danielramos

<p>Ok thanks guys, some of the stuff said here is great advice and others hurt my ego a little but I gotta face the facts. I understand that my wedding portfolio is not "remarkable" but you have to understand that these were my first weddings, it's not an excuse but it's fair to say that I was being "safe". If you take a look at my portrait portfolio you'll see that my work is a lot stronger and noone can deny me that.<br>

I see portraits on a different level than just telling someone to pose and smile. I see it more like transforming my subjects into an ideal Them! I don't just like to create images, I like to mold them. I'm not talking blabbery, people used to commission artworks from me and would pay me good money to create portraits painted and drawn by hand (I can actually do oil paintings of people) . I won several local awards but I had to face the facts that there are "starving artists"and I wasn't gonna be one of them.<br>

Photography is something I picked up later, not as a necessity but as a hobby. A friend of mine, saw that I had a "good eye" and bought me my first semi professional camera. In fact a lot of my equipment that I have I did not buy (cameras, lights, strobes)..They were given to me by photographers who thought that I should purse this further because "I have a good eye for Photography". People started noticing my portrait work and somehow word got around and I started being contacted to do portraits of people. Now I can honestly say that weddings for me is something new.<br>

So far I have done what I've seen on other wedding photographer's websites and tried to imitate it somehow while adding a small portion of my portrait style. As time has passed I have learned a lot and I would like to come out of my shell more and produce truly great wedding photography. I don't really care for the cookie cutter, standard photography I see on so many websites. My vision is bigger than that, someday I hope, I will be able to produce what I imagine. I want to take the bride and truly transform them into some etheral creature( at least for bridal sessions) My influence is fashion, I love styled images, and by styled I don't mean the overly used sepia, skin blurring and vignettes I see everywhere, I mean High end retouching where the bride will look like she stepped out of a Loreal campaign.<br>

I have high hopes for my next wedding, but I will just have to wait for what the future brings.</p>

 

<p>Ok Thanks Matt, as much as it hurts you were right about the entry page, so I improved it a little, I actually just posted all this cluttery stuff on it yesterday because I was reading that putting a bunch of links on the front page helps with google ranking, otherwise I would have kept this page very clean with less text. As far as networking I have not gone out and interacted with other vendors, truthfully I wouldn't know where to start and who to recommend since there are so many. I have tried the newspaper before but only got two calls and they were looking for someone who also does video, my past client's weddings were done for very little money since I didn't have a wedding portfolio, I had only done several portraits up until then. I know that after reading so much about photography and after seeing so many great wedding photos that my next wedding I shoot will be far greater than my initial ones, the problem is I have no future bookings, it just seems to me that the only people that email me, which I can count in one hand, only want to pay from$300-$400 for my service. I would rather do it for free and keep my dignity since I do value my work, but I would like to get some critiques on my photos as well.</p>

<p>Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I seem to be stuck at 0. I have advertised, joined a few wedding websites, put my website up and still nothing, I have had my website running since the beggining of this year and only booked 2 weddings for pennies...I'm beggining to think maybe photography is just not my thing and maybe people don't really want my style of photos....I just don't know, it is definetely very discouraging when I have spent so much time learning about photography and business handling along with google SEO, can anybody give me some critiques and good advice please. My portfolio website is<br>

http://www.ramos-studio.com/</p>