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This week on Pro Imaging.... We started the week with the most amazing story of an actual assault on a wedding photographer. A Pro Imaging member with long experience in press and editorial photography though he's seen it all in the bustle of the press pack, but when covering a wedding, one of the guests offered to take away his camera and then proceeded to inflict a broken nose. Apart from the obvious discussion on prosecutions for assault, the main lesson from the discussion were that wedding photographers really do earn their money and that life can get very unpredictable when you're surrounded by drunken people. On the subject of unhappy wedding clients, though not quite so agressive, we had a discussion about what to do with issues after the wedding when clients express dissatisfaction with the images. Some of the long-experienced members worldwide offered such diverse examples as the bride not liking her hairstyle, thinking she was fat and hating some of the guests in the shot. Business issues covered an international outcry by professional photographers in response to an advertising campaign by Modern Postcard, a large printing house supplying promotional cards. Their campaign ran on the line "why pay for that expensive photo shoot when you can get images from iStockphoto for less than a dollar" The fact that a large percentage of their customer base includes professional photographers seemed to have escaped their notice, but when one client after another voted with their cash and cancelled pending orders, Modern Postcard had a hasty rethink and cancelled their campaign and iStockphoto connection. Another member with a large stock archive expressed exasperation at the £10 fee offered by a picture researcher ofr a firefighter image he had risked his life to capture. Her response was that these days she was simply told to source the cheapest image, not the best. When it was explained that in that case, she could well be redundant soon, as a creative eye is not needed to operate a calculator, the phone went very quiet... Should you have a blog? It's easy to add a blog to any website, in fact you're reading a king of blog right now. It's a great way to add a touch of personality to a website, but how much effort is needed to keep it fresh and is it a worthwhile and cost effective use of your time? Technical issues included a question regarding the failure rate of the Canon 1D11n when focussing on sports. A very comprehensive reply by one of the experienced sports shooting members showed just how technical and adjustable the AF settings on the 1D series cameras are, with a huge list of settings that can be customised for different scenes and action situations. |
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