Biz 101, Competition, Customers, Marketing, Pricing, Quotes, Rants, Scams

Every month, I buy PDN, Photo District News, the photo magazine. I do not subscribe to it, the subscription is more expensive than buying it at the newsstand. PDN is a magazine directed toward the professional photographers and is a must-read for anybody/everybody that wants to keep current with the business, the marketing of photography and the commercial photography trends. Every issue has big ads from both Canon and Nikon.

In the May 2012 issue, Nikon USA did a double truck spread, that's a two facing pages, about a wedding photographer, Doug Gordon, on page 42 and page 43. Two large photographs, and two smaller ones. Excellent photos (they'd better be), great inspiration…

His go-to cameras: the Nikon D3x and the Nikon D3s…

Then Nikon USA goes on explaining the D3X and the D3s… engineered for professionals…

There's only one problem with the ad, it's a small photograph, 3 inch by 2 inch, of Doug Gordon, the photographer, taking photos with a Canon camera (that looks like a Canon 5DMk2) and a Canon 70-200L f/2.8.

If you don't have a point-and-shoot, get one. They are inexpensive and can turn even the most photographically impaired into practically a pro. The one drawback is that point-and-shoot cameras, while great for “scenery”, are not well designed for photographing objects closer than about four feet.
…
While you probably won't be pressed into capturing a quickly unfolding event, it's still a good idea to take a number of shots just to be sure to get a good one…
…
Apply the rule of thirds when composing subjects and/or objects for the camera.

I'm a Nikon man through and through

— Identity withheld, but “he hopes to become a professional photographer.”

Cameras are a dime a dozen (with the new price increases, they cost slightly more than a dime). It's not the camera, but the system that is important. There's never a perfect system, be it Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Sony…

First of all, I'm not a Canon man, a Nikon man or… For years, I've used Pentax cameras, now I use Canon cameras, some Canon lenses and some Canon accessories, but I'm not a Canon man. Big difference! I'm not defined by the camera, I'm defined by: “I try to do the right thing” according to my morals. Sometimes, I'm too selfish and then I kick myself in the… Sometimes, I'm extremely proud when customers carry my photographs everywhere and show them to everybody.

Now that Nikon has shipped the D800 and the D800E, that's when the rubber meets the road. I mentioned in many of my “rants” like D800: Thanks but No Thanks that the problem is going to be the lenses and their capacity or lack of capacity to resolve the 30+ megapixels.

Lens Rentals of http://www.lensrentals.com tried the D800 on their lenses. Not only they have “everything”, they have more than everything! They tested the D800 with their Nikon mount lenses. The sensor may be fantastic but most Nikon lenses are not “that fantastic.”

Last week, I received a call from an “old client” but it wasn't the “old client”, my contact left about a couple years ago and there's a new person, Brenda. Brenda called to check if I was still available “to do some quick photos.” I didn't argue and said yes, so she sent me an email asking for an “accurate estimate of the cost” with some description of the work.

The dictionary definition of an estimate is:

to form an approximate judgment or opinion regarding the worth, amount, size, weight, etc., of

The important words are:

• Judgement
• Opinion
• Approximate

But that's not what Brenda wanted. Brenda wanted a quote with a fixed price and wanted me to stick to that fixed price even when they would change the specifications and what the job entitled.

The prism contains a lot of “stuff”. It's the top of the camera and houses the flash, the hot shoe for the external flash and inside, it contains the pentaprism which is according to Canon gives a vertical/horizontal coverage of approximately 100% (p253 of the manual). The prism also contains a lot of electronics and sensors like the AF sensors and the exposure control.

The pentaprism is designed so that the eye is 22mm away from the eyepiece.

Which photograph do you prefer? This will be for a mail-in to construction companies.

Photograph A

or Photograph B

Which version do you prefer?

Thank you. For comments, you can use the Contact Me form.

• Did you know that Case is the second largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment and the third largest manufacturer of construction equipment? Maybe you know that.
• But did you know that Case is part of the FIAT empire? Yes, the Italian car manufacturer of the FIAT 500, of Ferrari or Lancia fame.

This photographer walks around while carrying a Canon 7D, a Canon 500mm f/4 with TC 1.4x converter with a gimball head and his open tripod.

He's not the only one to walk around with an open tripod. I don't understand why most photographers walk around with their camera on the tripod with the tripod open. I understand that it takes a good 10 seconds to open and close the tripod. The vast majority of the time my tripod's height is 3 feet tall. When I walk around with my camera on the tripod, I keep the tripod with the legs closed. It's less intrusive, it's easier to walk and to carry the outfit.

I saw this photographer walking around the Reifel Bird Sanctuary. I was there for a couple of hours and I would say that he walked around the sanctuary carrying the whole "shebang" at least 90% of the time. His neck and shoulder must hurt from carrying the tripod open.

I'm doing a new website for my commercial photography and was looking for the dos and don't on how to present the pricing. Some people have no explanation, just a “contact me” web form. Of the few web sites that I have seen, 3 web sites had an almost empty web page, with just one word: Pricing or Prices, and nothing else.

But there are some really bad web pages. Or should I say photographers? Here are a couple of these web pages. These are not section of web pages, but the complete web pages minus the actual name and phone number, if it was present.

Last night, I was doing my exercise on the couch in front of the TV, aka channel surfing and exercising my thumb on the remote. Suddenly I found a camera ad. Cameras? Lets watch, It was an ad for Nikon with Ashton Kutcher. Nikon even has a full website, just for him: http://ashton.nikonusa.com/. Ashton Kutcher knows nothing about camera or photos but he has a Nikon camera.

I was reading the February 2012 issue of a magazine for professional photographers. They had some lens write-ups. I'd like to quote some portions:

• Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM: “since it's an L lens, you know that it offers top-of-the-line optics with eight elements…”
• Canon 500mm f/4L IS II USM: “Though formally announced last February, … no estimated delivery date but this monster of a lens will certainly be an impressive upgrade…”

The photography business is all about copying what the other does. The current “fad” is HDR. In the “good old days”, every landscape was taken with 2 to 3 color polarizer. Now, all the weddings are “documentary style”… Photographers often get a friend or a family member to call their competition and ask for the prices… then copy it almost exactly.

The best that happened to me was: when people shoot from over my shoulder, literally, which not too difficult since I'm often on my knees. The worst was just a week ago, when a “turkey” instead of going behind me, just went straight in front when I had to shame him to get him to move. There are magazines, conferences… that show you how copy other successful photographers.

What the duck has captured it very well, except the most important, what makes me unique and that nobody can copy.

Yan of http://yanphoto.com wrote a blog post: sick of it, in which she states how hard the life of a photographer is: no business, dead… Her photos are good, so why can't she get any work?

Because like most photographers, she doesn't understand the business of photography. First the facts, then the solutions.

• Photography is booming
• Photography is exploding.

It's the new year, 2012. New year equals new resolutions but there are so many resolutions to forget from 2011. Here's a quick one that you can do right now and make us feel good as photographers, because we are asserting our rights.

Did you update your copyrights? It takes only from 5 to 15 minutes.

1. In your camera: almost all “pro-summer” cameras and all “pro” cameras have a copyright menu item to set it up. Many “amateur” cameras also have it.

   On the Canon 7D, it's in the Menu → Wrench 3 → Copyright Information

Trey Ratcliff of Stuck In Customs wrote an blog post: Stop Advertising in Photo Magazines – Head West to the Web. He spent $28,000 to advertise in 3 magazines and found that 2 of them were a complete waste.

He advertised in Popular Photography, Shutterbug and Photoshop User. Sales were dismal with Popular Photography and Shutterbug. Sales were very good with Photoshop User.