Erie Patsellis
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 p.1 #14 · A warning for amateurs... | |
Micky Bill wrote:
If you are lighting something that takes 5 hours I kinda doubt an 'amateur' could or would have done it. The question is , does the client care or know the difference between your spectacular shot and the amateur's shot? You may be over-producing for that particular client. I mean my dog would eat a steak if I gave it to him but he's also happy eating dog food. I have always thought that if you're losing jobs to amateurs its time to upgrade to new and better clients, upgrade your work so the better clients will hire you. The economy sucks and the middle ground of the photo biz is a lot smaller than only 5 years ago. The lower end has always been attractive to the many new photographers it's just that there seems to be a lot more of them these days.
The clients are all looking for a bargain too. Getting something is more important than getting something done well.
For many clients "good enough" has taken over.
In this particular case, definately not over produced. This particular product is a new composite artificial granite/recycled glass material fabricated into a 6' wide prefabricated shower enclosure (with glass doors installed).
There was a combination of soft overall light, using a 8'x14' lightbank I use for onsite work of larger objects.(similar to Chimera F2 lightbanks, but of our own construction) Specular light was also needed to bring out the glass "bits". This was shot on location, in a warehouse, with both a scan back and 8x10 chrome (at the designer's insistence, was kind of nice for a change) for a double truck ad in a national trade publication and for use in their promotional brochures. Getting 90% of the way there was fairly easy, it was the extra 10% that took a few hours. (I was happy after setting the specular lights, the AD insisted we keep going, until he got the look he had in his head. He signs the approval form and it's his call, I booked an entire day regardless) As soon as we were done and had a processed chrome in hand, the item was crated and put on a truck for delivery.
This AD and I have worked together on many similar projects of this type in the past, and I have been involved with this project since the conceptualization phase, so I knew exactly what was needed going in. While on the low end, there's always some work lost, at the upper end, where I prefer to work, I have no concerns about amateurs taking any work away. 20 years ago, it was the tabletop work that paid the bills and the bigger work that was what you looked forward to. Now the tabletop work is so underbid, it's hard to even recoup production costs, much less profit. Yes, I still quote them, but don't get nearly what I did years ago, in quantity or price.
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