Good vs Bad

[uzmajones]

So in my eyes, this lady is the gold-standard for what I want to achieve with my photography: http://www.katebyarsphotography.com/blog/
You can tell she does basic artistic editing in some photos, but it's not enough to make the shots or the people in them look fake in any way.

Here's an example of photography I loved before I started studying

Comments

[nadomonster]

I think most people at the end of the day don't really have that much knowledge about what makes a photo technically good (or even care?), but really just want to see how their pictures look like when they get them. For me, I like natural looking pictures but at the same time expect that if there are flaws (whether it's the lighting, my acne, etc), I would want the photographer to fix that but make it look as normal/natural as possible. I personally don't care how much or little processing is involved, the end product is what matters especially if I'm paying a lot of $. Even though something like my acne infested skin is natural, if it's my wedding pictures I want that not to show as I bet any bride in the world would want. Subtle enhancements/editing for the win.

When people see a portfolio, they ideally should get a feel of what kind of pictures a photographer takes. Hopefully the type of pictures you have would deter people who want things like photographer #2 that you mentioned. Though it will probably get tricky when people you know hire you and ask you to do things that aren't true to your style.

[uzmajones]

One thing I'm grateful for is the ability to turn down customers if it doesn't seem like I'll be a good fit for what they're looking for. Also to combat people expecting me turn their work into stuff like Photographer #2, I'm changing the info part of the site to include the word "photojournalism." I'd hope if people are shelling out that much dough for photography they'll at least take the time to google it.

To tell you the truth, most photographers actually charge extra for skin retouching. They'll do it for their blog posts and if the customers order certain prints, but not for every single photo (I'm getting this info from a social network for photographers thing I joined). It only takes ~30 min per photo if you want it to look realistic, but if you multiply that by 800 pictures you get the idea. I'll start doing it for my blog posts though...but honestly I don't notice people's pimples! Need to start looking for them.

[nadomonster]

My photographer had that included in his price package which is one of the major reasons why I picked him. The majority of the ones that I heard back from in Nashville did as well.