Putting Together a Great Photography Website
Tips on putting together a powerful website.
http://fusionextreme.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Building-Your-Website.pdf
If a password is required to open this document please use FusionX
Studio Lighting and Your Wallet
I have been a professional photographer for 22 years and one thing that I learned many years ago is to not be cheap when it comes to lenses. Go ahead and pay more, it’s worth it. Camera bodies are usually a little more flexible. A good quality DSLR can be found in the mid-range area. Lighting is something entirely different.
I have had the opportunity to work with top of the line lighting and also with lighting that is much (MUCH) less costly. What I have found is that price has little effect on your final image.
Pretend for a moment that you mortgage the house and shell out for some really expensive German gear. It recycles a little faster and the consistency is a (very) little better from one flash to another. You can drive a truck over the equipment and it will still work.
Now take that same photographer only this time they don’t mortgage house. Instead they stock up on less expensive lighting. We aren’t talking cheap. We are talking less expensive.
If you look at the final images from that photographer I doubt you will find much if any difference at all no matter which lights they used. This photographer may have to wait a second longer to shoot, which in most caes makes no difference at all. He will have to avoid running the truck over the lights, but now he has no mortgage on the house. He can acquire more lighting, spend less and still get the same images.
Some lights are poor quality. A little bit of research can help you weave through this maze of lighting.
I shoot exclusively with Westcott Lighting. I used to shoot with a very expensive brand of lighting and the truth is that I really just can’t see a difference other than in price. I also used to work with Alien Bees. I am not going to sit here and tell you that they are bad lighting. They aren’t. I just found that the quality and price of Westcott is more appealing. They are better quality. They are relatively inexpensive and still have the feel of higher end lighting and function fantastically.
The appeal of expensive lighting is the same appeal in owning a super expensive car. A Bentley will get you from point A to point B just like a Ford Focus. That Bentley sure makes ya feel good though doesn’t it? Same goes with lighting. The one argument to be made is that there are definitely marked differences in comfort and amenities with the Bentley. The differences are far less noticeable with less expensive lighting.
A tech guru and gear geek can certainly wax eloquent about how great the differences are between the lighting companies. I had a buddy once go on for a long time about the differences between his expensive Nike golf ball and a less expensive Titelist. Which golf ball does a pro choose to play with? The one that endorses them – as long as they can perform at the top of their game with it. The same goes as a photographer.
Westcott has chosen me as one their Top Endorsed Pros. I work with them because they endorse me and I can shoot at the top of my game with them. The results of my shoots are no worse between them and the uber expensive lighting I used to work with. I could be endorsed elsewhere, but I chose Westcott. The customer service is so much better than that expensive company that I used to work with and that matters to me a lot more than the recycle time.
I was speaking with a rep from a high end lighting company and he relayed a story about a day at his company’s factory. He explained how he passed a room where there was a bank of lighting from an inexpensive company that was firing over and over and how all of the engineers were trying to figure out how the quality could be so good at such an inexpensive price. You won’t find that story on that company’s marketing materials.
No matter what company you choose to go with ask yourself if the cost/benefit is really worth it. Drive the Bentley if ya can, but don’t get confused. It won’t change the destination, but it will make you feel more important. Just get ready to be saddled by the bill.
Sample After Metting Letter
Photographing Celebrities
In the 20 years I have been a photographer I have had the opportunity to work with several celebrities from the music and sports world. Whether it is a magazine cover or spread, an ad or promotional shot for the celebrity themselves, the experience is usually one that requires a great deal of patience.
Rule #1: Celebrities Are Just Normal People – Don’t be in awe and don’t be so star struck that you forget how to be a good photographer. Light falls on the face of a celebrity just like it does on anyone else. Shadows don’t dance differently based on number of Oscars, Emmys or Grammys. You still have a person in front of your camera and you need to capture a fantastic image for them.
Rule #2: Celebrities Are Not Just Normal People – Once you have a firm grasp on how must think about the person in front of your lens remember that they are actually a famous person. They are coddled and taken care of most of the day and will expect to be thought of and treated as royalty. They will probably show up late, give you mere minutes to capture an image that they expect to dazzle everyone that sees it.
Take your ego out of the equation when you shoot celebrities. Unless you are one of the top celebrity photographers in L.A. or New York you will need to check your pride at the door and just do the job at hand and reap the rewards later. You will not be treated as a great photographer. You will be treated as though you are lucky to be there, and the truth is that they may be right.
Sports stars are intriguing to shoot. They can be so confident and commanding in their sport, dominating other powerful athletes with consistency, but they are amazingly vulnerable on camera. This is not a comfortable situation for them. They may be able to tear down a backboard or throw an amazingly precise pass with a 300 lb. lineman bearing down on them, but they are not comfortable on camera many times. The studio is usually not their ideal field of play and photography is not their arena. If you put any powerful creature in a vulnerable position their actions can be unpredictable.
Some may be surprisingly gracious, but that is rare. Shaquille O’Neil was actually fun to photograph. Julius Irving was hilarious and teased my makeup artist while we shot a magazine cover. These are exceptions, not the rule. Most celebrities just want out of there as quickly as possible. My shoot with Grammy winner Nelly lasted just a few minutes. The preparation for the shoot took all day. I can honestly say the he spent more time getting a haircut in my studio than he did in front of the camera, and I couldn’t even see any difference before or after the haircut.
Celebrity photography is entertaining and the rewards are certainly worth the challenges and headaches that come to pass.
Developing Your Personal Style
Have you ever looked at a photograph and immediately known who shot it? That photographer has a style so clear that it is unmistakable. Herb Ritts had a style so identifiable that it launched him from his still fashion work into music videos for artists as renowned as Michael Jackson at the peak of his career. David LaChapelle has a style like that.
There is no real way to define what a photographer’s style is. You can identify characteristics of an individual style, but I don’t think that I have ever heard any style completely defined. A style is as unique as a snowflake. Can you tell me how one snowflake is so radically different from another? It isn’t…yet it is.
The ultimate question is what is YOUR individual style? How do you develop it and refine it?
When I started shooting 20 years ago I used to look at my work and think it had no style. Sometimes black and white, sometimes color, sSometimes higher contrast and other times flat. No discernable style. At least that is what I thought. A few clients came to me and made comments that opened my eyes to what my style actually was. I like to shoot very clean images. I gravitate towards beauty crossed with both fashion and glamour.
While I struggled trying to decide what style I would settle on, one emerged on it’s own. Others could see it before me and the same will go for you. Your style will emerge. You DO have a style. You don’t need to adopt one. Just shoot and it will emerge. Don’t make the usual mistake of trying so hard to adopt a style that your lose what is uniquely you.
Look at photography books and magazines that show the kind of photography you like. Shoot images similar to what you like. Don’t be afraid to fill a folder with pages that you have torn out of magazines and keep it in your camera bag for inspiration when you shoot. You are not copying a shot that inspires you unless you are truly copying absolutely every element in the shot. Take a shot that you like and tweak it. Make it your own. Your style reveals itself.
Some people like black and white and shoot it almost exclusively. Some people have embraced the whole tattooed pinup model genre. Even within those types of shooting there are subtle, but clear differences from one photographer to another. Look at your images. What do you see that you genuinely like? What do you want to improve?
If you spend the bulk of the time looking deeply into your images and the images of others you will find elements that you like. There are poses, lighting techniques, colors, tones and shades, expressions that ring true to you. Experiment with those things and your style will emerge. You already have a style just allow it to come out by not giving up. Pick up that camera and fire away!
So You Want To Be A Fashion Photographer
You want to be a fashion photographer? Fashion shooting can offer a rewarding career full of exciting opportunities and experiences. The truth is that it does not come easily. There are countless more opportunities in glamour and wedding photography. Most fashion magazines and modeling agencies prefer working with photographers that are experienced or have a reputation that is already established. Many times the quality of the photography is not as important as the star power of the person behind or in front of the camera.
This is not meant to discourage anyone from choosing this path. Hanging a lantern on the truth makes it easier to face, or at least more difficult to ignore.
The first key to success is to honestly assess your talent. I am not talking about your photographic talent. I am talking about something far more important. Your marketing talent. Is marketing something that you do well? Do you have a natural sense of what is marketable and how to best achieve marketing success? If your answer is not an unquestioned “Yes!” than you are going to struggle in the fashion arena.
Fashion is about what? Art? No. Looking great? No, believe it or not. Fashion is about sales. Sales to who? Young people. What do young people buy? They buy “cool”. Catalog Photography is about sales to the masses. Have you ever seen clothes that come into style that really are ugly, but they are an accepted trend and people wear them for a season anyway. It isn’t about beauty, or style or looking good. It is about sales. The same goes for fashion photography. The truth is that fashion is generally about the “cool” factor. Is the photographer as trendy as the clothes? Are you ready to be, or even able to be what is “cool” in the moment?
These are uncomfortable facts. Any photographer that has worked in the fashion industry has seen it. Someone with no talent becomes all the rage for a short period of time. That photographer comes and goes very quickly. The trick is staying power. There are an extremely small few photographers that last in the fashion world. How do they do it? They learn how to adapt and market themselves differently as time goes by. The know that the “new kid” is gonna be cooler by nature, so they have to find ways to make their age become part of what is cool about them.
“Huh?”
Think about it. Sean Connery won People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” tag at age 59. How? He understood how to market himself. His age was not something he hid. He embraced it, and used it. He became that experienced man, with character and strength. The average age of the other winners is over 20 years younger. So much for character and experience. Fashion is about youth , and more importantly “cool”. Selling the clothes that the average 50 year old wears is NOT fashion. The catalog industry is radically different and offers many more opportunities.
So, back to marketing for fashion. Like with any marketing you identify your target market. Is it modeling agencies? Fashion magazines? Who is running these companies? What are they like? Do you fit what they are buying?
I learned this lesson the hard way in South Beach many years ago. I walked into a modeling agency and they were not interested in working with me even though they said they liked y work. In a horribly refreshing moment the booker let the truth slip out of their mouth. “Your work is great, but you don’t look like a photographer. You look like a guy from Colorado.” The next day I put a bandana over my head and changed my nice clothes for jeans and an old t-shirt and returned to that same agency. “Much better! Let me send you some models to test.”
This is an extreme example, but make no mistake that when you choose fashion you are choosing an industry that thrives on being trendy. Are you prepared to enter that field and ride the trends? Be honest with yourself. It is an amazingly fun and exciting field to operate in. You meet celebrities and go to fantastic parties and see some wonderful things. Just understand the facts when you enter the arena and be ready for the ride. It is rewarding, and uncomfortable.
Now, stop reading and get your marketing plan together.
The Uncomfortable Truth
“Can I be successful as a photographer?” This question is usually asked of me as an unpublished shooter hands me their portfolio. I usually give them my honest personal assessment of their book, but there is a truth that always seems to go unspoken. Your photographs are a very small part of whether or not you will be successful.
Professional photographers like to think (or at least act like) their work is better than others and that is why they succeed. Most know that there is one key element that is actually far more important than the quality of their images- social skills.
Yes, I said far more important than the quality of their work.
You have to have “game”. Just like courting a potential mate you must also be attractive to a potential client. “Game” can’t really be taught. You either get it or you don’t.
Fellow professionals, especially workshop organizers don’t like to admit this. The truth is that there are many photographers more skilled than them that will never find success at their level. They don’t know how to do business. They may know how to crunch numbers. They may know how to plan and organize. They may be amazing with a camera. They will fail miserably as a photographer because they don’t look right, dress right, speak right, smell right or just plain have people skills.
Your photographic skills are important, but whether they are as important as your people skills can easily be debated. You definitely must be “good enough” to succeed consistently, but we have all seen bad photographs published, and sometimes even lauded.
It’s the same thing as when you were in high school. The cool guys got all the girls. Adults just know how to dress the same game up a little better. A photographer with phenomenal photographic ability that smells bad or looks “uncool” or has a big “creep factor” is going to have a more difficult time getting the jobs. We like to think that it’s all the bottom line when we do business, but the bottom line is not the only factor in who gets a job.
My advice is that as you develop your photographic skills you need to be developing your social skills. You need to learn to little things that seem like they shouldn’t matter, but the truth is that they do.
Wear the uniform. As I teach workshops I amazed at the absolute slobs that show up. They dress in their cheapest logo screaming shirt that they probably won at a local wet t-shirt contest. The “Follow Me to Hooters” t-shirt is accompanied by loose legged short pants that bring attention to what they are exposing with their shorts and not their camera. Why do they dress this way? “It’s hot and this is comfortable.” This very clearly shows that the photographer is more interested in immediate comfort rather than networking and approaching things professionally. “But it’s hot.” Yes, and you are lazy and don’t REALLY care about how you come across to others. “But it’s just a workshop!” Yes, it is. You have just guaranteed that you are just another attendee. This is a reflection of a mindset. It’s a parade of “reasons” why you aren’t standing out on top.
Companies like to hire people that project their image. Models like to work with people that care how they look. Successful photographers are always projecting a hirable image. It isn’t just how you dress though. The most uncomfortable part of all of this is that sometimes the problem isn’t your clothes. Sometimes it is the photographer themselves. Some photographers are just creepy not matter what they do. They shower, shave, say nothing inappropriate and yet that feeling is still there.
“Can I be a successful photographer?” Sometimes it is easy to answer that without ever even looking at that portfolio. That is the uncomfortable truth.