Official BeyondUnreal Photography Thread

[Rambowjo]

Off? WTF

The fill in that is great. D:

I agree, it looks great, it just looks like he was using some advanced lighting setup, but judging from that other picture, I couldn't really see anything crazy.

 

[Kantham]

This looks fake, like the people were cut from another photograph and pasted here.

Yeah that was my first impression; the people doesn't fit the mood.

CLEARLY SHOP'ED!!!

 

[OO7MIKE]

The light looks so off in those pictures. How did you get it like that?

Not sure what part of it looks off. I know the first shot had two different light sources and temperatures which caused a magenta cast on my skin.

I'd imagine he had some lighting equipment there, remote flashes and stuff myself.

I used a 47" octabox softbox to the right of them. Gives your subjects super soft fill light. I had it turned up to half power. Bright enough to get a little bit of the sky but not too bright to make the background look dark

Yeah that was my first impression; the people doesn't fit the mood.

CLEARLY SHOP'ED!!!

Haha! I did some photo processing after the fact for sure.

 

[shadow_dragon]

This looks fake, like the people were cut from another photograph and pasted here. They also look really 2d, like cardboard cutouts. Kinda cool, heh.

I think it' just a "trick of the light" as it were. It's probably due to the focusing.
There is a line of grass that is perfectly in focus which happens to sit in the foreground in line with Mr Business partner Man(to whom i imagine was the subject of the focusing) whilst all the people are slightly out of focus and/or are lit/processed just enough to make them standout(which is what you want from the photo) but I think because that line of grass is so sharp and there doesn't immediately seem to be any other grass between that line and the people it can almost look like it's been composed digitally.
Like there was a background of some grass, some people dropped in and then a line of grass dropped ontop of them... also it doesn't help that the appearance of Mr Business Partner Man is a little juxtaposed to the wedding couple. They're so well dressed and made-up whilst he's just in a tee... and such.

hey almost look like they shouldn't be in the same picture together... but to be honest that is the appeal of the picture to me.

It looks fake by chance but it looks good due to skilll.

 

[Israphel]

First of all, thanks for all the info. Your biz model is very different from mine and it looks like you have found a few areas that are profitable. I have done gallery shows just to test the market and never made any $$ off of them. The feedback was great, even got some folks who where offended but it was very disappointing in a monetary sense. I always thought that people are more likely to purchase a photo of an animal or landscape than a photo of a person you don't know. I suppose it was good for advertising. That is something that I cant measure.

From the sound of things I think i might be able to successfully set up a wedding biz in your area and do quite well. There are people here who will pay 2-5k for a wedding.. but with the economy down we are having to shoot for volume to make up for the monetary loss. It's tough! Around here weddings rarely happen outside of the summer. There are only so many Saturdays and Sundays in the summer and if we can fill the summer up with clients we aren't doing too bad.

Two shots taken at the end of last weeks wedding:

Interesting shots. It looks like you already had great natural light (there's a luminous quality about the whole field) which you filled with a softbox or reflector. Nicely done.

I've never really thought of it as a "business model" to be honest, but I guess that's the right expression. It's just that we come to photography from different places....I started out as a landscape photographer, and the primary way to make money out of that is print sales, followed by running workshops. I only ended up doing weddings because first one friend said "You take pictures don't you, will you do our wedding?" and I said yes as a favour. I didn't have a clue at the time about flash or wedding photography, but after that, another friend got married, and then another and then I was being asked to do events for my violinist friend's website. I helped her out at a wedding expo in Lisbon, and gave a few cards out to people there. It's funny, because there were a lot of very professional wedding shooters there, and my cards were landscape cards. My site was purely landscape and fine art, not a single wedding shot on it, but I got 6 weddings from that show, and I sort of realized that there was a niche (a small one, but certainly exploitable) for a wedding photographer who's actually not a "wedding photographer" (if that makes sense). It's strange, but that's how it's worked out....as I said, wedding photography here is a lot less sophisticated than in the states.

You almost certainly could make a go of it here (although, you'd need to learn the language first ) and do quite well. I really only see a handful of people in Portugal who's work I think is any good, and those people charge a hell of a lot. I read somewhere that Portugal is one of the places where people spend proportionately the most on weddings (in relation to what they earn). Certainly some of the weddings that I've shot have left me scratching my head at how people can afford and are willing to spend that much....I mean, I know what salaries are like here and it's not unusual to attend weddings where people are spending around 5 times what would be a good annual salary. Absolutely crazy!

Anyway, I did a few shots of the wedding albums I did for my last clients. I really can't praise them highly enough. The print quality is absolutely top notch, and actually exceeds the quality of my local lab which I use for my landscape prints. The leather and binding are also fantastic, they really do feel luxurious and are the best I've seen by a long way.
The couple I did the books for wanted a 10x10 black leather (they come in 12x12 and 8x8 too), and I decided to get them a small 4x4 leather book to throw in as a extra...they were over the moon.
I highly recommend you check them out...they do 20% discounts on sample copies.

 

[shadow_dragon]

Anyway, I did a few shots of the wedding albums I did for my last clients. I really can't praise them highly enough. The print quality is absolutely top notch, and actually exceeds the quality of my local lab which I use for my landscape prints. The leather and binding are also fantastic, they really do feel luxurious and are the best I've seen by a long way.
The couple I did the books for wanted a 10x10 black leather (they come in 12x12 and 8x8 too), and I decided to get them a small 4x4 leather book to throw in as a extra...they were over the moon.
I highly recommend you check them out...they do 20% discounts on sample copies.

Am i missing soemthing or have you forgotten to mention who you're talking about?

 

[Israphel]

Am i missing soemthing or have you forgotten to mention who you're talking about?

Not sure I get you.
I quoted Mike at the top, and directed my post to him as we have been exchanging comments about wedding photography and our approach to marketing our work in our last few posts. I added the photos of the books at the bottom because I mentioned them in an earlier post, and said I'd post shots of them when I got them.

I have a ton of wedding book referrals from folks.. most are pretty spendy. I'll check it out. I signed up using your name as a referral

Cheers Mike. I just took delivery of a book today actually...it's stunning. I'll get some pictures of it and put them up before I deliver it to the clients.

I didn't mention the name of the books again, because Mike's already been to their site and signed up...so it seemed a little gratuitous to keep pimping their name again.

Apologies if it wasn't clear, but I didn't expect everyone to be following every word of our conversation as it's quite wedding business specific.
I guess it's the nature of a thread like this where people are dipping in and out every couple of days that things get missed

 

[shadow_dragon]

Ah i see. I thought I was missing something

 

[OO7MIKE]

You almost certainly could make a go of it here (although, you'd need to learn the language first ) and do quite well. I really only see a handful of people in Portugal who's work I think is any good, and those people charge a hell of a lot. I read somewhere that Portugal is one of the places where people spend proportionately the most on weddings (in relation to what they earn). Certainly some of the weddings that I've shot have left me scratching my head at how people can afford and are willing to spend that much....I mean, I know what salaries are like here and it's not unusual to attend weddings where people are spending around 5 times what would be a good annual salary. Absolutely crazy!

Learning Portuguese will definitely be a problem for me. If the $$ is good I would have to get an interpreter until my Portuguese is better.

I think their families are pitching in! It doesn't happen a lot over here in the states as most people pay for their own weddings... making them much smaller in size.. or they just go into a ton of debt.

Anyway, I did a few shots of the wedding albums I did for my last clients. I really can't praise them highly enough. The print quality is absolutely top notch, and actually exceeds the quality of my local lab which I use for my landscape prints. The leather and binding are also fantastic, they really do feel luxurious and are the best I've seen by a long way.
The couple I did the books for wanted a 10x10 black leather (they come in 12x12 and 8x8 too), and I decided to get them a small 4x4 leather book to throw in as a extra...they were over the moon.
I highly recommend you check them out...they do 20% discounts on sample copies.

I was finally able to check the prices and they are a bit higher than most. I will have to give them a test in the future. 4x4 book is cheap enough for a quality test. Most of my clients are not willing to pay a lot for albums.. so that kinda puts a cramp in our marketing aspirations. Still, its important to have the option just in case they are won over by seeing them in person.

 

[Firefly]

Met a famous person today.
not bad for a phone camera shot

 

[M.A.D.X.W]

Ha he is obviously talking about his sexual adventures with Samantha.
While that walnut hair man listens uncomfortably.

 

[IronMonkey]

find ./ -iname '*.crw' -exec dcraw -v -n 100 -w -q 3 -T \{\} \;

For those occasions when you have promised the other parents a copy of all 1600 photos from the Judo competition and you know if you leave the photos in RAW then you'll be on the telephone for the next week explaining how convert them to something that their photoviewer software knows about.

 

[das_ben]

[SCREENSHOT]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4069/4680229660_5b65c98527_b.jpg[/SCREENSHOT]

It's alright #1.

[SCREENSHOT]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1276/4680234048_4388cac6f5_b.jpg[/SCREENSHOT]

It's alright #2.

[SCREENSHOT]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4057/4680238936_9bb5c14669_b.jpg[/SCREENSHOT]

[SCREENSHOT]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4027/4680245026_a3a8824f64_b.jpg[/SCREENSHOT]

 

[WaitForTheRain]

I think Firefly's David Cameron photo deserves a "caption this photo" thread.

 

[Firefly]

Do it

 

[OO7MIKE]

find ./ -iname '*.crw' -exec dcraw -v -n 100 -w -q 3 -T \{\} \;

For those occasions when you have promised the other parents a copy of all 1600 photos from the Judo competition and you know if you leave the photos in RAW then you'll be on the telephone for the next week explaining how convert them to something that their photoviewer software knows about.

LOL!! Don't ever give away your RAW files!

If someone asks for them, I tell them that they are digital negatives and you probably wont be able to view the files on your computer as they are meant to be handled by professional photographers and graphic designers. If they insist, I give them a quote of 4x what their original package was. I also state that I offer no support for the files and that the quoted amount is non refundable. The price can range from $350 - $1600. I like to make it sting a lot to help them reconsider. If its important to them, they will pay it. I've only had one customer do it so far and as predicted they had many questions after trying to open the files. "the images are too dark, they don't look anything like your photos. What do I do?"

I would much rather choose the best shots, edit those in raw, create an online gallery, and have them pay for prints or digital files. Since you already said you would give it to them.. I would just narrow it down to 100 of the best shots, zip them up and upload them via ftp. Mass mail your customers and give them the link. Lots of exposure, little effort on your part and you come off looking like a pro.

I typically shoot 1-2k images at every event. My keeper rate is 5-15 images per 100 shots taken. I'm super picky too! The less images = less work for you. No client likes sifting through 2k images only to find duplicates of the same person doing the same thing. No offense of course, but it reflects poorly on your photography skills and your customer satisfaction. Nobody likes a shovel disk. 100 images is tolerable and will be much more exciting to look at.

 

[SleepyHe4d]

LOL don't ever give away your RAW files. If someone asks for them, I tell them that they are digital negatives and you will likely be able to open them. If they insist I give them a quote of 4x what their original package was. This can range from $350 - $1600. I like to make it sting a lot. If its important to them, they will pay it. I've only had one customer do it so far.

Haha, why is that? That's a kind of ****ed up business model. They pay for a service and when they want to take full advantage of the service you rip them off. Jesus, and people are complaining about DLC these days...

 

[OO7MIKE]

Haha, why is that? That's a kind of ****ed up business model. They pay for a service and when they want to take full advantage of the service you rip them off. Jesus, and people are complaining about DLC these days...

Why would you ever want to give someone an incomplete product? A product where they will take your unprocessed, noisy as hell underexposed images .. open them up.. then export them and make prints.

It gets better! Then they take the poster prints they just made and display it in front of everyone to see at a convention with your name right next to the photo "photo by Insert Your Name" 4,000 people see it that day and think to themselves.. "ew.. thats a crappy photo .. why would anyone put their name on that. I'll never hire that guy"

Wouldn't you rather just give them a better product? Make the prints for them? Quality control is important and they will get more by allowing you to offer them a polished and complete product.

 

[Igoy]

Yeah, seriously Mike. Way to patronise your clients. :/

 

[OO7MIKE]

What part is patronizing? I don't find keeping your customers well informed as being patronizing. Giving Raw files away can be very dangerous to your business.

In the past we had film. Old wedding photographers would sell their clients prints. Nobody gave the negatives away because that meant they had no control over what the client would do with them. It also meant they could no longer make money off of that client or their family.