Rant: High Prices for Bad Quality Photography

Focusing on others is no way to move forward it usually gets you left behind. If you want to expand your business contact Las Vegas' chamber of commerce who's sole purpose is to help people be successful in business in their area. Be proactive (for yourself) not reactive (to others).

form wrote in post #5557612
competing photographers out here who charge as much as $200/hour for the same services that I provide, but who actually put out what I consider to be inferior products, be it because the white balance is off, the pictures are plain or camera shake is present, or they look like snapshots.

Many of them don't even use fill flash in daylight pictures.

I missed out on the link to your competition so I can't compare.
Ok this is going to hurt

Your photography maybe good and professional, but IMO your website doesn't reflect that. I know I am being brutal, but hopefully brutally honest.

Your site isn't current and the pictures on it don't appear to be either. An enthusiastic amateur could easily out market you.

If you are as good as you say, you're doing a damn bad job of showing it. The upside is, that with a little work and some focus on presentation and the business, you should be able to flip the tables.

My recommendations:
1. Put your site up for critique on this forum or sit with an honest friend and work through it.

2. Update your site with fresh work if you haven't. If it's fresh work, get rid of all the mediocre pictures and leave potential clients to with only solid offerings. You have some really good work. Reprocess 'older' work to make it fresh and up to date.
Ps. Look at weddings. The first 10 pictures are basically all the same. All dancing or hugging. But 18 is absolutely stunning! If I was a bride, I would be bored at 5.

3. Re-work your navigation. It took me a few seconds to workout how it worked and I am web savy. We can all get to close to our sites, forgetting 'we' know how to use them.

If your rant is to serve any purpose and you are to benefit, humbly take on board the good advice from those who have already posted.

I would only feel depressed if I was doing all I could and my business wasn't keeping up. I would feel excited, if I am doing ok and I know there is loads that can be done to improve.

I hope this wasn't to straight. I'll probably get flamed for this.

I'm all ears, but I don't understand "current" as far as a site goes. Out market in what way and how?

With the exception of the black and white photos, most of my photos are either unprocessed or very lightly processed. There might be half a dozen color pictures with some genuine effort applied to enhancement. Are you saying I should enhance them all?

I took your advice about the wedding pictures and removed the ones I thought were the least interesting as well as what I thought you meant by #5. I don't know which one is #18 and stunning, but thanks.

More navigational issues? I have to rethink it again I suppose.

Your comments have been by far the most helpful thus far. But I don't understand what you mean by my site not being "current." Do you mean it doesn't use flash that delays by animating everything? My computer is too old to make any of that look good; it just takes longer for me to load any website that uses flash for portfolio navigation, and, in fact, I rarely can view the average photographer's flash website for any length of time before getting tired of waiting. But then, I always preferred the snappiness of Mac OS 9 over the pretty, but SLOW, Mac OS X...until X.4 came along.

Hi Form,
By out market, I just mean they could use marketing to appear like a more experienced, professional company even though in reality they aren't.

Much of processes is fine. But I found a few in the portrait area that just seemed flat and boring, that could be rescued with a little some PP.

18 was the picture with the the couple in front of the sign Vegas sign. I'd love that on my portfolio!

I am all for not using to much flash. I agree keeping it simple is often best. I would loose the background picture on your site. It confuses and clashes with the photography on your site. Quick simple sites are a good idea. I have worked with the same principle on mine.

I to have different channels. When you get to the homepage, you choose which area you're interested in. So the pricing and portfolio is relevant to whatever channel is chosen.

I also see from your profile that you are into web design...so I can go a little more technical. I would avoid frames like the plague as google can't read the effectively.

The homepage is very boring, it will be even more boring when you take the advice to loose the overall background image. So that will need a rethink. If your are going to use a big body of text, could you add some thumbnails. Link those thumbnails to your photo gallery.

The slideshow is good. Are muslin background shots in fashion up your way? They look kind of old fashioned against some of your other work in that slideshow. Cull that as well. Only keep the excellent work. You have a picture of a yellow flower in there, why? Will someone pay you to take that kind of shot?
You have a lady with a little kid with boxing gloves...was that a special event or charity? If it was, mention it on the picture.

Hope this helps. I am doing the same thing to my site today. I only updated it on friday. Got 3 bookings since and a fourth on the way, but it could still be more powerful. It's been quiet for a couple of days, so I want to make it more persuasive.

Why do you care what other photographers do? Do YOUR best work, and it'll speak for itself. Once you become more in demand, you can charge accordingly.

I never liked frames and have almost never used them. I use CSS for positioning and other things, and a table for the base layout.

The site looked simpler when I had plain black (and once I had grey), but it lacked a sense of being "finished and complete." I'm thinking.

Thumbnails on the front page. I initially had the slideshow autoplay on the front page but people complained of visibility conflicts with the page, so I believe that I am going to have to separate photos from text and consider some downward scrolling to be a necessity. I do need to add some pictures to the front page somewhere. I have to try to use the "a place for everything and everything in its place" planning method next time I redo my website.

Muslin backgrounds are used in some instances and not in others. I know for a fact that they still get used for standard, traditional portraiture, which is one of the styles I am most comfortable with. It's not edgy work, but edgy doesn't fit my personality well and I find that I struggle when I try to do that kind of photography, though I keep trying to understand it.

I'm not nearly as experienced as you are, but I do claim that my photos are better than snapshots most of the time, and I do know how to adjust white balance and exposure, which some of the local photographers don't do.

I understand what you mean about marketing now.

I care if someone who puts out snapshot-quality work and gets $200/hour for it actually gets the work, especially if it's work I would get otherwise, for less money while providing a better product. I'm not top quality, but I do a better job than they do, and it irks me to think that they would be able to get any work for that price.


My website has been a bone of contention for me for a long time: I don't get many viewers, so I have been trying to figure out how to make the most of out the ones I get by improving my website. It's due for another rehaul anyway (usually I do that once every few months), and I started last night.

Perhaps you should concentrate on what you are doing and not those around you. If you develop a better understanding of light, exposure, postproduction and most of all the interaction between yourself and your subjects then Clients will find you. Worrying about everyone else is counterproductive and will only drive you crazy. Unfortunately, it's not always the best photographer that gets the job, often times it's the best salesman.

I spend about 0.5% of my time thinking about other photographers; the rest of the time I'm busy working or doing other things. The initial post was the result of that 0.5% of the time when I saw someone's ad and was in an ill mood to begin with, which spark ignited a flame that quickly died and turned into a very useful post for me, and has helped me try to rethink my website.

Light and composition have been my primary foci for improvement for some time now.

I was able to navigate in the web site of the 200$ guy, but I was not able to navigate in yours.

- Your web site takes only half of my screen
- The icons are invisble, and show only a small part of the image
- The images are too small.
- The image on the home page is muddy.
- I was not able to find your price list.

Statistics show that the average person will simply go to another site if he doesn't find what he is looking for within the first few seconds.

If I wanted to hire a photographer, I would be looking for two things: his images, and his prices. Right or wrong, I found both easily in the other guy site, and not on yours.

And I'm changing my website. But I don't see how the price list couldn't be found because it's on the left side under home and portfolio.

I made my website size conform to a 800x600 resolution screen for maximum compatibility. I can stretch some things, but not everything. If it takes up half of your screen you must be using a graphic designer/photographer'​s resolution or a widescreen display (or both) because most people use between 1024 and 1280 on the wide end, since the optimum resolution for most LCD displays is within that range.

The next revision won't have any background pictures like the muddy one on the home page.

The images are 642x428, any larger and file size becomes a serious problem unless I increase compression.

form wrote in post #5575400
And I'm changing my website. But I don't see how the price list couldn't be found because it's on the left side under home and portfolio.

I made my website size conform to a 800x600 resolution screen for maximum compatibility. I can stretch some things, but not everything. If it takes up half of your screen you must be using a graphic designer/photographer'​s resolution or a widescreen display (or both) because most people use between 1024 and 1280 on the wide end, since the optimum resolution for most LCD displays is within that range.

The next revision won't have any background pictures like the muddy one on the home page.

The images are 642x428, any larger and file size becomes a serious problem unless I increase compression.

I spent just a few seconds clicking around trying to make the pricelist show, and it didn't show. I don't know about my definition setting, but I am using a laptop and all other web sites take the entire screen.

PS here I am playing the role of the average potential customer!

My suggestion would be to when you finish your website editing, have some friends look it over. Have them look at it via different browsers, like Firefox, Opera, IE, Netscape, Safari, things like that. Also, asking them to look it it under different resolutions will help too.

or the average smart aleck!

I'm working on it already, but this time I'm trying to really plan out a template.

form wrote in post #5576360
I'm working on it already, but this time I'm trying to really plan out a template.

Learn css a bit better, and then implement an elastic or liquid layout, which means the size can fill whatever resolution (and you should size it to 1024x768, not 800x600). The photos will stay the same, but the spaces around them will expand neatly, improving the look of the site, overall.

Do you know php at all? PHP, creating your html on the server is a better (more flexible; since you can change your template very easily and robustly) solution than just html, and you can also implement dynamic data if you know any mysql.


Jon

PS forget the bleed objects behind the text; that's 80's tacky (in my opinion) unless it's done just right!

Ok.
I guess then this is what you were looking for, with your rant:

-Your pictures are way better then the pictures of the other guy, who can't distiguish a camera from a toaster.
-If he charges 200$, you have to charge at least 400$.
-Your web site is just great. It's actually so good, that it cannot be improved. Keep it just like that.
-If the other guy makes enough money and keeps his business running, while you cannot, it's not your fault, nor his credit. It is just your bad luck that has been following you for your entire life, and there is nothing to do about it. Karma.

You sure that this helps more then my previous post?

Good luck.

Tiziano