hiring a photographer

It’s the photographer not the price

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If you’re about to hire a photographer then remember that you get what you pay for. Low price always gets you low quality.

Business headshots never cost anywhere near $15 each no matter what the volume. Expect *at least* quadruple that amount for a high volume shoot with minimal editing.

When you hire a photographer, you’re paying partly for the photography and partly for the photographer. The experience and quality of the photographer directly affects the success of the photos. Pictures do not create themselves nor do cameras create pictures.

If one professional is saying they will do the work for $100 per hour and another is quoting you $200 per hour, your instinct shouldn’t immediately jump to the one offering the lowest price.

As an example, maybe the higher-priced solution has the learnings from a 20 year career vs. a 5 year career, to help you avoid more known pitfalls that you don’t even see coming. Or, they have helped 20 clients succeed in similar situations, vs. 2 clients succeed . . .

– George Deeb, Forbes

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Reach for the Top

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A job search engine company published its annual list of top Canadian employers. A printed version was inserted in today’s The Globe and Mail newspaper.

Not all of the selected top employers were profiled in the (online and printed) magazine. But by some strange coincidence, every company that was profiled just happened to have a paid ad in the publication.

If you flip through the magazine, you can tell which companies hired professional photographers and which decided to go with, uh, “other” photographers.

You will notice an awful lot of group pictures showing people doing nothing but standing or sitting around. There are also a number of photos that most professional photographers would’ve deleted. To be fair, there is one good group photo and several other acceptable images.
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Selfie Science

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A scientific study released a few days ago confirmed what every portrait photographer has known forever:

If you take a picture of someone from very close up, it will distort their facial features.

This fact is not well known by people who take selfies which, apparently, is the number one cause of distorted faces. Some of these folks are going to plastic surgeons and requesting surgery to correct their distorted facial appearance.

Boris Paskhover, an assistant professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School’s Department of Otolaryngology who specializes in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery, frequently was shown selfies as examples of why patients were requesting surgery to make their noses smaller.

Researchers have named this horrible disfiguring issue as . . . wait for it . . . “The Selfie Effect.”

Dr. Boris Paskhover worked with the computer science department at Stanford University to develop a mathematical model to explain why noses look bigger when photographed close up.

Their mathematical model determined that most selfies are shot from a distances of about 12 inches. This short distance makes a nose look 30% wider. But, and here’s modern science in action, if a photo is shot from at least five feet away then the nose will look normal.

Researchers concluded that selfies are a public health issue. So please, for the sake of your health, hire a professional portrait photographer for your business headshots and other important portraits. Your nose will thank you.

 

Working With A Photographer

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US author Seth Godin recently wrote a post titled Working with a designer (four paths). Since my web site is about business photography, I will steal adapt Godin’s post:

 

Working with a photographer (four paths)

All of us want to look good online, need some web site photos and maybe even a portrait of ourselves. More and more individuals and companies are learning that they need to hire a professional photographer.

It comes down to doing your homework. Be clear with yourself before you spend a nickel or a minute with a photographer. This difficult internal conversation will save you endless frustration and heartache later.

Here are four postures to consider when working with a good photographer:
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Visualizing A Better Story

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A potential customer asked for “action pictures” of their employees. What do the employees do at this financial company? They sit all day long and tap away at their computers.

Five weeks ago, I photographed at an office which was an entire floor of employees quietly typing inside beige cubicles. I was also recently at a healthcare company’s warehouse-sized call centre that was wall-to-wall cubicles of employees talking on telephones while they typed on computer keyboards.

Even at a tech company’s office, which is well-known for its fun decor and in-office perks, the employees sat quietly at tables tapping away at their laptops. (This tech company office had no landline phones except for the receptionist. When I stood in this office, the only sound I heard was that plastic clicky sound from keyboards.)

So where’s all the action?
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Why you need a professional sports photographer

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If your company is organizing or sponsoring a professional sports event then you know that you need photography. The photos can be used for your social media, press releases, event programs, annual report, and to market next year’s event.

Look at the following pairs of photos. In each pair, one image was shot by an employee with a cell phone or a cheap camera, and the other image was made by a professional photographer. Can you figure out which is which?

 


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How much should you pay for business headshots?

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If you’re thinking of getting a business portrait done, you’ve probably found out that, in Toronto, the price ranges from about $50 to over $1,000. Why is there such a wide price range?

The price of running shoes ranges from $20 to over $300. Men’s haircuts in Toronto range from $8 to about $450. A Toronto hamburger costs anywhere from $1 to $100.

The magic phrase is: you get what you pay for.

When it comes to professional photography, a higher price means that you get more and you get better: better advice, more attention to detail, better editing, better technical quality, better artistic quality and more experience. All these combine to give you a more reliable and more effective outcome.
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