of two siblings, every so often after a decent shot you need to say, "OH! that's a great one! That'll make a lovely 11x14 canvas mount print!" just to plant the seed of the smaller, but very,very high-markup small canvas prints. Stuff like that. "Oh, he's so adorable in that little jacket--he looks like a tiny little man!" for a five year-old boy. etc.,etc..

Family photography is a people business! You need to have a lint brush on hand,and maybe even dab it on a spot or two. When first posing a man and wife, you need to say, "Here, let me just really quickly check your jacket for any loose threads," and also do a necktie check as well. Many younger men today are LOUSY necktie tiers, and if you mention that you are "Adjusting some of the small details," it conveys an attention to detail, a level of professionalism that the average FB snapper is gonna be clueless about. Same goes with shirt tails, jacket lapels, collars, necklaces, etc.etc. You need to state, clearly, and make a point of showing that YOU are IN CONTROL of the session and the way they look. If a necktie has a loose, sloppy knot, or the collar is sticking up weirdly, or a man's shirt is hanging out and wrinkling, you need to demonstrate that NOTHING gets by you. Necktie flaws, lint on jackets, cat hair, flyaway hairs, ladies necklaces with the pendant hanging awkwardly, missed shirt buttons, lapels that are laying weird, wedding rings where the diamond is off to the side, all those kinds of things fall to YOU. AS you are shooting, you need to tell your clients about these styling touch-ups, and direct them as to how to remedy them. This eliminates costly retouching AND makes for better photos,with better-styled clothes and hair.

If you demonstrate real old-school perfectionism and professionalism, and show enthusiasm and EXCITEMENT when you and your subjects work together to make a successful portrait image, you'll develop a reputation that will precede you. People will talk about how, "Paul's necktie was tied kind of funny, and my necklace was crooked, but he SPOTTED it and fixed it right way!" "And he thought the girls were just soooo darling, and they thought he was really a fun photographer too." This is how you educate people and show them why you're better than some hack who doesn't know a single trick of the business. Ooh and ahh over the babies, look out for the dads and teenage sons' appearance (many of whom are helpless in 'good clothes') and alwayyyyyyys compliment the moms and grandmas on how well everybody behaved and how nice they all look together. Keep in mind too that the women usually wield the checkbooks and the big credit cards, and are the actual BUYERS of family photography services and prints. Don't suck up to the dads unless it is clearly a divorced dad/weekend dad scenario, which is not that common, but also not rare.
 
Derrel,

I agree with you and that's something I already have been doing. But how do I put this without sounding snobbish? For the most part, I don't think there are alot in this community who really appreciate the difference or should I say understand it. Just since reading on this forum constantly and reading critiques, I am now learning to understand the difference, but before I didn't. I would have never really picked up on some of it without learning what makes a good portrait a good one. Am I making sense?
As long is it's done in natural light, and the eyes are dazzling, most responses around here are "Oh, great job! These look wonderful!"

How do you get past that?

From your original post, it doesn't sound like you are there, yet, but keep my advice in mind for when you are consistently producing quality photos.

You know the best way to separate yourself from your peers? Price. And I don't mean undercutting them. Find the most expensive photographer in your area and charge at least double. Produce quality results, stay away from facebook, and just the fact that you are expensive will give you a percieved value above the others. Make photos from you symbolic with status, and produce the results that go along with it.

To quote bitter, and I hate doing it, but, he is right... "Competition is fierce at the bottom of the barrel." Produce better quality, provide great service, charge at least double what they charge, and those guys will never be your competition.
 

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