Busy period continues

Since my last post I have still been busy with 2 family portrait shoots, 1 romantic goth couples shoot and a portfolio shoot for a well known singer and musician, who sports some lovely tattoo's. All were great fun.

Not so quiet anymore!

So much for my previous post about having a quiet time. Last week I had 3 studio shoots in 2 days and am only catching up with all the editing now.

Ist shoot was a Model Portfolio. The second shoot was a Couples shoot and lastly a shoot for an Actress for her acting portfolio.

Here are images from each shoot.

Featured Model: Luna Lilith

Featured Model: Luna Lilith

One of my photographs of Luna being used as a comic book character. I have another shoot with her next week.

Emke - Beach Shoot.

The quiet period continues. I am getting lots of enquiries for shoots, which always seems to follow immeadiately after posting images of beautiful models to my Facebook photography Page. The enquries are often from Facebook friends of the models who would like a similar shoot for themselves and this results in the usual email "ping pong" but then often just seems to fade away when it comes to making a final committment. Probably just wishful thinking and not being able to afford the shoot.

Anyway, I did get a message from Emke Swarts, who I did a studio shot with a month or so ago, wanting to do a beach shoot. We settled on a day when the  forecast was favourable and the conditions were perfect. Below are a few of the images from the shoot.

Start to 2012

I was extremely busy in the last few weeks of 2011 with lots of family shoots and now it has gone a bit quiet with all the festivities over and people going back to work and school. I have 4 shoots outstanding form Xmas Gift Voucher presents but no definite dates set for those yet.

I started off the New Year with a lovely beach shoot for a young model who moved here from the Ukraine 4 years ago.

The Bezuidenhout's

I did a really fun family shoot on the beach last weekend for a lovely family that live in different parts of the country and got together especially for the shoot. There were a twin brother and sister of 23, another sister of 20 and the youngest sister of 15. The parents live in Sedgefield.

 

You get what you pay for

There have been several articles and discussions lately on various photography forums and group pages about what a photographer should charge for their services.

I get 3 or 4 emails daily direct from my website enquiring about the costs of shoots and only about 10% of these actually result in a shoot. I have had feedback from a few prospective clients that they had gone for a cheaper package.

A few of these prospective clients had also in the meantime added me as a friend on Facebook and therefore I also got to see the results of some of the "cheaper packages". I make a point of never running other photographers work down as we all had to start somewhere and I cringe when I look at some of my earlier work, but I have to say that there are some really nasty "photographers" out there with really poor quality results. Hence the title of this post. When I see the results of some of their shoots, my 1st thought is that I hope that at least they got the shoot for free and did not part with any cash for these shoddy images. However, this is not the only factor. The client also invested time and money in preparing for and going to the shoot, only to be dissapointed with less than lovely images.

Now it is definitley not just having good equipment that makes for a good photographer BUT the photographer that spends R8000.00 on a camera with 2 kit lenses from Makro/Walmart is just not going to be able to produce the same results that I can with my R80,000.00 investment in photographic, computer equipment and editing software.

Again, on a last note "Buyer beware, you will probably get exactly what you pay for".

Artistic Nude Shoot

Last week I did an Artistic and Implied nude shoot for a model.

 Here are a few images.

Emke

After I had arranged the previous shoot with Ashley and Dinita, I was approached by another model, Emke, asking if I still needed a model as she really wanted to do a shoot. After looking at her portfolio, you can easily see why I told her to come along for a shoot as well..

Lighting workshop

Last week I was approached by a friend photographer who wanted to buy a studio lighting setup and wanted to see how the lights worked. I put a post on a Facebook page asking for models to volunteer to help out with a shoot and got these 2 lovely girls. Dinita who I had shot a short while ago and her friend Ashley.

Yonela

My Friend and fellow Photographer, Freda, asked me to come and help her out with a model shoot yesterday as she was having a problem with her flash trigger. We got it sorted out and here are a few images that I took.

Black+White, Sepia and other Effetcts

I have found that the special effects versions of the photo's that I do for every client have become more and more popular.

I have presets in Photoshop Lightroom, some dowloaded and some designed by me, with a variety of Black and White, Different Sepia's, Antique and various others that I use to convert the original colour images. 

Different skin types and tones react differently with some of these presets and I always have to experiment a bit with each different clients images to see what suits them best.

New studio backdrop and stand.

In order to create a bit more space in my studio at home, I have obtained a new backdrop stand and 3 meter wide grey paper backdrop.

This also helps with the editing as I now do not have to spend hours photoshopping creases out of my white nylon backdrop that I used in the past.

I did a test shoot yesterday and below are some images of the new setup and the shoot.

Mini Outdoor Shoots

I get 5 or 6 emails per week on average, originating  from my website, enquiring about having only a few photo's taken and not a full shoot.

In an earlier post I displayed an image of my studio at home, which is going to be upgraded with a new backdrop stand and backdrops within the next day or two. This setup takes me about an hour and a half to setup and pack away again after the shoot. It is therefore not worth all this to do just a few photos.

I have decided to offer outdoor mini shoots, at a very reasonable cost with 20+ images on a CD. These will be done down at Blaauwbergstrand. Clients will also still get a Black + White/Sepia version of each image and a reduced size file of all images as well on their CD. You will get a few images with the beach and sea in the background as well as a few portraits with nicely textured walls as a backdrop. 

Here are a few examples of what to expect.