Getting Started...

[kienlein]

I just found this section the other day, there sure is allot of great info here, and wonderful pix...

I am including a few from last weekend i got published as mentioned below.

I am just getting started in band and concert photography... I noticed someone say they were shooting 3 bands, do they hire you, or do you take pix on spec and show them to them? And how do you set a fee...

What about submitting to newspapers... ?? How do you subit stuff and get paid? I was at a music festival, submitted several pix and had 2 published. Good for my portfolio, and i will submit a few more for free, but i do not know how to appraoch them to get paid and much i should get paid.

I have a few bands using my photos on their websites (currently gratis to get known) should i charge a shooting fee plus so much a pix flat fee or per year? Any suggestions.

Thanks in advance for any assistance... kk

[René Damkot]

Both are a bit OoF, and both are cropped a bit odd (cut off feet). Also, mind the background: It's quite distracting in both images.

Expressions are nice, and you did manage to capture both without the mic too much in the face, which is good.

In the Faq, there are a few links to sites re. payment.

[kienlein]

Thanks for the notes, I appreciate the feedback... These were both taken from quite a ways away, using a 75-300IS lens handheld.

The first one (Carrie Underwood) I did not have any options on the BG, the second (Reba) I thought the lights added to the feeling of the stage. I do not believe either had feet!! :o)

I will see if i can find the $'s info in the FAQ... kk

[Steve Parr]

I do not believe either had feet!! :o)

Thanks; I just had hot coffee shoot through my nose!

I'm not too distracted by the background in the shot of Reba, although I agree that both shots seem a bit soft.

When I started out (not that I'm some maverick concert photographer now), it was shooting a friend's band for free.

I'm not trying to pay my mortgage with my photography. If I was, I fear I'd be living in a mid-size tent. But when I get hired to shoot a band, it's a flat fee, per shoot, for a minimum of 50 images. I've done shoots for as little as $50.00, and as much as $600.00.

I'm not sure where the "per year" aspect would come into play. That seems like some sort of retainer, which is something I would think you wouldn't want to get involved with as a photographer. If either you or a band you shoot suddenly "makes it", then your photos are worth more, yet you'd be locked into the previous agreement that has you shooting for "X" amount instead of "Z" amount...

[kienlein]

Steve,
I hope your sinus' will be clear for a bit, and that you had lots of Kleenex handy!!

The softness comes from being at least 60+ feet away, and hand held.

As for the shooting fee+/'X+Z'. I shot a band, the lady gave me $100 shooting fee, she now wants to know how much $'s I would/will charge to have use fo the pix on the website, and other promo materials... Would this additional fee be a one time payment or a yearly 'rental'?

I hope this is clear... kk

[DwightMcCann]

Dont' worry about Parr ... he's been kicked off this forum more than anyone else I know! A little internal nose-burn will do him more good than bad. Anyway, if you go to the FAQ (sticky near the top of the threads in this forum) I expect there will be something about fees. My experience suggests that it is hard to figure out what to charge at the start, for EVERYONE, but after your first $20K you learn to ask high and be willing to compromise. Web images are often licensed for a year at a time. $325 is a good price but I have batched up deals with ten for $750 ... you need to take the wealth of the client into great consideration as well as the depth of your own experience in the music business.

[kienlein]

Thanks for the feed back, it is certainly a tough call knowing what to charge... it is a simialr challenge as a musician... nobody wants to say what they charge, but yout dont want to price yourself out of the game, or undercut the rest of the field...

you mention ten for $750.. is that the use of ten photos for $750 for the year?? the lady i know she quite likes the pix ti took of her and i am thinking $250 for the year may be a good start, and another fellow i know said his band paid $25 per 'print' plaus a shooting fee... the tough part with digital is once you give them a 5 meg image THEY have full reproduction capabilities! ...

Thanks again.. kk

[johnstoy]

Kevin, you could choose the file size for the specific images as applicable...

There are even recommendations and prices for same, in the FAQ's links that Dwight has in the Sticky... Rene' gave us the links a few months back and Dwight posted them...

[DwightMcCann]

Thanks for the feed back, it is certainly a tough call knowing what to charge... it is a simialr challenge as a musician... nobody wants to say what they charge, but yout dont want to price yourself out of the game, or undercut the rest of the field...

you mention ten for $750.. is that the use of ten photos for $750 for the year?? the lady i know she quite likes the pix ti took of her and i am thinking $250 for the year may be a good start, and another fellow i know said his band paid $25 per 'print' plaus a shooting fee... the tough part with digital is once you give them a 5 meg image THEY have full reproduction capabilities! ...

Thanks again.. kk

Yes, $750 for ten images although without a timelimit since she is the talent buyer at my venue so it is also in my own interest. As for the "THEY have full reproduction capabilities!" that is supposed to be taken care of by the agreement you have which should specify what they can do and they can't do anything else. That's what agreements are for. And that's what lawyers are for, unfortunately. I urge that you do business with honest people. The dishonest ones screw it up for everybody and should be treated without mercy.

[kienlein]

Dwight,
thank you for the clarification... YOu mention an agreement, would you have a copy oyu could send me so i could put one together for myself?? As i mentioned before, there sure are allot of ducks to line up before you shoot!! kk

ps, you have lots of nice gear... how long have you been at this game...??

[DwightMcCann]

As is so frequent for me my agreement was verbal/handshake. I do not recommend this as SOP. I have a very small core group of clients for whom I do ongoing work and trust completely [Chumash Casino Resort, Casa Cassara Vineyard & Winery, Kalyra Women's Racing Team, Pepe Marquez & The Latin Soul Review (replacing Shalonda & A Touch of Soul), etc.] ... fortunately I have no room for more clients, but if I were to take new ones I would certainly have a written agreement.

As for your other questions I can refer you to a thread:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=81761

Let's see, and "lots of equipment" ... yes, and this year has at least one and maybe two 1D MIIIs with WiFi attachment budgeted. I am always considering additional glass ... currently I have my eye on the small, fast "L" primes particularly the 14mm. I am also adding pieces to my studio flash system and may be installing a rail system in my little home studio as well as adding drapes so I can cover the white walls my wife says I cannot paint! I invest $20-30K per year of photography income into equipment and have done so for 2-1/2 years.

Finally let me once again point out that it is 80% "Who you know" and 10 percent luck and 10 percent talent. It is more important to shake hands, hand out business cards, smile, chat, extend yourself, be 100% reliable, give more than you get, follow the golden rule, etc., than to be talented. You can always get help learning to do a particular photograph/shoot but if you don't know anyone who wants to hire you then you won't get paid for it. This is business. It is neither Utopia or the land of Cinderella ... where money is involved, mice remain mice! [Edit: When I go to the local camera stores (I normally buy from B&H online) and am chatting with the sales people about what I am doing, the Brooks students often say how they would give anything to have my jobs ... they go to Brooks Institute here in Santa Barbara and are generally 1000% better photographers than I am ... but I have the work and no formal photography education. I mention this just to illustrate the point.]


Dwight,
thank you for the clarification... YOu mention an agreement, would you have a copy oyu could send me so i could put one together for myself?? As i mentioned before, there sure are allot of ducks to line up before you shoot!! kk

ps, you have lots of nice gear... how long have you been at this game...??

[kienlein]

Dwight,
I have read most the threads you suggested and MAN, i sure learned allot! Thanks... There are allot of wonderful, helpful people here, I aspire to the level of work you all do. I am gettting there, but there is still LOTS for me to learn.

It may seem a bit long, but I would like to give you a short bio (is there such a thing??); I took pictures many years ago, and really liked it, but I have a heart conditon (a congentital problem called: tricuspid, atresia, atrial & vent with septal defects... it only took me 45 years to get that down!!) My parents were told, i would be lucky to make 10-15 years, here i am at 47 still looking at the right side of the grrass. Anyways,... I was/am on disablitly, so it did not make sense to me to take pix and not have a way for them to pay for themselves. Thus I kind of gave it up for many years.

Since that time I have become an entertainer in my 'valley' area. I enjoy playing and over the last number of years done quite well and am 'infamous' locale! (my site is www.kevinkienlein.com ) Last January I would up with pneumonia & congestive heart failure, by August i was doing well, feeling pretty good and then I managed to get the CHF AGAIN... it was pretty scary and I was not sure if i would be doing much playing after that. Thankfully God has let me recover pretty well, and i am still annoying people for money!

During this time i mentioned to a friend i was interested in photography and what kind of camera would be good. i wound up with a Canon 300D and the rest as they say is history, 10,000 pix later (since last september), a 30D and WAY too much stuff. i am getting into all kinds of photography, but i think i like flowers and band stuff the best... That is why i am here..

Thus my continuing saga of life goes on....

Since checking out all the info, I have a couple questions i think are unanswered, here goes:

1) do you keep ALL your images, or just the best? I have heard it said dont throw anything away... I cull the real fuzzy ones, but how do you determine what you keeep?

2) Are you shooting RAW yet or still JPEGs? i am doing all my shooting in RAW since getting my 30D. (i have CS3 and am slowly learning it!!!)

3) Do you shoot a white card before the shoot and go with that or do you change your settings as you go along or do you put it on 'P' and let er rip?

I now have a 75-300IS, a 28-135IS and next week will be getting an 17-85IS. when i go shooting i plan on using the 75&17 lens' on two cameras and that will cover all the lenghts i need without hving to change lens... if it is low light, then i will use my 85/1.8,,,

Thanks again... kk

[kienlein]

I should post a couple of my better pix... (i think they are!)

[kienlein]

I hope i dont get in trouble for too many images, but i dont have a way to host them yet... kk

[kienlein]

Dwight,
I have read a bunch more of your bio, posts etc... I am quite inspired, even though we dont have the population base of your area, i think i can do well with bands and other things, it will just take time, patience and lots of PIX...

Also, I thought of a couple more questions...

4) do you still bracket every shot plus and minus?

5) the tutorial on the collage is missing images, possibly you could repost them sometime.. and i missed what program did you do it in? as i mentioned ihave CS3 and also coreldraw..

tnx kk

[René Damkot]

I like the second image in post #13 and the first in post #14!
Not the 'default' PA images, but nice!

[th256]

Beautiful b/w photos, but I have to say the others seem a bit soft

[DwightMcCann]

Because Rene and Kalle keep whining about RAW to anyone who doesn't I have converted 90% to RAW. The only exceptions are sports where I tend to take a LOT of frames, the ability to adjust is less, and bursts of RAW easily overflow the buffer. Perhaps with a 1DMIII I will shoot sports in RAW, too.

I am HUGE on bracketing. I still bracket even though I shoot RAW: 0, -1, +1. I shoot the metered exposure frames first (it is a setting on my 1DMII bodies) because Rene kept claiming that bracketing caused one to miss the perfect instant (a debatable conjecture at best.) This leaves me with a lot of very similar frames so I cull a lot. I may keep 25% but usually closer to 15% and I don't use most of those.

Quickly, my concert workflow is: (1) download CF cards to Epson P-2000, (2) PhotoMechanic 4.5 Ingest from one to three bodies worth from Epson to folders named YYYY_MMDD_EventName with all images from one event into one folder, (3) sort by capture time, (4) rename with something that identifies the content, (5) add IPTC data [steps 2-5 done with PhotoMechanic], (6) import folder into LightRoom 1.1, (7) step through all images making adjustments, ( 8 ) export fullsize jpegs to new folder, (9) export sized jpegs to new folders as required, (10) backup [See note below], (11) build collage from jpegs in PhotoImpact, (12) add logo to selected images for gallery in PhotoImpact. I have Adobe Web Premium CS3 (and most previous versions of PS but just haven't gotten converted to it!)

Backup: I never format my CF cards until I am verifying settings just prior to a shoot. This has saved my butt a couple of times although not so much now that I download to my Epson P-2000 rather than directly to my PC. Once I have ingested to a folder on my PC I have three copies of the images: CF, Epson, RAID 1 HD. I erase folders from the Epson as I need the space. My initial cull and processing are done on a RAID 1 mirror which I think of as my "work" drive. I then backup new/changed files to a biggish RAID 5 on the same PC. At this point I have four copies of the images if you count the RAID arrays as only one each. Once I format CF, erase from Epson, I am down to two copies, but I may have several copies of any one file: RAW and jpeg in one to four sizes ... remember I have erased a lot of the files before even bringing into LightRoom. Every couple of days I backup my RAID 5 on my primary PC to an even bigger RAID 5 on my backup (actually better but I am too lazy to convert) PC. I use SyncBack from TwoBriteStars (I think ... about $25) to do this. The RAID 1, my initial download target, is only about 300GB so it fills first although I emptied it at the beginning of the year and still have enough for several more months ... I think of this space as "work space", the first RAID 5 as backup and the RAID 5 on the other machine as archive.

Recently a number of people were concerned that I did not have an "offsite" backup. [If you follow my antics you will find that I take good advice, such as converting to RAW, but that I am not often a "leader of the pack".] I bought two 750GB external HDs [Seagates from Costco with 5 year warranties for $250 each ... now they are cheaper] and rotate them keeping one at work (UCSB where I have a locked office) and one at home where I do an incremental backup from the archive every week or so and then swap with the drive at work. My longer term plan is to use BluRay DVDs, too, but they are way too expensive at the moment.

I currently have about 150,000 image files although many are duplicates, so I probably have a catalog of 50-75K images. I can find any file in minutes by date/name. I am adding IPTC data to all new files and trying to add it to old files. Not only does this embed my copyright but also descriptive information that can be searched. As with so much of my workflow, I didn't think this up ... it was required by a wire service that I contribute to but it is really a requirement in the industry. I keep trying to bully my local newspaper to whom I contribute courtesy images to embrace IPTC but so far they are resistant.

On collages: well, I use PhotoImpact and just do what you see ... all manual. What takes time is selecting the images that work together (I am terrible at this) and it takes forever to get a font and treatment that aren't offensive (I am terrible at this.)

Phew! Anyway, you will find that Kalle (KMB here at POTN ... who runs a great new concert photography website) and Rene Damkot (the best critiques and my primary resource for improving my workflow) have different workflow with different software.

Health: Old people always talk about their health. I am 62. I had a quadruple bypass 2-1/2 years ago just exactly when I went professional (I had to have someone carry my camera for a couple of months after surgery) and apparently have a couple of valves that will need to be replaced at some point. I have a 5-1/2 year old daughter along with my child bride ... they will not permit me to be idle!

[kienlein]

Thanks for the comments on my pix... i really like the B&W stuff, it really defines the musician and takes away the distractions of color... the softness can be attributed to me being a newbie, VERY LOW LIGHT, handheld and several other excuses!!!

However, i think i captured the essance of the person and I feel THAT is the important part. I have lots of other musicans shots, but i have not converted them to JPEG and edited them yet... I hope in the next month or two get to them and have a website to show off my captures/creations... kk

[kienlein]

Dwight, thanks for all the great info, there is so much to learn, but i am trying to absorb and use what i have been reading and watching... TIS GOOD!

My health issues are not an excuse, but the reason i have found a possible new vocation, and i wanted to share where i came from.

I am putting gout feelers in the local music scene, and i hope some of them grow and flower.... it will be an interesting autumn season for sure!... I may even get back some of the funds i spent on all my 'toys'!

Your system sounds quite GRAND, i have lowly HP machine, a 200gig HD devoted to my pix and the back up is a 350 gig USB...

I don't print my own pix, for 4x6's i use the local wal-mart (I KNOW!!!!) or other places, and for my blank greeting cards, larger pix etc, i have a fellow who has a very nice XEROX Color setup that prints on very nice archival paper and the print process is supposed to last 150 years... i do not expect I will be around then, so will be famous! He does pro work such as books, calenders and various other things, so I do have good stuff to sell when i need it.

Nite for now... i am sure i will have more questions later... kk