A Good Kick in the Ass Critique

[rick_m.]

<p>But you see Jeff, we need to ignore that to help him market. I completely understand the different sensibilities. The thing is that if he is going to market his services he has a choice to make. To use an analogy, he has to decide whether he is going to shoot jeans or dresses or both. You and I know that he may prefer to shoot jeans and feel uninspired by dresses but he will make more money if he can shoot both. Versatility is a market expander. Read my earlier posts. They are all about making the site appeal to more people. </p>

<p>I got that he wants to be the edgy guy. He can go ahead and do that. But he can make more money if he can shoot traditional weddings in a traditional way as well as his interpretation of the traditional wedding. The shots are in his port. He just needs to make them more commercial to show his versatility. That or he will get type-cast. If his limited market puts all the bread on the table that he needs then fine. My guess is that he would not be doing this site if the world were already beating a path to his door. And he certainly wouldn't be asking for help.</p>

<p>Market analysis. How old are the parents who are going to buy senior pictures? The answer is that they will average well over 40 yeas old. That means they were born in the 70's. They are out in front of hip-hop culture. So that does not mean that he should not include this styling in his port to appeal to the senior. It means that he ought to include both. George is in Burbank California. It is a fairly affluent area compared to the rest of California with an average household income about 20% higher than California in general. Its largest employer is Disney and it calls itself the "Media Capital of the World". There may be plenty of call for his style in a forward thinking place like Burbank and if he can stay busy with a one-note approach then more power to him. But my bet is on appealing to both democrats and republicans alike to use another analogy. So I would put both in my portfolio. And he ought to also unless he is beating customers off with a stick.</p>

<p>Jonathan is very talented. He picked up his first camera in 2009 and is doing the work he is doing now in a little under four years. That is <strong>very</strong> impressive. He appears to have the eye and ability to be one of the good if not great ones. He is WAY beyond the GWCs on C-list. What would be more impressive would be for him to continue to grow in photography by learning to do other stuff as well. Get depth. Have a larger skill set. </p>

<p>Clearly he wants to do weddings and senior portraits and my guess is that he would not turn down some other things too. Our goal in trying to help him ought to be to get him to see that we are pushing him to do MORE not less!!! Is he smart enough to see this? I think so. None of our suggestion call upon him to not do what he is doing. They call upon him to do more than he is doing. </p>

<p>Finally he has to learn that all creative types have to have thick skin. He is in an industry where some 19 year old entrepreneur can reject his work out of hand. He is in an industry where some mean as hell grandmother of the bride can give him fits and poison the water in a very close-knit industry. And he is in an industry that is interested in product. His job has two goals. The first and foremost is to delight customers. To satisfy their vision and their dream. The other is to express his unique viewpoint both in a way that sells and in a way that satisfies his art. As his career grows (and it is my opinion and hope that it will) he can narrow his focus and arrive at the perfect place where he balances his bliss with his bank account. Or he can just be another frustrated artist working at the camera store.</p>

[george_jonathan]

<p>Rick I agree with everything you say too. Again I apologize for being defensive and thank you for taking the time to teach me. I'll apply everything you've taught me along with all the other photographers on this thread. I feel once I get the business side of things right, I can feel more confident to put my best foot forward and just go for it. One day I would like to be the full package and I understand I have a long way to go, but like all things that are achieved, hard work is the main ingredient to do that.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><<<<em>Young people these days are taking things into their own hands instead of letting senior citizen photographers determine what they want.</em>>>></p>

<p>This is blatantly off the mark. If I'm not mistaken, George asked for critique in an open forum, and he's been given it. He is obviously not solely taking things into his own hands. He wanted the advice and obviously wanted an ass-kicking from others. By defending him in this way, geezer yourself, you're actually condescending to him and not giving him credit for being able to withstand criticism from young and old alike. You're the one acting paternalistically, old dude.</p>

<p>______________________________________</p>

<p>Most of the photos struck me as harsh and hard to look at. I also felt I was looking at cartoon-like thug art. I didn't really like the way the navigation worked. When you clicked on a thumbnail, the bigger pic covered all the thumbnails and you had to click again to get back to the thumbnails. It just seemed clunky to me and I got tired of doing it after a while. I looked at the site only just now and don't see any text in the ABOUT section so I assume you're re-writing it.</p>

<p>I think some of the setups you employ, actually many of them, are good and creative. That's part of style and your own creativity. What bothers me a little is that these setups (the striped shirt against the bricks is nice, the guy with the graffiti is good) feel unconnected to the individuals portrayed. They feel just like ideas that might have been used interchangeably with any of your subjects. If I sensed a connection between the photographic ideas and the individuals, I'd likely respond with much more enthusiasm. But there often seems a kind of distance between your subjects and the idea of each photo.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><<<<em>It's the teens who are changing things in their world, and people who don't listen to them will end up obsolete.</em>>>></p>

<p>Was just re-reading and found this other falsehood proclaimed by Jeff. Look at history. There were plenty of people in my parents' generation who kind of warmed to the Beatles after a time but never really warmed to a lot of the rest of my generation's music, The Who, The Grateful Dead, Cream, even Janis and Jimi. That hardly rendered them obsolete. They continued listening to Sinatra and Big Bands. The irony, and where Jeff's statement becomes even more misguided, is that while many of my parents' generation never warmed up to a lot of my music, I have come to love Sinatra, Glen Miller, Ella, Armstrong, and the rest. So far from being obsolete, they showed me the timelessness of some of their taste.</p>

<p>For me, a willingness to listen even as I've developed my own voice, which has nothing to do with age (I started doing so when I was 50), seems like a good approach.</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>I can't really comment on the commercial aspect of the site but I can tell you a few things that I didn't like with respect to the site layout/structure.</p>

<p>(1) I didn't like the rapidly changing Home page images. I think they'd be better if the transitions were more gradual and there were more images.</p>

<p>(2) The "About" page doesn't tell me anything about you at all. It's just a picture. If there's some text you can get to from that page that actually tells me something, the link isn't obvious.</p>

<p>(3) I'd like to see captions with the images. They don't have to be detailed, but they should tell me <em>something</em> about the images, especially the more unconventional ones.</p>

<p>(4) I'm not sure if the washed out look of a lot of the images (not the thumbnails, the larger images) is deliberate or some sort of artifact of my browser (Chrome) but it doesn't appeal to me. I doubt it would appeal to many couples looking for a wedding photographer either, but perhaps you know your demographic better than I do!</p>

<p>(5) The contact form is a little impersonal. Again some text there might help.</p>

<p>Again, I'm using Chrome on an XP system to view the site. Perhaps it looks different in Safari or IE or on a Mac, but if it does, you should certainly check how it looks in all the popular browsers.</p>

<p> </p>