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Nobody cares what your camera costs, Nat. You can still take shitty pictures with a $5000 camera. Charge what you think your service is worth and work for clients who pay it.
I’ve met too many people who think the number they associate to a thing somehow makes them a better user of it.
Tons of people take amazing photos with tons of thought and skill involved in composition and everything, with a phone camera or shitty digital from 2010.
People who use the price of the equipment to justify expense instead of the quality of their work are usually bad at whatever it is they’re charging for.
You can shift the quality a lot with great equipment, but that requires you to know what you’re doing first. And it still depends on what you’re trying to shoot. Somebody trying to capture a great moment in high speed sports might need a better camera than a cat dad. But without knowing how to use it, it is worth nothing.
All the money in the world can’t buy talent
All the talent in the world can’t perform brain surgery with a chainsaw
OH YEAH?!
I’m stealing this 😂
At $100 per shoot she can pay off her camera in one year doing one shoot a week. That’s if it’s a hobby.
But since it’s not a hobby for her, as she points out, that means she can do 3-5 shoots per week. If she charges $300 per shoot, and averages let’s say 4 shoots per week, that’s over $60k per year. A small salary, but people get by for less.
If she wants to make more, that’s fine. But she has to convince people that she’s worth a higher price by doing quality work and demonstrating consistency, professionalism, building a network of returning clients and recommendations if she wants to be fully booked each week. Not by telling them how expensive her equipment is…
Just playing devils advocate here, there should be more involved than simply taking pictures. There will be editing, and putting together an album that makes sense to the customer as well; therefore she could charge more for her time and upcharge for album features such as hard copy decorative stuff.
Then again, there is that saying “starving artist” and all…
Sure, but I factored that in by considering 5 shoots per week “fully booked.” That gives you an average of 8 hours per shoot for everything from transport, set up, shooting, take-down, editing, archiving, billing, etc.
Not unreasonable, especially considering that’s a 40 hour week. Overtime exists if she needs longer, and should be billed accordingly. $1500 in one week is more than a lot of people make, even working over 40 hours.
Is the $100-$300 she mentions a flat rate or an hourly rate? Even as a flat rate that would be decent for one day’s work. If it’s hourly, that’s pretty lucrative and leaves no room to complain, especially not about all the extra stuff that’s involved.
Physical copies would of course be charged a la carte or as a bundle or whatever; it’s pretty standard for those to be add-on costs, unless a certain number of items were already part of the negotiated contract. But with print-on-demand services these days, that adds very little additional work or overhead expense for the photographer.
But yeah if she wants to charge more than $300 for one shoot, then she needs to spend time building her reputation, not complaining about the cost of her equipment and acting like her cheapskate customers are to blame.
You can build a reputation with a $400 mirrorless camera, if you’re a good photographer. Then invest in professional equipment when you can afford it.
At $100 per shoot she can pay off her camera in one year doing one shoot a week.
Assuming you don’t value your time, sure. Pro-photographers charge a lot more than that. Also, who wants to give up a year’s worth of weekends for a fancy camera?
Let’s look at the rest of that paragraph you selectively quoted:
At $100 per shoot she can pay off her camera in one year doing one shoot a week. That’s if it’s a hobby.
[emphasis added]
What a bad faith attempt to stir shit up over nothing.
???
Get some thicker skin, my guy. If you’re getting paid for the work, its going to be more than a hobby. Especially if you’re planning to work 50 separate gigs.
Ffs, if you can file taxes as a business, we’re well past the point of hobbying. That’s just a part time job
This isn’t about having thin skin, this is about you being unnecessarily combative. Don’t flatter yourself thinking I’m torn up about it.
If you’re getting paid for the work, its going to be more than a hobby. Especially if you’re planning to work 50 separate gigs.
Ffs, if you can file taxes as a business, we’re well past the point of hobbying. That’s just a part time job
Hence where the rest of my original comment comes in. I know you like cherrypicking excerpts devoid of context, but ffs everyone can see my whole fucking comment. It’s right there. And you’re acting like you’re actually making a point here? Go away.
and if you do not pay taxes, and do account for software licenses, work going into post processing, and general admin work for your business as a start.
Wedding photographer is an interesting job. With a lot of jobs, people buy the minimum viable equipment they need to get the job done.
But, people who get into wedding photography seem to generally be people who are really into photography. Rather than a $5000 camera being the requirement for the job. The $5000 camera is a present you can justify getting yourself if the wedding photography game is going well.
It’s not a tool that goes into the case and stays there until the next wedding. It’s something to be used for the kinds of pictures that don’t pay the bills but that you love taking: nature shots, architecture, abstract art, gritty realism, etc.
$5k is also literally hobby money. I’ve spent way more than that snowboarding and hiking over the years. My lab setup at work is literally worth more than I will make in my entire career. Sit down bitch.
Nobody cares what your camera costs
It’s certainly a curiosity. Like, what’s the value-add of a $5k camera relative to a cheaper model? What’s the step-up or step-down in price? What features are you prizing? What brand are you favoring? What are your clients looking for that someone else can’t necessarily bring with a cheaper device?
Whole books have been written about the industry, the technology around the industry, and the kinds of people who pursue it.
Charge what you think your service is worth and work for clients who pay it.
Finding clients who pay well is half the work of any freelance job.
And even if your pictures were good, more than 100$ per photo is overpriced asf, and with that you can recover your inversion and gain more.
I shoot with a refurbished $600 Canon EOS Rebel T7. I use two lenses for the majority of my work: an 18-55mm, and a 75-300mm.
Fite me irl, Nat, my shit’s gorgeous and I know it.
Nice shots but if you’re wanting gorgeous candid shots of fast moving action (like weddings/events), you’re gonna struggle without the expensive glass/body.
I’ve got a nifty fifty which can open to 1.6, and that’s pretty good for getting as fast as 1/250th in dim light, and I got it for free! :D
Catch is, the zoom controls are at the bottom, on my feet.
you don’t zoom with your feet. that is how you change perspective, and it is not the same as zooming. serious hobby photographer should understand the difference.
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Lemme use my cute euphemisms.
Alternatively: drat, you got me, I’m not a hobby photographer, I’m just a lesbian with a camera.
Alternatively: drat, you got me, am I still approved by the board you’re on to take pictures of cool things, or should I turn my kit in?
Alternatively and truly: what is the point of the tone you’re using in the last sentence? You’re not aiming to shame me out of taking and making photographs, are you? Even if you don’t want to call them art, I’m still using a camera to capture visuals that I enjoy to a file, and adjusting them to my heart’s content. And what if I don’t really understand your definition of perspective vs. zoom? English is a second language for me!
Alternative and deeply truly, in my bones: who the fuck are you? Let’s see some of your damn portfolio.
(And yes, I downvoted myself to save you the damn click, cause let’s be real, you’re not gonna reply, you’re gonna downvote and move on.)
Alternative and deeply truly, in my bones: who the fuck are you? Let’s see some of your damn portfolio.
i am someone pointing your attention to the fact that you don’t zoom with your feet. i assume you did not know that, because why would you say that otherwise, so now you know something you didn’t before and you can think about how to apply that knowledge to your pictures of cool things. i don’t really need to present my portfolio for that.
And yes, I downvoted myself to save you the damn click,
you seem to have forgotten to do that. what is the point of making such bizarre performative claim when you don’t even follow through?
if simple comment sends you into such tailspin, maybe public discussion is not for you…
Fair. Sorry for being an asshole.
Zooming with your feet (and switching primes) is part and parcel to events photography. If I see a zoom lens at a wedding I will judge the photographer.
Those are really nice! I especially like in the first one how you captured the city lights on the water and filled in that potential darker space on the left with the bridge span.
Of course, there’s scenic photography, which is basically having really good composition skills, knowing good locations, and timing, and then there’s people photography, which is… extra. I don’t blame photographers for charging more for that shit lol
‘I want our wedding photos to be the two of us on a cliff at the beach at sunset with really pretty clouds behind us!’ And you’re thinking, okay, drive time, waiting for a good colorful sunset instead of a cloudless or too cloudy or foggy one (always a fun game of roll-the-dice in Oregon at least), and they want their backs to the sunset, so that’s extra lighting (that you’ll have to carry to the location) and extra time in photoshop to be sure you can still see their faces clearly…
Yeah, I don’t do people cause they’re hard to look at, what with the brain damage and all, so scenery’s more of my thing. Scenery doesn’t stay put, but it’s a hell of a lot less wiggly than people.
And I mean, I’ve never seen the Oregon Coast look bad, you just have to take what it gives you when you show up, no expectations.
Fuuuuck, I think I’ve gotta go there this weekend, just to get out of town.
how do you white balance your shots/ seems overly sepia
It’s a preference. I’m biased away from cool light as a person, and like my work to be a bit warmer.
I turn off QRedShift when I’m working, then I ultimately end up re-creating it by hand, cause I’m just like that.
Hey man, I support your hobby, but uh, this is embarrassing to boast about. Be humble, you’re an amateur and that’s okay.
Where’s your portfolio?
They’re not even out here identifiably.
I’m out here with my legal name up front, making art that I like, and being really, really proud of it.
I, uh, don’t have a website though, just a Pixelfed account that I update with new work fairly often.
I’m gonna start posting more work, not just because I like the work I post, but now with an added layer of spite! (Nothing functionally will change except my spirits will continue to be undampened, despite their recent attempts at doing so.)
Seriously, I don’t care if you’re Gregory fucking Crewdson, you do not say that shit to aspiring artists.
Cultivate us goddammit.
DO NOT DEMORALIZE PEOPLE OUT OF THIS FIELD.
Too late…I used to get covers and was all city. Saw my work in the paper and every news stand. Didn’t matter… I gave up on it a long time ago. Most slobs just want porn, piggy slop and you know what I don’t care anymore. Shoot your own damn photos, fix your own $8000 bicycle and fix your own damn car. Fucking twats I hope this slob ass nation is nuked into oblivion. and I mean that. Their little meaningless lives and their own self perception blinds them into thinking they are somehow important. What good is a doctor if no one can afford it. What good is a lawyer if no one can afford it. Don’t get me started on these marketurds and office chimps. I kinda enjoyed when all the middle manager gen X’ers lost their jobs to AI. The great equaliser. 👍️. More layoffs to come. These assholes will be wiped out.
PS the paper I worked for the owner thought I wasn’t worth making full time. He got caught selling drugs went to jail and the paper went belly up. He never showed his face around town after that… then after jail worked at a hotel at the desk after that🙂 humbled you could say. Fuck everybody and this whole gawd damn world. All these little piggies. OINK OINK OINK Fuck these boomers.
All the “successful” photographers I knew were boomers about to retire and scam artist. Fuck the arts forever I just pray for nukes. Support small business bla bla bla capitalism gonna capitalise on you damn ass real soon if it hasn’t already.
I just shoot the art that I wanna shoot. I like my works, I’m real damn proud of them. I wanna show them to as many people as I can, to get in galleries, to have my work be seen, to make my mark on this world.
I’m not a laborer with my camera. I don’t shoot food for packaging, I don’t get ninety seconds with an NBA star, I’m not on NatGeo.
I’ve made a grand total of $300 from this gig cause I sold a canvas and a few prints, and I sold a shit ton of magic cards to get the camera to begin with.
I guess what I’m saying is, I’m not gonna be some jaded old hack like the dude I replied to up there. I do this simply for the love.
And for what it’s worth, your words have a good weight. :)
Hey, you might want to reset the password on your account, someone used it to post something absolutely idiotic under your username. Just letting you know, so that you get this sorted out.
Actually no, I’m preserving the text of what you said here so you can’t do a dirty delete: @darntootin@lemmy.world said “Hey man, I support your hobby, but uh, this is embarrassing to boast about. Be humble, you’re an amateur and that’s okay.”
If my photographer can get me the picture I need with the $300 camera, I’m hiring them first. Not everyone needs their pictures on a billboard or TV ad.
She wants her investment repaid in 2 or 3 gigs?
Taxes, assistant fee, mileage, you own more than one lens and one cam body…no lol not even close. We haven’t even talked about post processing, delivery, rights, etc.
She should’ve mentioned that instead of just listing a single piece of equipment
It’s probably fake. Don’t take image macros/memes too seriously ;)
Its easy to say something like “my camera for this shoot costs $5k, you could rent it for $300 a day and do it yourself” but people dont really care about art or skill. If youre shooting a wedding, for example, there are hundreds of little candid moments that your friend John the Designated Driver wouldn’t catch that Natalie GirlWhoDoesThisForALiving would.
Not to mention there aren’t enough weddings a day to sustain someone for $300 per, and youre competing with others, and blah blah blah.
I tend to follow my instinct of “your art is worth whatever you say it is”. If i like your art and i like your price, ill pay it, no haggling. If i dont like one or either, i apologize for wasting your time.
In my experience, items are only worth what someone is actually willing to pay. Because if it is priced so high that no one in your target demographic is actually willing to pay that much, it is just unrealized gains. And for most people, an unrealized gain is equivalent to 0.
I see this a lot in the MTG community. People will say a card is worth $200 because that is what they list for on eBay. I ask if they’ve ever had an offer for that much - and the answer is almost exclusively no. I tell them that the ones listed on eBay are the ones that aren’t selling. The real value is less because no one actually buying them for $200, that is the cutoff where people stopped buying the card and so the listings stay up.
I remember eBay used to let you view items that have actually sold that way you could see the actual price an item moves at. Haven’t used it in a while but if that’s still there I would show them what price the card has sold for in the recent past
so you are equally unhappy about your favourite restaurant not stating what percentage paid for a meal goes into admin, and into repairs/replacement equipment and admin work?
You’re right, but it’s not the argument she’s presenting.
She’s a stock image
tbf I doubt many Uber drivers actually profit, especially the ones driving $40k cars
On the Uber and transport topic, I sometimes get to ride the light rail and I have to drive to the park n ride to leave my car and ride the rail.
The trip from my home to the park n ride is a quick 10 to 15 minutes by car. By bus it’s 1 to 2 hours. By foot it’s probably a few days.
The light rail takes me 30 minutes from north king county to Seattle downtown. If I drove there it would take an hour of mostly just sitting in traffic.
Progress is slow but if there was a light rail from bothell to Kenmore to the I-5 corridor, that would basically eliminate my need for a 40 to $90 Uber. We only pay that if we a traveling. That way we get a car from our house to the link and then easy 30 minutes to the airport.
The whole Uber thing is great unless there are only a few riders or a few drivers. Plus the cut that goes to Uber is probably stifling innovation. I recall that there’s an open-source Uber system called…
a quick 10 to 15 minutes by car. […] By foot it’s probably a few days.
Just as a raw ballpark estimate. By car could be 50km/h on average, with a walking speed of roughly 5km/h, that’s 10x the time it takes by car, i.e. 2-3 hours.
A few days usually takes you trough a few adjacent townships. Do you have to take a humongous detour on foot?
Or they are so weak they can only walk 30 minutes per day and had to rest until the next day
5km/h is also faster than average walk that is probably not a pace you’d maintain for hours? After considering you also need to stop on intersection you may be getting the average down to less than 4, but then if it’s actually a 10 minute ride you’d probably also spend enough time in stop lights and your average speed would also be way lower than 50km/h
5km/h is on the low end of the “average” walking speed but waiting at intersections and lights will murder that speed. You could easily be on the upper end of six and then have to wait 5+ minutes at an intersection, bringing you back below a 5.
not a pace you’d maintain for hours?
This is after all the human superpower.
just hypothesizing but: the part of the burbs they’re traversing doesn’t have much in the way of sidewalks along the highways, forcing detours along the local trails like the burke gilman.
don’t cars usually go at least 65mph?
Tops. Waiting at intersections, slowing down for other traffic situations and driving on roads with a lower speed limit drags down that average, as others have mentioned with regards to walking.
At my house there are no buses. There are no light rails. There are no sidewalks, no bike lanes. You can walk in the easement of people’s front yards but it’s mostly a ditch, full of water when it’s raining. I live inside the loop highway that runs around my 2+ million population city. Cars are the only option, even most of the homeless have cars here.
sounds like a real shithole. texas?
could be anywhere, usa
nah. lots of places have decent infrastructure, and many even have transit.
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light rail from bothell to Kenmore to the I-5 corridor
that’ll be st12? 15? lol.
after the excavate under the mountain of queen anne to connect ballard…
honestly the real solution is to move out of the sticks, or stop working in downtown.
My education cost 200,000. You think I made all that back in one paycheck? Cry me a river, Natalie.
shes probably rich or well off, of course she afford to this.
Photography is harder than most people think. You need to get to the places where you are doing your job, there is tons of communication involved, then there is editing and proper archival stuff you need to do, accounting is also completely different from that of an uber driver’s, and it’s not just the camera that costs more than 5K (looking at you BRIESE and any basic lens set – telephoto, normal, wide angle, zoom, low light will quickly exceed the 15K mark if you care about professional standards). It’s really a whole thing.
And then there’s lights. A decent portrait setup will run you thousands easily, and if you want to do anything even slightly abnormal (colored lights, say) it can be astronomically high. Art is expensive.
It’s absolutely not. You can take perfectly fine, artsy photographs with a bunch of cheap gels and Chinese import lights.
You’ll be shocked to learn that people took fantastic pictures before an $8.6k M.ZUIKO lens came into existence.
Go ahead and tell me what a setup the likes of what Evans or Miller had at the time would cost today and stop putting art behind a paywall. Stock photography and repeatable product pictures are expensive, but that’s not art.
Professional photographers have expensive equipment because it makes certain shots commercially feasible, not because it’s impossible to create art without money.
… Walker Evans famously shot with a Zeiss Contax (among many other cameras) - which retailed for an inflation-adjusted ~$2,700.
I’m gonna stick with “art is expensive”. Yes, good equipment isn’t required to make art (a claim I didn’t make) - but the reason to have good equipment is because you don’t have to fight your tools to get the results you want. Sure, I could fuck around with gels and can lights to get the cool effects I want - but unless I have a stack of ~2.2 million gels, a Westcott RGB point-light is going to be both more capable and critically less time consuming so more of my time is spent doing art than it is futzing around while my model (usually myself) slowly wilts. Similarly, you can produce incredible paintings with a stick and chewed berries - but the time spent going out to pick a bushel of pokeweed, then process that into a usable format, then wait for each stroke to dry, can’t be excluded just because it’s a more authentic process.
(And don’t be an elitist about what constitutes art, either - stock photography is absolutely an art form even if you sneer at it.)
I think eventually, you’re saying the same thing. If you want to shoot professionally, it makes sense to get equipment to save time and have a manner of control over reproducibility. That’s also why the local metal shop gets the $200 carbide endmills vs. grinding HSS blanks by hand. I did state that already.
I’ll still disagree with two things. You absolutely did say “art is expensive”, and stock photography will not produce a lot of art. It can be shot artfully, sure, but that’s more of a word choice and eventually rather equates to craftsmanship. I’m sure there is at least one stock photographer out there, producing art all the time. Same with any amazing shot that happens to get uploaded to a stock library not becoming any less meaningful. But that’s not common and simply not how the process works, claiming anything else would be disingenuous. I’m not out to disparage the craft or the skill of anyone involved, that’s a completely different topic.
Finally, I was actually absolutely thinking of the Contax 1. Now, don’t adjust for inflation. Why would you do that? This camera auctions for around $200, $250 today. Did something happen in the past 86 years that now makes it impossible to shoot the same, great pictures with that camera? I don’t think so. Yes, shooting has become a lot more convenient, a lot more consistent (some people would argue that’s a bad thing), but surely it’s not the tool then that enabled these photographs. That was my angle.
(Please let’s not get hung up on the particular camera model, availability of film etc., it’s an example to make a point)
Did something happen in the past 86 years that now makes it impossible to shoot the same, great pictures with that camera?
Well, yes? The massive infrastructure built to support film photography disappeared. It’s an incredibly expensive and fairly niche medium now, and one that does not have anything like a robust market to support a professional on. It’s little more than a gimmick at this point - one that could produce great art absolutely, but one with a microscopically niche appeal and that would see you starved on the street if you tried to support yourself with it.
Anyways, yes I said art is expensive - twice, in fact - what I never said is that art requires expensive tools (which it doesn’t). At the bare minimum art requires a vast investiture of that most precious resource, time, even if we’re to set aside all the concerns with other expenses. Doing art professionally though, that needs the high quality tools to deliver the consistent and rapid results.
Being totally honest here though, I am incredibly skeptical of anyone who acts like they can decide what is and is not art. It’s difficult to take their philosophical outlook seriously when they’re comfortable passing judgment on that.
This is true, it’s the need for consistency that drives up costs.
the prices they charge and the inability to give me the damn RAWs is why I just got a camera instead.
Our wedding photographer gave us both RAWs and processed JPEGs
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Asked mine to give it to me RAW and it turned into a huge misunderstanding.
For the price of one shoot, you can buy someone’s lightly used $5,000 kit on ebay. I’ve had a Canon I bought a decade ago that’s still works great. Maybe got it for $250 or so IIRC.
I found a guy willing to chuck me RAWs for a lower price, still felt a bit ripped off. He shot 90% of the day on a walkabout zoom and the photos were nothing special.
The audacity to ask for the raw, unprocessed photos for a lower price, and then complain that they look boring.
You wanted the raws. Process them yourself.
I mean this comment makes total sense if we pretend that all photos are equally valuable and that the color balance is the only issue but not if we actually address the part where the photographer ostensibly took a bunch of poorly framed candids and failed to capture the energy of the moment
Oops, sorry, I forgot you already decided that the photographer must have been the good guy so that means I’m wrong
Processing won’t do shit to a shitty shot, with terrible composition and lighting.
They were boring because of the lens choice and lack of effort/skill of the photographer. Processing isn’t going to do anything to change that.
The audacity to ask for the raw, unprocessed photos for a lower price, and then complain that they look boring.
That has the same energy as going to a restaurant and asking for the raw ingredients.
The craft I’m paying for is in the taking of the photos, processing is subjective and isn’t going to transform a shitty photo into a gorgeous one. Your restaurant comparison is shitty, it would only make sense if I was asking to just plate the food myself.
Ohhhh this pisses me off soooooo much. I decided to do family photos and specifically asked for the raws before I went into the shoot. They still gave me a hard time after the shoot to get the raws. They gave me a stripped down .dng without any camera settings. Ohhhh that pisses me off so much.
When I used to film pornography I got sloppy seconds.
It was the definition of win/win.
A man after my own heart. Plus, dinner and a show.
Ah, so that’s why you’re known as the cum farter, you were the sloppy seconds.
Okay real talk here, how tf is this Xavier guy basically everywhere? Did he go to meme school?
Does he make up content to react to? Is that his thing?
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There are loads of us ! At least two.
Yeah and that Uber driver can’t afford rent. Photographers often have less business in the winter, too, and they have a ton of extra equipment to lug around. I know a wedding photographer and it’s a lot of work day of and post work to make sure it’s all nice.
Pppffffssshhhh… 5k?!?that is hobby level money. I’m over 15k into just my lenses and I do this as a hobby and shoot friends and family for free.
Bro… Shooting your friends and family is messed up… Whether someone pays you to or not…
I kill people for money… But you are my friend… So I will kill you for free
Post a photo so we know you’re legit
We demand man ass
Free the weenie!
My house cost 300 grand and you want me to look after your kids for 60 quid a day?
If this photographer can reduce her time spent to the same level as a 10 minute Uber journey, then yes - she should not be charging more than $12
As an IT guy, i feel the opposite. I fixed it in ten minutes because I have ten years of experience. My hourly rate goes up because I spend so little time fixing the problem, if I charged any less, I couldn’t earn a living.
True, but a photographer has to work with people, which you know damn well is the worst part.
IT also has to work with people
Only if they manage to get past my labyrinth of cunning traps and ticketing system auto-emails…
Some of us have to answer calls
There's a solution for that:
but a photographer has to work with people
Easiest way to tell me you’ve never worked IT
But you only have to hit their taste of photography. Ask IT people how hard it is to hit the taste of someone who mainly is able to click on iPhone apps and now starts to tell you what db/infra/server structure he/she wants.
The story goes:
The huge printing presses of a major Chicago newspaper began malfunctioning on the Saturday before Christmas, putting all the revenue for advertising that was to appear in the Sunday paper in jeopardy. None of the technicians could track down the problem. Finally, a frantic call was made to the retired printer who had worked with these presses for over 40 years. “We’ll pay anything; just come in and fix them,” he was told.
When he arrived, he walked around for a few minutes, surveying the presses; then he approached one of the control panels and opened it. He removed a dime from his pocket, turned a screw 1/4 of a turn, and said, “The presses will now work correctly.” After being profusely thanked, he was told to submit a bill for his work.
The bill arrived a few days later, for $10,000.00! Not wanting to pay such a huge amount for so little work, the printer was told to please itemize his charges, with the hope that he would reduce the amount once he had to identify his services. The revised bill arrived: $1.00 for turning the screw; $9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn.
Wasn’t that Charles Proteus Steinmetz fixing a generator at one of Fords factories? “1 $ for the piece of chalk, 9,999 $ for knowing where to put the mark”.
Search for “Ford” on the linked page to see the story as given there :)
The first time I heard it was a VCR repairman turning a screw for $100.
They want to do a shoot for a 100 - 300 bucks bucks, which would be 1 - 3 hours or so of her time at a comparable rate.
1-3 hours working directly with the client, and then 3-6 hours spent editing (or more, depending on the type of shoot). Even if they don’t have a studio to pay rent on, $100 for an on-location shoot in a park is still ridiculously low for the amount of work involved. Art is expensive for a reason, good art more so!
A 10 min ride home is not the same as a 3 hour wedding and 12 hours processing images and video.
By your logic you’re not paying for a 10 minute ride home. You’re paying for a 15 minute drive to your point of origin, a 10 minute ride home, a 15 minute ride elsewhere, in time, fuel, maintenance, insurance, car payment, interest on that payment and taxes.
That’s not what she was talking about though.
It kind of is, but she’s making her argument poorly.
If you want a professional photography shoot, there is a minimal expectation on equipment above whatever your phone can do. That equipment costs significant money to own.
There is also the money to pay for someone’s time for the shoot, which she argues for poorly. Even though photography is a hobby, selling services is a commitment of time to reach a certain minimum standard. That time is worth something.
If she’s even real (could be a troll account), we have no idea what she’s talking about. Quick half hour or shorter shoot for your family after getting a new baby? A wedding lasting hell, maybe 5-6 hours or more? 300 bucks is way too much for the first option (assuming she has a studio and can just shoot 1.5 families an hour and then do the editing later) and probably about a fifth of what the second option should cost.
Not to mention the skill of moving around a wedding in an unobtrusive manner so as to both capture great shots and not distract from the ceremony too much. A good wedding photographer is worth more than $100-300. But, people getting married should get what they can afford. Even if that’s a ride to the courthouse and your friend with the newest smartphone that has the better camera. Great photos are nice to have. Any photo from your wedding is going to bring back the memory.
Of course. The second ‘wedding’ leaves the customer’s lips, the price jumps 5x. Because fuck you pay me.
