MICHAELSCHULZ|PHOTOGRAPHY

This is definitely sick and I want people in Houston to contact me if they’re at least half
as good.

I am looking for parkour masters in Houston, Dallas or Austin for some stunning
photo shoots. If you are very good or know anybody who is send an email to
info@michaelschulz-photography.com.

Thank you.
Michael

Just finished a shooting in Houston. Justin had to really work it, but it was worth it.

Edit: original from http://www.caughtonfilmphoto.com/costofphotography.html

found this on a myspace bulletin:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea … =351320074

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Why are Professional Photographers so expensive?

(This article has been very well received by the photography community, and is now referred to by many Photography websites across the country)

In this digital age where everyone has digital cameras, scanners and home “photo printers”, when people upload their photos to a local drug store website and pick them up a few hours later, we hear this all the time - How in the world do Professional Photographers charge $55 for an 8×10 when they cost just $1.50 at the drug store?

Here’s why.

Simply put, you’re not just paying for the actual photograph, you’re paying for time and expertise. First, let’s look at the actual time involved. If you don’t read this entire page, at least read this first part.

For a two hour portrait session:

- one hour of travel to and from the session
- two hours of shooting
- 30 minutes of setup, preparation, talking to the client etc.
- 30 minutes to load the photos onto a computer (2 - 4 Gb of data)
- 30 minutes to back up the files on an external drive
- 3 - 4 hours of Photoshop time including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, saving a copy for print and a copy for the internet and backing up the edited photographs
- 2 - 3 hours to talk to the client, answer questions, receive their order and payment, order their prints, receive and verify prints, package prints, schedule shipment and drop package off at Fed Ex.
- For local customers, we also print a set of all of their photos, and meet them at our studio to review the photos and place their order. Meeting and travel time averages 2 hours.

You can see how one two hour session easily turns into more than ten hours of work from start to finish. So when you see a Photographer charging a $200 session fee for a two hour photo shoot, you are not paying them $100 / hour.

For an eight hour wedding:

- I won’t bore you with the details, but an eight hour wedding typically amounts to at least two to three full 40 hour work weeks worth of time. Again, if they are charging you $4,000 for an eight hour wedding, you are not paying them $500 / hour.

Now for the expertise.

Shooting professional photography is a skill, acquired through years of experience. Even though a quality camera now costs under $2,000 taking professional portraits involves much more than a nice camera.

Most Professional Photographers take years to go from buying their first decent camera to making money with their photography. In addition to learning how to use the camera itself, there is a mountain of other equipment involved, as well as numerous software programs used to edit and print photographs, run a website etc.

And let’s not forget that you actually have to have people skills, be able to communicate, make people comfortable in front of the camera - and posing people to make them look their best in a photograph is a skill all by itself.

Think of it this way - the next time you pay $X to get your hair done, a pair of scissors only costs $1.50. But you gladly pay a lot more to hire a Professional.

What about the cheap studios at the mall?

Please don’t compare us to the chain store studios. But if you must, consider all of the time and work that we put into our photographs, compared to what they do. Good luck getting a two hour photo shoot at a chain store. Not to mention they won’t come to the beach! And of course, look at our work compared to theirs. You get what you pay for.

The truth is, most of the mall and chain store studios lose money. In fact, in 2007 Wal-Mart closed 500 of their portrait studios because of the financial drain they were putting on the company. What the chain stores bet on is that you’ll come in for some quick and cheap photos, and while you’re there, you’ll also spend $200 on other things. They don’t have to make money, they are just there to get you in the door.

Conclusion

We hope that those who have taken the time to read this page will have a better understanding of why professional photographs cost so much more than the ones that you get from your local drug store.

When I went to the Apple store yesterday to pick up a new keyboard (kinda love
the new look) I asked for the receipt to be sent to me via email (very convenient).
The email never arrived in my inbox though and I had the guy in the store print me one.
When I got home I found Apple’s email. In the Junk folder. Moved by … Apple Mail :).

Found this very interesting post on Chase’s blog about how photography can retain it’s value in the
digital world.

Creativity In The New Economy: “Kevin Kelly has a remarkable post over at The Technium about the free flow of information online and how certain values must be cultivated in order to succeed in the New Economy. I think it very much applies to all creatives, and most certainly is of particular interest to photographers. Kevin says:

1. The internet is a giant copy machine, spreading your work to every corner of the globe;
2. When copies are super abundant, they become worthless; and
3. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

Consider this in terms of the photography that you create. When copies of your work - through market pressures or otherwise - head toward free (read: commodification of photographs), you’ll need to focus on ’selling’ things which can not be copied, like artistic vision, trust, experience, excellence, or other similar ‘values’. Mr. Kelly offers up 8 categories of these values. Below, I’ve paraphrased and commented briefly on how each applies to photography:

Immediacy — Pictures that are faster to market could be worth more.

Personalization — Pictures of value must target or be relevant to a certain segment of the market. Generic content will have diminishing value. In order to keep your artistic content relevant, you’ll need to stay informed and engaged.

Interpretation — Your unique vision on something could create a premium value.

Authenticity — That which bears your personal signature - be it literal in the case of fine art, or figurative in the sense of commercial - could allow you to charge premium prices. Even more so, your personal authenticity to your art, your business practices, and your creative inspirations will add value.

Accessibility — You’ll need to keep your content or brand well-organized so that you can provide buyers with access.

Embodiment — At its core the digital copy is without a soul (consider Baudrillard’s simulacra). Music is a great example: nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance. Just like live music has a unique pulse where music from a CD–relatively speaking–lacks one; freshly commissioned, custom-created images will have increased value over their generic, commodified counterparts. The process of creating, and how connected you are with that process, will also continue to grow value.

Patronage — Audiences WANT to artists to get paid (whether your audience is a fine art patron or an ad agency, or someone else), but increasingly so only if its made increasingly easy to do so. Radiohead’s recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay whatever they wished for a downloadable copy of their album is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage; and, for example, the recent success in stock photography of bundled ‘package’ offerings (rights managed, multiple uses) and flat prices (rights ready), is reasonable proof that many buyers want ‘easy’.

Findability — A work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of pictures–or photographers ready to shoot commissioned assignments–requesting buyers attentions, having one of the images, agents, websites, whatever that is being found has obvious value.

And lastly, according to Kelly, fostering these eight qualities will require a new skill set.

‘Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can’t be replicated with a click of the mouse.’

We’ve already seen much of what Kevin is talking about happening to the photography industry. Are you doing things to differentiate your creativity and your brand? Are you employing generosity in your business model? If not, you’d better start. I’ve said it plenty of times before, but this article underscores my point nicely: there has never been a more exciting time in history to be a photographer. Embrace the change.

If some or any of this stuff interests you, I highly encourage reading the original post entitled Better Than Free.

(via Seth)

“

(Via Chase Jarvis Blog.)

Now after several re-installs and repurposing of this blog, here’s a first post. Again.