[cassie]

EyeDoc, I totally have to agree with you 100%.

I have a client from back in the day that wants to work with me again (I teach horse riding lessons). The mom is trying to see if I drive to her barn or they get a trailer and come to my barn and use their horse, if it would be cheaper than using one of my horses.

Of course the answer is a flat no, just because she’s using her own horse, at the end of the day my horses have still gotta eat. And I’m sure it will be interesting when she finds out that if I drive out to her she won’t be able to get the discount I give people for prepaying for lessons in bulk to cover my extra travel time and gas.

And this is probably the number one reason I haven’t started shooting for people for business at all. I’ve shot for a few friends and family members and that’s it. Luckily you don’t run into as many cheapskates with horse riding lessons because almost everyone assumes it is going to be expensive (rightfully so) and we aren’t oversaturated in our market. I can still get all the work I need (want) doing that without having to worry about getting pushed out by someone doing it for much less money.

[cassie]

I didn’t look at them too much, but my first impression is that the contrast on a few IS overdone. However I’m not really on the right monitor to see colors.

BUT if you are exporting in LR it is really easy to export specifically for facebook. Now that I know better, I export what goes to facebook into it’s own facebook folder, and in the fields where you select all your export options find the resize field and set it so the long edge is resized to 960 pixels, this is the size that FB resizes everything to so you won’t run into the compression problem that blurs a lot of the bigger photos.

[cassie]

Dang. Apparently I need to get into shooting professionally if this lady is paying 35% in taxes. I’ve never had my personal business make enough income to be paying that much to uncle Sam…

[cassie]

emf I’m in the USA. So it must be a different company.

BUT I guess it’s a little better than what the first hospital I had my oldest daughter at did. They basically just had this webcam thing in the room you could put your baby under before you went home in their little outfit and snap a picture that would print out for like $10.

Hospitals are good at gouging you for money here, lol.

[cassie]

I actually think I know the franchise you are talking about. They have a couple MWAC that walk around the hospital in the morning to get people before discharges. We respectfully declined though, which wasn’t hard since my daughter’s face was so bruised up the nurse had to put a sign on the bassinet that said “baby has a bruised face”. But my sister bought pics of her daughter that was a month older. They were bad. With her second kid she didn’t have enough money and I took them. She got just as many pictures but they weren’t cheesy and looked good.

Although honestly, why would someone actually want pictures of their baby only a day or two old? Unless you have a c-sec they’re usually bruised all over, have either a smashed face or a conehead, and that weird cheesy flaky stuff all over them.

[cassie]

My understanding is you get the same image with the 50mm DX and the 50mm FX on the DX body, but the DX lens is usually cheaper and more compact.

D means there is an aperture ring, yes. But D lenses also don’t have an internal focus motor so if the D70 body doesn’t have it’s own focus motor it’ll work on your camera but at the same time it won’t. Like I can technically use D lenses on my D3100 but only at the narrowest aperture and it doesn’t AF so it’s not worth the savings at all. The mount on the G lens is better though and it’s heavier because there’s less plastic in it. I have the 18-55 kit lens and also a 28-85mm D lens and there is a pretty significant difference in quality between the two mounts and lens elements.

[cassie]

Since you are shooting on the Nikon DX format the 35 mm DX lens price point wise isn’t that bad at all. I just got the 35mm DX-f/1.8g for $200 new.

 

The Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 G (check your camera manual, you may need G lenses instead of D lenses in order for autofocus to work on your camera body) is in FX format only last I checked but would still work with your camera and is running around $240 a pop.

[cassie]

A lot of it looks like just snap shots to me. There isn’t much thought put into the lighting for nearly every single portrait, and many of them the light is distracting and unflattering to the person. Many of the pictures are too soft (which COULD be facebook but some are definitely not focused on the person’s eye). For example this one the background looks sharper than the family: https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1/1395825_601258973267079_654883671_n.jpg There is also a lot of spot coloring and general over processing. Some of them the color is off and the skin tones look bad. There are some pics that are OK in there but I wouldn’t consider them anything past snap shots, they almost seem more like the coincidental success from a string of spray and pray.

If anything, I think you should try ditching your photo editing software completely and work on nailing down the basics. Learn how to find the light, learn how to use your camera better, and practice practice practice. Looking at what you have up, I’d definitely say you aren’t ready to be shooting professionally. There are a lot of problems with your photos, but lighting I think is one of the biggest. Here is a video that I found REALLY incredibly useful. But it isn’t enough to just watch it- watch it and then grab an egg and photograph it like he says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM7CcUrUD2g

Also just a heads up- you may want to consider changing your hours on your facebook site. We don’t like to think that someone would call at 10pm and wake up the kiddos, but it happens (I’ve had it happen quite a few times actually, even though I think I’ve pretty much made it clear that I have kids in bed by 8pm). Some people get upset when you don’t answer the phone right away either, so I’d change it to hours that someone could expect to reach a live person on the phone. True you might not schedule their appointments during that time frame necessarily, but it’ll save you some grief when someone tries calling you every hour until they reach you personally rather than just leaving voicemails and waiting until the next day or when you’re back from lunch (I’ve had this happen several times too). It’ll happen regardless, but at least it sets a policy in place for your business and lets people know you aren’t ignoring them or have crappy customer service.

[cassie]

It sounds like what she needs to do (and others that have had issues with her in the past) is to get legal counsel. Hearing crap like this makes me thankful I have four uncles that are attorneys, and they pretty much cover all the bases from insurance companies to patents and copyright, lol.

[cassie]

Seth is right, she doesn’t have a file open for editing right. She just had that image set as her desk top image. And like CC stated, you can pretty much do in GIMP what you can in Photoshop. Some of the stuff you have to download  and add in plug ins but for the main part it’s all there. I would rather have  Photoshop but I just finished  paying for my second born child and have the coming one to pay for.

[cassie]

What cameraclicker stated- totally. Worst case she can definitely get it retrieved from her harddrive- it’s still there even if her computer doesn’t say it’s there. I’ve had data retrieved off of a harddrive that was even half smashed professionally.

I’m also curious as to what medium she got the photos in- CD? Dropbox? Of course dropbox she’s probably SOL since the faux probably already deleted them from her account.

[cassie]

I don’t think that ebi really meant it to be completely rude but it could have been said better. But there are many people going around out there without glasses that really actually do need them, they just haven’t realized it yet. I was one of those people- I probably should have had glasses at least in high school but I was 19 by the time that I got my first exam and glasses. I thought I had decent vision before then, and it certainly wasn’t horrible (it’s only like -1.25 and -1.5 which is basically nothing), but it was enough that glasses did actually make a big difference for me.

For me personally, it wouldn’t be worth the extra money spent on the equipment when I could just zoom in and double check really quickly. I’m already a pretty clutzy person to begin with which would lead to me somehow breaking it + my camera since it would significantly increase the awkwardness factor for me, plus the extra weight would put some strain on me carpal tunnel problems wise.

I actually think a tethered tablet even in an outdoor situation wouldn’t be any more awkward than having another gadget connected onto your camera body. You probably already have a bag with a lens or two in it, possibly a reflector, etc moving around with you already and even if you didn’t they are pretty lightweight and small enough you could just slip it into a small shoulder bag or satchel type deal with your phone and some other stuff. I think the only way the on camera monitor would not be awkward for me is if it is only mounted to a tripod during use.

[cassie]

Emilee, CC’s point though is that a gray card is just that- it’s gray. Grass and deep blue sky are colors, they aren’t gray (which isn’t technically a color at all) and they won’t work. It’ll screw your colors all up and your processing program won’t remove any color casts right. A gray card is also very specifically 18% gray to help get exposure right.

[cassie]

I basically did what JimC is talking about- I experimented a whole ton with things, picking a different thing to experiment with each week. I started with ISO, then shutter speed, and then aperture to learn exposure. Read the owner’s manual cover to cover so you can learn what the different things your camera can do is.

I also would consider taking a community college course. I know ours has some available for beginner beginners and covers the owners manual and all that good stuff, and then just very basic stuff, and moves into more stuff if you decide to take further classes on composition and manual modes.

Also I do think it’s important for us moms to spend a little money on ourselves. I know we tend to forget ourselves, but we deserve a little extra too, the kids can’t get all of it 🙂 But the awesome thing is that you can follow your kids around with your camera all the time and they’ll give you plenty of practice opportunities. And like JimC also stated, there’s nothing wrong with investing money in a hobby either. I’m literally tens of thousands of dollars into my favorite hobby (horse riding) and I continue to invest in it, because that’s what makes me happy. It makes photography cheap, haha.

You might also want to check out the website iheartfaces.com, it’s geared more towards the momtog audience and is pretty straightforward in their tutorials and all that.

[cassie]

If you look at it and cringe, then yes, pull it. Really just post a pic or two of what gets you super excited when you take pics of someone so you’re showing your best.

 

I’m assuming you switched to single point ficus from the dynamic range focus (I think that’s what it’s called?) That should make an enormous difference because the camera left to it’s own will  usually just focus on the closest thing, whereas single point will focus where you put it.

 

The reason you get lots of business it’s because often people are uneducated on what  subpar, average, good, and great quality are. They see cheap and look at the pics and think cute! But they don’t know about all the issues the pics have.

 

As far as editing, don’t even touch anything in photo shop right now. Totally skip editing for now. Teach yourself to get that look in the camera.  Breaking up with photo shop for a little bit will make you learn the technical side faster.

 

I’m confused why are you finding conflicting info? Or at least on what sort of things?  For the main part it’s all physics and  math. What I did was pick one technical  subject each week to practice (focus, ISO, white balance, etc). Then each week I added on until eventually I was shooting full manual. After that it was about looking for light.

 

The pictures will usually look better or worse once on the computer because you’re viewing them bigger and actually able to view them correctly. Unless it’s obviously wrong, you probably won’t be able to tell until it’s on the computer.

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