[MBChamberlain]

People seem to think that me calling them a fauxtog means that I think they are bad photographers or bad people. Some of them are quite good photographers in fact and if they were not charging people, I would be complementing their work.

I apply the word fauxtog to refer to them as imitation pros, not imitation photographers. I think it is rather presumptuous to ask people to pay them for the privileged of helping them learn, but I at least have respect for those who will do that and state categorically that they are still students. You are correct, my concern is for the clients when you start charging, but that is because everyone has a responsibility for the client.

I think that is probably the best answer to your question. A “real” photographer comes down to my definition of a photograph: “The snapshot allows you to gaze dimly on a memory, the photograph allows anyone to experience it anew.” There is no real bar for that, if you can perform that single function, you are a photographer. On this site, however, it’s the question of faux vs pro, and that is a completely different discussion. To be a pro, there is a bar, and it is very high, but not because I’m setting it there. When you go pro, the bar is set by reality. There is a level you have to be at to make it in business, and getting to that level only comes through study and experience.

I’ve worked with a lot of photographers who jumped into business too soon, and their reactions are almost always the same, “I had no idea that business was gonna be so hard.” In every single case, there was the same problem, they didn’t have a high enough skill level to support the business and they were having to make up the difference with hard work and sheer force of will and that was crushing them. I encourage them to stop charging not to crush them, or stifle them, but to save them from being destroyed. Don’t get me wrong, it takes a huge amount of humility to admit that their business was a bad idea, and their pride will take a huge hit to do it.

I will never quite understand why everyone always seems to think that they are immune to the forces of life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them for it, but to the person, they always think that they can beat the odds and make it by learning while charging. I’m not kidding or exaggerating when I say this, but when a photographer chooses to ignore my advice and continues in their chosen path, I write their name down in my calendar in the month that I predict life will catch up to them based on their skill level and tenacity. To stress how consistently this happens, I pick the right month better than half the time and have only been off by more than 3 months twice. I’m not screaming “hit the breaks!!” because I want to stifle them, I do it because I can see the cliff.

This is the area where experience comes into play. The thing about experience is how much time you’ve had to make mistakes and learn from them. You will understand this better as you progress in the industry, but photography is like a trail to the summit. Every time there is a break in the treeline you can look down and see how far you’ve come and how high you are and it is tempting to believe that you’ve reached the peak. Around the corner, though, there is more trail. Going pro is like reaching the summit, looking around, and finally having a clear view of much bigger mountains to climb.

Does this better answer your question?

[MBChamberlain]

Brandi,

The simple fact that you are interested in pursuing an apprenticeship is encouraging. In my experience, it is the best way to learn because it combines the theoretical with the practical. A class-based education is theory heavy and self-teaching is practice heavy, but to be a good photographer you need a good basis in both and the apprenticeship is the best way to go.

One piece of advice moving forward. Photography is a wide and varied field and one can spend a lifetime devoting themselves to one aspect of it and never learn all there is to know, so as you move forward and get ready to progress to the next phase of learning, experiment with different types of photography and decide what you most want to pursue. This will help you find the mentor that will help you most.

[MBChamberlain]

There are a few things I look at when I evaluate a portfolio on here. Top of the list are technical skill, consistency, and improvement because these are the backbone of actually being a profitable photographer in business.

I ask two questions normally, because everything else can be discovered by simply looking at the photos, do you charge and how long have you been shooting. The first is important because if you are charging, I will judge your portfolio at the same level I would evaluate any other professional. The second is used only to gauge growth and improvement, it tells me how fast you are learning, and that helps me to advise you on continuing. The reason I ask those two questions is for the reason your pointed out, I am looking to provide a professional review, not secure their services.

Technical skill is the first test to pass, this is not complicated to pass, if you demonstrate the ability to manipulate your camera without relying on Photoshop and post-processing to get a decent shot.

Consistency is the thing that causes me to label most photographers who come here for a review as fauxtogs. I believe that if you are going to offer your services for hire, your clients have a right to expect to get the level of product you present to them. Everyone can get a few good shots here or there. What I look for is whether or not each shoot in their portfolio is comparable in quality. We all have good days and bad days, but if you’re not consistent enough to produce high-quality work on your worst days, you’re not ready to charge for your work. Your clients should never be in a position where they are rolling the dice on whether they are going to get good quality work depending on how your day is going. I consider consistently average to be superior to good some days and bad on others.

Finally improvement. If I can look over a year of work and see that you are not growing and improving, something isn’t working as it should. Growth and improvement are a sign of passion for the art, when I don’t see it, I immediately suspect that the photographer is more concerned with the business than with the art or are more consumed with the prestige that comes from being seen as an artist, and either is a problem.

Twenty years ago, 9 out of 10 photographers failed within 3-5 years, and one would go on to have a successful business. In the last few years (largely due to the availability of less expensive digital cameras) the number of people starting a photography business has increased a hundred fold but the overall density of photographers who make it past that magical 5 year mark has not increased more than population growth would justify.

We must ask ourselves why this is. Almost every photographer that I have ever known to make it past the 5 year mark are technically proficient, consistent, and always growing. (Not riding the trends mind you, but actually improving as a photographer.) Look at it this way, if your technical proficiency is poor and you have to fix your photos, even if it takes you a mere 10 minutes per shot, on a one hour shoot with 30 picks, you’re looking at 5 hours of editing, totaling up to 6 hours of work for a shoot. A photographer who is proficient in their technical skills doesn’t need to edit their photos, and if they choose to, it takes a minute or two at most (artwork and retouching not withstanding).

Consistency is important because the further you get from your normal circle of acquaintances, clients become more and more focused on the product and less and less focused on the photographer. They hire you because they like your work, and if the work you produce does not live up to their expectations, you will end up with a host of problems. Consistency also affords a photographer the opportunity to increase their prices because their clients as you improve.

Improvement is the reason I so readily encourage photographers to get out of business and grow before they re-enter it. The formula for a successful business is:
10% talent + 60% skill + 10% hard work + 20% business savvy = profitability
The percentages represent the effectiveness of each ingredient. If you bring equal amounts of talent, skill, hard work, and savvy, you’ll be profitable, but if you lack skill, it takes 6 times as much talent or hard work to make up for the loss. This is why I stress taking the time to learn before going into business. If you devote your hard work to building skill instead of building your business, it is an investment that pays for itself and then some when you do get into business. Pik mentions that studying can suck the passion out of you, though I contend that if your passion is for photography and not praise it is impossible, being in business before you are ready will destroy your passion much faster, because without a high skill level, you’re working 6 times as hard to get the same outcome.

In short, being better than the work featured on the blog does not make you a pro. Producing work that is worth the client’s money does. To address the three you mentioned from a more practical and less philosophical point of view:

Malula has great potential, but her work lacks consistency and she is progressing at a snails pace if at all. (I suspect she knows this because she was careful to present not-for-hire images when she clearly charges most of the time.) She is talented, hard working, and has business savvy, but without the skill to back it up, I’d say the odds are 100 to 1 that the business will kill itself before they get to the point that they can support the business. I and others gave her the advice we did because we’ve been doing this a long time, and we have been around long enough to see a lot more in the images that just the images. Right now, she is struggling to be sure, and this is probably why she sought reassurance here, but her struggles are obvious in her photos for someone who has watched hundreds of photographers get crushed under the exact same circumstances. I’d estimate her current earning potential cap to be about $30,000 before expenses, which is essentially working for less than minimum wage. It would take her 15 years at her current progression to reach a skill level that would yield a living wage, but she would burn out long before she made it there. On the other hand, with two more years of hard study without the pressures of the business, she could easily triple her earning potential and be operating a profitable business within 4.

JVendetti’s work is, quite frankly, amazing for her level of experience. The problem I see in her work is mostly in the fact that she is wildly overconfident. I was extremely hard on her, admittedly, but I reacted that way because she was heading down a different bad road than Malula. She learned a little bit, and without understanding what she didn’t know, jumped into the deep end. I accept that the growth process is different for everyone. I’ve seen photographers become masters in 5 years and I’ve seen 20 year hobbyists who couldn’t shoot their way out of a paper bag. But it is impossible to go pro in less than a year, and in her case, she tried to do it the first day she picked up a camera. In 9 months of being in business, there hasn’t been any improvement at all, and at that rate, she will fail within the year. Again, the only way to prevent this is to stop, step back, and really put some time into learning. If she were to do that for 3 years, with as far as she has already progressed in so short a time, we’re looking at a photographer who could easily turn $250,000 per year.

MeganRay I believe is a lost cause. After gauging her reactions to critique, I judge that she has no concern for photography whatsoever. She wants to be an artist, has convinced herself she is one, and firmly believes that the best way to be an artist is to avoid learning anything about photography because it would “spoil” her.She’ll lose a few thousand dollars a year doing what she does and convince herself she’s made a profit.

I do not set the bar high because I’m an elitist or a snob, I set the bar high because there is a LOT of competition out there and photography is a very rough business to the point that even a skilled photographer can’t guarantee success. I hate to see potential wasted and so I work to push people to better things, usually through harsh honesty because they are getting more than enough encouragement from other places. If someone is gonna take the risk and go into business, I want to tell them how to stack the deck in their favor, and the best way to do that is to master the art. I am the first to admit that I am a very hard teacher, but I am much, much nicer than the completely unforgiving world of running your own business.

I will use your work as a final example to hopefully make my views a little clearer. Normally if I spotted a few images that look like yours littered in someone’s portfolio, I would label them a fauxtog. In your case, though, it is clear that you are not. When I look at your images, I do not get the impression that they look that way by accident. Rules broken by accident detract from an image, but you clearly know the rules and choose to break them because you desire a certain effect that adds to the image in each case. What’s more, you’ve defined a style for yourself and established a range within that style.

[MBChamberlain]

Yeahright,

I’ve had a very busy week, hence the delay, but I wanted to get back with you before it was over. I hope this will help you understand where I’m coming from and help you to identify areas for improvement.

The first image (0956) feels a little clunky to me. Among the things that kinda bother me about it are that I can see up her nose, she looks very uncomfortable, and it just doesn’t look clean to me. You need to be very careful when shooting under cloudy conditions, the effect of light scattering is great if the clouds are thin, but under heavy coverage, you get this dirty, snapshot look that makes the images look like they were shot with a point and shoot. It also looks like your focus is actually behind the subject by a few inches, the rock behind her looks much sharper than she does. It just doesn’t feel planned, it feels like the kind of test shot you do when you’re playing with framing. If you’d have moved around her enough that she was short lit instead of broad, gotten in a little tighter, and used a reflector to reduce the harshness of the shadows, this would be a much more pleasing shot. It would also solve the big black detail-less area of hair on her right side. Also be careful with merging, the branch behind her kinda looks like an antler as well.

The second shot (0947) is framed much better than the first, but again, you’re a little further out than I would recommend. You can capture the scenery a lot better by moving down and shooting a little wider, that way she could fill the frame a little better. I’d also recommend bringing her down to the lower right third intersection instead of centering her on the right third line. Just like the first shot, it’s got that dirty look because it was shot under heavy cloud cover without anything to break up the gloom. It also looks like the focus is off as well. If you focus manually, check your diopter, it may not be set correctly, if you use autofocus, look into now to calibrate it on your camera, that can help. The lighting is OK, but still broad lit and it’s generally preferable to make sure that the shadow from the nose doesn’t touch the lips. Also ask the models not to disjoint their elbows like that, I know they see it in the fashion magazines and it’s a coutour and crap, but it’s a bad habit to get into in anything but the highest end editorial work.

The third shot (0901), I would have probably thrown away. She just looks so awkward and uncomfortable it makes me uncomfortable to look at it. The posing shortens her legs and makes them look stubby, she just kinds gets lost in the background and she looks like she’s about to be sick. Practice working with models faces and the light, shoot with longer lenses whenever possible (I’m talking 150-200mm or more) to compress the features when you’re working with models. Most models do not look good face on without very precise lighting, 3/4 shots tend to look better. Position yourself in relation to the light to end up with short lighting and get a little higher. Remember that if you shoot low, it makes the legs, hips and belly look bigger, shooting high accentuates the face and upper torso and minimizes the hips and legs. One mantra I use is “if you have two of them, make them different” and try to avoid losing the models limbs behind her. Again, your biggest things to work on are lighting and posing.

The last two shots the lighting is much better, mostly because of the difference in cloud cover.

The fourth shot (0479) is a lot better off than the first 3, the color, balance, and overall look is much cleaner and the image looks a lot more refined. The same three problems do persist (focus, lighting, posing). The lighting (while better) could use some work in this case a reflector would have done wonders if you’d used it to bounce the sunlight into the scene. When you’re doing your TF work, practice getting the models to feel at ease. Unfortunately this isn’t something that I can really tell you how to do, you need to develop a rapport with the model that makes them feel comfortable enough with you to fully relax. Most people will get tense when the camera goes up, so you need to find a way to relax them, and how to do that depends entirely on your personality and theirs, though it gets easier with practice. When I’m working with just one model and they are having trouble, sometimes I’ll have them lay down on a bench and I’ll lead them through a few guided breathing and meditation exercises which usually gets them out of their own heads long enough to finish the shoot. It working with a couple, I’ll have them close their eyes and talk about things that are important to both of them, asking them to think about things like where they met, what they thought when they first saw each other, and stuff like that. This works well for me because I’m good at drawing out others emotions, but you’ll just have to figure out what works for you. I wish I could be more helpful, but every photographer must find their own way to deal with this because trying to mimic another photographer’s approach will distract you. When posing, have your models stand tall, avoid bunching the shoulders up to the neck, again, try not to hide the arms behind the people. For women, position their body so that it faces abot 45 degrees from camera, put their weight on their back hip or leg, turn the head back beyond the camera 20 or 30 degrees, then bring the eyes straight forward into camera. For a guy you do the same thing, but instead of bringing the face past the camera, bring it straight on to camera. These are the basic 1-3-2 pose and 1-2-2 pose. You can then rotate this pose as necessary, but the positions remain relatively the same. This will accentuate the femininity of your female subjects and the masculinity of your male subjects. Also, in long shots like this, I usually line up the subjects bodies long the third lines instead of trying to make their faces hit on the third intersections, this avoids the excessive head room. Also, try to shoot with a 4×5 crop it mind because it maximizes your print size versatility.

Shot five (0411) is overall better on the framing issue. She’s just a little too close to centered for me, but the head room is better. She’s almost short lit in this shot, which flatters her face better. The biggest problem with this shot is that she’s all scrunched up and it makes her look short and wide. Backing off and shooting longer while having her stretch her body would have flattered her figure a lot more than this shot does. One technical thing in this shot is that you’ve blown out the whites on the horse. This is hard to put into words, but you need your model’s body to be active but not tense. If you hold out your arm and let your hand dangle, that’s an inactive form, holding your wrist out straight, but without flexing all the muscles is active, and making a fist and flexing the arm is tense. Never allow a subject to relax into a position, if they are comfortable, the photo will look weak, but you need to keep them from over-compensating and tensing up, because that will make the photo look uncomfortable. The trick, and it just takes practice, is hitting that happy medium between tense and relaxed. You won’t always nail that perfect balance, none of us do every time, but being aware of it will help you spot it. I tend to have the model enter the scene and get comfortable, then I adjust her pose bringing her entire body active, which feel awkward but looks relaxed.

Anyway, I know this is a lot of negative stuff, but I wanted to focus on the areas that are most important to improve on first. As I said, you have a consistency in your work, so I know you’re thinking about your shots, but these finer points of photography are a bit more intangible than some of the simpler technical issues, and therefore harder to pick up quickly out of a book or a couple of tutorials online. I recommend finding photos you love and attempting to replicate the lighting and posing on those shots. Having an image that you can use as your goal will help you deconstruct how to do some of this stuff.

I hope this was helpful, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[MBChamberlain]

Pik,

To continue your analogy. I do not expect every photographer to be a Lamborghini. But I expect them to at least be a Honda. If you sell me a car I expect it to start every time I turn the key in the ignition and get me to my destination without breaking down every time, if it fails to do so more than once a year, it’s not a car, it’s a lemon on wheels.

You people seem to be completely missing my entire point because you’re fixated on this idea that I’m full of myself and want to tear down this young, talented photographer. I will say this in all caps in the hope you will get the point.

I WANT HER TO SUCCEED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the path to success is not the fauxtog path that she is currently taking. If I got some vindictive pleasure from destroying people, it would be much more effective to just let them continue marching dilutedly toward their own destruction, because failure is on the horizon.

Every single fauxtog featured on the main blog is charging for their work, were selected by the clients on Facebook, and both client and photographer are happy with the results. Assuming that if people are paying you’re not a fauxtog is completely missing the point.

I have been doing this a very long time and I have seen thousands of fauxtographers rush into business, have anemic success for a little while, completely fail to grow, raise their prices because they can’t afford to do it cheep anymore, and go out of business in debt or worse.

The general definition used in the real world for a professional is that it is someone whose work is worth charging for. Therefore, and I’ll say this in all caps so you get the point.

IF YOU CHARGE FOR YOUR WORK YOU THINK YOUR WORK IS PROFESSIONAL LEVEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you think you are still an amateur, or learning (and I’m not talking learning in the “we’re all always learning” sense, which we all are) and you charge for your work. You are, by definition, telling people you are a pro when you’re not. Even if you never say the words “I”m a pro.” Intentionally or not, you’re lying to your clients, and that is what bothers me about fauxtography.

Every last one of us produces substandard work when they are learning. When I retired, I took two years off from charging because I’d spent so long working with professional talent that I couldn’t get a decent pose when I was working with an amateur or a non-model client, with a pro, you get the pose you want from a few words, with a client you who doesn’t know the lingo have to explain how to pose, and that takes practice. If I had charged money for shooting while I was picking up that learning curve (shooting a lot of garbage in the process), I would have been acting like a fauxtog and that is unacceptable.

I am hard on people like the OP because I see potential in their work and I don’t want to see that wasted. She is phenomenal, for someone who has studied, but never really shot before. But to use your analogy, she’s a car without an engine, she doesn’t have the skill to propel her business and so she’s having to push it everywhere. But being in business, she hasn’t had the time to start building an engine because she’s pushing the car everywhere. There is no marked improvement in the 9 months she’s been shooting, and if she keeps doing what she’s doing, she will fail.

AND I DON”T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN TO HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And you people coming in here and telling her she isn’t doing anything wrong is risking that. I don’t say a word on this site unless I believe it is what the person requesting review NEEDS to hear, I couldn’t care less what she wants to hear and what you think I ought to say. I don’t get angry at their responses, although sometimes I respond with force, again, I think that’s what they need. But it drives me crazy to have people come in here, see me being hard on someone, and feel the need to offer undue encouragement because they feel they’ve got to protect her from the big bad bully who is only picking on her to make himself look big. Doing so proves that you not only don’t understand me, you don’t understand that in the real world, the people that are hardest on you are often the ones who are most concerned for your success.

I’ve walked the hard road to success in this business, I’ve helped who knows how many other photographers along that same road over the years, and I want to help the OP too. You are encouraging her to take the easy, fun path, when that path leads straight to a cliff, both for the business and her passion for photography. I encourage her to take the hard road, it isn’t always fun, it is never easy, but it leads upward and onward with no limits to how far and how high you can go.

If there is any question to if the path I am suggesting, while old fashioned, is a better path, let me add this, 20 years ago, the odds of starting a successful studio were not great, about 10:1. Nine out of every ten photographers failed and went out of business within 3 years. Today, now that the “charge while you’re learning” thing is popular, about 1 in 1000 start-ups survives their first 3 years, and better than half will fail in serious debt because of it. And in all this time, the total number of studios lasting more than 3 years had remained virtually unchanged (only increasing due to coincide with population growth).

At this point I have spoken my peace, I have already repeated myself several times on this thread and I tire of it. To the OP, I truly hope that you will take my advice and change to a track that will give you a fighting chance to succeed in what is an incredibly competitive and difficult field. If you choose to progress the way you are, I wish you the best of luck in beating the 1,000:1 odds that you will fail.

[MBChamberlain]

I agree with you that you don’t need to be rude to give criticism. When a person is open to the criticism and willing to listed, kind and gentle instruction works great. My original response was a hard truth, but it was delivered without sarcasm or rudeness. I complemented her progress so far, offered correction for her misconception of how much she had learned, and extended an offer to help further.

Unfortunately in this situation, she didn’t want to hear that, and in her response she made it clear that her position had been galvanized. I am enough of a student of human behavior to know that if that shell wasn’t cracked it before it had time to harden, it never would be. There was no malice in my response. She had built a defense against criticism, and that was what needed to be broken or it would have encased her and prevented her from growing in the future. I responded with a carefully gauged level of harshness, forcefulness, and yes, sarcasm in order to shatter that shell, but not to harm the person inside it. But in all that, I never rescinded my offer to help.

It seems to have worked. She came back a little shaken, but calm, collected, and ready to learn. And so the teaching can finally begin. It is my hope that now she can move forward and really get out there and learn and become a great photographer, because as you said, she is talented even if she is not yet pro.

I hope this will help you to understand.

Concerning the idea of not charging for services. Let me use another example that are closer to photography perhaps. Cooking.

If you wanted to learn how to cook and had only progressed as far as successfully making prepackaged meals, would it be right for you to market your services as a personal chef so that you could get paid for learning? That is preposterous. You would learn at home, experiment, cook for yourself and your family. It would cost you time, effort, and, yes, a lot of money. It isn’t enough to produce something edible, in order to charge for being a chef, it doesn’t have to be five-star quality, but you have to cook something home-made, nutritious and delicious with enough variety to fill an extended menu. An how would it be for you if you hired someone to cater your kids birthday party, a family gathering, or a wedding if all they could handle was prepackaged food? If you paid them to make home-made pizza for the party and they ordered the pizza from Domino’s put it on a tray and brought it over, marking it up ten times in the process? You’d be appalled wouldn’t you?

This, of course, wouldn’t work in the real world because people are generally good judges of food because they are exposed to it so much good food and the only people who they could get business from are those with very bad palettes. Photography is different. People aren’t exposed to good photography on a daily basis. They are exposed to snapshots, cell phone pics, memes, and the like. They have no view of good photography because they have never been exposed to it. So they, like you, look at work that is better than their own and assume it must be professional. I do not blame the clients for not knowing any better, and I don’t even really blame the photographer that much. Work of this caliber is only good because the bar has been set so low by the mass availability of photography. But those who claim to love and respect photography as an art form must fight to raise the bar or the art will be lost.

To continue with the food analogy, I’m half Italian and I grew up on a farm where my mother and both grandmothers were amazing cooks. It was a very rude awakening indeed the first time I went over to my friend Tom’s house and had his mother’s “cooking.” I was shocked (silently) at how much everyone at the table was enjoying the prepackaged lasagna while I could barely eat the stuff because it tasted of preservatives. After that day I set out to learn to cook. I am no great cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I cook all home-made food and the way people I know talk about my food you’d think I owned a five-star restaurant. I am not foolish enough to believe that I could walk into a restaurant and be a chef, I thank them for their compliments, but I know very well that they only praise my work because they don’t have enough experience with really good food to know that mine is only OK.

[MBChamberlain]

That explains a lot. I think I complete understand your position now. You can’t take criticism. Especially if it is public. Your professor didn’t love the shot you loved, so he must be a snob. I expect someone who charges people money for services as a photographer to actually produce photographs instead of snapshots, so I’m a snob. You have absolutely no concept that a bad review is an opportunity for growth, you’d rather attack the reviewer. Am I right in thinking that if you were in business, you’re the kind of person who would offer a full refund as a bribe to prevent someone from leaving a bad review of you? Am I hitting closer to the mark now?

My specialty was fashion and marketing before I retired. Some people loved my work, some people hated it with a passion. There were people who wouldn’t consider hiring me, and others who would call me first thing if they had a job. I look at every rejection as an opportunity in disguise. If you reacted to your teacher’s instruction like you’ve reacted here, I don’t doubt that they were completely justified in wondering if you’d learned anything from them. I take a lot of flack from certain circles, including the owner of my partner studio, because I’m more than willing to break the rules, but only if I’ve got a good reason before I do it.

When it comes to charging for learning, that is unacceptable. How would you react if someone read a book on being a plumber, bought a wrench, wrote it on the side of their truck and expected you to pay them for the privilege of letting them practice on your toilet? What if it was an electrician? Or a firefighter? Or a doctor? Granted, very few people are going do die from a bad photo, but the principle is the same. Back when I started photography, if you seriously wanted to be a pro, you didn’t go out on your own, you apprenticed with a master. I spent 4 years working for a master photographer, without pay, for the chance to learn from him. Slowly during that time, I started to set up shots and set up the camera, then he’d check everything before he shot the image. Then I started to actually take a couple shots during the shoot. By the end, he’d let me run a shoot now and again. He worked with me, he trained me, he was always honest and harsh at times.

My standards for being a professional aren’t actually all that high. If you shoot portraits, I expect every shot you deliver to be: well lit, in focus, exposed properly, composed well, artistically sound, and emotionally resonant. I’m a little more lenient in wedding and events because there are times you need to include a photo because of the emotional significance, but this is the exception rather than the rule and you don’t stick them in your portfolio. Also to be a professional, you need to be consistent enough that you can produce the same quality work no matter how tired you are, or how bad a day you’re having. If you’re charging, your client deserves to know what they are getting. If your quality is dependent on your mood, how much sleep you’ve gotten, how many cups of coffee you’ve had, or any other external factor, you’re not ready to be a professional.

On price, if you can’t afford a high-level pro, there are plenty of real pros out there starting their businesses that need good photos. Fauxtogs don’t hurt established photographers. We don’t want clients who can’t afford to pay out rates, they expect too much for too little. The people fauxtogs hurt are those who are trying to get a good portfolio together. They pollute the public consciousness by teaching the masses that bad photography is good photography, because the masses don’t know any better. People hire fauxtogs who will give them a disc because the real photographers (who are much better and charging about the same rates) care enough about their clients to ensure they get good prints. So the ignorant clients print their snapshots at walmart and think they got a great deal, and they must bet getting good photos because they hired a “professional.”

Like it or not, photography is a luxury. It is not a right. I have the same problems with someone charging for snapshots and calling themselves a photographer as I would someone charging natural diamond prices for lab created diamonds. It is dishonest. Fauxtographers are the guys on the street outside of a jewelry with 50 knockoff watches in their coat who will sell you a Rollex for 50 bucks. You can buy a $5 watch from them for $50 bucks or you can go inside and buy a $500 watch for $500. You’re saying that is acceptable because it costs to much to buy a Rolex. We’re saying you have the choice between buying a $50 Timex for $50 or a $500 Rolex for $500? Either way you get your money’s worth, so either is fine. All I ask of a watch salesman is that if I pay $50, I get $50 worth of watch.

I ask the same of a photographer, don’t charge unless you’re PRODUCT is worth the client’s money.  I stress product because they are not paying you for your time, they are paying you for your PRODUCT. Even when I charge by the hour, I am charging for the product, not the time. To be successful in any business, you must provide a good product at a fair value. If your product isn’t good enough to net you a good wage, it isn’t your prices that are the problem, it is the product. IHF is only partly right in her talk of pricing structures. You add up your costs, overhead, taxes, and a living wage, compare that to the value of the product you’re wanting to sell, and if the product’s value is higher, you’ve got a chance of making it in business. It is skill and experience on the photographers part plus economic considerations like supply and demand that determines the products value.

Before you reach that point, every hour of work you put in and every shot you take is an investment in your future. As I have said before, I don’t measure someone’s passion by how much they love what they do. There are a lot of things I love to do, but I’m not passionate about them. I love to rock climb, bicycle, and swim. But I’m not passionate enough about any of those things to put in the training required to climb half dome, enter in the Tour de France, or win a gold medal in the butterfly. True greatness will only ever come to those who are willing to toil in obscurity.

For the record, here are Chamberlain’s Three Laws of Photography:

ONE- The rules of photography are simple and finite, and they should not be deviated from.

TWO- You may break rule one if and only if you have a good reason why it will enhance the photo to do so. (“I want to,” “It’s artistic,” and “It’s impossible to do it right,” aren’t acceptable reasons)

THREE- The expectations of the client are equal to the inverse square of the amount charged in relation to the value. I.E. If you charge half the client will have 4 times the expectation. Charge a third and it will be 9 times. Charge nothing and the client’s demands become infinite.

[MBChamberlain]

I would be more than happy to provide a critique on a couple of specific images, it is much more effective than a critique of a body of work.

TF work is a great way to get experience, since the models are usually learning as well, you can help each other. Since you’re gonna buy Paul Buff stuff anyway, make sure you check out his essays on studio flashes.

http://www.paulcbuff.com/sfe.php

Then research short vs broad lighting (95% of the time, you’ll want to use short) and the basic lighting patterns. Keep in mind that you can do almost anything you want to do in studio with just the big light source in the sky and a reflector.

The rings shot would be fine if it were lit a little better, but the cliche that I was referencing is the hands heart thing that has suddenly become so popular… it just seems tacky to me, like selective color, it was cool the first time I saw it, then it got boring, now it just hurts my soul (overstated for effect). I find intertwined fingers work a lot better to convey the emotion, the heart thing just feels forced.

Portfolios are tricky, but it is true that quality is better than quantity. Every shot should be good. 10 great shots are better than 10 great shots, 10 good, 4 mediocre, and 1 bad. For my web site, I still need to pull my best work and make up a gallery of wedding images, but I do link to a couple of entire wedding days. This includes shots taken by second shooters and shots I include for emotional resonance for the specific client even if I don’t feel they are good enough to print. I guide clients through the process of picking their images for enlargements and albums, so I avoid them printing the less than stellar shots even though I’ll put them on the web site. If there is any question in your mind that a shot might not need to be in the port, don’t put it in. Never keep shots in your portfolio more than two years, and always look through it from time to time and eliminate shots that don’t represent your skill level, replacing them with more recent shots. I keep a print portfolio and save all of my old prints all the way back to the 80’s. It’s fun from time to time to look at what I thought was portfolio worthy back then. Though it’s a little surreal to look at your own work and realize that you’d throw it away at a glance today when you’d put it in your portfolio a few years earlier.

I also keep more than one portfolio. I have them for fashion, general portraits, seniors, weddings, and general artwork, which are the five areas I do work in. Most have only 15-20 shots, that’s all it takes to get a booking if the portfolio is solid.

[MBChamberlain]

Good call SEC, Zakia’s work should definitely be on the required reading list for photographers.

 

[MBChamberlain]

Creyes,

Let me try to explain this in terms that you can understand. You say you are a mom, so I understand that it is in your nature to protect and offer blind encouragement. So let’s equate this to an experience with your kids.

Let’s say you have a 5 year old little boy and he has started to play t-ball. He’s the best on his team, bats .900, and has even progressed to hitting without the t in practice. He looks at the pros and sees that they have a batting average of .180-.250 and comes to you to ask if he can be a professional ball player.

If you react the way you have here, you’d rush out to the nearest major city and insist that their baseball team give your son a tryout. When the coach informs you that your son weighs less than the average equipment bag and doesn’t have the strength to throw from the mound to the plate, you berate him, insist that he’s arrogant and doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that your son is amazing and that he would do well not to discourage your son. Let’s suspend reality for a moment and assume that the coach gives him the tryout just to make it so he doesn’t have to deal with the crazy mom anymore. Your son goes to his tryout, and faced with a 90mph fastball for the first time, swings and strikes out, over and over and over again while the players laugh at him and the coach shakes his head. On the way home, the boy is in tears… you try to tell him he’s amazing, but now that he’s seen what amazing really is, he’s broken. He quits his team, and never swings a bat again. All because of your encouragement.

Now let’s look at this same scene my way had my son come to me with the same request. I sit the boy down and explain that he’s only a boy, and that playing t-ball isn’t the same as playing pro. I encourage him, not for his abilities, but to his potential by being honest and telling him that he’ll need to work very hard if he wants to be a pro player some day. He works hard, I take him to the batting cages, work with him as he progresses to little league, then senior league, than high school. His hard work pays off and he gets a scholarship to play baseball at the college of his choice and he’s picked up after graduation by a minor league team. I keep encouraging him to improve. He works hard, and finally, 20 years after he came to me wanting to be a pro ball player, he’s picked up by a pro team.

It would be utterly ridiculous to take the first approach with your child, so why is it any less ridiculous to do it in this situation?

Hard truths are always preferable to comfortable lies. If you come to me for advice, I tell the truth, I do so in the hope that the OP will in fact reach that potential. In order to grow, you must understand where you are and what direction to go. I’ve got experience in the business. I know how hard it is, I know what it takes. I know that if you start business before your skill is strong enough to support it, you have to support it with sheer will, and that is a crushing weight.

It is something about photography that I hate, but roughly 80% of all professional photographers who have been working over 5 years are men while around 75% of those working less than 5 are women.I’ve never been able to figure out why, but I am learning, through my interactions on this site, a reason that finally is starting to make sense. It’s their female friends who don’t understand that encouragement can be as dangerous as it it beneficial. Moms like you. Moms who get together and encourage other moms that their pictures are amazing and that they should go into business. You build them up with the highly addictive drugs or praise and status, then rush them to their pro tryout before they’ve mastered the basics and think you’re helping them. You’re not, you are dooming them to be crushed, their passion destroyed, their hopes dashed. You are unwittingly damning them with your good intentions.

I don’t care what you think of me, I don’t care what the OP thinks of me. It isn’t my problem, so I can tell her the truth in the hope that it will help her. I’d rather she hate me forever and succeed than have her like me and fail. The best teachers I ever had were not the ones who handed out easy A’s, who coddled and told me I was wonderful. The best teachers are the ones who focused on all that I could be, who gave me the tools to learn and left it up to me to grow. I didn’t like them at the time, but now that I’m older and more mature, I appreciate them more than the teachers I loved at the time, the latter I can’t even remember their names, the former (Gloria Apple, Jim Springer, Betty Endelman, Sandra Bade, Dennis McMaken, and Dan Shaffer) I will never forget.

[MBChamberlain]

How long you’ve been doing it is merely something that helps inform me how best to advise you in proceeding. The question of which you charge is paramount. If you are not marketing your services you cannot be a fauxtog because the definition of a fauxtog includes charging for sub-standard work.

If you were going for a certain look in your first shot, it does not enhance the shot in any way, so I would say that it probably not an experiment you want to put into your portfolio, it looks very much like a mistake.

Your biggest weakness is probably lighting, sometimes it is decent, sometimes it is very awful. Remember that available light does not mean ignore the lighting and hope for the best. When you shoot in the real world (as opposed to a studio) you need to work with the lighting almost as though it is another model in the scene. Working with available light is very limiting, but can produce amazing work with a little extra effort.  It will make you explore options you wouldn’t if you had control over the light. Art through adversity applies here. This is the stumbling block that would make me classify you as a fauxtog. Your composition, posing, use of cliche’s and lack of finesse in processing are all things you should be working on and I would advise working on them some more before going pro, but they aren’t really breaking the shots for the most part. Exposure and contrast issues will be largely corrected by learning a little more about the lighting as well.

Just because I don’t think you’re there yet, doesn’t mean I don’t think you can get there. You’ve been at it long enough that I know you enjoy what you do and your work is fairly consistent, so I know you’re thinking. I suspect most of your problems are probably resultant from either not realizing your weaknesses or just not knowing where to go to get the information you need to continue. Trying to maintain a business while still having the freedom to shoot what you need to learn and grow is almost impossible, and if done, slows your growth tremendously. If you step back, shoot only for yourself with the goal of improving your lighting with the help of an experienced mentor, you could easily be up to pro level within a year.

I recommend you sit down with every shoot and throw away 90% of your shots. I know this is tedious, but write down why you threw away what you trashed and why you kept what you did. Doing so will help you identify what works and what doesn’t so you can do the things that work on purpose and better avoid the pitfalls.

I see a ton of potential in your work, so get out there and harness it.

[MBChamberlain]

Two important questions before continuing, how long have you been shooting and do you market your services?

[MBChamberlain]

Megan,

What you are describing is a branch of retouching called photo-art. I’m not saying that photo art is bad, and I know that is the look you’re going for. My point is that photo art is only as good as the photo. If it is not a good photo, it will not be good photo art. I’m not a photo artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I have learned through what little experimentation I’ve done with it that if you want to do it, you must shoot your images in a very specific way depending on the effect you want and you must do it with a level of technical precision beyond what is required for normal shooting.

If you take a photo with bad lighting, bad composition, bad framing, and bad exposure and try to make photo art out of it, you get photo art with bad lighting, bad composition, bad framing, and bad exposure with the added problem of now being bad photo art as well. And to be perfectly frank with you, if your goal is to “look more like a painting or almost animated” you’re not succeeding there either, I don’t get the impression that that is your goal, and the images don’t look that way at all, they look like they have been mangled by someone with only the most basic understanding of how to use Photoshop.

If the photo isn’t good enough to sell, trying to turn it into photo art to make it salable makes the problem worse, not better. I have done some stylized work for some of my clients.  Take this image for example:

http://chamberlaindigital.com/fashion/albums/guys/images/D30_3420.jpg

The client requested something that had an old glass plate feel to it. So I whipped this up (took about 4 minutes). The image itself is solid, good lighting, good exposure, good focus. Editing is simple, complements and enhances the emotional impact of the image. But if the image had been bad, I could have stylized it until the end of time and never gotten a shot that would have pleased my client, let alone myself.

Either way, you can’t get away with sloppy shooting if you want to create real photo art any more than a painter could get away with using poorly mixed paints to try to create on canvas.

You may not use the term professional photographer. But you call yourself a photographer and charge for your work, so you style yourself a professional none the less.

The biggest reason I say that you don’t go in with something in mind and create that is that you shoot one decent shot among 10 really really bad ones. That speaks of spray and pray to me. You may have something in mind, yes, but you don’t understand how to make it happen, you just shoot a lot of shots and hope something materializes.

 

Sharra,

I’ve never been impressed with Kelby’s work (as a teacher), he seems to be a tutorial hound, but he doesn’t really explain anything well enough to consider it teaching. You need a good understanding of what he’s doing to adapt the tutorials to your own images and I don’t feel he supplies that. His work is excellent, but he just doesn’t know how to teach it well. I’m familiar with McNally and Peterson’s work, but I’ve never read their books or taken their workshops. My inclination is that their stuff, while good and accurate advice, can actually be harmful to someone who doesn’t have a good solid foundation though.

One of the problems with learning from the internet these days is that the information hits you somewhat at random. A good book will provide a much more focused approach. It will cover the major points of technical understanding in a straight forward and methodical way that makes sure you learn things in an order that they are of use to you. There is just too much to miss if you learn from blogs and tutorials at random.

This is a good example, today I was out running a few errands and I spotted a guy shooting pictures in the park. He had his flash pointed straight up into the sky while he was trying to shoot some people sitting in the grass. I know he read on some blog somewhere that it’s better to shoot your flash pointed up so you get better lighting. He just doesn’t understand that that only works if you have a ceiling to bounce off of, and it doesn’t help you outside because you can’t bounce the flash off the sky. This shows me that he’s trying to tackle the finer points of lighting without the basic understanding of how light works that every photographer needs. This connects back to the Kelby comments, you can’t understand how unless you understand why as well.

[MBChamberlain]

I apologize for the delay in getting back with you, but I had some unexpected work come in that needed completing and I wanted to make sure I gave your critique the time it deserved.

The first image is one that I would have selected if I had picked your three best, but only for its emotional impact, not for its quality as a photograph exactly. Be very careful when shooting in the shade, it causes as many problems as it solves. The biggest problem in this image is actually the expressions, the young lad is expressive and connecting with the camera, but a photographer has to be able to pull that same emotion out of the mother as well. Her face is a bit dead and here eyes are looking at the camera instead of connecting with the viewer. The lighting is extremely flat (one of the problems with shooting in the shade) which makes the mother’s face look puffy. It really needs either a light source or a reflector to bounce sunlight into the shaded area to give the faces a little definition. The pose is also straight on and the framing is a little awkward. Shooting face straight into the camera causes a flat wide look whereas good lighting and a good angle can flatter the curves of the face and really bring out the beauty of the woman’s bone structure. If you had been at forehead level or slightly higher, rather than at nose level, you would also have hidden her very slight double chin which would have flattered her as well.

When shooting maternity you have several things working against you, almost all women gain weight when they are pregnant, and you have to minimize that as much as possible. Seeing photographic evidence of that fact, especially knowing that it is a permanent record, is not a good way to garner repeat business.

The brightness in the background is a bit distracting, the DOF is at least shallow enough that it doesn’t feel like there is a merging problem exactly, but the slightly higher angle would have allowed you to eliminate all of that as well. The background of an image should always add to the image, not detract from the subject. You should also avoid letting your clients wear short sleeves for head and shoulder’s portraits, the skin showing under the boy’s arm and on her back arm are both distracting. I would also prefer this image be cropped in such a way that they are off to one side or the other, but I’d slide them left and have the boy drop his shoulders to eliminate the hunchback effect you’re getting from him. I also recommend avoiding stripes in clothing for a shoot. I also recommend my clients not wear white if they have dark complexions and hair or black if they have light complexions and hair. Contrasting shades cam be almost as bad as contrasting colors for getting a good solid exposure. In this image, the white stripes on the boys shirt draw attention away from their faces, and that isn’t a good thing.

On to the second image, all things considered, this is not a good shot, I would, however, include it in a shoot portfolio for one purpose and one purpose only, the expression on the baby’s face as the mother kisses him (I think him anyway) is lightning in a bottle, and that makes up for all the technical failings of the image. It is one of those rare cases where something happens that makes up for the technical deficiencies.

The background of the shot is extremely busy and distracting, as mentioned before, no short sleaves, and I think that’s her arm on the left hand side, or maybe it’s a pillow, either way, it’s distracting. You have somehow managed to give her neck wrinkles and a double chin even though you can’t see her chin. This photo would be a hundred times better if you cropped it down to just her face and the baby in a square crop though.

The butterfly lighting on the mother from this angle isn’t working well, especially since the shadow on her lip makes her nose look absolutely enormous. All around, this photo is extremely unflattering to the mother. The skin tones are a bit off and the entire area between her cheek and shirt just looks off to me, I really hope I’m seeing it wrong, but, there is not delicate way to put this, it looks like she’s extremely deformed. Just take a look at that area and ask yourself what is what and were everything is coming from and going to and you should see what I’m talking about. Let’s just say laying down requires extra, well, support… and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

On the third image, the first thing I noticed was what looks like a serious math error. I certainly hope her pregnancy doesn’t last 18,118 years. You’ve covered up the all important dot under your exclamation point and those kind of details are important. That isn’t even considering that the chalkboard thing is extremely cliche. Shooting into the sun at sunset is a very tricky proposition. If you don’t use supplemental lighting, you blow out the sun and sky like you have here. If you expose for the sky, you silhouette your subject. Either way, it looks amateurish. The use of no sleeves works here to show off her tattoos, if that is your goal, but using a short skirt like that and showing her knees and legs underneath it makes her look bloated, and even more because she has locked her knees.

The dutch angle is a little off-putting for me, and it definitely looks like she’s got a tree growing out of her head. The color also lacks any of the warmth that I associate with sunset. It looks more like you white balanced for the scene instead of white balancing for daylight so the natural colors of the evening would shine through. The way she is looking down makes her neck look very fat, and I assume that since you posted this in October with a due date in June she isn’t showing yet. The way the chalkboard is posed and your choice of outfit makes her look like she’s already 4-5 months pregnant, and that isn’t what you want to convey with 8 1/2 months to go. The angle of the shot has her nose breaking her cheek, and that makes the nose look quite a bit bigger. This image just isn’t becoming to the subject at all.

Those are the biggest issues with these images, but they are common in a lot of your shots, so hopefully that will give you something to be going on with.

Remember to keep learning and working hard to improve, you’ll get there.

[MBChamberlain]

With all due respect, I have to disagree with IHF… I don’t see very much creativity in your work at all. When I glance through your portfolio, what others (yourself included) see as creativity, I see as a person who has absolutely no clue how to get what she wants out of a photograph. I’m not saying that you are not creative, I’m just saying that it isn’t showing here. Right now the work is a little soul-less.

My definition of an artist is someone who either sets out to say something and effectively conveys it in their chosen medium or someone who sets out to ask a question and effectively gets you thinking about it through their medium. You, my dear, are no more an artist than a pianist who can’t play the piano or a painter who doesn’t know how to hold a brush. The only difference is that photography is a medium that occasionally produces a result whether you know what you are doing or not.

You have some very nice shots in your portfolio, but it is maybe 1 in 100. And that is only 1% of what’s in your portfolio, and considering what you consider to be acceptable, I cringe to think what your rejects must look like. Then you take the bad shots and try to cover for yourself in Photoshop, making them even worse because you don’t understand good editing procedures. (I won’t even talk about the fact that there isn’t a decent black and white photo to be found in 3 years of images.)

Basically, this portfolio is an all around mess, and I actually feel sorry for each and every “client” you have duped into thinking your work is worth their hard earned money.

If you want to be a photographer, I don’t want to discourage you, but I do have to get real with you. It takes YEARS of study and hard work to get to a point that you can see it in your head and then make it come into existence. When I work with a client, I meet with them, get a feel for their personality, their passion, their soul. Then I consider how best to capture that spark within them. I see the shot, then I make it be. I know the rules, but sometimes I choose to break them for the sake of creativity, but I do so with intent, I know that I’m breaking the rules and there is a purpose to that act. And for the record, I never retouch a photo that isn’t work selling to the client exactly they way it is.

Good art is 10% creativity and 90% knowing how to use a brush. So if you want to be an artist and you want photography to be your medium, you have to learn how to take a good photo. If you try to learn by trial and error, you will always be 170 years behind the times, because you will never progress more than one lifetime’s experience can allow. You have to get out there and learn. I suggest reading the London and London text (check used book stores the older editions are more in-depth), then pick up Grimm and Grimm, John Hedgecoe’s photography handbook and Horenstien and Hart’s book is pretty good too. That will teach you the basics of how to work a camera and how to get a decent shot. The move on to studying studio lighting (this will help you immensely in all aspects of lighting, especially natural light). Learn posing, study body language and non-verbal communication. Take a class in being a mime if you can find one. Take some acting classes and learn about darkroom techniques. Then, once your photos are good enough to sell without retouching, you can pick up Photoshop for the first time, because then and only then will it be a pole vault instead of a crutch.

Only after investing all that work and time into your art will your time be worth enough to charge for it, but this is the true test of your passion. You don’t test an athlete’s passion when they are standing on the podium getting a medal, you test it when they have to get up at 4am, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for practice, for 10 years. If you don’t have the kind of passion to work hard, unpaid, and without recognition for a good long while to get good, you don’t have any passion for it at all, and you would be better off to find something you are passionate about instead of something you enjoy. I suspect from reading your comments and looking at your photos that you don’t really care that much about photography (if you did care about the art, you’d be improving over time), but you LOVE the praise and attention you get when you do it, not to mention the prestige that comes from calling yourself and “artist”.

Here are a couple of good rules of thumb for a professional photographer:

A professional photographer doesn’t need to edit their images to sell them to the client, and if they do edit them, it takes less time than it did to shoot them. If you are spending more than an hour editing a 1 hour shoot, you’re a fauxtog. (It should be closer to 30 minutes, this rule does not apply to commercial clients.)

A professional photographer produces superior quality work on their worst days, not just their best. If you’re charging people and you can’t produce the same quality work on a bad day as you do on a good one, you’re a fauxtog.

A professional photographer never puts their own priorities above those of the client. If you aren’t completely focused on giving the client good value for their money, you’re a fauxtog.

A professional photographer never delivers a photo unless it is exposed correctly, well lit, framed well, in focus, artistically sound, emotionally relevant, and makes the subject look as good or better than they do in real life. If you hand a client an image that doesn’t meet these basic criteria, you’re a fauxtog. (There is a little room on this when shooting events for photos of personal significance to the client, but you should never blow them up.)

[Author]

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