Home Forums Main YANAP Discussion Forum Wanna see serious Fauxtographers?

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 59 total)
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  • #5204
    Freqe C
    Participant

    I am a military member stationed in Germany.  It is funny out here.  It seems the additional income for many military spouses is through their “Photography” businesses.  Of course, a lot of them never pay taxes either.  We have some real winners out here.  If you ever want to see the gold mine of fauxtography, come on out to Germany and meet up with me.

    #5205
    brinneydee
    Participant

    Fauxtographers run rampant in the military communities. No matter where you go, you will find hundreds of “photographers” who think they can be a photographer just because they got a nice camera.

     

    #5224
    reality check
    Participant

    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! 😉

    #5233
    Intuition
    Participant

    I’m a military wife, and we’re in Alaska, which is considered an overseas tour. There are at least 30 on base “photographers”. It’s terrible. Some are okay, one or two are good, most are bad. The problem is they have no concept of the cost, the time ( for education) and the work it entails. I tried talking to one photographer about why she shouldn’t be charging when she’s using a 100 dollar point and shoot, and even found her a pretty good deal on a D3000, ( I think it was under 300 dollars with lenses) but she said  she was short on money and needed to buy props first. Now I know gear isn’t everything, but appropriate gear is still important. It just floored me. I’ll never get half assing things

    #5240
    fstopper89
    Participant

    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

    #5266
    shhhitsasecret
    Participant

    @browneyedgirl  Couldn’t help it, had to look at her magazine covers. Then I saw this….wow is it creepy.

     

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=388464577868975&set=a.388051971243569.79532.385294661519300&type=3&theater

    #5267
    Intuition
    Participant

    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

    #5274
    fstopper89
    Participant

    A lot of her photos (including the one gfox5 linked) are her own daughter. She does a lot of “creative” photoshopping thus making people look distorted or like dolls. She put some kind of snakeskin texture filter on her boyfriend’s face and called it photoshop. She’s literally doing what I used to do playing around with PS Elements at the age of 12, thinking it was “cool.”

    #5708
    Kimera
    Participant

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

    #5919
    Mrs Woo
    Participant

    That has got to be one of the creepiest pictures I have ever seen.  I’m still horrified and I closed the window…

     

    #6116
    iheartnerds
    Participant

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

    #6196
    CoastalTog
    Participant

    Military wives fuel the MWAC culture and stereotype.  They are usually 21-30 years old, married to a junior enlisted member, have no formal education beyond high school and LOVE to gossip.  I have quite a few friends who are in the military and their wives are hanging out the Facebook business shingle by the week (especially after their husbands bought them a new Canon Rebel for Christmas).  It is what it is.

    #6293
    pantsdetail
    Participant

    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.

    #7932
    MsLouLou_25
    Participant

    With the military you get the “I want a free photographer or someone who doesn’t cost an arm and a leg” posts all day.. and that is why the real photographers don’t advertise on the military sites, they are by word of mouth and why you get someone like this, who thinks you would want to pay money to have clip art pasted on your child:
    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=287455494705946&set=a.188373541280809.40829.188354594616037&type=1&theater

    #7936
    EMTChris
    Participant

    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.

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