{Disclaimer, I am by no means a writer. I’m a photographer for a reason, please excuse my less than perfect writing skills and grammar.}
There are many misconceptions when it comes to how a professional photographer operates in the current digital age. A professional photographer needs training, experience and time to be prepared for any situation that is presented, with any kind of light provided. Most of the time a photographer has an idea of the photo they want to create before they even show up to the shoot. In order to execute that they need the training to know the combination of settings and correct numbers to make that happen. When you add constantly changing atmospheres and locations which means the photographer has to have the experience to act quickly on their feet with adjustments, this requires experience. Lastly a great printable photograph needs to be edited carefully, this can be tedious and it needs time. The photographer needs to know what adjustments, ( also from experience ) will be successful in transforming a photograph to reflect their style but also has the quality to be printed in many formats. An un-experienced photographer without editing knowledge may scrap great photos that can be saved with extensive edits, without realizing it.
There is a handful of consumers who have their own SLR cameras and decent camera phones that believe that photography is a simple process of shoot and share. By shoot and share I mean they think that after a shoot the photographer simply goes home, uploads the photos and calls it a day. This is not true, at all. On today’s camera phones and digital point and shoot cameras you use to take quick photos of your kids on their first day of school etc, have various automatic modes which adjusts all your settings so that all you have to do is upload them to the internet to send them to Shutterfly to be printed. While professional cameras have automatic settings, the real professional behind the camera rarely if ever uses the automatic setting. The automatic setting does not allow a creative professional to make manual adjustments to create the photo they have planned out in their mind. Using the before and after photo below I am going to address why experience, training and time spent mattered when creating this photo.
There is always a handful of people who think that photographers come home after a shoot and just upload your photos and call it a day. This is not true, at all. This edit took me about 15 mins. While every photo is different, some take less time and some take more, now multiply that by the number of photos you get in your gallery. This is why good photos cost what they do. Always make sure what you are paying for are fully edited photos. City Savvy Imaging only provides fully edited photos. Always.
First Ill give you a little bit of information about the photo. This before & after photo was taken during a practice shoot. When I’m doing a shoot in an location with lighting I’ve never tried before I go before hand to to practice. I was having trouble with my lighting transmitters recently and I wanted to make sure they were in working condition against the colder temps. Thank goodness I did because they failed about 10 mins into shooting, that topic for another blog. As a result I got maybe 5 shots with my off camera lighting and the rest of the shoot was done in natural light provided by the Christmas lights. I had planned to use the off camera lights for the whole shoot. I had to think quickly and figure out how I could continue only using the very low light of the Christmas lights. I decided that I could only shoot close to the lights in order to get the most light I could from them. I also decided I could only use my low light lenses that reach an aperture of 1.8 and I knew doing any shots involving motion was not an option since I knew I needed to keep my ISO high. No sweat!
Now, here is why experience, training and time were important in this situation. When you have training in photography, you are taught to understand your camera in a technical way. You are taught the settings and how they work together. You are also taught about light, how it falls on things and people and how it can work with you or against you. Had I not been taught those things in college when I studied photography I would not have been able to work in the manual mode of my camera. If I had been inexperienced like I once was, (like we all start out) I would have just thrown my camera into auto mode and done the shoot in that mode. In that case I wouldn’t have had the control I wanted to create the photos I wanted, I would have just gotten whatever lighting the camera decided for me and hope for the best. This is why training is important in a professional photography career.
As for experience, I can say that in the past if my lighting had failed that early in a shoot, I would have panicked, because the without the training I wouldn’t have known how to use what I had on me instead, which was the low light lenses. I knew that I could use the natural light from the Christmas lights to use in my favor. I have experience therefor I have a backup plan. I can modify the tools that I have and accommodate for changing situations. Before I had experience I didn’t fully understand how lenses operated and I didn’t understand how different lenses are better for different situations. When you have experience you approach a shoot knowing what can and cannot be fixed in post editing. You realize how to shoot in a manner that will save you time in the long run with editing and workflow. I remember when I first started second shooting weddings I didn’t understand why I needed to shoot certain wide angle shots or why I underexposing or overexposing an image would be helpful later. Then once I had shot an a lot of weddings and started designing albums, I realized that you go into a wedding knowing how to design entire spreads of an album which demands that you shoot in a manor that will provide you with wide angle (etc) shots that ( might not be a shot a couple will order a print of but ) look fantastic in an album. This experience is the kind that you need to live yourself sometimes more than once, this experience forms you as a professional.
Now Ill address the aspect of time , the following explains how a professional can create polished images that impress. If I had taken a photo like the “before” photo above, lets say 5 years ago with the editing experience I had back then, I most likely would have seen it as unusable. I may have taken a stab at fixing it but it would have looked horrible. The time you put into experimenting with editing software and learning the post editing tools is very important. The experience and training definitely play into saving you time with editing. The more experienced you are at creating a well exposed image right in your camera the less time you will need to spend on it with post edits. However with editing, if you are good with your software ( which takes experience ) you can easily develop a style for your work, and take your photos to another level that can impress your audience. If not used correctly editing software can over process your photos and it can end up hurting more than helping. I used to do this but the more practice I get with it and the more software I test out, I’ve learned how to steer clear of over processing. I’m still to this day learning from this. I also take the time to go on location ahead of time to test lighting. This will help eliminate wasting client time with setting up blindly. I have learned the more time you set aside to experiment with not only editing but with lighting and technique the faster it projects you with being able to create impressive work and learn the craft.
This all leads to my final point that I make time and time again but it always bears repeating. When you are shopping for a photographer and are in sticker shock at how much the good ones cost, it’s because they are professional and they have experience and hopefully training ( I say hopefully because many in the digital age do not ), and have put in the time to learn their craft. Most important of all when you are specifically hiring a wedding photographer, make sure they have a good amount of experience, and training because weddings are not like portrait sessions. Weddings are an entire day of needing experience to react to changing situations, light and people. Wedding photography is the most demanding in terms of being experienced. Rarely do weddings present the opportunity for do-overs like a portrait session does. There are way too many over night hobbyist photographers out there claiming to be professionals and you don’t want to lose money to their deals that are too good to be true for a good reason.
Thanks for reading my blog! I am an independent wedding photographer in Chicago. I am City Savvy imaging. I also take a limited amount of newborn, family and portrait sessions. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram as well.