mike_barrett2

Well Anne,

I am not one to usually say such things but you deserve what you are charging and a whole lot more! Your work is amazing. I don't know why you do not offer clients a finished product, though. With your work the album would be stunning!

I still think 56+ hours is excessive. But if it works for you great. However, with your work in the same league as the Fong and the other legends in the wedding photo world, you deserve at least double what your getting IMHO.

I have been doing weddings for nearly 20 years and specialize in creating relationships and producing a high quality consistant result in the least amount of time possible. I also do a lot of volume work such as schools, sports leagues, etc. It doesn't seem right that you are not making a lot more money per hour than myself.

Truly, your images blew me away!

Mike

Mike

Quote-I think everyone in this thread has overlooked the beginning of Carrie's initial post. Remember the part about how she had only shot one wedding-type event and tried to meet with the bride and show her portfolio, and all the bride had seen was her website with one event, etc.? I think Carrie went out of her way to make the statement to the bride that she's a newcomer to this. The bride clearly glossed over all of that, and said, "I've seen enough, you're hired".

The images on her website was what she trusted. Blaming the bride for believing what she saw to be a fair representation of the quality she could expect is just wrong. If Carrie was not able to produce that result consistently, the images shouldn?t be there. Period. I have booked dozens of wedding from brides who never meet with me personally. They trusted I could deliver as advertised. We want our clients to trust us! Should we use a disclaimer on our website that says ?photography on this site is in no way a reflection of the work you can expect on your wedding day??

Quote- Now, Carrie, I've looked through your images, and I think they're really not bad for a first effort, and for a less-descriminating bride. These are really not BAD pictures at all, and you should not be ashamed. I think a lot of the issues could be fixed with some good post-production by someone who knows what they're doing (white balancing, de-noising, etc.).

Please- sometimes you just need to call a spade a spade. These pictures are a far cry from professional. There is nothing here that isn?t riddled with problems. Can they be made better with a lot of work? Sure. But if you have to FIX every shot you take there is indeed a problem. I have NEVER meet a bride who was paying $1000 that would have called this a reasonably professional job. With training, I am sure Carrie can do better. But as Carrie said, ?You can?t fix it if you don?t know it?s broken?. This is broken. I was honest about that for Carrie?s sake. I also offered practical advice for improvement.

Carrie, I tried to give you a realistic appraisal of the situation you found yourself in and help you out as much as I could. I do not sugar coat or bash. I do believe if you are hard on yourself, life (and your clients) will be infinitely easier on you. I think that is a Zig Ziglar quote.

Learn from this and move on. We have all screwed up, it happens.

Mike

I meant to say YOUR houlrly would be quite low.

I average $100-150 per hour for each hour of the entire process.

Your average can't be over $65

And some photographers say I do not charge enough!

Mike

WOW Anne!

A Mininimum of 56 hours. I spend 15-18 hours total including meeting for the initial consultation, the shooting, album design and album design consultation. If you add my office girl to the equation it would be more like 20-25 hours. What do you spend 56 hours doing???

My average collection is $2300 to $2900 not including parents and guests orders. You are charging more, to be sure. But I have a feeling that once expenses are paid, my hourly would be quite low!

Just curious???? WOW! 58 hours.........Oh yah, I already said that.

Mike

Hi Sam,

I checked your site and LOVE some of your shots on the beach!

My opinion is this. If you are going to judge your success at this show by the number that book you on the spot you are likely going to be real disappointed. As I am sure you know, bridal shows are CRAZY! The brides are completely overwhelmed and are often walking around in sensory overload. If you are after the brides looking for cheap, then a "book now and into to win...: tragedy might work. However, based on your images, you are not that kind of photographer.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, I would suggest you need a differentiating idea. Might I suggest a beach specialist. I would only show beach weddings and have a beach theme to my booth. Go all out. Maybe with sand, surfboard, whatever. Give out seashells with your contact information on a sticker inside. Just make it fun and get noticed. Make sure you have a guide to having the perfect beach wedding including suggested venues, best time of day, best beach wedding attire, etc. Better yet, try to get some other vendors to give you coupons to include. Make it have value and set you up as the authority on the subject.

First create a buz with your beach booth. It will be a MUST SEE if you play your cards right, add value with your free booklet (I bet there is a lot of brides who have given thought to the beach idea but had questions about it) and concentrate on setting up consultations. You can always give a small concession to those interesting in booking on the spot. However, if you do book on the spot, don?t ignore your other booth visitors. You should likely have an assistant.

If you really want a hook, I would suggest a ?do it on the beach? engagement session drawing for everyone who fills out contact information. Then follow up!

My 2 cents,

Mike

Carrie,

I am bored. Family is out of town and I don't have to leave for todays wedding for a while.

Thought you might like to see a corrected image. Of course, I am dealing with a really low resolution image here. If you want a high resolution image, email me a pic and I'll adjust an post.

Mike

Carrie,

You just touched on the thing that is in my mind the problem with the wedding photography industry these days.

Yes, cameras have gotten a lot more technologically advanced. Shooting on program mode and auto white balance does produce better results than ever before. However, in some (many)circumstances the little computer inside your camera gets fooled. When you rely on technology over intellect you are asking for trouble. For example, in a church with low light, your camera will have you shooting WAY too slow to be handheld. You need to know what the limitations are, move up your ISO, get on a tripod, try to shoot at times with minimal subject movement, etc.

As a professional it is our job to know what our camera is doing and how to make it behave when it gets real stupid. Personally, I shoot everything on full manual. I think of a digital camera as just another camera. Therefore, I tend to shoot the way I did when there was no auto settings and the camera didn't even have a battery! In addition, I shoot RAW as to give myself some wiggle room on exposure and white balance.

Shooting a portrait were you have control over where you shoot and the time to look at the back of your camera and adjust as needed program mode can work. However, in a wedding setting often you need to make the best of what you have and do it very quickly. In this case, you better know how your camera, flash, etc function and how to make them do your bidding!

I do not have a problem with someone who loves photography and wants to enter the wedding photography market. Actually, I spend a fair amount of time helping them. However, I do have a problem with anyone that poo poos training, doesn't even take the time to read the manual, shoots on auto everything and has no desire to change. They are cheating the brides, the industry and themselves! Carrie, I am not saying this is you. I am speaking in generalities here.

Anyone can take a few good shots, post them on a website and call themselves a professional wedding photographer. Brides on a budget will seek these people out in an effort to save the money. But, in the end they very possibly will not have the photographic memories of one of the biggest days of their lives. This will be sad a month after the wedding. The real tragedy is 25 years later. When there own child is getting married, you can bet these couples will insist on hiring a true professional. I have heard this story from my clients parents a hunred times or more.

Mike

For anyone interested, here is a link to free tutorials and more information on Canon's DPP (Digital Photo Professional Raw Conversion software.

http://www.usa.canon.com/content/dpp2/index.html

Cathy,

Look for the posts November 8th in particilar.

Mike

Cathy,

You are confusing shutter speed with ISO equivelant. Higher ISO (say 1600) does produce more noise. However, noise is always associated with higher ISO, even with film!! However, noise can be dealt with by things like noiseware that is a plug in for photoshop. Camera movement is the worst kind of problem.

Raw is something that is easy to learn. The file sizes are bigger than jpegs but memory cards are cheap. It has nothing to do with a mac. I am a PC guy all the way. Since you shoot cannon, you probably received a free copy of DPP raw conversion software with it for free. It is a great program! I use it (actually my office girl does) every day!

Go to this link to learn more about raw among other tips.

http://capturelifeinpixels.typepad.com/

Sorry I haven't updated this site for a while!

Hope this helps,

Mike

Jim,

I am pretty sure that there is camera movement here due to too slow of shutter speed and not enough flash to frreze the subject. That jives with the comment of the bride about the close ups being better. Unfortunatly, that is something that unsharp mask won't do much for. As far as adjusting in lightroom or photoshop...

I believe a professional has 2 real choices

1) shoot jpeg and adjust your white balance (custom white balance)with every change in lighting. Adjusting jpegs corrupts the image!!

2) shoot raw and do your white balance after the fact

Personally, I've done both and think RAW is 1000% easier.

But that's just me.

Mike

Carrie.

Thanks for not thinking I am just an @ss!

It is a tough situation. People always say that you should assist first. However, finding someone who wants to train their future competition is not easy. My thing is learn a fail safe then experiment. And, do not advertise anything on your site that you can not consistantly recreate. My advise to you after you get past this is take weddings off your site, learn as much as you can from reading and practice on FREE gigs until your comfortable with the basics. Then, start small and learn as you go.

Michael

Carrie,

I got the link to work. There was a space in it. Here is the corrected link

http://www.photoreflect.com/pr3/ThumbPage.aspx?r=1&e=2948207

I know this is going to sound harsh but it needs to be said...

This bride has EVERY reason to be upset. You didn't deliver as promised. I looked at your images on your website. Although limited, there is some nice work there. She had every reason to expect a similiar result. Not one of the hundreds of images even come close to that standard.

Shooting weddings is all about producing a consistant result in a variety of lighting conditions and often under extreme pressure. These images show that you are not ready yet. It doesn't mean you can't learn the necessary skills. However, until you do you would be best advised to not put yourself in this position again.

The lighting of the ceremony is the least of the trouble here. The cermoney shots that are taken with available light only are between the processional and resessional. You need to adjust your white balance for tungsten light, move your ISO settings up to 800 or possibly 1600 and shoot as wide open as possible. They should be shot on tripod and your shutter speed as high as possible. Typically these are shot at around 1/30th of a second ISO 800-1600 at f4.

The thing that really the issue is that the formal shots taken in the sanctuary have virtually the same lighting as the ceremony shots. They are all soft because they were shot hand held at too low of shutter speed. Even if you only had an on camera strobe, you could do so much better. You need to learn this stuff!

If you were to set your on camera flash at F5.6 your shutter speed at 1/60th to 125 and your flash compensation at -1/3 to +1 (depending on subject and distance) at 400ISO you would get a consistant sellable result. Really, you should have seen that you were getting very poor lighting and made the necessary adjustments. The key is you need to know how to adjust according to the situation. That is were learning and practice come in.

The outdoor shots and reception have there own issues but I am sure you get the point.

It appears that these shots were all taken in program mode on auto white balance. That is not professional. That is what Aunt Kathy would do.

There is a lot of things you can learn on this forum to help you become a competent wedding photographer. If this is something you want to persue, then start soaking it all up!

As for your question as to how to handle this...

It depends on if you want to continue persuing weddings.

If not, return a portion of her money and forget it.

If so, then spend the many many hours necessarry to make the images look as good as possible, recreate her album AND return all of her money with your sincere apologies for not producing work up to YOUR standards you have for yourself.

If you want help in what you can do in photoshop to help these I would be happy to assist. But know it will take a very long time and won't be real fun. But its situations like this that will make you better in the long run.

Mike

link doesn't work for me. Tried it on 2 machines. It says the photos are unavailable.

Mike

The link doesn't work.

Also, how much did she pay, it seems at least somewhat relevant in what her expectations were.

Mike

I use labprints to design my albums. Although I create some custom templates

for every album, I prefer to work from an existing template and just modify it.

My question is, does anyone know of any templates for sale that can be

imported into Labprints software?

Here is a link to our latest design. This was a wedding I shot personally.

Sweetest bride of the year!

http://www.1184881060165.weddingherald.com/index.php?id=88&wedding_id=125325

Comments welcome!

Michael<div></div>

Sara and Dave,

I beg to differ on your opinion about selective color. First of all selective color is used in bridal magazines on a fairly regular basis. Second, even Hallmark cards use selective color and if not overdone it looks rather nice. Third, if the bride wants it, then it's our job to do it. Lastly, the comments on it being only something for the low end bride is just plain wrong.

I shoot 35-45 weddings per year (700+ total). The average collection is $2300-$2900. Is this what you call low end?

I have had at least 10 of the last 30 brides I have meet with ask about that "neat black and white thing with only a little bit of color."

Although it is not my thing in particular, my job is to serve my clients first.

Also, some selective color is better than others. It needs to be subtle IMO. See example below.

Kacy, a piece of advice for you. You may want to email a request to past brides and friends and have them help you with your selection. What photographers like and what brides like differ considerably. As I am sure you can tell by these posts!

Good luck,

Michael

To add a vingnette

Set your lasso tool to 225pix feather (assuming you are working with a high res file), draw around your subject, select inverse, then move up your black point in levels. I use an action to make this simplier. Make selection and hit a button.

BTW, I was wondering the same thing about Andy.

Mike

Kacy,

Andy may not like it. Actually, I am not a real big fan of it either. However, your clients will and that who is paying you. That's why I still do a bit of selective color from every wedding.

Mike

Hi Kacy,

I checked out the images. Overall, I think they are pretty good for someone who has only been shooting for a short time. I have been doing weddings for nearly 20 years and I cringe when I look back at what I did in the early days. Yours are much better.

2 comments

1) You really need to make sure that your images on your site are as perfected as possible. I attached an image to give you an example of what I mean. This touch up only took aboout 20 seconds. The lacked impact to me. I hope you don't mind me playing with it. Even, if you don't like my enhanced version better, the point is the same. Use your best and make them look even better!

2) Maybe you like tattos. However, unless you are marketing towards a very niche market, I would not use that image. I promise you that it will turn off a lot of brides. In addition, the posture of the girl is not very flattering.

Hope this helps some. Best of luck to you.

Michael<div></div>

Art Leather defines bad business and has worked hard over the last 10 years to make sure that we won't ever forget it. Michael is asking for alternatives.

Michael, Albums Inc or Wooden Nickel Albums offers a variety of albums that will likely suit your needs. When I was doing matted albums I used Renaissance. I was VERY happy with the quality and turn around order to delivery was about a week.

Wooden Nickel's number is 800-827-0363

Best of luck to you,

Michael

BTW, I know there is capitalization and several other mistakes on the sample posted. This is just a rough draft to give my designer. This is just about content and look and feel.

Mike