For years, professional photography has suffered some hard knocks. A decline in print publications, recession and the growing number of people who own digital cameras (or smart phones) have all contributed to a shrinking market for traditional still photography. This has affects professional photographers all across the industry, regardless of genre. There are fewer jobs to be had, and those that exist often pay less than they used to, simply because supply has outstripped demand.
One factor that undermines the efforts of professional photographers is lack of understanding among customers of why pro photographers deserve the prices they demand for their work. This is a complex set of variables that I hope to present in a simple a way as possible. There are several factors which combine at varying levels, depending on the genre, to create the impression among customers that the services of a pro photographer either aren't needed, or should be dirt cheap.
The first is the ease with which digital cameras, and even smart phones, allow the average person to produce acceptable images. When I became serious about photography with the purchase of my first 35mm slr, a Canon AT-1, taking photos with anything other than an Instamatic or Polaroid camera was considered somewhat arcane. Simply loading a roll of 35mm film was a challenge some wanted to avoid, much less things such as setting exposure values, focusing and understanding how shutter speed, aperture and focus all worked together to either make or break any given photo.
The other factor was cost. A 110 Instamatic that took decent photos could be purchased for as little a ten dollars, while even the least expensive 35mm slr was around three hundred dollars. When I stared, Automatic Exposure was just becoming reliable, but the Canon AE-1 had been introduced with a very effective marketing campaign that convinced people it was both easy to use and would produce "professional looking results". By that the marketing people meant the images would have greater detail, more accurate exposure and certain other factors that set professional photos taken with an slr apart from those taken with an Instamatic or Polaroid. It did not however, guarantee that the composition would be of a professional level.
Today digital cameras can produce technically excellent photos with the camera set to do everything automatically. Exposure and focus are all handled masterfully by the camera: some even have aids in composition, such as face detection, even smile detection. The result is people have found they can capture images they didn't think were possible even 10 years ago. This sense of ease in producing technically good images contributes to the thinking that owning the right camera makes up for lack of professional level ability. The result is people thinking that a professional isn't needed, since the photos they or their friends take look "good enough".
This thinking translates into lowered demand for pros all across the industry. A company looking for photos of the new offices for its newsletter may opt to have an employee with a dslr who takes "really nice photos" produce the images when in previous years they would have hired a pro. This is less expensive and quicker (since the employee simply has to upload the photos to the company intranet site) and the decision makers justify it with the savings in money. They don't think it as important that the photos they have lack a certain "something" and don't quite grab attention the way the ones the pro produced a few years ago do.
This attitude of letting Stan in Accounting take all the photos for the office means lost business for event and commercial photographers. Companies will even rely on non-professional photographers for product and advertising photos. As someone who has worked in the printing industry and seen the sort of photos some companies send in for ads, I can tell you that in some cases, they are actually hurting their business because of how poorly the photos present their products.
The decline in printed periodicals means that companies don't need as much photography for advertising, but it also means less demand for photojournalists and editorial photographers. A couple of years ago, the Chicago Sun-Times fired all its photographers, handed out iPhones to all its writers, and told them to take the photos necessary to support their articles. Sure, the newspaper felt this was a smart business decision in the face of decreasing subscriptions and advertising sales. The actual result, however, was a loss of respect and credibility among readers, without really resulting in a worthwhile savings.
Wedding photographers take a hit because people can use cheap cameras and cheap editing software to produce images that look like those made by a wedding photographer charging thousands of dollars. The technical quality of the photos may be comparable when posted to Flickr or Facebook, but the prints done by Walmart won't be quite the same, for more than technical reasons.
The wedding and portrait industry is further undermined by people who buy a cheap dslr and kit lenses, then advertise themselves as professional photographers, hoping to get jobs on weekends to earn some extra money. They often list job prices at half, or even one tenth, of what the real pros offer. Instead of a package that includes high quality prints and albums, they charge $200 to show up, take one or two hundred photos, put all but the technically bad ones on a CD and give that to the client.
"OK. So what?," you might say. "People are no longer paying pros as much or at all, because they can produce images that are just as good."
No they can't. Not when a truly qualified professional is involved.
The real pros, the ones worth every penny they charge, are not people who picked up a "professionally capable camera" a few months or years ago and decided to go pro because everyone told them how good their photos are. They are talented, skilled individuals who have spent years honing their craft, even obtaining college degrees, to offer the utmost in quality and creativity.
The difference between the photographer who charges $200 for a wedding and the one who charges $2000 can be the difference between "Not quite" and "Just right", or even "Outta sight!". The cheap photographer shows up at the wedding, quite possibly with gear that is low end, especially the lenses. He'll walk around snapping photos. He'll have people line up for group shots. He may shoot available light, even when he shouldn't, or may use the flash built into the camera, which he especially shouldn't. Then he'll head home, delete all the out of focus or improperly exposed shots and mail off the CD, leaving it up to the client to sort through scores, even hundreds of photos to pick a dozen worthy of printing and putting in an album.
The photos look good, maybe, but probably not great. That grab shot of the bride walking down the aisle is marred by the flower girl picking her nose or the back of some people's heads in the foreground. That casually posed shot of the bridesmaids has some feet cut off at the bottom. The romantic looking photo of the bride and groom in the garden has them both squinting slightly in the bright sun.
What the $2000 photographer offers is the skill, knowledge and experience to watch for things that mar an image, such as nose picking flower girls or heads on the edge of a frame. He'll take the extra time to properly pose subjects when it's important to do so, knowing how to make people look good on camera. Training and a careful eye combine to make details the average person misses at the time of capture-and sometimes even when viewing the prints-are avoided. If not avoided at the time of capture, then these mishaps are never seen by the client because they are deleted in the edit.
Therein lies another skill of the "real pro": the experience and ability to offer only those images which make the subject look his, her or its very best. You're not paying a pro to "take pictures", you're paying a pro to "make memorable images". This extends even to the higher priced pro knowing the best labs for producing prints, albums and special items. The folks who take the CD to Wal-Mart or order from a dirt cheap online lab may find their photos of a once in a lifetime event don't survive to their tenth anniversary. The higher priced pro will usually order from a lab that offers high quality, archival products so your grandchildren can see the same quality photos you did the day the album was delivered.
What you are paying for with a higher priced professional is actually something priceless: the ability to produce images that stand above the millions taken by ordinary people. Whether the purpose of the photos are senior portraits, a wedding, a company newsletter or advertising, the ability of a good pro to create images that have value beyond what most people think is inestimable. That value comes not only from technical expertise, but from aesthetic and creative talents ideally suited for the intended purpose of the photos.
A good pro makes sure the images you pay for are ones that are going to be the best ones for your purposes because that is what he is paid to do. He knows what will work best, even better than his clients do, because he knows his craft. His craft is producing extraordinary images of ordinary subjects. After he calculates all the tangibles of his bill-his own bills, expenses, etc. the cost of his own labor includes the value of that intangible quality he has, and Stan in accounting or the weekend wannabe lack, which makes for photos that leave people saying "Oh wow!" instead of just "Oh".
A $2000 wedding photographer is worth that much because he gives far more than the $200 photographer gives. In fact, in a lot of cases, the $2000 wedding photographer is undercharging and the $200 one is overcharging. The sad part is a lot of people don't discover this until it's too late: that once in a lifetime ceremony is done with, or the negative impression that poor advertising photos have created is hard for a business to overcome after the fact.
Whether you are a business owner doing advertising or just want a portrait to hang on the wall, consider whether you want to spend money for "Not quite" or "Outta sight!". Then choose the photographer with the understanding that you will get only what you pay for.
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