g_mcduff

<a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast-enhancement.shtml" target="_blank">Contrast Enhancement aka "Removing Digital Haze"</a>

What's not to like about a good P&S? Magnum photographer Alex Majoli is famous for having won several major awards for projects in which <a href="http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6468-7844" target="_blank">he used nothing but</a>.

 

<p>While narrow depth of field is useful for CERTAIN type of applications, a lot of photographers use it because they're too lazy to clean up a cluttered background. The good photographers, however, use deep DoF to their advantage ...

Oh, and to pre-empt the inevitable "but a photograph is not objective" argument, I should add that there's a world of difference between the unavoidable subjectivity in the photographic act of excluding (by framing/composing and choice of moment) and the willful injecting of personal bias through commentary such as that quoted above.

An amendment to my post: I realize that you do have a phone number that you eventually will give to a client since you say "there, we can discuss details over the phone." However, you should still offer your phone number on your website. If for whatever reason you don't want to, at least remove "As of right now, email is the best way to get ahold of me" because it implies unreliability and inconsistency.

<p>1) You can simplify the opening text by removing some redundancy. For example: "Professional wedding photography services based out of Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario" is unnecessarily long and wordy... "professional wedding photography services" your clients will be able to figure out by seeing "Weddings" gallery thumbnail and "Packages" in the menu right under it. "Based out of," well, if you simply state a location it would be safe to assume you're based there. So just keep "Taylor Jackson Photography" and right under it, "Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario". Simple and elegant.

 

<p>2) <b>Gallery</b>: The small commercial portfolio can probably be taken out altogether, but if you want to keep it, it's probably OK to show off what else you can do. Your Weddings portfolio, however, needs to have more. 8 sample pictures isn't going to convince me to spend up to $1000 to hire you.

 

<p>3) <b>Packages</b>: <i>"A free consultation can be arranged, and can take place at any Kitchener/Waterloo Starbucks or Williams Coffee Pub location."</i> Sorry but I'm not going to pay $1000 to someone who will only meet at a coffee house. Would you? You don't have to have a professional $1500/month photo studio. Just clean out your apartment, have a nice corner with a comfortable sofa and albums on the table where you can interview prospective clients.

 

<p>4) <b>About</b>: <i>"I'm completely confident in my abilities to capture one of the most important days of your life."</i> Someone who needs to say this, somehow does not inspire confidence in me. <i>"I've learned how to save almost any photo from the garbage bin"</i> You don't want to give the client the impression that ANY of your work would end up in the garbage bin without a Photoshop rescue...

 

<p>5) <b>Contact</b>: <i>"As of right now, email is the best way to get ahold of me."</i> Find yourself a consistent and reliable way to let people get a hold of you. If you've got my $1000 and my pictures on you, I don't really like the idea that "as of right now" email is the way to contact you, that is unprofessional and I don't care if you can respond in 6 hours. Email may be fine for initial inquiries but paying clients will want a PHONE NUMBER. Also, free email services such as gmail, yahoo etc are unprofessional. Get yourself an ISP or webaddy based email, e.g. info@taylorjacksonphoto.com. <i>"there, we can discuss details over the phone, or by meeting at any Kitchener-Waterloo Starbucks or Williams Coffee Pub."</i> See #3.

 

<p>6) Resize your text box to get rid of the horizontal slider.

If you're already 25 with a BA, I would say it's time to look for internships with newspapers rather than seeking more academic training. This is assuming, of course, you have a suitable portfolio, and there's no excuse not to when you've completed a BA in photo-documentary. Documentary photography is more about having a journalistic sense, an eye for storytelling picture composition and a conviction that the stories you're interested in really need to be told - and it's debatable whether a master's degree is any more helpful than working experience.

 

<p>I read some of your blog and one thing I'd like to mention - if you took any journalism courses at all, whether visual or written, you should know not to inject your own opinions and biases into your work. I'm referring to certain statements you make such as:

 

<p><i>"The nazi's were really quite stupid. They were inarticulate and the arguments obviously beyond flawed. Many times I had to keep myself from chuckling at the ridiculous things they would say."</i>

 

<p>As strong as your personal feelings may be, your job as a <b>documentarian</b> is to report what you see as objectively as possible, and let your viewers/readers decide for themselves. Commentary like this has no place in documentary. I know it's a blog, but you need to be aware of this. Study the work of Magnum photographers such as Leonard Freed (himself of Jewish descent) and how they cover topics such as <a href="http://todayspictures.slate.com/20061115/7.html" target="_blank">white supremacy</a>.

<i>I included the hot shot because I felt the subject was strong enough to sustain the hit. It's probably my favorite shot of all of them. Your mileage may very.</i>

<p>You could look at it several different ways. When I look at that shot, any moment it could have had is completely overpowered by the distraction of a giant hotspot smack in the middle of the frame. Your personal style? Perhaps, but it also suggests someone who doesn't know how to expose or post-process very well, and that's a possibility you don't want coming up in a client's mind who's thinking of paying you $$$ to document the most important day in her life.

<p>You didn't ask for a critique, but you did say:

 

<p><i>Is it even possible to make a living shooting strict documentary style? I would be happy if I never shoot another group shot, but can one sell a package like that?</i>

 

<p>Karen essentially said "for you, not yet" in the most gentle way possible. But as you said, potatos and spuds.

<i>You know about the IR filters you put on the lenses don't you.</i>

<p>You mean that hoop you need to jump through just to get a $4800 camera to register color properly? Yeah. I also know a number of photog friends who are still waiting for Leica to deliver their promised filters, four months after taking delivery of their cameras. I've tried telling them <a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/154495-REG/B_W_65014686_46_mm_486_Digital.html" target="_blank">they can order from B&H</a> but they don't want to spend $70+ and wait 6-10 weeks when Leica's said their filters will ship "any day now" - any day now for the last month. Oh well.