They Grow Like Weeds!

Great Letter

Dear Gary,

Morning, responding to your entry on Xanga about 'spraying and praying' and amateur photographers claiming themselves to be 'professional' photographers. Last July I was hired by a remove family member (Uncles ex wife) to shoot her registery office wedding. On the day I was nervous, I was more scared than anything of mucking the whole wedding up by producing less than acceptable photos, I charged her £150.00/$237.47 Canadian Dollars because I didn't want to be out of my depth and be in such a position where I was unable to repay her the money if she demanded a refund. 

Every time I look back at the photos I took, I am ashamed, I'm distraught that I'd let myself down and let her down. Although upon handing he images over she said she was overwhelmed, I still felt somewhat bad for charging her for a in totally honesty, and please do excuse my language but a shit job!

I've never once claimed to be a professional photographer, in fact at times when possible clients have approached me looking for a professional photographer, I always point them in the direction of one of my associates who are to me, professional photographers. 

I respect you as a photographer and businessman and I your debates always interest me which one reason I'm writing this mail. You mentioned something yesterday or a few days ago saying that conventions or something similar should have staged wedding sets for which photographers could take photos of the set to use on template sites or something along those lines. I believe that would be a superb idea and follow that through with staged weddings with actors to teach up-coming photographers wedding photography techniques. 

To show how ashamed of my work I am, I'll share a link and please, if you feel the need to use it as an example to show other photographers the mistakes amateur photographers make.

Benjamin.

Here is the link to his gallery.  Honestly, it was nowhere as terrible as he was making it sound, but he does have a point.

Learn To Burn

A wedding is no place to learn how to shoot weddings.

The phrase "Spray and Pray" is causing an uproar because it is simply irresponsible for a person who is not familiar with wedding photography to advertise that they shoot weddings.  It is dishonest and it causes problems.  

Jessica Claire and Jenn Bebb shot our wedding.  The images are spectacular and it's how I remember the day.  Talk about girls who knew what they were doing!  It was so captivating watching their lens selections, cool and confident manner of dealing with the never-ending surprises and readjustments to shooting a wedding.  They are professionals through and through.

Today there are a lot of fake professionals.  That's what has everybody up in arms.  False photographers who don't know how to handle a crush situation.  Who don't know which lens to use, or how to correct for heavy backlighting or other problems when shooting something that can't be done over.

I had somebody who had only shot a few weddings say that the reason she charged only $500 was because, "If things don't turn out, at least I didn't charge a lot".  I looked at her impressive template website, and I could see how an unsuspecting couple could hang their trust on the perception of professionally.  It says "internationally published".  It says, "Available for International Travel".  If you don't know the difference, you'd think that she was the real deal.

So wedding couples are getting burned.  And the newbies who shoot these disaster weddings (at any fee) wind up quitting because they can't deal with getting screamed at.  I know of MANY people who came into this, blew a job and quit right after.  They leave a wake of their disaster behind them, as word spreads that the couple's wedding photographer "sucked".  

How many times have we heard, "I hated my wedding photographer".  Would YOU like to be the recipient of such anguish?  Would you like to have to field the calls and feel the outrage of somebody whose day you've ruined because you believed that "now is the time" and you're just going to have faith in yourself and "go for it".  All you need is a fancy website and a community of people who will encourage you to "do it" and boost you up.  Much like what goes on at Weight Watchers or at AA meetings.  

Wedding Photography is probably one of the most important responsibilities any service professional can have.  When it comes out bad, its' heartbreaking.  So to create a "slick" website professing to be a professional photographer when you are not experienced is dishonest.  

Doing social media and hype and campaigns to get people to "like" your photography fan page on Facebook or Twitter is dishonest if you really don't know how to shoot.  PDN or some other magazine named [b] as one of the top photographers in the world, scoring above Annie Leibowitz!  He was one of the first to jump on blogging and tweeting, and got a ton of followers to rise him up the pedestal.  What that did was bring down PDN's reputation, and even the people on that list don't really publicize their ranking on it because it was so badly ridiculed.

Me and DJ have been back and forth on voicemails.  We're having lunch next week as he and I are friends, but we have vastly differing views on certain things.  I can respect him because he's built this loyal group of followers that believe everything he says, and is that not admirable?  He is getting rich off of these people because he was able to say the right things, do the right things to get them to believe that his advice is really great.

That's where I come from.  The advice isn't really great.  DJ doesn't (or shouldn't) care about his standing as a professional photographer - he left that a long time ago to go beyond that and teach people how to be "winners" in photography.  I don't think he ever really took his shooting skills that seriously.  In all of our long talks, he never talked like my photographer friends about photography.  We shared discussions about SEO, e-commerce, touring to promote a product.  I don't ever think we actually had a discussion about photography.  For DJ, photography itself was a stepping stone to a more profitable path - and that's subscription plans.  For that, honestly - he hit it out of the ballpark.

Dane Sanders tried it and was gone about as fast as he arrived.  Becker's [b] school was an attempt at the same thing (getting rich off of monthly subscriptions) and that one fizzled a long time ago.  But DJ did it.  He's getting rich off of his followers and that was his goal absolutely for sure.  My theory as to why he got traction where Dane and Becker sank?  The tie to Christianity - that's my guess and I think it's right.  I'm not saying this is wrong, he is not alone.  And if he didn't do it, the crowd would select another leader.

The Importance Of An Organized Checklist...

There is a lot of discussion about how to photograph responsibly lately.  But file management is also extremely important.  I relied very heavily on this sheet above for keeping my cameras and files organized.  I also, by labeling my cards, was able to keep the photos taken by my second shooter identified and separate, important if there is a dispute over who took that award winning image.

Lastly, the sheet above can really protect you if you get sued over lost images.  A judge will understand that mistakes happen, and that with such diligent record keeping of your image files, it will show that you are anything but negligent.

Two Styles Of Shooting

This "Spray and Pray" is one of the loudest thumping of war drums I've ever heard yet.  It's an idea that one of the top ten tips to being a wedding photographer is to set your camera on "Program" mode, shoot a lot and hope something comes out of it.

Here is a fantastic opening for the true professional photographer to really increase the professional divide.  Here is how to educate what a real photographer does in capturing a moment, on the fly, making rapid decisions while catching the moment.

On the left is an image I took at a wedding I shot as a guest for our longtime assistant, Lauren.  On the right is an image David Jay shot at Stacy B. Shy's wedding.  David Jay is the photographic guru promoting the "Spray and Pray" method.  David was named one of the top ten photographers in the world by PDN Magazine.

My image is on the left, DJ's is on the right.           His was shot RAW, mine was shot JPG.  

Here are the steps to get an unposed image like I did on the left.  The image on left was resized, but otherwise STRAIGHT FROM THE CAMERA and not modified in any way.

1) Choose your lens - During sunset, I knew that I would get some beautiful photos of the guests in the elegant lighting.  It wouldn't make sense to shoot that with a wide angle lens, because I'd just get a big room with a lot of shadows cutting across.  So I selected a long, fast telephoto lens for this series.

2) Move your feet so you are at the perfect angle - I had to select the guests that were perfectly lit at the angle that would look more striking.  If I moved to the right, the shot would be backlit, with the skin tones going murky, just like the "Spray and Pray" example above.  If I move to the left, I'd get people turning away from the sunset to avoid squinting.  So I hovered from left to right until I had people perfectly rim-lit.

2) Wait for the moment the lighting was perfect on this bridesmaid.  Her hand touching her shoulder looked very elegant.  Once I locked my focus sensor on her eyeball and tickled my aperture wheel until it was wide open, I waited for this expression.  It was gone in a fleeting second, and nailing moments keeps you sharp.  It keeps your eyes OPEN, while "Spray and Pray" can actually be done with automated cameras with eyes closed.

3) Lock Focus and Exposure - Program selects the focus point for you.  Even if your camera has face detection, it doesn't have eyeball detection.  So to be safe, the camera will increase depth of field by shutting aperture down, but you'd lose that beautifully soft, selective focus look.  I locked my focus point in the settings to the centre spot, then focused on her eyeball and the used focus lock to freeze the lens from whirring.  Having set the camera to Focus Lock = Exposure Lock, I was now ready for her expression to soften and then grab that shot.

4) Open your radar to anticipate the moment - professional photojournalists have what I call a "radar".  Since the time between you seeing an obstacle and stepping on your brake at 60mph is 180 feet (pedestrian is dead before you think to hit the brakes), similarly a wedding is going at 175 miles per hour.  You have to know when the peak moment is going to happen and click the shutter in anticipation of the moment.  By the time you "see" the moment, if you react with your trigger finger, you'll miss it.  That's the huge difference between a fantastic photographer and the average one.  The ability to squeeze the trigger when you feel the smile start to break.

I've always suggested to my friends (and formerly my clients) to ask any photographer they are interviewing to see one wedding from start to finish.  This will speak volumes about what you will expect.

I've put the online galleries from Stacy B. Shy from her wedding from my buddy the "Spray and Pray" lecturer, (who charged $6,000) and me shooting my friend's wedding well as a guest.

Click on each thumbnail to expand:

DJ's 

mine