I found an article on the web written by a professional photographer, which puts it all into such great perspective and I think anyone that is browsing around my website needs to read this. One of the problems that is occurring these days is the technology. You can run down to your local Wal-Mart or Best Buy and for around 400-500 dollars you can purchase a decent Canon or Nikon DSLR camera that will take pretty good pictures. Then you run around taking pictures of your children, family, friends or pets and you find out that you really love what you are doing and so many people say “wow you take such great pictures!” and before you know it, one of your friends is getting married and they asked you if you wanted to take pictures of their wedding, when in reality they just cannot afford a “real” photographer.

So after shooting your first wedding, and with your new found confidence, you start to call your self a “photographer”. Lets not down play your ability to see a great picture or pose and capture it and you may very well have the “EYE” for great photographs. However, what is it that you are doing differently than a professional photographer? A lot! For one, you did not go to school to learn about, Aperture, Shutter Speed, Focal Length, Reciprocal Values, Depth of Field, White Balance, Tonal Range a Histogram, Bracketing and sooo many more things that you NEED to know to really take GREAT pictures. Secondly, if you were given an off camera flash or a studio set up, you would not know how to set it up or the first thing about how to use a light meter.

Now there is nothing wrong with this, everyone, even myself had to start out somewhere. For me it started when I was 16 and I made the transition from art on drawings or canvas to art in photography, but I never started calling myself a photographer until I had professional training and schooling to back it up. But lets face it… You are only using the auto features on your camera, because of the wonderful technology these days you can flip a switch and the camera does the rest, however, there still is a difference and being a professional myself, I can look at a photograph and tell if it was shot on auto or if it was done manually.

The problem with all of this, is that there are so many “photographers” out there that decide that they are going to get paid for taking pictures, that they have now made it hard for the budget crunching consumer to justify paying a professional when they can get mediocre pictures for much less because the “photographer” cannot charge as much as a professional studio photographer.

Now this also works in reverse, if the so called “photographer” gets the gall to charge as much as a professional studio photographer, now the “budget crunching” consumer decides to look deeper and now does not see the value in their “photography”. The problem with so many consumers now-a-days is that they do not want to spend a lot, whether they just cannot afford it or they are just cheap. There are however some consumers that are willing to pay the money to get great quality pictures from a professional photographer, but there are few of them and more of the other. So this has forced professional photographers to have to lower their prices and “compete” with the hobbyist. To me, this is just a slap in the face. Just like any career professional, We Professional Photographers had to go to college to receive the proper training, we had to put in years of field experience, apprenticeships, continually joining workshops and certification courses to keep up with technology, not to mention thousands of dollars invested in professional equipment, retail space and over head. If we do not get paid to take great pictures we do not eat, pay our bills or survive.

Would you pay a hobbyist construction worker to build your house? Would you pay a hobbyist mechanic to fix your car? Would you pay a hobbyist web designer to build your companies website? Would you pay a hobbyist Dentist to fix your teeth?? But yet, you will pay a hobbyist “photographer” to capture the most important day of your life, your wedding which you can never re-do.

This is something to think about.

You really do get what you pay for, and there is no shortage of brides that have come to me and said that they wish they would have never hired their “photographer” to shoot their wedding because they hate their pictures. Or a model that has to pay for a complete new portfolio with a real professional photographer because every agency they take their other pictures to tells them they have to get new ones done by a professional. Or a business that has to pay again because their product photo shoot looked crappy.

Now, because you were a “budget crunching consumer”, you have to pay more than if you would have made the right choice to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, it does make me happy when my clients come to me when they made these mistakes and they now are trusting in me to get it right. However, it would have been much better and less expensive had they given the decision more thought and importance to begin with.

So with that off my chest, read this article I found below, about “Why are Professional Photographers so Expensive?” It really puts everything in perspective. We have overhead just like any other real business, and we have to pay our bills and survive too!

Why are Professional Photographers so expensive?
This article has been very well received by the photography community, and is published in the December 2009 edition of Professional Photographer Magazine.

In this digital age where everyone has cameras, scanners, and home “photo printers,” we hear this all the time: How do professional (or personal) photographers charge $X for an 8×10 when they cost just $1.50 at the drugstore? Simply put, the customer is not just paying for the actual photograph; they’re paying for time and expertise.

The average one-hour portrait session

First, let’s look at the actual work involved:

• Travel to the session
• Setup, preparation, talking to the client, etc.
• Shoot the photos
• Travel from the session
• Load images onto a computer
• Back up the files on an external drive
• 2 – 4 hours of Adobe® Photoshop® time, including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, and backing up edited photographs. Proof photos are also ordered.
• 2 – 3 hours to talk to the client, answer questions, receive order and payment, order their prints, receive and verify prints, package prints, schedule shipment, and ship.
• Possibly meet clients at the studio to review photos and place order. Meeting and travel time average 2 hours.

You can see how a one-hour session easily turns into an eight-hour day or more from start to finish. So when you see a personal photographer charging a $200 session fee for a one-hour photo shoot, the client is NOT paying them $200 per hour.

The eight-hour wedding

A wedding photographer typically meets with the bride and groom several times before and after the wedding. And it’s not uncommon to end up with 1,000 – 2,000 photos, much more than a portrait session. Many photographers spend 40-60 hours working on one eight-hour wedding if you look at the time that is truly involved. Again, when a wedding photographer charges $4,000 for eight hours of coverage, clients are NOT paying them $500 an hour!

(Don’t forget that the photographer runs the wedding day to some extent. A comfortable, confident wedding photographer can make a wedding day go more smoothly.)

The expertise and cost of doing business

Shooting professional photography is a skill acquired through years of experience. Even though a DSLR now costs under $1,000, taking professional portraits involves much more than a nice camera.

Most personal photographers take years to go from buying their first camera to making money with photography. In addition to learning how to use the camera, there is a mountain of other equipment and software programs used to edit and print photographs, run a website, etc. And don’t forget backdrops, props, rent, utilities, insurance, etc!

In addition to the financial investment, photographers actually have to have people skills to make subjects comfortable in front of the camera. Posing people to look their best is a skill by itself. You could argue that posing is a more important skill than actually knowing how to use the camera. A poorly exposed photo can be saved, but a badly posed photo cannot.

The chain store photo studio

Chain stores do have their place. For a very cheap price you can run in, shoot some quick photos, and be done with it. But you get what you pay for.

Consider the time and effort that a personal photographer puts into photographs, compared to a chain store. Store sessions last just a few minutes, while a personal photographer takes the time to get to know the people, makes them comfortable, makes them laugh. If a baby is crying at a chain store, they often don’t have the time (or the patience) to wait because everyone is in a hurry.

The truth is that many chain store studios lose money. In fact, Wal-Mart closed 500 of their portrait studios in 2007 because of the financial drain. What the chain stores bank on is a client coming in for quick, cheap photos…and while there, spending $200 on other items. They are there to get you in the door.

The real deal

Professional, personal photographers are just that—professionals. No different than a mechanic, dentist, doctor, or electrician. But a personal photographer often becomes a friend, someone who documents a family for generations with professional, personal photographs of cherished memories.

Maybe we need to help clients look at it this way: A pair of scissors costs $1.50 at the drugstore. Still, most people will gladly pay a lot more to hire a professional hair dresser to cut their hair.

The added attention and quality that a personal photographer gives is worth every penny.

Conclusion

We hope that those who have taken the time to read this page will have a better understanding of why professional photographs, created by a Personal Photographer are so expensive.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Source:

http://www.caughtonfilmphoto.com/costofphotography.html

I will tell you why the answer is yes before I tell you why it is more no. When it comes to being a seasoned
amateur or a semi-pro, or heck even a pro photographer, a bigger, better more expensive camera will take better
pictures and give you more options, so in turn making your pictures a better quality than they were before when
you had an inferior camera.

So that kind of goes with out saying right? Due to technology and the millions of megapixels that they can put
in a pro DSLR these days it can be pretty easy to set the camera to an auto function and take some really great
shots.

So now your wondering, well why is the answer more NO than yes? If the camera makes everything better, than that
should make you a better photographer as well right? No, point in case, I knew someone who owned a pro-nikkon DSLR
camera and didn’t know the first thing about taking good pictures, so really you are just taking high quality crap!

There is so much that goes into taking a beautiful photograph, and the first most important thing that goes into it
is your brain, your creativity. As an artist, like most photographers are, you have a vision and the camera is just
a tool to capture that vision for all to see. I’m sure you caught what I said there, “most photographers” well its
true, not all photographers are artists, and it is obvious by the kind of “normal” or “common” types of pictures that
they take. Bla, Bla, Bla boring photos, you all know what I am talking about so I do not even have to go into that.

So back to why it does not make you a better photographer. Well it doesn’t because the meaning of photographer means
painter of light, or light painter, however you want to interpret it. Instead of using pencils or paint brushes on
paper or canvas to create their master piece, they use light and shadows. They use soft light, hard light, colored light,
reflected light and lack of light to bring together a perfectly posed subject to create their vision or master piece. Its
ALL about the light, with out light, there is not photograph.

If you are not so great at that when you have a slightly inferior camera, then spending thousands on a much better camera
is not going to automatically make your snoring pictures come to life!

So my suggestion, perfect your style and your lighting and posing techniques with your standard DSLR that you have and you
will know when you have to buy a new camera because you will exceed the capabilities of the camera you are using, once your
camera is holding you back, it is time to upgrade. But don’t think that upgrading is what you need to make your pictures better
because it is possible to take a super high quality picture of a pile of crap.

That’s just my two cents.