If you think hiring a Professional Photographer is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur!
Here are the top reasons to hire a professional photographer for the moments that cannot be relived . . . weddings, a pregnancy, your newborn baby’s skin, your aging parents, or any important milestones you are celebrating in your family’s life.
- EXPERIENCE: There is no short cut for experience! Just as you are deciding who will educate your children or grill your favorite steak, experience is a must when it comes to photography. What a huge gamble to take with a first-timer on your wedding day. Experienced photographers know how to handle various personalities during your event. They know how to work a crowd, blend in when necessary, sooth a crying baby and diffuse a situation with grumpy old grandpa. They can move like ninja’s through a crowd, always have a plan B, and are professional. It’s our job! Expect nothing less! I now have 13 years under my belt so I believe that gives me a reason to call myself an expert in the points below!!!!!!!!
- POSING: Enough cannot be said about posing! Whether you are petite, curvy, tall, skinny, hour-glass shaped, pear shaped, round as a bowling ball, male or female, photographers know the best poses for men and women, and how to NOT make you look like the opposite! No man wants to be posed like a girl. No girl wants to look heavier than she is. It is our job to know how to pose you . . . how to mold and shape your body for the MOST flattering images.
- LIGHTING: Well, duh! This is a big one, considering light is the key in making the camera expose the people in the image correctly. Professionals know how to modify, bend, shape, add and subtract light in order to expose correctly. They know different lighting techniques, whether natural or flash to add unique and custom light quality to your images. They know this information like the back of their hand and adapt to the changes in light quality quickly and smoothly.
- STYLE: Professional Photographers are PASSIONATE about creating works of ART with your images! This is what makes the photographers original, their STYLE. In their experience with lighting, posing, composition, technique, presentation, and retouching, they want to leave you stunned when you see your images. They don’t just take “snapshots”. They study art and other photographers in order to fine tune their own art! The images they shoot look better in person than what you see on insta-gram, twitter and face book. They care about their art, they aren’t just “winging it”. You can save money on something else, not photography.
- RETOUCHING: Professional Photographers know how to color correct, white balance, soften skin, remove zits, swap heads, add graphics, take out telephone poles, sharpen, straighten, remove glass glare, tan lines, bra straps, braces, etc. They know how to keep you from looking like plastic Barbie. They can soften freckles or sharpen freckles depending on their style. (Remember: style is what makes the photographer original, their retouching style goes right along with it). Photographers know words like: crop, lasso tool, plug-ins, brushes, presets, actions, and resize. We know lots of abbreviations like: rgb, srgb, cmyk, hdr, jpeg, raw, png, tiff, etc. ( Ha ha ) And we’ve had to learn slang like: ikr, idk, jk, slay, kill, sic, etc. WE ARE GRAPHIC DESIGNERS. We design Christmas cards, graduation announcements, save-the-date cards, newspaper ads, yearbook pages, etc. We burn discs, upload galleries, and talk you through the process of it all.
- EQUIPMENT: The equipment doesn’t have to be expensive, but most photographers that are getting paid for commissioned work have thousands of dollars invested in their lenses. We buy them here. They have fast, sharp, good glass lenses that work for them, add to their artistic style, and lend a hand in setting them apart from the i-phone! Lenses are like chocolate, you just can’t live without trying different ones at each session. We have extra batteries, grips, stands, booms, reflectors, go-bos, egg crates, soft boxes, strobes, flashes, radio triggers, you name it. Whatever we have in our arsenal, it wasn’t cheap.
- LIABILITY: We have liability insurance, property damage insurance, and know how to handle the loss of an image, session, or defective memory card. We understand copyright laws and how that impacts what you are allowed to do with your session. We know how to handle privacy laws your through an adoption, divorce and even death. Most often, when your loved ones pass away, your family photographer even has images that can be printed in time for a funeral.
- DEADLINES: Professional Photographers know how to keep deadlines, email your local newspaper , upload birth, death and wedding announcements when needed, have a relationship with the yearbook staff at your high school and know the turn around times at their printing labs.
- CUSTOMER SERVICE: Professional Photographers are in the customer service industry. We work for you! We are professionally invested in giving you the best product and experience we have to offer. We care about your satisfaction. Otherwise, we wouldn’t care about all the time and effort spent on the above!!!!!!!!!!!! Which brings me to my last point:
- EDUCATION: We can all say that we are “self-taught” but that’s just not completely true. We did teach ourselves a lot, and mostly, where to get EDUCATED! We have spent countless hours learning about all the above mentioned. We’ve read books, watched videos on you tube, entered print competitions, submitted sessions to magazines, editorials, studied with mentors, attended classes FAR AWAY, uploaded, downloaded, practiced, shared, and stalked other photographers to improve for our clients! We’ve designed websites, blogs, face book pages, mobile apps and insta-gram feeds, all so we can share your images! I think we are a pretty cool bunch who want to keep servicing our clients! You can save money somewhere else, don’t scrimp on PHOTOGRAPHY!
A big shout out to all the professional photographers who are working their tales off everyday preserving memories and love our industry! We hope you consider hiring a professional to do a professional job of preserving your memories.
If you are a photographer, feel free to share this link on your own social media! We have to stick together as an industry! Photographers who want to read other articles like this one click here.
Here’s a list off all my camera equipment with links to purchase.
