Photography

Me and my significant other have just had a milestone moment in our relationship, and are looking into the options of having some classy nude photographs taken of us. But we dont want to do have to pay hundreds for the package deals that some places offer.

What is the best way of finding a proper photographer, who can be trusted to do a proper job and not do something shady, without paying the big bucks?

You seem to have a pretty specific style and good idea of what you want. I’d recommend going to google and enter your zipcode and ‘photographer’ to get a list of everyone in you area. Then the long task is reviewing their portfolios and narrowing down the list to those who have portfolios with the style and quality you want. For example, if their portfolios only contain wedding photos, baby pics and generic family portraits, that’s one you almost certainly do not want to follow up on. Those that have a variety of tasteful art shots, including some nudes, they’re a possibility.

If I understand what you want … review the final list of candidates carefully. I think you’ll see that some fall into a category more suited for models for girlie magazines, and other’s are more personal and tasteful. Try to determine what the photographer is trying to tell you with the picture. Some will just scream ‘hey look at the nekkid people’ and others will tell the kind of story you want your photos to tell.

You should be down to a very short list of photographers at that point and then it’s a matter discussing the details and costs.

Good luck!

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My wife is a photographer, and I am just wondering how late does a photographer usually stay at the wedding. She usually stays until around 10:00. I am just wondering in the world of professional photographers is there a standard time that the photographer stays until, before she needs to start charging more?

Hi, I am a wedding photographer and I ask the person that is paying me if it’s going to be long. If they say no and they are sure it will only last 3 hours or less then I charge them a set fee and if it last longer I charge them hourly after that for as many hours as I need to stay until the bride and groom drive away.

I have a contract so they know what they agreed on. If they tell me they are not sure when it will end and I may be there all day & night then I charge an all day price. Have a contract so both partys know what’s expected and protect you both. Hope this helps and good luck!

I am planning a wedding and looking for a photographer, have even met with some, but still cant decide if I should be looking at some big studios suggested by Davids Bridal, or go with some private small studios with one or two photographers? What is your experience people? Whats better?

Private photographer.

Check this, it should help you:

http://www.art-vision.us/main/en/tips/photo-studios/

celebrity photographer Olaf Heine discusses, life, photography, and Leaving the Comfort Zone his new retrospective book of photographs.
Visit http://photoinduced.com for more photography info.

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Hi, I am trying to start a photography business, and have been doing photoshoots for people for almost a year now. I still consider myself to be amateur so I have only been charging around 40-50 dollars for each photoshoot. An experienced photographer looked at my work and said that I need to stop undercharging people for good quality prints. How much did you charge when you first started taking photos? Or how much would you expect to pay someone that you consider to be new to the business?

There’s a simple calculus here:

A. You need to charge what it takes to compensate you adequately for your time, given your expenses.

B. Your clients will pay what they feel your work is worth.

Hopefully, B will exceed A.

Here’s the thing, though: almost every amateur photographer or young professional dramatically underestimates their costs of doing business. Wear-and-tear on equipment, computer upgrades, insurance, and so on seem like abstract concepts when you’re just doing a shoot here or there on the side. However, as you get serious, you’ll begin to realize that cheap photo shoots may be making you less money than you would make flipping burgers for Ronald McDonald.

If you’re serious about running a photography business, you need to sit down and really figure out how much this is going to cost to do it right, and how long you’re REALLY going to spend on every shoot, between client meetings, editing, and so on.

If I tried to charge $50/shoot, I’d be broke pretty quick…

Don’t try to figure out what everyone else is charging. Don’t listen to grumpy old people like me who think you need to charge more. Sit down and compute:
-How much will I spend on camera gear this year
-How much will I have to spend on upgrades as I continue with this business to remain competitive
-How much will it cost to keep my computer up to date to edit these images
-How much will the storage (and BACKUP!) cost to keep these images?
-Do I need liability or other kinds of insurance? how much will this cost?
-How much of a cut does uncle sam want to take?
-etc etc etc.

Blogged: http://julesmattsson.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/the-romford-incident/
I was detained by Police in Romford after taking an image of a cadet unit who were about to march in a massive parade in front of thousands of people with cameras. I was told it was an offence to photograph a child, then an offence to photograph the military, then an offence to photograph the police then that I was a threat under the terrorism act. I was frog marched with my arm painfully twisted away from the public eye and any witnesses and pushed down a set of stairs. The police illegally tried to take my details on several occasions also.

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I was just reading about some photographers like Diane Arbus who didn’t even know about stuff like exposure, apeture, and f-stops. Do you think it is a good investment of time for an aspiring photographer to read the technical books on photography? Or do you think it’s better to just get out there and shoot?

I believe your source on Diane Arbus was very misinformed.

A lot of people seem to think that if you "… just get out there and shoot…" you’ll somehow take a good picture. Of course, using this logic, its possible that you’ll take 300 lousy pictures and have no idea why they are lousy pictures. That’s where the "technical" part comes in. (A person once stated in here that if they took 100 pictures and got 1 good one they were happy. Talk about low expectations! I honestly believe you’d get similar results if you just gave the camera to a chimpanzee.)

If you don’t know and understand the exposure triangle of ISO, shutter speed and aperture then how can you control your picture making? Sure, you can set your camera on Program AE and let it make all the decisions about aperture and shutter speed but how does the camera know what effect you are trying to achieve? It doesn’t. It can’t. Cameras are just dumb boxes.

If you don’t understand how aperture and focal length are used to produce either a shallow Depth of Field (DOF) or a deep DOF then how do you isolate your subject from the background? How do you make sure that everything from 3′ in front of the camera to infinity is in focus? (Depth of Field is defined as that area in acceptable focus in front of and behind your subject).

If you don’t understand the role of shutter speed then how do you expect to use it to stop motion or to allow a subject to be slightly blurred to show motion?

If you don’t know how the ISO you choose affects both the aperture and shutter speed and the picture quality then how will you know what ISO to use on a sunny day? For sports/action? For the best possible picture quality?

Without a good technical knowledge of photography, how will you know what to do when confronted with scenes that aren’t average and that will cause your in-camera meter to give you a bad exposure? Suppose you have a subject against a bright background and don’t want a silhouette? What if the subject is frontlit against a dark background? If you depend on your camera you’ll be disappointed. Your subject will not be correctly exposed. Suppose your scene is white sand or snow. Let the camera’s meter decide and your white sand or snow will turn out gray.

You also must know and understand the "Rules of Composition". By knowing them you make your pictures more interesting. You know to not center your subject. You know to keep empty space to a minimum. You know to check the background so you can eliminate trees "growing" from someone’s head. You know how to eliminate ot at least minimize a distracting background. Of course, knowing the "Rules" then allows you to break them when your creative impulses overrule them.

So yes, having the technical knowledge is needed. Without it you are just a snapshooter. Point. Shoot. Hope. With it you are on your way to being a photographer. Compose. Shoot. Know.

For the record, I almost always shoot in Aperture Preferred because I like a lot of DOF and I know that lenses are designed to give their best results at between f5.8 to f11. I watch the shutter speed to make sure it isn’t too slow to hand-hold.

"Pictures are not taken, they are made." Ansel Adams

"Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’ ". Ernst Haas

I don’t live anywhere like LA or NY, I live in a bit of a hicktown. How can I find a good photographer?

Also, will a photographer take my pictures JUST to take pictures if I ask them, or do the photos have to be FOR something, like senior/wedding photos? Just wondering. Thanks!

Look in your local business pages or do a search on the www for your area.

Photographers are their to take photographs of anyone or anything.
If a customer just wants photos for their own purpose then the photographer will do them.

Brilliant clip. Rest assured, Photofinish-UK is not like this!!

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