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This journal discusses photography in all its guises with an emphasis on the art of making photographs.
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Frescos and photography”.
Posted in Paintings, Photography
Or alternatively:
Many pros are struggling because there are an awful lot of mediocre photographers in the business.
Wedding photography used to be a staple for the local photographer. Look at most people’s wedding albums and you’ll find something that looks exactly the same. The same stilted group shots. Champagne being poured. The happy couple in some trees. Boring boring boring. Uncle Bob took better shots with his pocket Casio. You may not want to rely on Uncle Bob, so you look to the pros for reliability and hard work. If that’s all you’re getting, they are very poor value.
Alternatively, you can look for a wedding photographer whose work makes you say “Wow”. Which is what we did. As we did our research, it was shocking – appalling – how many photographers expected us to hire them without even putting decent images on their web site. We ended up paying a little more for someone who was prepared to travel 4 hours in each direction.
This was the man who got me into (amateur) photography. I may not have known his 17-40L from a coke bottle at the time, but I am not stupid. I could see that his work was a cut above whatever else we were being offered. So can his other customers. He is fully booked for next summer. His wedding work enables him to travel in the winter, shooting real lives in the third world – his real passion.
My niece’s last school photo was the standard four light portrait against a splodgy grey background. It was indistinguishable from my own school photos from 25 years ago – except that in those days the shooter was bright enough not to use a blue-cast background for a school with blue uniforms. This won’t cut it any more. I say good riddance.
Unfortunately the overall quality will for a while mean that even the better pros have a hard time.
But it’s futile to complain about the difficulty of making money unless you have something to set you apart from the crowd. Quality will talk in the end. Look at Michaelangelo.