Joogy
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 p.2 #19 · My first wedding and my first post | |
schwettylens wrote:
I think I should just go ahead and do them dont you think? It is not like there is a pro that will do it for $200.
Just be careful. People on super low, super tight budgets typically seek to squeeze as much out of their dollars as they can. Therefore, those customers are more prone to complain after the wedding and nitpick, make up stuff, whatever, to get more out of you. They also tend to work the photographer harder, trying to get more production out of them. When I was first starting, there was a bride who came up to me near the end of the night while I was taking a break and had a stern tone in her voice asking me why I was sitting down. This is the way they're dealt with at work, being low paid employees, so this is the way they treat others.
It's not really a win for you, though, I have to tell you. You may think you're getting experience, and you are, a bit, but without training and guidance, you're going to probably spend YEARS re-inventing the wheel and not learning what you need to learn, unless it happens by happenstance. This is the problem with forgoing apprenticeship. Not just in the photography aspects of this profession, but in the business aspects as well. Coming to a forum like this, you'll get a wide range of opinions from all sorts of different experience levels, but you should only really heed the ones who are where you want to be, or find yourself following poor advice for a long time until you happen to realize better.
It's not really a win for you because the longer it takes you to be capable of earning more, the more it will cost you in the inability to have the life you want. You won't be able ever to buy back any time you spend going nowhere fast. Your family, wife, children as well either benefit or don't based on how well or not you do in this career. You owe it to them at least to be able to command a better professional fee for which you will deliver a better professional job. THAT's something to be proud of.
It's not a win for those customers, because the true cost is not what the out of pocket expense is today, the true cost is the value of the photography over their lifetime. If they freaked when they saw that huge lamppost coming out of their heads, or got upset with the way he's all rumpled in #12 and #15, or the different color light on their heads, or she becomes inconsolable over the blowing out of the details in her gown in most of her shots (women love the details in their gowns), or don't favor the "staring at the camera" look so many of the pictures have... and who knows what else because in my experience in lower budget land they can and will throw anything at you, real or perceived, and well, then that's a whole lot of grief every time they look at their images for the rest of their lives just because they didn't wish to spend some more today. What's the price of that again?
And you know, it's not like they're never ever going to earn another dollar again in their lives and can't afford better. They're going to some day buy a car, maybe a house, vacation, have a kid... IOW they will spend major money on items far beyond the cost of a pro photographer, so it's not like they really can't afford it. They CHOOSE not to afford it. Trust me, the money they kept because of paying you, they're blowing on something else, FWIW.
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