Amateur vs Professional pricing issues

[paulr]

"We've probably seen 'professional' wedding photographers lose work to amateurs (and these amateurs aren't always bad at it!); we've seen amateurs charging low costs for prints because they don't have to make up the cost of their equipment; "

reminds me of a study i saw on neighborhood ecology. they found that house cats were significantly more effective hunters than the local owls and foxes and other predators, even though the cats were basically doing it for fun ... they had meals waiting at home.

there's no sense of fair play in the jungle--or the back yard! the more efficient hunter gets the prey.

If you're a full time pro, with all the shiny pro gear, and you can't find a way to be better and more efficient than joe hobbyist, then maybe it's time to consider a different line of work.

i know that if i were a client looking for a photographer for a job, it wouldn't matter at all to me how they pay their rent. i'd look at their book, at their prices, and at how i like dealing with them. the good news for pros is that they usually are better at commercial work. i'd hope they would be ... they do it all day long.

[Jim Rhoades]

Opton writes, "What we do see a proliferation of is countless speculative posts by amateur photographers trying to blur the boundary in some quasi-fantasy that their work really might be up to professional standards. "

Now I really like the magazine B&W (Collectors) but some of the portfoilos shown are fuzzy, foggy and pointless. Then I read that the "Artist" wants $450. for a crappy print. Sorry, no quasi-fantasy here. I know craftmanship when I see it and when I don't.

I subscribed for many years to Aperture. It was filled with cross processed color prints of do your own thing dismembered body parts reported to be "art". Bullshit, it's new wave shock jock photography. Taught in college as art to students with no background in craft.

Steve sold Camera Arts. Now it has professional proof reading and ugly prints as they attempt to be a new Aperture. I did not subscribe this year.

I think it comes down to the age old question of craft vs. art. Which comes first? Can art exist without craft? Not for me it can't.

[tim atherton]

"I think it comes down to the age old question of craft vs. art. Which comes first? Can art exist without craft? Not for me it can't."

though craft without art is usually just fancy decor - doilies and antimacassars - to match your sofa

[Richard Boulware]

Richard Fenner's lead post on this thread is most interesting and I feel the need to respond as I have detected another common thread that I think needs to be addressed.

The secondary common threat is one that I feel most posters have little knowledge of, and I would like to respond as one who has, ' been there-done that.'

While Mr. Fenner's commentary on seeing ..."no qualitative difference between amateur and professional" ....is interesting, I feel (respectfully) it is incorrect, most likely because Mr. Fenner is not knowledgeable of the area of professional photography and this unique area of commercial photography where most of the money changes hands.

While it is true that the basic difference between amateur and professional is the percent of income derived from photography, there are more subtle differences that must be recognized.

My particular area of photography is advertising and editorial photography which has been my home for many decades. Shooting magazine ads and annual reports or magazine stories. While there are hundreds of professionals in photography in my own metro area, only about six of us controlled 80% of the total dollars spend for what one could call photography. By total dollars for photography, I lump into this group, portrait, wedding and similar practitioners. I and my five major competitors shot for accounts that would spend a quarter of a million dollars just for the ad space in national magazines, and thought nothing of hiring a skilled professional that would charge a day rate of $1000 or $2000 a day, plus all expenses for the job. Costs for a good shooter are a tiny portion of the total costs of an ad campaign, and six of us shooting major national ads and annual reports chewed up a large amount of total dollars spent for photography in this area.

I should be candid here and admit that I learned more about my own metro area photographic budgets, AFTER I left my studio (to raise a son and daughter) and then started to look back with some measure of surprise. Hind sight is so great, and often surprising.

My basic measure of my kind of professionalism is simply this: Producing quality photographic imagery, anywhere, anytime, upon demand.
It doesn't matter if you are sick, disabled (within reason), are having a bad-hair day or whatever.
When you accept the assignment, you have entered into a contract with the art-director or an editor, and if you blow it,...you will never get another job or assignment from them. Kiss your career goodbye.

The competition is incredible and you have to produce on demand. My business is one where your years of investment in education and/or experience is on the line. We have a saying in our world: "You're only as good as your last assignment"! Few amateurs can handle this kind of pressure day in and day out. It's just a different world.

I left more conventional areas of professional photography to specialize in my field, because that is where the money was (is).

I really encourage part time shooters (non-professionals) to take some time and make a friend of someone who is in my field, to see and learn about the world of others in photography. I'll bet it will expand your horizons, and give you valuable information that will be another skill or tool, in your tool kit the next time you decide to take a weekend off and make images...just for the fun of it.

Soon, I will be posting my second page of my "Photographers Notebook" series, and I will begin to share some images and a narrative on how the assignment came to be, the production problems and details, and the satisfaction of opening the new edition of TIME, and seeing your ad shot as a double-truck ( full two page spread). Few things in life, to me, are as satisfying..(and knowing that I deposited my check into my bank account three weeks ago is the icing on the cake)

Wishing you all...."Fresh eyes".........

Your friend, Richard.

[paulr]

Jim, are you looking at craft for the sake of craft, or craft as a means of realizing a particular vision?

if you're looking for the former, then the issue has nothing to do with art. it's about connoisseurship of pretty things, and could just as easily be about figurines or doillies and antimacassars to match your sofa.

if you're looking at the latter, then you need to get away from holding craftsmanship to some pre-conceived standards. the relevent question is "does the way this object was made sever the vision behind it?" what best serves that vision may be a classically crafted platinum print, or it may be newpaper photographs pasted to the side of a cow. without an attempt to see the work on its own terms, you're not even in a place to judge the suitability of its craftsmanship.

[Jim Rhoades]

Paulr, No I hope I'm not looking at craft for (or as) the sake of craft. I have seen beautiful 2 1/4 Pt. prints made from a Holga. There was art, craft and vision in those tiny slighty blurry photographs. The base of this thread goes back to the large color print of a fuzzy leaf selling for $3,700. I feel Brooks' was right about the high priced prints and wrong about going as low as $20.

But back to craft vs art. I would tend to ask the question as, "Does the lack of craft sever the vision behind it?" In many cases my answer is yes. My money says that I am indeed in the place to judge the suitability of its craftsmanship. I buy or I don't, that was Brooks' point. My point is that I've seen a lot of prints that I wish I could buy for $250. But I will never buy at $1,000. I also see a lot of overpriced junk at $450. that I would not pay $20. for.

When a magazine prints 2500 words by a art critic with a MA after his name using lofty language to justify a photograph being "art", I know I'm being scammed.

[jonathan smith]

--------------------On the whole, I don't care if eg a professional wedding photographer with a family to feed (for added emotive value!) loses work to an amateur who does a few jobs just to cover film/printing and enjoy the publicity-------------------

I agree with this, I'm sick of hearing about "I need to feed my family" as if that means everyone else should pack up and get out of the way. It sounds like whining to me. Just because someone can click a shutter doesn't mean they deserve to earn a living for themselves and 14 kids with it. If it sells, it sells. No one should buy a lousy photo just because some kids are hungry.

If you want to feed your family, get a job at Ford (oops!) , or go on foodstamps.

I was listening to a music composer whine that he got so little money from composing, he "couldn't feed his family". Well, write music good enough, sell it right, and you could feed dozens of families. Spin your wheels, spend your time feeling sorry for yourself, and see what you get.

[paulr]

""Does the lack of craft sever the vision behind it?" In many cases my answer is yes."

but what does "lack of craft" mean?

craft is what was required to make the phyiscal object that you're looking at. there was obviously enough craft to make the object, so what you're calling lack of craft is actually a value judgement placed on the craftsmanship. my point is that this value judgement can only be made within the context of trying to understand the underlying vision of the work.

a beautiful print that meets the standards of a print fetishist might utterly fail the vision of a down-in-the trenches street photographer from the 1960s--which is why the gritty, sooty newpaper print quality became an esthetic back then. In the same way a gritty, sooty print would utterly fail one of Stieglitz's pictures of O'keefe's hands, which were about as much about formal sensuality as they were about portraiture.

[Jim Rhoades]

Sorry paulr. Your engaging in esoteric photographic bullshit. Of which you wrote about three pages down. Protest denined.

[Oren Grad]

there was obviously enough craft to make the object, so what you're calling lack of craft is actually a value judgement placed on the craftsmanship. my point is that this value judgement can only be made within the context of trying to understand the underlying vision of the work.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a lack of craft really is a lack of craft, even allowing for the creator's intent.