[Closed] Professional Portrait Photography = Blackmail

imagine how cross they are at people like you - you should have known the prices before turning up and using their time, expertise and maybe facilities to get some good shots and now you bleat about the cost ?

(I've done it too, but at least I knew I was going to be shafted
... and I blame my wife 😀 )

A couple of years back we won a family session with a portrait photographer in the local paper. However, on the day he forgot that it was a freebie.

He almost shit with disappointment when we handed over the letter that he had sent to us.

Nice enough pictures, but not worth a couple of hundred quid.

You... had a photo shoot and are shocked that you now have to pay for half a day's work? Did you not know prices beforehand? What am I missing here?

Do you mean that you might as well have all the photos for free because they've been taken? The thing is, a good amount of time-consuming post-processing will go into every 'production' shot, and I doubt any photographer will want you flashing around inferior examples of their work which is just raw data out of the camera, potentially devaluing their brand.

Yeah, I fully accept I'm the dick in all this.

I'm glad that portrait photographers earn a living, hell I wish everyone could earn a great living, but it is a bit scammy, a lot of the photographers do the you've won a free session, woooo, ok fair enough, but then charge a colossal amount for the photos, my old dear got done for £300 for 10 admittedly pretty good digital photos. It's like the internet, only £1.99 for broadband, £18, line rental. Or the pricing of budget airline tickets.

"imagine how cross they are at people like you - you should have known the prices before turning up and using their time, expertise and maybe facilities to get some good shots and now you bleat about the cost ?
(I've done it too, but at least I knew I was going to be shafted
... and I blame my wife )"

He's going to end up loving me, I fear. 🙁

I think a lot of photographers have outdated business models. They have a cheapish fee for the shoot, then try and make money by selling prints afterwards. Except no one wants to buy prints any more.

Better to agree a fee beforehand, including a specified number of photos, as high resolution digital files. Then you can share them online, or make any prints you want yourself.

They take a ton of photos, then they've got a load of pics precious to the customer. It's like the customers giving the photographer an emotive gun to put to his head.

Give me a poorly composed spur of the moment shot that captures some real memories any day. (Plus you don't have to moan about paying the photographer as he/she's not trying to scrape a living!)

"I'm glad that portrait photographers earn a living, hell I wish everyone could earn a great living, but it is a bit scammy, a lot of the photographers do the you've won a free session, woooo, ok fair enough, but then charge a colossal amount for the photos, my old dear got done for £300 for 10 admittedly pretty good digital photos. It's like the internet, only £1.99 for broadband, £18, line rental. Or the pricing of budget airline tickets."

Yeah, in this case a family member bought us the session as a present for £60. But what that's really done is to commit me at least to a further £140 to get 6 jpegs. ...and probably a row with the wife who perceives anything less than £700 for the jpegs of the lot as somehow betraying our kids.

Again I'm sure if we'd done the deal upfront we'd have got every decent shot he got for £150 but I didn't think of it.

I have a DSLR and a reasonable lense. I can't help but think that a decent book on composition and a half day taking a lot of images would give equally good results.

"what makes them precious? Memories? "Oh wow honey, you remember when we posed for a photo 5 minutes ago? That was a special time"
Give me a poorly composed spur of the moment shot that captures some real memories any day. (Plus you don't have to moan about paying the photographer as he/she's not trying to scrape a living!)"

Agree. (but the Wife doesn't.)

I have a DSLR and a reasonable lense. I can't help but think that a decent book on composition and a half day taking a lot of images would give equally good results.

I agree, do it.

outofbreath

I have a DSLR and a reasonable lense. I can't help but think that a decent book on composition and a half day taking a lot of images would give equally good results.

Please post your pics and the professional's pics for us to compare when you do.

"I think a lot of photographers have outdated business models. They have a cheapish fee for the shoot, then try and make money by selling prints afterwards. Except no one wants to buy prints any more.
Better to agree a fee beforehand, including a specified number of photos, as high resolution digital files. Then you can share them online, or make any prints you want yourself"

This.

We did it for our wedding, worked a treat.

If it was so easy, everyone would be turning out quality images.
They're not.

I have a DSLR and a reasonable lense. I can't help but think that a decent book on composition and a half day taking a lot of images would give equally good results

what is a lense?

Please post your pics and the professional's pics for us to compare when you do.

ISTM it's your wife who is the problem, not the professional photographer 😈

I think a lot of photographers have outdated business models. They have a cheapish fee for the shoot, then try and make money by selling prints afterwards. Except no one wants to buy prints any more.

Better to agree a fee beforehand, including a specified number of photos, as high resolution digital files. Then you can share them online, or make any prints you want yourself.

The problem with that is it's still not doing their images and thus brand any favours.

The processing for a 300x300 facebook profile pic is different to a 1080x1920 desktop,is different to a small print, is different to an A3 print, is different to printing on canvas.

You can't just take .jpg's out the camera and hit print. Similarly even the best photographer in the world can't process the raw files into a format that will look good irrespective of the medium it's printed onto. OK, so they've probably got all their presets saved in lightroom/ACDSee and can make it look like it's coming straight from the camera to a printer with little work, but that's like saying an LBS should service your bike at less than cost because they've already got the tools.

That wouldn't tell you anything. A photo brings back memories. Being reminded you paid a fortune for a photo of your wife wearing too much makeup isn't a good memory.

Equally a photo can just look good and be of a subject matter you/I like. That's why the magazine is full of them (usually of bikes in the countryside, not your wife).

Equally a photo can just look good and be of a subject matter you/I like. That's why the magazine is full of them (usually of bikes in the countryside, not your wife).

"That wouldn't tell you anything"

This.

I strongly suspect JimJam would much rather have an amateur picture of a landscape taken by me than a professional picture *of* me.

"ISTM it's your wife who is the problem, not the professional photographer"

Yup, the whole business model seems to be set up with that in mind.

Christmas is coming and I think I've thought of the perfect gift for you to give your wife

[img] [/img]

Yup. Get her a hot girlfriend.

"Yup. Get her a hot girlfriend."

Should I take intimate photos of them together myself or get a professional to do it?

Being reminded you paid a fortune for a photo of your wife wearing too much makeup isn't a good memory.

Exactly this, and also lol 😆

5thElefant

Please post your pics and the professional's pics for us to compare when you do.

That wouldn't tell you anything.

Yes it would. The OP basically implied that he could deliver results as good as a professional photographer because he owned an SLR and a lens. Flick through a book, half a days practice, bish bash bosh - professional photographer. How many other professions do you think you could swap for photographer there without it being completely absurd?

A photo brings back memories.

That's not the point. You can make object comparisons. Professional photographers are, by and large better than us at taking pictures. Given the same subject matter, they will produce better results.

[quote=jimjam ]Given the same subject matter, they will produce better results.

The issue being that they don't get the same subject matter. I suppose it depends how precious time spent in a photography studio is.

[i]"what makes them precious? Memories? "Oh wow honey, you remember when we posed for a photo 5 minutes ago? That was a special time"[/i]

Aaah yeah. Remember that time 5 minutes ago . . .? good times man. good times.

That's not the point. You can make object comparisons. Professional photographers are, by and large better than us at taking pictures. Given the same subject matter, they will produce better results.

I did actually. Doh 😳

That's not the point. You can make object comparisons. Professional photographers are, by and large better than us at taking pictures. Given the same subject matter, they will produce better results.

Professional photography mostly existed because of technical and cost barriers that have long since gone.

They've got a photo that's comparable to a pro.

Dream on....

Dream on....

You're forgetting about Photoshop. Any Tom, Dick or Harriette can take a photo on their megapixel camera, throw the RAW file through Photoshop and bosh! They've got a photo that's comparable to a pro. They don't need to understand either the environment or the equipment, Photshop will do it all for them.

And Poe's law has been achieved.

Better to agree a fee beforehand, including a specified number of photos, as high resolution digital files. Then you can share them online, or make any prints you want yourself"

This.

We did it for our wedding, worked a treat.

So they can price that up. And people will pay it in advance because they only have (hopefully) 1 wedding.

Portraits are different because you might not like the images once they're taken, but you still have your baby/dog/wife so can go elsewhere and have more taken. So the photographer has to sell you a couple of hours of his time as that's all people will commit to, then sell them the images on top if they like them (which it's the 'togs any good they should do).

5thElefant

Only in specific cases.

No, in every case. Unless you happen to be watching the Gadget show or some guff.

I'm not a professional typist but it makes any odds.

Absolutely no idea what this means.

Professional photography mostly existed because of technical and cost barriers that have long since gone.

Could you direct me to a website or magazine [i](inevitable porn comment incomining)[/i] that's populated entirely by amateur phone pics and compare with one which uses the work of professionals?

I took this photo in my back garden... put it through photoshop and.....
[img] [/img]

....voila!

[img] [/img]

Only in specific cases. I'm not a professional typist but it makes any odds.
Professional photography mostly existed because of technical and cost barriers that have long since gone.

I don't know about that..

Professional photography mostly existed because of technical and cost barriers that have long since gone.

Rubbish, a film SLR cost a fraction of what a DSLR does now.

In fact without DIY post processing, my £20 film SLR produces the better images (because someone at the printers is doing the post processing).

Anyone need any heart bypasses doing? I'm not a surgeon, but I've got a scalpel from the craft shop, a GCSE in needlecraft and I've watched Casualty. Bosh.

Please post your results and the professionals for us to compare when you do.

"Anyone need any heart bypasses doing? I'm not a surgeon, but I've got a scalpel from the craft shop, a GCSE in needlecraft and I've watched Casualty. Bosh."

I've taken 10,000 photos in the last 10 years. I know nothing about photography but in spite of that some of those were pretty good and three of them good enough to sell to a mag - one was printed over two pages.

If I take a shit photo nobody dies.

So if you're prepared to do a load of bypasses, and you're happy nobody would be harmed and by fluke some might be a total success then why not?

no reason why not at all!!

point is you took 10 000 photographs over 10 years to get three saleable shots... which would be a rough way to make a living! 🙂

I've got some lovely pens here and some paper. I reckon with a decent book, half a day scribbling I could do as well as a professional illustrator.

I could probably draw portraits of people for a living, but if I showed them the portraits then asked them for money that would basically be blackmail.

I've got a thousand monkeys...

Do you have a typewriter?

My wife is a professional portrait photographer. She is wonderfully talented , works really hard and has trained in it for years . She makes a nice tidy sum from people like the OP 🙂

[img] [/img]

I've taken 10,000 photos in the last 10 years.

You're not even trying! I took 3000 this morning shooting a single hockey match!

A photo every 1.5-2 seconds. 😯
There should be at least one decent shot in that lot.

A photo every 1.5-2 seconds.

10/11fps frame rate

There should be at least one decent shot in that lot.

Hit rate is about 1 in 25. You get a lot of scenes obscured when another players runs in front of the action and blocks the view / steal the focus and a lot of scenes never come off and there's nothing worth shooting in the end. Very much a numbers game....

Best of the bunch here https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/albums/72157673924468051

In case anybody is in work on a Saturday, poah's link is NSFW

Hit rate is about 1 in 25. 😯 You get a lot of scenes obscured when another players runs in front of the action and blocks the view / steal the focus and a lot of scenes never come off and there's nothing worth shooting in the end. Very much a numbers game....

Best of the bunch here https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/albums/72157673924468051

In case anybody is at work on a Saturday, poah's link is of a lovely lass with a cracking arse and is well worth looking at later.

There's some decent shots in there.

Cheers, ought to be getting the hang of it by now, must have shot about 100 matches...

it wasn't all tits and ass

[img] [/img]

also used to shoot film with an EOS5 and a bronica ETRS

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Anyone need any heart bypasses doing? I'm not a surgeon, but I've got a scalpel from the craft shop, a GCSE in needlecraft and I've watched Casualty. Bosh

1. A trained professional will do a better job than someone having a go
2. Some tasks are more complicated than others
3. Some tasks are more safety critical than others
4. Some tasks an amateur can have a decent go at

IMHO Photography covers both 1 and 4 so decide how much you wish to pay for 1

Heart surgery is most definitely 1,2,3

Its not really a fair comparison

In much the same way I could paint a wall I cannot paint a Banksy or a da vinci

We had some family portraits done, and very nice they are too, which they should do because they were powerfully expensive. My wife and I felt at the time that my probably would actually have spent more if the pricing model had been different. We payed £x00 for 4 framed shots in the end but that's because it felt like the sweet spot for value, not because that's the budget we had in mind (we didn't have a budget really).

Personally do not care for studio portraits, which does not help...

There's probably something out there you would like molgrips.

Certainly would not like a portrait of myself on my own wall!

"Yup. Get her a hot girlfriend."

Should I take intimate photos of them together myself or get a professional to do it?

🙂

I've started a fork and shock tuning service.

It's taken a while to really get to grips with, but for a tenner a time, I think it's good value.

Unfortunately, I can only tune them to G# at the moment, but I'm much cheaper than those shysters at LOCO, TF etc.

Anyone need any heart bypasses doing? I'm not a surgeon, but I've got a scalpel from the craft shop, a GCSE in needlecraft and I've watched Casualty. Bosh

Overqualified if you ask me. Plus Theresa May is looking for big cost savings in the NHS, you're probably just what she had in mind.....

FWIW, I've taken photos at two weddings, one was my cousin's registry office wedding, she just wanted some photos to remember the day. I was a bit worried about disappointing her, but she was thrilled to bits with the results.
The second was an ex-girlfriend who is also one of my best friends, who's first wedding had the reception at a fairly s****y location in Castle Combe, with a bunch of her Chinese relatives flying in from Malaysia, and she wanted some photos of the day that were less formal for them to take back home.
I took a bunch at the church, then more at the formal reception, took the films into Boots for their 1-hour processing service, had a load of sets run off, then dashed back for the less formal do.
The relatives, and the bride and her immediate family were beyond chuffed with my efforts, because the photos showed a more relaxed and playful side, and were available to be taken away on the day.
The professional photos are there to be treasured, but as the couple are now divorced and my friend has re-married, it's possibly fair to say the memories are somewhat bittersweet, regardless of who took the photos.
Anyone who things all you do is chuck a RAW file into Ps or Lightroom, hit F1 or wherever you have a set action stored, and bingo! Robert's your mother's brother, you have a perfect image is sadly deluded.
I saw my job as a scanner operator and Ps retoucher in print prepress disappear almost over night with the advent of digital cameras and cheap desktop scanners bundled with Ps Lite, because, armed with those tools, and a couple of books from WHSmith, everyone became a bloody expert!
And the results were painfully obvious in magazines I saw on the shelves in Smiths.
You want a good result? You pay someone to produce it.
If you only want to pay peanuts, get a chimp to do it.

Wtf was wrong with that photo, it was a link and it's not porn. :boggle:

Sorry, I'm still wrangling with the concept that you have a dSLR, have taken 10,000 photos (an average of three a day) and by your own admission "know nothing about photography." I can't get my head around that. You'd be better off with an iPhone.

As for the assertion that you could do as well as a professional yourself because you've had photos published, either you're being modest and selling yourself very very short, or you got lucky once and are deluded and overgeared.

A dSLR in and of itself takes higher quality images but does not by any stretch of the imagination take good photographs.

Rubbish, a film SLR cost a fraction of what a DSLR does now.

In fact without DIY post processing, my £20 film SLR produces the better images (because someone at the printers is doing the post processing).

I really don't think that either of those is true. I think mid 1970s an OM1 was about £250 and an OM 2 was £350. £3,000 a year was a wage back then?

The Nikon F4 was released 1988 and cost it cost about $2000 dollars

On the second point if you go through our albums I'd say that even my first 4mp camera produced better prints than the film prints we had before. You could argue that the digital ones still have faults

Once I'd bought a DSLR and lens (6mp) and started doing mu own post processing I was wiping the floor with the film stuff every time

I had one of my pictures as double page spread in Velovert magazine a few months back. I guess that makes me a professional?

Oft said that photography is 30% skill, 30% equipment and 30% luck (the other 2% is maths- you need to know the rule of thirds).
10,000 shots to 3 published falls short on that one. I'd aim for a 75% success rate and have 3 or 4 published per week.

As for the film vs digital argument, I'd say that digital being an improvement is subjective and depends on the type of image. What is beyond critisism is the fact that more skill was required to take good film images, unless you had an endless pot of money. It was mentioned earlier that a bucket load of photos can be taken at an event for next to no cost or nearly [url= http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-x-KODAK-PORTRA-36-EXPOSURE-35MM-FILMS-ISO-400-FRESH-UK-STOCK-TRACKED-POST-/162228535180? ]£300.00 in film alone[/url]. It's no contest.

Anyone who things all you do is chuck a RAW file into Ps or Lightroom, hit F1 or wherever you have a set action stored, and bingo! Robert's your mother's brother, you have a perfect image is sadly deluded.

(the other 2% is maths

Is that irony?

I used to do a lot of gig photography.
Pre digital, getting money out of musicians was virtually impossible.
Post digital, it's a complete waste of time.

I've had so many nicked and reused by others I just don't bother anymore, even for free for mates and relatives.

My only claim to fame as a photographer is getting punched in the face at a party by Elaine Constantine.
And I'd completely forgotten about that 'till someone reminded me at a funeral yesterday.
🙂

Is that irony?

We had a professional shoot done as it was given to us as a christmas present, I hated all the staged shots so we only ended up with the photos that were included in the package. Then I bought a DSLR and spent a lot of time learning how to use it, now get to take as many shots of the kids as I like and end up with plenty good enough to hang on the wall, I can also update them as often as I like.

I do admire the work of some of the professionals, but there is no way I could afford any of the ones I would be prepared to have hanging on the wall.

OP, I think the angle to take with your wife is as follows:

"look all those photos will cost £500, why don't we have a fantastic family day out/ weekend away and I'll take my big camera and loads of photos of the kids. If none of them are any good we'll go back to the pro"

How could she say no? And if you actually have a holiday the photos you take with attached real memories will bodyslam the fake studio shots.

Wtf was wrong with that photo, it was a link and it's not porn

Maybe not, but certainly NSFW as I pointed out - and some people might not want pics like that popping up on their screen when they innocently click on a link whether or not at work. FWIW I didn't have a problem with it and didn't report it - though I'm not really sure what it added to the thread.

Professional photography mostly existed because of technical and cost barriers that have long since gone

Hilarious.
As a photographer I'm so glad I don't have to hawk my skills to the general public as on the whole they are a nightmare!
Owning a violin doesn't make you a violinist etc etc.
That said a lot of high st/social photography is dire and I wouldn't pay a penny for it, the good ones (photographers) tend to charge enough that the tight arses don't bother asking and those who can afford it don't ask either 🙄

We had a gift card for a local photographer a couple of years ago. Booked him he turned up at our house and took some photos. All good. A couple of weeks later we asked what was happening with the photos. Photographer in New York atm will get in touch when he's back. 3 weeks later. Where are the photo's we ask after a call to his office, Just sorting them out he says. 2 Days later get a phone call, no photo's the memory card is corrupt. (yes of course it is). Can you re arrange for another shoot. Sure how about next weekend? That's fine. Next weekend comes, but the photographer didn't. Ad infinatum. Never did tell my my mum that Phil Garland Photography from Longridge stole from her.

MrSmith - Member
Owning a violin doesn't make you a violinist etc etc

Spot on.

My wife cares little about photographic equipment and less about formal theory.
Yet her images are usually excellent.
She has a very good eye.
My pictures are usually technically spot on, yet lack soul, compared to hers.
In terms of composition and spontaneity, she's a natural, whilst I have to work at it.

We hired a pro for the eldest daughter's wedding - a newbie with excellent people and compositional skills, but little technical knowledge.
Fortunately, the student she'd brought with her as an assistant, shy young lad who was a bit nervous ordering people around, turned out to have a wonderful feel for light and exposure and knew his kit backward.
They made a very effective team.

The camera has little to do with it - it's a box with a hole in it.
Creating brilliant images requires a knowledge of how to pick the most suitable kit and get the best out of it, but if you can't organise yourself and others, recognise and capture that crucial moment, you might as well not bother.

That's what you pay for.

Rusty Spanner

The camera has little to do with it - it's a box with a hole in it.
Creating brilliant images requires a knowledge of how to pick the most suitable kit and get the best out of it, but if you can't organise yourself and others, recognise and capture that crucial moment, you might as well not bother.

That's what you pay for.

As well as creating images with often overlooked attributes like focus, lighting and composition a pro will also be relied upon to show up on time and produce images of events that may not be repeatable. Everyone understands the importance of their wedding photographer getting the job right, but that pressure and those demands are applicable to most shoots.

I'd love to see a wedding photographer hand over a few hundred out of focus, under lit badly framed shots and explain to the client that the quality doesn't matter since it's all about memories.