Reply To: Needing reassurance!

[fstopper89]

You are NOT a fauxtog. You may have a few things to work on, but you’re not a fauxtog and you should not stop charging people for your work. Your work is so much better than the fauxtogs I see in my town. Your jaw would drop when you saw theirs. MBC obviously has a lot of experience, and he’s probably an excellent photographer, but some of his comments are discouraging! A lot of those points he brought up are things that you learn over time. I’m learning those things as well. I consider myself semi-professional. I don’t have a storefront. I’ve been in the photography business a few years (first as an assistant, now on my own). There is no way you’re going to be able to afford new, better equipment or software by just not charging. The way I figure is, don’t charge top-notch prices until you have a lot more experience and some higher end equipment. There are fauxtogs in my town who charge “$50 for the session and you get the disk with all the photos we take and the copyright!” Yeah, no. I know my work is worth a lot more than that as yours is also. I’m not going to charge $300 for a portrait session, because I’m not there yet. From looking at a few of your images, I would agree that maybe you need to work on posing and angles a bit. Your technical knowledge of using your equipment properly looks nice. Your images are sharp, and for the most part, well-exposed. Some of the color/white balance seemed a bit off to me on some of the images. I wasn’t crazy about a few of the locations. You’re shooting quite wide-open though so it helps minimize distractions on the background but some were a bit overpowering. And your logo? It fits your target market well. If you wanted to get into glamour or senior photography, maybe do a re-design, but it looks very child-friendly. I like your newborn photos.