Spitting Fountain

Every sane person was staying in an airconditioned office while me and my parents were aimlessly strutting down the streets of Chicago, wiping our sweat, and complaining about the low penetration of frozen yogurt stores. One of the best things that happened to us was running into this fountain. Crown Fountain is a very first video sculpture fountain I have ever seen. It is interactive, especially in the 2011 Chicago heat wave we were so "lucky" to experience. Less than 1cm deep, it is also probably the safest fountain in the world. Children and adults were running around the glossy surface, trying to catch the stream of refreshing spit emited in regular intervals by the faces projected into the glass walls.

After one day in the 98 F hot humid hell, I decided to lay low and worked from Google Chicago office while my parents continued to roam around in the heat extravaganza. The office was right next to these two corncobs:

Chicago is a fun place to photograph, even in the most touristy areas such as Navy Pier. I took this shot from the ferris wheel:

And here is a closeup of Marylin's toes. She clearly needs some footwork.

The view from the Hancock Tower is great, especially right after the sunset. The bar at the top fills up really fast. If you want to see this, make sure to arrive few minutes before the sunset.

Confession

I have sixty-one pairs of shoes.

Do Photographers Subsidize Their Clients or Do They Rip Them Off?

Photographers often hear clients say things like:

• "Unfortunately you are out of our price range."
• or "It will be an intimate wedding with limited budget."

The typical initial photography budget tends to hover around $1000. What's interesting, is that after the client learns about the various expenses of wedding photography, they are shocked to realize how skewed their original perception was. No wonder you hear photographers talk about the importance of client education. Let's educate you a bit. What do YOU think are the expenses? A camera and a blank DVD to burn the photos on?

The below list shows a breakdown of all expenses (monetary and time investment) for a wedding that does not require any air travel, does not include album creation, and uses professional photo editing service such as http://photographersedit.com for bulk editing of engagement and wedding photos (it's worth it, trust me).

Wedding photography expenses and hours:

Direct expenses:

• 3+ hours spent on client meetings and email discussions (spread over few days)
• 1 hour prep for an engagement session (charge batteries, format C/F cards, clean lenses, pack)
• 2 hours travel to/from engagement session + car/gas/insurance
• 1 hour engagement photo shoot
• 1 hour editing a handful of engagement photos to provide to the client before the rest of the photos get professionaly edited (client often needs a handful of photos for the invitations and their wedding website)
• $85 + shipping engagement shoot photo editing cost using a professional editing service
• 1 hour prep for the wedding (charge batteries, format C/F cards, clean lenses, pack)
• 2 hours travel to/from wedding + car/gas/insurance
• 9 hours at the wedding (arrive early, shoot for 8 hours)
• $300-$500 payed to the second photographer
• 2 hours editing a handful of engagement photos and creating an online slideshow (to let the customer see the highlights while the rest of the photos are being edited by professionals)
• $290 + shipping for culling 2000 raw images and editing 30-35% of these (done by professionals)
• $45 for every additional 1000 raw images to cull/edit
• $20 to have the editing service FTP photos to online gallery (this allows clients to see the photos while the hard drive of edited photos is being shipped back to the photographer)
• 1 hr photographer reviewing the edited photos, possibly doing additional corrections, and burning them on a disk for the client
• $20 gift wrapping & shipping the disk of digital negatives to the client

Indirect expenses:

• $40 montly cost of book keeping software plan (or pay a book keeper about $40 per wedding). The software generates invoices and lets the clients sign a contract and pay fees online.
• $20-40 monthly website/portfolio cost (clients need to see a decent portfolio before they approach you). If you are a full time photographer, you will shoot about 24 weddings a year, which brings this cost down to $10-$20 per wedding.
• $30 for online proofing gallery per wedding (or a monthly subscribtion). Some services offer proofing galleries for $700/year, some offer $30 monthly subscription model, some offer pricing models based on a number of photos uploaded
• $25 fraction of yearly license to Adobe Lightoom ($300 spread over 12 weddings)
• $xx laptop, external hard disk, and DVD burner wear & tear
• $10 promo items, sample prints needed to for client meetings, business cards, stationery 
• $xx camera & lenses. This is a huge variable. Most of the equipment is on a three year replacement/upgrade cycle.
• $10 accessories wear & tear (shootsac, memory cards, dozens of batteries)
• $35/month gear insurance. If the photographer does not have insurance, their net profit might be a tiny bit higher. However, their risk would be much higher too. A typical photographer carries ten to twenty thousand dollars worth of gear and having it damaged or stolen is a major risk to his/her business.
• $35/month liability insurance (large venues require photographer to have insurance)
• $25 ($300/year) professional memberships
• $xxx studio rent
• $xx workshop and conference fees
• $xx advertising and marketing
• 9.5% sales tax
• XX% self employment tax 

What are the totals? A photographer has somewhere between $1200 and $2500 worth of expenses per wedding.

In our scenario, a low cost photographer charging only $2000 per wedding, who pays $1200 worth of expenses and spends 23 hours working on the wedding has:

gross profit per wedding = ($2000 - $1200) = $800

profit per hour worked = $800 / 23 = $34.8

If she shoots 24 weddings per year, she spends 552 hours on the actual weddings she books. She also spends hundreds of hours on advertising, blogging, website work, meeting with clients that don't book, conferences, etc. Her yearly gross income would be $19,200.  Would it cover her rent, bills, food, car, childcare, and health insurance?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average professional photographer made $26,610 in 2004, with the average low being $15,390 and the average high being $54,100. Median hourly wage was $14. See http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes274021.htm

Subsidizing the client?

The American Association of Photographers calculated that a wedding photographer needs to charge about $5000 per wedding in order to be able to survive doing photography as their only job. If you live in an urban area such as New York City or San Francisco Bay Area, that number is probably higher.

Most photographers charge less than $5000 per wedding, which explains why about half of them have another full time job in addition to photography. Their main job pays for health insurance and rent, and thus subsidizes their photography clients. The tragic part is that they subsidize the client in order to compete with yet another struggling photographer who does the same.

Advice

If you have read this far and still care to hear my advice, here it is: 

• Pick a talented photographer, not just someone who can properly expose and frame photos.
• If you can afford to pay what they ask for, pay it. If it is below $5000, congratulations, you are being subsidized.
• Stay clear of your hobbyist uncle who has an entry level SLR camera and is offering to shoot your wedding for free. Tell your uncle to not interfere with the photographers you hire. Uncle Bob can ruin a lot of photos by being in the way of photographers. This happens at almost every wedding.
• Enjoy great photos for the rest of your life with no regrets. Accept compliments from everyone who sees them.

Independent San Francisco

The Sun was almost ready to set, the temperature was dropping rapidly, and we were heading towards the Alcatraz. The plan was to drink some bubbly and watch the 4th of July fireworks from a safe distance somewhere in the San Francisco Bay. The waters could not have been more crowded, but right after the fireworks show we weasled our way out of the boat cluster and made it home without a dent.

I did not bother trying to get a stable shot or use a tripod. We were on a boat for heaven's sake! The plan B was to shoot the lights in time. Some of these shots were taken with two second exposures. Can you guess what is the subject of the following two photos?

How to Retouch Portraits Without Photoshop

You probably do not have an access to Adobe Creative Suite, nor are you interested in buying this two thousand dollar bundle of creativity tools. In this second article of my HOW TO series, I will explain how you can improve a portrait without having to use a professional photo editing software such as Adobe PhotoShop.

The technique I am going to show you uses a free software called Picnik which can be invoked directly from Picasa or Flickr. One drawback worth mentioning is that this technique does not scale to a large number of photos. Professional photographers therefore have to use other more powerful tools such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom. I use Picnic only when I need to edit a handful of images. For batch jobs, I use Adobe Lightroom. For even larger jobs, I outsource the editing to professionals at Photographers Edit, who can cull and edit 2000 photos in a fraction of a time it would take me to do it. Such services are helping photographers to focus on what they do best -- meeting clients and taking photos.

Picasa is a free software from Google and I am naturally biased towards it. It has all the basic editing tools for everyday use, and I encourage all my friends and family to use it. Since Google bought Picnik and integrated it into Picasa, Picasa became even more attractive.

Above is a portrait of a client I photographed yesterday who graceously allowed me to demonstrate the post processing on one of her photos. This successful business woman needed photos for a professional publication she is going to appear in. Let's play a game now. Can you list all the things I have done to the original photo? Take your time, look at the above image carefully. How many different changes do you see? Then compare your number to what you are about to read.

Change 1: Remove certain wrinkles

It is important to remove wrinkles only partially. The photo would not look natural if the thirty-something year old subject would not have any wrinkles. I used the "wrinkle remover" tool and lowered the strength to about 50%. Do not forget about the neck and hands.

Change 2: Airbrush uneven skin surface

The airbrush tool is very strong. Lower it's intensity to only about 30% for a more realistic look. If a person has a nice set of freckles, try to preserve them. Remove only unwanted zits and other skin flaws.

Change 3: Apply mascara

This quick fix increases the contrast between the eyes and the lashes without increasing the contrast of the whole photo.

Change 4: Whiten teeth

This is a no brainer. You almost always need to do this step, but again, please lower the intensity of the tool to only about 60%.

Change 5: Apply lip gloss

The lip color tool offers a variety of lip hues. I picked a dark pink and decreased its intensity. Please make sure to use small brush size and avoid coloring the gums.

Change 6: Apply blush

Blush adds a vitality to a person's face. Add a bit of pinkish hue and decrease its intensity by about 70% for a more natural look.

Change 7: Increase contrast

You are almost done. Before you save the file, increase a contrast just a bit. It whitens the eyes and teeth even further and makes the photo look more crisp.

How much post processing shall you apply?

If you are working on an image that would be looked at as a close up, you need to take it easy with post processing, especially with the airbrush tool. Photo that would look fine from a distance will look too post-processed if looked at with magnifying mirror. Therefore always keep the end use in mind when doing the edits.

Voila! The editing is done and the subject hopefully looks better than when you started editing. Please ask your questions and add your comments in the comments section below. If you have a suggestion for the next post in the HOW TO series, I'd like to hear it.