Wanna see serious Fauxtographers?

Agreed.  Fauxtography runs rampant in the military.  Running a shoddy business and fauxtography aside…I think military spouses get the short end of the stick.  Constantly relocating and having to start “careers” over and over again.  Are they even able to have a true successful career?  They are desperate for something to fulfill them.  I think the portability of photography “businesses” is very attractive to them.  It makes them feel like they are contributing financially while doing something fun and easy (Or so they think) If they were to sit and figure out, how much it costs them to be in “business” they would find they are spending a lot more than earning.  and while being for hire learning diddly squat as far as photography skills.  they start so fast that they fall into bad habits and cant break them.  What I don’t understand is, if they love photography, like they say they do, why not learn it?  Why not just do it for themselves, instead of taking advantage of people and dealing with all the faux madness?  Are they not allowed to do something solely for themselves?  Is there some sort of high they get from pretending to be something they are not?  Is it photography they love or the attention, drama, and Facebook likes?  Isn’t there other, less expensive and less shady ways to go about this than running a sub par and/or illegal photography business?  Do they ever eventually wake up and see this?  If they do, what happens to them?  Do they just hide and never speak of it again?  Why aren’t there any X fauxtogs crying out to people and trying to help others from falling in?  I mean you never see that do you?  They have to be out there.  Tons upon tons by now.  Where are they?

LOL the answer just dawned on me!!  They are all stationed in Germany! 😉

Ugh @intuition, that’s terrible! To take a good photograph you do not even need props. Props are nice added extras, like maybe old soda crates and wooden chairs for people to sit on, and maybe a metal sled for Christmas card photos, or a basket and some soft blankets and knit hats for baby photos. Aside from those things (which are all relatively inexpensive) photography is NOT throwing a bunch of cheesy props like teddy bears and rubber ducks in family photos. For people to use the excuse that they need to spend money on props vs. on equipment, it just sounds idiotic.

There are some people in my town I know for sure are charging for portraits using a point and shoot. Last year an art gallery opened up and the owner didn’t really know how to use discretion when accepting work. (Her gallery closed less than a year later). She kind of let anybody submit work. She invited artists to have “gallery showings” and this one girl was scheduled to have a photography show. So, I checked out her work on FB beforehand and planned on going. To my dismay all her work was terrible. I did go because I wanted to meet her. I said I was a photographer also, and asked her what camera she used. She said “Oh! It’s here in my purse actually… it’s a PowerShot!” I was totally not surprised. Here’s her page. Even her non-photography artwork looks like that of a 4th grader and she apparently went to school for graphic design at the tech college. I took graphic design courses in college and my professor would have failed me instantly for submitting some of the work she did for school projects (look at her magazine covers). https://www.facebook.com/KourtneyArtAndDesign/photos_albums

Oh holy hell what did she do to that child O.o I would be mad if someone did that to my future child -_- good grief

I almost jumped when I saw the magazine cover .. OW!!!

I’m new. And horrified. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a horribly edited alien-monster-anime eyes photo – creepy.

I have a friend who lives in North Carolina at a base there and he says it’s horrible how many people think they’re photographers.

why you get someone like this, who thinks you would want to pay money to have clip art pasted on your child:

The real problem is, of course, that there are TONS of people who seriously will pay money to have Fauxtogs take horrible photos of them, their children, and their family and then edit them even more horribly. That’s why places like Picture People inside Walmart stay in business – people will pay to have selective color done, and horrible white vignettes added and all that sort of thing.

This Fauxtog at my local military base (Fort Drum, NY) was holding a contest to win a free session on one of the local Fort Drum websites. The contest ended up getting pulled for unrelated reasons but LOADS of people signed up to win and she is bragging on her page how she got more than 80 new likes. She’s doing every fauxtog trick in the book.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Memory-Lane-Photography-NNY-LLC/531267200237805?ref=ts&fref=ts

Unfortunately, everyone thinks that if you own a nice camera, you’re suddenly a photographer – and there are enough young military spouses out there to pose as photographers and enough young military spouses who think that’s a great way to inexpensively get nice pictures done, so they do keep them in business. Fort Drum Area Events, one of the local pages, does a post on Facebook every week asking folks to plug their business and 99% of them are photography “businesses”. Some of them are good but most of them are complete crap.

And people wonder why I only do photos as a HOBBY. 😀 I just like taking pictures.