Sunday, February 1, 2009

Today's Faces

Today I had a shoot with two very charming young ladies.





I'm starting to see a pattern with these shoots:

First, there's about a 10-minute window of cooperation.

Second, after the 10 minutes, parents seem to instinctively begin bribing their kids to cooperate with cookies. It's always cookies.

Third, I'm as clueless about shooting kids as I was the first time I did it.

2 comments:

Chris Robinson said...

If you don't start making some money off these photos, I will hurt you. Think of it this way. Everyday in this country some parent shells out hundreds of dollars for horrible portraits of their children. You know they got robbed. I know they got robbed. Well, why not jump in their and shoot amazing photos of those kids and give them their money's worth? You could even charge half and they would think you were a saint.

I'm only saying that I think your portraits compare to some of the best in town. People would be happy to pay you for them.

Or you could get a Shutterfly pro account. Shoot all the kid photos you want for free. Then give the parents your card and tell them how to find the photos of their children. If they want them they can order them and you keep the mark up. If they don't want to order them, they can at least see how good your shots turned out. Perhaps they may refer you to other parents lookig for portraitls.

Seriously, Scott. If you don't do it, some hack will and the photos will suck and those parents will have been suckered. With great power comes great responsability!

Scott Roeben said...

Thank you so much for saying that, Chris. I'm not sure I've shifted my thinking to charging money for something I enjoy so much...at least not yet. I even have trouble when it's CLEARLY a for-money shoot. I just have a hard time with it. But, given the growing cost of equipment, I am more and more motivated with each passing day. Thanks so much for the supportive words. That means a lot.