[Nightrose]

soaringturkeys: I do agree with you that it’s all about marketing. I was being facetious about free winning over discount, not trying to put a monetary value on photographic services.  I will say though that in many situations,  if people can get things for free, they will! Everyone likes free stuff 🙂

faux not funny: I think you’re right that people who improve are the ones who are willing to change their ideas…pretty much sums up everything in life really 🙂

[Nightrose]

Free always wins over discounted! That is until the clients get a bunch of sub-standard photos….people never seem to learn though, lol.

It’s so funny looking back on old photos that you once thought were the best thing ever, and then you see them again with wiser eyes and wonder just what exactly you were thinking….this happens to me all the time at any rate!

It guess rather than being closed off, it could be more of a case of people not liking to hear criticism about their work from others. It can be hard work to try and keep and open mind and take the feedback as a learning experience rather than a personal attack.

Then there are those whose egos are so massive that the very notion that they are anything but amazing is unthinkable, and therefore such a concept does not exist 😉

[Nightrose]

Costco in Australia are actually pretty good when it comes to prints. Their paper is decent and supposedly “archival quality”. For my every day snaps I will use them.   However, the difference in quality between them and a pro lab that I also use is like night and day! Yes the pro lab is more expensive but wow is their paper stunningly beautiful!  The richness of colours and monochromes is light-years ahead of cheaper places.  They also have the option of all photos being printed on a single printer, so there is minimal to no difference in colour quality within a single batch of photos.

[Nightrose]

Oh that’s a difficult one! I also still have yet to have all of my photos organised properly, and have a mix of digital backups on external HD and disks.  The raw files make everything massive, so I tend to back up all my original raws/jpegs onto external drives (trying to keep business and personal snaps on separate devices), and I back-up all the final jpegs onto DVD as well.   I find it very hard to throw the raws away completely!

Aside from having a million hard drives and disks, I have yet to figure out a better solution.   One of my thoughts is to archive everything by year.

[Nightrose]

I remember having my final project at high school absolutely ripped to shreds by the judges. I had worked for countless hours in the darkroom and spent crazy amounts of money on film and paper, and finished up with what I thought was a really good project. I got 42%. I was utterly, utterly devastated! So much so that I stopped doing photography altogether for a good ten years.

Looking back, being older and somewhat wiser, I can totally understand why I bombed – my subject matter was far too abstract and I had forgotten the rule of “keeping it simple”.  This was a hard lesson to learn at 18!   Fortunately I got over it, and here I am back doing what I love. Does everyone like my work? Of course not!  But I haven’t had a client complain about me yet, and if they did I certainly hope I could rectify the situation without having an epic tantrum 😉

 

[Nightrose]

Well I was trying to be nice but I suppose there is too much anger to diffuse this situation…oh well.

You still need to get a monitor calibrator 😉

I’m done!

[Nightrose]

Sorry you are upset, WD, but as with any form of art there will always be those who will critique your work (ie rip it to shreds).  You would give up on your dreams because of the comments of a few strangers (including myself)?  There is no reason that you need to stop taking photos, but as your client has indicated, your work isn’t quite at a sellable level yet. And if you can’t make your customers happy, then your business isn’t going to take off in the direction you would like.

Does this mean you give up and go home? No! Like anything in this world, photography is a constantly evolving process involving the study of new techniques, and practise, practise, practise!  The day you think you are great is the day you stop becoming so.

Now, some quick advice for some easy improvements you can make:  the first thing is to calibrate your monitor, so that you see true colours.  You can pick up a Spyder4 Express for around $100, and it pays for itself the first time you use it.  Basically you will see a huge difference in your monitor before and after, and it then makes colour correction of your photos a lot easier.

The second thing is that yellow casting in photos is going to make them look very dated very quickly. This also applies to any other gimmik of the month, like spot colouring, wonky angles for the sake of being “artistic”, and HDR, which has been done unto death.  Get rid of all the arty junk and focus on your subject – perfect your horizons, subject placement, focus on eyes, and the simple aspects which when done right, make a photo amazing. I would much rather look at a plain photo with amazing focus and beautifully balanced colours than something that has been over-worked and looks sickly yellow.

Hopefully you will change your mind about giving up. People here aren’t trying to make you do that, but you need to understand the outrage that many of us feel when we see work that isn’t up to a professional level being sold as if it is. Also, take these comments as a true and honest critique of your work. Strangers don’t lie, those who love you will, or at least will see you work through rose-tinted glasses.

Best of luck to you!

 

 

 

[Nightrose]

Can you link to evidence of this person attacking other photographers? I don’t see anything on her Facebook page, and it doesn’t seem fair to slander someone like this without sufficient cause to do so.

[Nightrose]

A case of all the gear with no idea!

[Nightrose]

What a shame! It must be so frustrating to not be happy with your photos. As a photographer I would be completely gutted if a client hated the photos I took, but at the same time I would definately want to be told, because there is always room for improvement! Feedback is of vital importance.

The first glaring problem I see is the colouring of the photos. That partial sepia gimmick that seems to be all the rage at the moment just drives me to tears!  Sepia only works when people are wearing ye olde outfits, otherwise it should be used sparingly or not at all. I wouldn’t even consider these to be proper sepia, more like random washed-out yellowish tones that suit nobody! I wonder if the photographer has calibrated her monitor…. 

Other issues: toddler bending over and being cute is ruined by the placement of the tree trunk behind her. Either zoom in so that the trunk takes up all of the background or move around to not have it there at all. Man holding baby with the fenceline being at the same height as the top of his head…ugh! The next photo is better composed, with the baby looking over Mum’s shoulder, and the fence creates an interesting background effect. The last photo of Mum and baby taken on an angle is one of my pet peeves – I can’t stand wonky angles and horizons. This is considered ‘arty’ but it only works in a handful of situations, and really I just like a nice straight-to-camera look. Symmetry is best 🙂

Using pop-up flash is also a very amateur thing to do. Proper lighting would have been either an external flash with a diffuser (even then I’m not a fan), off-camera lighting, reflectors, or even just using natural light to its fullest effects (eg: positioning people in correct angles so that light illuminates their eyes). 

These are just a few things that I have noticed….the colour is definately the most annoying aspect though. I don’t blame you for not liking it!

[Nightrose]

I have four words to sum up the three pages of posts here: Too Long, Didn’t Read!

 

[Nightrose]

The other thing that I’ve notice happen time and time again is that people don’t want to pay for a professional photographer, so they get someone in the family to take photos of the event in question.  Perhaps Uncle Bob has a “really good camera” and can therefore automatically take amazing shots in low-light with no actual training as a photographer. The camera does all the work dontcha know!

Earlier this year my husband’s distant relatives invited us to the christening of their twins. I asked if they had a photographer, as I’m always on the lookout for potential opportunities (although photographing for family is usually more hassle than it’s worth!).  They said they had the photography covered as the mother’s sister was going to do it. Ok fine, no worries. I thought I’d bring my camera along anyway, as it is not often that twins get christened, and I thought I’d get some practise in to keep my skills honed. We’re talking Greek Orthodox here, where a christening is a big event and the baby gets fully submerged in the font, not just a splash of water on the forehead.  The ceremony is also pretty boring, so I like to keep myself amused by taking photos.

Come the christening day, I had set up my camera settings and was just mucking around taking some shots of the church, which was absolutely stunning and had skylights so there was an amazing beam of light coming down right on the altar, lighting everyone’s hair up in a halo effect. Too awesome not to photograph!  The sister turned up and to my horror she had a mid-range P&S, which as most of you will know,  is next to useless when it comes to taking a number of photos in rapid succession – the load time between shots is insane! Plus you can’t get a fast enough shutter speed, as the one she had didn’t have manual controls and would have picked a slower speed over aperture (and ISO? what is that?).   To cut a long story short, I took a bunch of photos (making sure I kept out of her way, since that is only polite), and learned first-hand how challenging it is to try and photograph two babies at once!

A few weeks later I was asked by the family if they could see my photos. Apparently they hadn’t gotten anything useable from the sister and they were devastated.   They ended up offering me money for my photos because I’d gotten ones that were actually in focus, and so I ended up getting paid for it after all, yay!  I’m not that altrustic that I would have just given them the shots….shame on me?

This happened AGAIN last Sunday, at another Greek Christening. The cousins-in-law said earlier in the year that they were going to pay me to do the photography. I never heard anything else on the subject, and in the end was given an invitation to attend the christening as a guest. I’m at a stage where I have written family off as clients, because of disappointments like this.   I took my camera along anyway because my parents-in-law were overseas, and hubby and I would have had our arses in a sling if we didn’t give them some photos of the event, lol.   Turns out that the father’s brother had been roped in to do the photography. At least he had an SLR! With an external flash!!! However, the flash was facing forward with one of those pointless “diffusers”, and he hardly took any photos! This particular church has shocking light and I know from experience that using any kind of flash is going to either light everyone up horribly, or give the effect where foreground is lit up and everything else is hideously blackened, in a fine example of inverse square law.  I myself shot at high ISO with no flash, and used Lightroom to smooth out the noise afterwards.

I can’t wait to see the photos that they got…these are wealthy people and they could have easily afforded a professional. I don’t understand why they didn’t. It didn’t have to be me, but surely you’d want to have someone who knows what they are doing for an event as precious as a christening????? People are cray-cray!   Mind you, the mother once told me that I have a ‘nice camera’ when she saw some photos I took…..kind of says it all really.

Not that I’m bitter 😉

 

 

[Nightrose]

I hate to say that my first thought was also “GWC”.  The reason for this being that you state you will shoot “anything pretty much, after all a subject is a subject”….so why are all of your photos of scantily clad women? No male models? They’re subjects too!

I think your best album is of Gabrielle Scarlet – I like the contrast of colours between her hair and the blue hoodie, and the majority of her poses are strong and flattering. This album indicates you are trying to do something fun and creative, rather than focus on the lack of clothing.  You should do more photoshoots like this one.

The album of Leah Marie is the least successful, as a lot of the poses are unflattering and lean towards the “skanky” side of things. This group of photos screams GWC.

Remember that sexiness is not necessarily overt – smouldering eyes, strong poses and flattering outfits are usually far better than parading around in skimpy bras and knickers!

[Nightrose]

I’m hoping within another year or so to have a much more stable income from photography, once my studio is properly built. It is insanely difficult to make enough money when starting a photography business, and if it wasn’t for my husband “bringing home the bacon”, I would have crashed and burned a long time ago, lol!

 

[Nightrose]

“I SUCK with portraits. I really only enjoy nature, but nature doesn’t make any lens-money..”

Money aside, you should focus on what you love, and work on perfecting your nature shots (the ones you have are pretty good!).  I started out trying to photograph everything, and soon worked out that I really dislike photographing events such as birthday parties and nightclub scenes. I no longer do them despite their potential for income, because not being miserable is worth more to me, lol.  Ironically, I do enjoy weddings, but even those can only be done occasionally due to their incredibly stressful nature (and epic post-production workload).

My advice is to focus on the aspects of photography you enjoy, and develop a style/niche specific to you.  If portraits aren’t your thing, don’t do them!  🙂

[Author]

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