A few leftover thoughts for the end of the month:
What they didn’t teach you in photo school is the value of blue food colouring.
For the past two years, I’ve been photographing interiors of houses for Toronto-area construction and renovation companies.
You can shoot a bathtub empty but, depending on the look of the bathroom, filling the tub and adding a bit of blue colouring can add a nice touch. The dyed water can easily be altered using Photoshop’s Hue and Saturation tool to change the appearance of the blue or to completely desaturate it if you later change your mind.
I’ve noticed that some interior photographers always photograph faucets with the water running. Some also turn on kitchen appliances so all the indicator lights are visible. They also turn on gas fireplaces. The idea is to show the house “in action.”
Ironic Mistakes
Got a request from a company looking for a Toronto conference photographer. I checked its website and noticed:
(i) Ticket prices for its three-day conference *started* at $3,000. Checking a conference’s ticket prices can give you an idea of its budget. A low-priced event is unlikely to hire an expensive photographer. A high-priced event should probably not be given a discount.
(ii) There were a lot of front-page spelling and grammar mistakes as well as a few odd typos:
If you’re trying to sell at premium prices, you need to make a premium impression. Customers who pay more expect more. (And remember that customers who pay less don’t expect less.) Typos and other mistakes don’t help especially when they’re on your front page. There’s a difference between being casual and being sloppy. Customers don’t like the latter.
Experts ‘Я’ Us
Came across the website of someone who’s “been a full-time professional photographer for over two years.” She’s selling online tutorials and in-person workshops on how to be a professional photographer. She offers to teach you how to use a camera, how to use a flash, how to take portraits, and also how to run a small business.
The often-used saying is that it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something. The concept of 10,000 hours was first mentioned by Karl Anders Ericsson in his 1993 paper, The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. It was popularized by author Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book “Outliers: The Story of Success”. Gladwell later said that the 10,000 number was misinterpreted and misunderstood.
Nevertheless, apparently some people need only a couple of years to become an expert (scroll down to the Dilbert cartoon).
There are far too many blind-leading-the-blind tutorials, videos and workshops. Are you getting proven experience or just opinion?
The difference between opinion and experience is that only one of them is worth something.
Finish your pictures
At a dinner party last week, the host brought out a large box of family photos and everyone had a fun time looking at the prints and passing them around the table. It took only a few minutes before someone said, “We won’t do this in the future because all our photos are on our phones. Maybe we could pass phones around the table.”
All the photo labs in my area have gone out of business. A nearby Walmart has a bunch of self-serve kiosks to print your images but I’m not aware of any other photofinishing store. It seems only online digital photo labs remain.
Photofinishing store: a place to finish your pictures.
A photograph isn’t really finished until you can hold it in your hands.
