Everyone's a photographer

[Greg Blank]

Just my typical weisenheimer commentary, these people make money apparently so technically they are professionals using rather broad terms.

Greg, sorry, I just don't have a clue as to what you mean? Obviously child pornographers are not professional photographers and I don't think anyone need explain why they are the lowest possible area of photography and above all give photography a bad name.

[Frank Petronio]

We had a local Monte Zucker acolyte, his Yellow Pages ad was for "Artistic Misty Mood" photographs. Now I remember why I cringed at wedding photography in the 80s ;-p

[Brian K]

Being a professional is far more than getting paid for it, because even supposed professionals, that is people who earn their living through photography often work unprofessionally.

The majority of the people I assisted were very professional, partly in the sense that most of them made very lucrative incomes, but partly and perhaps a major contributor to those incomes was that they worked very professionally. They rarely if ever screwed up, rarely. But even then a client would never see a screw up because of the way in which the photographer worked. They worked in such a way as to understand that screw ups can happen and set in place methodology to prevent and repair any screw ups.

In my own case I built a super well equipped studio with more than enough space to shoot anything short of cars. My last studio, 7500 square feet. I had enough cameras, lenses, lighting gear,camera stands to do 4 complex still lifes at once. At one point I had about 40,000 watts of strobe. If anything broke there was a backup, and the back up had a backup, and that had a backup. And the quality of the gear was the best.

When I would be called to see a client about a job, or would get a job delivered by messenger, I had enough experience to look at the layout and know exactly what problems existed in the layout. If you can look at the layout and tell the client that the perspective indicated is not physically possible, they can amend their layout or agree to do it as two images and compose them together. If the product or a required prop is Teal in color, a combination of green and blue that looks more green to the eye but more blue on film, you could tell the client that in advance and let him know that correcting for the color of the product will throw off all the other colors in the shot. If you can communicate all the possible problems and hopefully solve them or give the client time to deal with the problem or make a change in advance, then they are not surprised or shocked when the film comes back with an issue or if issues arise on the shoot day. And to be able to look at a layout and be able to see all the problems in advance in a matter of seconds requires one thing, experience. Having photographed nearly every object, surface, color, texture, and shape before, I've already experienced those issues. And could see them on the layout.

When I was booked for a shoot, the entire shot was completely set up the day before the shoot day. No client likes to see you struggling to make something work, or wants to sit through endless polaroids while you make that one highlight perfect. So all the effort was put in the day or days before the booking. It was finished before the clients even arrived. They would show up at 9 or 10am, there would be an 8x10 chrome on the lightbox, perfectly matched color. There were multiple reflective/transmissive light boxes for them to view the product and film side by side but it was always perfect because it was shot for color tests once or twice, the day before. The lighting also fine tuned on the test images. For all intents and purposes they could have left right then and there with the film. But knowing clients as I do, I know they always need to make some change, and they would.


After viewing the set, they'd then sit in the kitchen/work area and look through the view camera on a TTL video system I had. They could see, while they sat and ate a muffin, what was actually in the view camera. No need to have them climb up a ladder and lean over the camera and set. (I got this system after seeing a 7 month pregnant AD do that) They could ask my assistants to move this or that a fraction of an inch and they could just yell, "Stop" when it was in the right spot. No other photographer I know of had this system.

The assistant would then shoot a polaroid and bring it to us. And within an hour of the client's arrival the new film version would be off to the lab. We'd then break for a rather nice lunch, often catered, or go out for lunch at a really nice restaurant. Two hours later, the film would walk through the studio door, it would be perfect, having in reality been shot 2 or 3 times already, but only once in front of the client. By 1 or 2pm the client would be back to their office, or out shopping having been scheduled to spend an entire day in the studio because most often and with most other photographers that's how long it took.

From the client's perspective, could this have been ANY easier or more pleasant for them? Or appeared any more professional? And the quality of the work reflected all the pre planning and thought given, as well as the serious attention to detail required. And if multiple photographs were being produced that day, then up to 4 sets could be up and running at the same time.

After the clients left, we'd start setting up the next job. If the job was more complicated or required a complicated set or a room to be built or heavy prop styling, casting talent, these projects would start days or weeks ahead of the shoot date.

[Greg Blank]

No doubt & treating the client well- is; "good business". I appreciate the insight related to the studio. A lot of people never have these sort of experiences because higher end studios are farther and fewer between. Corporations that would have spent money on services like this, now hire some recent college grad to shoot the photos in an office or closet and Photoshop the heck out of the file for web use. Goes back to your original statements, which I agree with. I was kind of fortunate when I went through the AAD program I received my Photography training in (here in the Baltimore area). The Program director had a large product illustration studio and we took a journey there to see it, he had some bigger clients like McCormick Spice Company-etc. Most people have no basis for what a studio did or does. I kind of went the route of working in labs, testing Forte Photo paper for Omega, and then doing my own thing, and I like to write.

I never did much product illustration, beyond school projects with the 4x5 and the schools studio, but I have a pretty decent body of published scenic and editorial
work.

Being a professional is far more than getting paid for it, because even supposed professionals, that is people who earn their living through photography often work unprofessionally.

<Snip-good stuff>

From the client's perspective, could this have been ANY easier or more pleasant for them?

[John NYC]

In any artistic field, professionalism means nothing to me if the person is not also a great artist.

The path to mastery is more than just doing the steps and putting in the time. Many people have practiced long and hard and correctly at their arts, yet ultimately do not produce anything that has an artistic voice of their own.

[Mike Anderson]

Point was, that I would say a few other categories fit at the bottom before wedding photography...

I was a surf school photographer once. That's definitely a couple rungs below wedding photographer.

...Mike

[Frank Petronio]

There are classy clients everywhere but unfortunately they aren't always the norm... but every little compromise we let slip makes it easier for the bad practices to percolate up and become the new normal. Basically we've let things go to Hell because photographers didn't keep their standards up, people caved on rights and prices, and embraced digital and sloppy practices in a race to the bottom.

What we should have done was to go en masse and burnt Getty and Corbis to the ground. Skewered iStockPhoto, literally. Stood up to magazine's right's grabs. Sued and punched internet thieves. And tarred and feathered all the shysters and lousy photographers who gave this business a bad name.

[Greg Blank]

You really are crazy, but I like you

And tarred and feathered all the shysters and lousy photographers who gave this business a bad name.

[Jay DeFehr]

Brian,

I was not offended by what you wrote, but it's clear you were by what I wrote. What you wrote, far from being offensive, is just trite and grating, like an incessantly whining child.

I'm glad you were able to look up the definition of arrogant, and I'm not surprised you want to apply the term to anyone but yourself, however accurately it might describe you. I wonder if you could also look up the definition of photographer? Allow me:

PHOTOGRAPHER

One who practices photography; especially: one who makes a business of taking photographs.

The above, according to Mirriam-Webster.

By definition, anyone who makes photographs is a photographer. Insecure photographers love to repeat the old saw; Owning a camera doesn't make you a photographer, and with that I agree; one must make photos to be a photographer, but who doesn't? Today there are more photographers on the planet, many, many times more, than all of the photographers preceding this era, combined. Whether or not it bursts your bubble, there is nothing special about being a photographer, in fact,in technological societies, belonging to that defined category is more common than not. So, the title of this thread, Everyone is a photographer, is a lot more accurate than you might like.

If you'd actually read my post you might have noticed most of my comments about professional photographers were limited to professional wedding photographers. One doesn't have to be a professional wedding photographer to understand how that profession has been impacted by the availability of low cost, high quality DSLRs, combined with unprecedented quantities of unstructured time for citizens of developed countries. But you don't dispute my claims, do you? No, you just take yet another opportunity to blather on about your experience and credentials, and denigrate anyone who makes photographs for the love of it, or even just for the fun of it.

If you haven't already recuperated the investment you never tire of reminding us all you've made into photo equipment, I suspect you never will. Whatever fame, fortune, recognition you're ever likely to receive, I suspect has been received already. I might be wrong. Time will tell.

[Jay DeFehr]

Jay, you really have no idea what you are talking about. Brian is almost totally correct. You have a history of arguing with people who actually know what they are talking about, and you do it from a perspective of someone who dabbles in photography. I have read your arguments in the past with people who have done photochemistry for a living and somehow you think you are right. It boggles the mind. Maybe you should start a forum about working in an oil field, or at least learn some humility.

Photography is drastically changing. There is no doubt. I contribute this to the fact that the mystery is gone. The craft is gone as well. People think that if they can take a photograph with their cell phone which all of their friends on Flickr think is great, then why pay for a photographer? Ignorance is bliss, but it gets you shitty photographs.

Patrick,

You agree with Brian. I disagree, and I say why. When I disagree with anyone, I always say why. I don't remember disagreeing with photo chemists, but it's possible. If I did, I'm sure I said why. It's easy to take sides in a disagreement, and it's easier to take sides based on titles than on substance. I'm not a professional chemist, or a professional photographer, but I learned sensitometry, built a sensitometer, and tested my formulas as rigorously as I was able, and made my data available for review. I don't remember anyone claiming my developers don't work as described by me. I made all of my formulas public, have never tried to profit from them, and have done my best to support users of them. True, that doesn't make me a professional, but it does confer some measure of expertise, and speaks to my motives. For what it's worth, neither John Wimberley, Barry Thornton, Gordon Hutchings, nor Sandy King are chemists. Photography has a long history of innovation and invention by amateur photographers, including George Eastman, and I'm proud to count myself among them.

This is a forum for large format photographers, of which I am one. My experience and expertise in various aspects of LF photography lie on a spectrum with the other members of this group, amateurs and professionals. If I'm not qualified to comment here, than neither are many others, yourself included.

In reply to your comments of more substance:

Photography is drastically changing. There is no doubt. I contribute this to the fact that the mystery is gone. The craft is gone as well. People think that if they can take a photograph with their cell phone which all of their friends on Flickr think is great, then why pay for a photographer? Ignorance is bliss, but it gets you shitty photographs.

On what do you base your contention that "the craft is gone"? I don't think that's true. I think craft photography, in the sense I believe you intended, has shifted from professionals to amateurs and artists, but it's still very much alive. I think your wrong to disparage images made with cell phones, or Flickr. I've seen beautiful images made with cell phone cameras on Flickr, and it's not out of ignorance that I say so. Are poor images made with cell phones? Sure! But poor quality images have been made with every imaging system ever devised. If you want to discuss quality intelligently, you should make a distinction between commercial work, and art. In commercial work, quality and value are defined by the consumer. If a couple prefers the photos made of their wedding by the brides niece with her new DSLR (or cell phone, for that matter) to those made by a professional wedding photographer, you can say they're wrong, but you'd be wrong. It's a misunderstanding of the job the couple was hiring to do. They were hiring someone to make photos they like, for their own reasons, and not hiring someone to make images that meet some technical standard.

The last wedding I attended was photographed professionally, and additionally by one of the guests, with a Polaroid 600 camera. They much preferred the Polaroids, and the professionally made wedding album sits in a drawer while the scanned Polaroids are shared with friends and family.

I'm not suggesting that professional wedding photographers are hacks, or unskilled, or that they don't make well crafted photos; what I'm saying is that what matters most to the people doing the hiring is not the credentials of the photographer, his professionalism, or the technical quality of his work, but the emotional impact of the images produced. The best wedding photographers can out compete the guests, despite the guests advantages, but even the very best of them can expect their albums to be supplemented by images from guests. When friends ask me to shoot their weddings, I usually tell them I'm happy to take some photos, but if they want a formal album, they should hire a pro. Most say they don't care about a formal album they just want great pictures. I tell them that everyone who attends their wedding will have a camera, and make photos, and they should provide a website for the guests to upload their images to. This is not just the future of wedding photography, but of all event photography, including photojournalism.