For Photographers

Everyone Or Just Someone

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Everyone who goes to a grocery store will buy something. Food is a necessity and everyone needs food today.

Everyone who goes to a photographer’s web site will *not* hire that photographer. Photography isn’t a necessity and everyone doesn’t need photography today.

Everyone is not your photography customer.

Everyone doesn’t want you. Everyone won’t pay your rates. Your photography isn’t good enough for everyone.

But someone is your photography customer.

Someone understands what you do. Someone will gladly pay your rates. Your photography is perfect for someone.

Who is your someone?

 

Happiness And Photography

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People record a live event with their cellphones in Toronto, 2018. Instead of watching a real person right in front of them, many of these folks watched a one-and-a-half-inch digital version on their cellphone screen.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, I occasionally crossed paths with a certain other newspaper photographer when I photographed dress rehearsals for ballet and opera. After shooting a suitable number of pictures of a rehearsal, I would leave the theatre. But this other photographer always stayed behind. He put his cameras on the floor and watched the remaining rehearsal. I thought he was being lazy, just sitting there and not taking pictures.
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Job One for a Photographer

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Running your photo business is a bit like being a photographer in a canoe. You have to stay afloat, keep things balanced, paddle forward, don’t run aground or hit any rocks, and, along the way, make nice photos. Otherwise you might be up a creek without a paddle. (US Library of Congress)

Job priorities for running your photo business:

1. You’re a photographer.

No that’s wrong.

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Supply, Need, and Demand for Photography

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Marijuana plants grow at a licensed Canadian producer of cannabis for medicinal use, 21 June 2018. Recreational use of marijuana became legal across Canada in October 2018.

When Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, everyone in the industry was expecting a windfall. But that expectation soon faded.

More than three years after the federal government legalized cannabis, there are more than 870 licensed cultivators, processors and sellers in Canada. But despite piqued interest following legalization, high supply and low demand have led to billions of dollars in writedowns and millions of grams of unsold marijuana.
(. . .)
Ontario has seen, in particular, a very large increase in the number of retail stores over the last 24 months, and because of that, the overall (market share) each store on average is able to get continues to decline . . .

– Toronto Star, July 2022

There are 425 cannabis stores and 421 Tim Hortons across Toronto.

– Toronto Star, September 2022

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Yellow Brick Road Photography

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Queen Elizabeth II watches the 151st running of The Queen’s Plate horse race in Toronto, Canada, 04 July 2010. With the passing of the Queen and the accession of Prince Charles to the throne, the race will become The King’s Plate.

This is another view-from-my-office photo.

Most photography web sites are about equipment. I’m referring to photography web sites not photographer web sites. Such photography sites write about gear because it’s quick and easy.

There are some web sites that offer photography advice and instruction. But these “nuts and bolts” sites are superficial and intended for beginners. Quick bites of junk food. Tastes good for the few minutes you’re consuming it.

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Hiding Photographers

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An obvious group of photographers, 09 September 2014.

And just for fun, here’s the reverse angle:

British actress Keira Knightley at the Toronto Film Festival, 09 September 2014.

 

A Toronto dentist recently told me that when he graduated from dental school in the mid-1970s, there were about 1,300 dentists in Toronto. He said that number has since increased at least 600%.

When he opened his own practice in Toronto, there was one other dental office within a one-block radius of his office. Today there are eight other dental offices within that same one-block radius and those eight dental businesses collectively employ about 18 dentists.
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Low Expectations

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Canadian goalkeeper Milan Borjan celebrates Canada’s win over Jamaica in their men’s soccer match in the final rounds of the Concacaf FIFA World Cup qualifiers in Toronto, Canada, 27 March 2022.

This is a view-from-my-office photo from a cold, rainy-snowy soccer game.

From the past two weeks:

 

• A Toronto professional photographer does family portraits for $500 according to his web site. The price includes a 45-minute session and 50 “fully retouched” pictures.

Fifty images in 45 minutes? Fully retouched? Ten dollars per photo?

At that price, who should have low expectations, the customer or the photographer?

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