[rookie35m]

As a professional service provider and a staunch fiscal conservative, here is my take: Capitalism cures everything. Those students have every right to open a photography business. With no experience they will undercharge and produce DSLR snapshots versus true images. The market will take care of the rest. Once they get through the family and friends sessions, they will be left to picking up leads from referrals (from more people with no budget for a true photographer). Anyone that does this for real knows what things cost and how much you have to charge to make this a full time endeavor. They will either go out of business or stay in the mediocre pool. Either way, it doesn’t affect me. In fact, we need people in all aspects and values of photography. Their customer will never be mine and my customers will probably never be theirs.

In short.. people worry to much what someone else is doing. This site was amusing for five minutes but its really filled with more mediocres that seem to be upset that their low end pool of customers is actually affected by an amateur or newbie. That’s not a knock on the prolific posters but you’re work is mehhh.. $150/$200 per session stuff. Work on your own business and the newbies and hacks work themselves out.

 

OP, you are offering a service. Who the hell cares what anyone does after they complete your course? You can lead a horse to water….

[rookie35m]

That was a little big and got compressed vertically. Click for the full image.

[rookie35m]

Won’t load from photobucket

 

[rookie35m]

I would lean towards Stef’s advice when thinking about starting a business. The technical stuff.. how to file your legal entity, licensing, contracts, setting up your books, etc is easily handled by research or getting professional counsel. The part where you are on your own is in marketing and sales. Every business is a success or fail based upon their ability to market and sell. That may make your average passionate photographer or hand-made jewelry maker cringe but it is reality. These are some tips I have learned to establish in 25 years of multiple start-up companies:

• Who is my market and is that market viable? In my case I live just outside of Philadelphia. I’m surrounded by affluent suburbs, pricy venues and dense population.  There is a very lucrative market for wedding shooters and portrait photography.

• Am I properly capitalized? With little-to-no client base, the investment in equipment and advertising comes out of pocket. The biggest death sentence for start-ups is running out of money. (having a full time job while starting a business can be grueling but gives you a safety net). I agree with the above that business and your personal money are completely separate. Its okay to seed a startup with personal capital but that should be treated like a loan from a bank and paid back on a timely and consistent basis. That leads into:

• How much do I charge? Whatever you think it costs to run a business, double or triple it. Just because you filled up the family SUV with gas doesn’t mean that the fuel you use driving to a gig isn’t a business expense. To know what to charge you have to know your overhead. Here is a good calculator to give you an idea of expenses and how they will parlay into your billing.   https://nppa.org/calculator

• Am I dedicated enough to this endeavor? Everyone starts with passion. That’s why you hang out a shingle that reads, “Photographer”. As Stef mentioned, that quickly fades into having to live and breath your business. Can you work eight hours per day at your full time job and come home and spend 4 hours editing, doing your books, making calls, scheduling, handling customer service, performing equipment maintenance, designing your next marketing piece, and updating social media? Add in the actual shoots and there goes the last bit of personal and family time you may have previously enjoyed. One has to look hard at reality and beyond the passion for holding a camera to answer that.

None of this is meant to scare. There are so many benefits to owning a successful business and making money by doing something you love. The problems arise when people put the benefits in front of common sense. A very good book to read is E Myth. It tells the story of how being a good technician has little to do with business success and outlines quite a few things many business owners do in their race to failing. Once you correct (or preclude) those mistakes, things start to make sense and you make money.   Good Luck!

 

[rookie35m]

That was the one that did it for me too. I have no problem with experimenting but to look at that image and think that its worth publishing (anywhere) indicates someone that needs to return to square one and learn composition and light theory.

[rookie35m]

Watch your cropping and don’t let models do the duck face.

[rookie35m]

You are at a completely different level in your career. You’re investing in education and equipment and you have a good eye.  She is another in a long line of Instagram/Facebook trying-to-be’s with a point and shoot who will never charge enough to be able to grow a business. That’s harsh but it is what it is.

[rookie35m]

Seeing outstanding composition with your bare eye takes a few years to develop. My only suggestion is to fill your frame a bit more and reduce the headroom in your images. I like your silhouettes but your lens is holding you back. Faster glass will blow out the background and isolate your subjects better. You can try to cheat the system a little by zooming in to max focazl length and keeping the lens at its maximum aperture. You’ll get closer to softening the background but it won’t reach pro level until you invest in something that can shoot 100 mm at f2.8 or faster.

[rookie35m]

These are great snapshots. Its more important to enjoy the times with your children and have a photographic log of their lives than it is to achieve image excellence.. if you are not a professional. But you can turn snapshots into decent photography by creating interest. Just some general tips for you:

– don’t center your images.  ( not a hard and fast rule, but a good guideline)

– watch your headroom and your crops. If you are capturing an image that includes a wrist, get the whole hand into the frame. Too much headroom and not filling your frame turns images into less interesting snapshots.

– Don’t be afraid to get on the ground. I think your angles were good. Good images capture angles we don’t normally see. Usually we see children below our eye level and we photograph them that way, the image can become mehhh. The same goes for flowers or geese on a lake. As my mentor drilled into me.. use that sneaker zoom.. put your knees in the dirt.

– This may be a personal preference but the best images to me capture interaction.. either with the environment or other subjects. This was mentioned above about taking more candid style shots. That moment capturing a child happily playing in leaves is the kind of shot that elicits emotion. A person sitting on a log with a half smile, half sneeze expression.. not so much.

– On the technical side, you’re exposures aren’t bad and a couple I took a closer look at have the eyes in focus. Its more the composition that suffered in this set.

 

[rookie35m]

Kourtney Art And Design has some weird stuff and violates just about every “avoid this when taking pictures” suggestion. The Photoshop.. she is experimenting. Why it makes her public portfolio.. who knows?

Here’s one I found in my area. She is another 20 something kid with a Nikon D200 and has no clue how to use it. (nobody take offense at my use of kid for a 20-something.. I am 48 and have been shooting for 30+ years).  I’ll start you here and let you explore: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=194516614005524&set=a.169519546505231.6962.104048769718976&type=1&theater

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