Matt Burke Photo // RANT? yup

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After seeing that letter I reblogged about the woman dying, it got me thinking of all the crap I have heard from people when looking for a photographer…

“Oh, that’s just too expensive, can you maybe not shoot us for as long?”

“Can you only snap 5 photos and pick the best of them and send it to us?”

“Oh, it’s ok, he can just photoshop that out”

“It’ll just be me and my wife” - you show up and every cousin, uncle, brother, dogs, and even the pet goldfish is there…oh, and they all want individual portraits, and all under the same payment.

etc, etc…

Do people with this mentality truly not understand what goes into a photoshoot?

I will break down a VERY basic set of things I go over before a shoot.

1) The client approaches you and asks if a certain date is open.

2) Find out what the client wants (portraits, headshot, family portrait, wedding, band promo, etc)

3) Go over rates with the client and let them know there is SOME flexibility, but nothing crazy.

4) Scout a location

5) Get to location and set up gear

6) Wait for client(s) to show up

7) After the client shows up late to the shoot, get them together.

8) Shoot the photos in-between everyone goofing off

9) Ask the person whose eyes are closed in every photo to keep their eyes open

10) Repeat #9 about 50 times

11) Finish the shoot and send the client on their way…

I could really keep this going forever, but I won’t.

But, once the photos aren’t taken, that’s not where the job ends. We still have to break down gear, pay assistants, pay for studio rental, pay for gear rental is needed, bring expensive camera with expensive memory card to house that’s paid for with Rent money, upload the photos to an expensive computer to edit them on an expensive program.

The editing process takes quite a while to do some digital plastic surgery, clean up pimples on your 13 year old daughter who was also flipping off the camera in every shot which needed to be cleaned up…etc.

You get the point.

It is a very long and very tedious process and I PROMISE that no photographer wants to look at/edit the same wrinkles off the same face 15 times over and over, but we do it because we love what we do. We don’t have a guaranteed salary, we don’t have benefits, we don’t get a day off…even our days off are work as we re-edit photos, network, scout for future locations, organize invoices, repair gear, etc… it is never ending.

So please, next time you want to tell a photographer he is too expensive, please do so in the privacy of your car or your expensive house that you pay for with the work you do in your chosen profession.

POSTED 4 months ago with 18 notes