Photography Is Undervalued

To the people out there that always want something for nothing, you wouldn’t expect not to pay the going rate for a plumber to fix your burst pipe. So why do you always expect your photography for free.

Owning an expensive set of spanners doesn’t make you a great plumber. That’s the  same as owning the most expensive camera doesn’t make you a great photographer. They are only tools to do the job.. When you book a photographer you’re not paying for his camera, you’re paying him for his skill, knowledge and my qualifications to supply  you with the best phtographic work I can.

Yes maybe you will choose your photographer on price, the same as you would choose your plumber. But CHEAPEST is not always the best and good value for money, especially when you have hire a second person to fix it second time round.

Let’s look at this another way, I you’re are getting married you would expect to pay an average of £1500 to your wedding photographer to be there for eight hours. You wouldn’t normally think twice about that. So just because I maybe at your office photographing your staff portraits, or at my studio shooting pack shots of your product to go on your website. Why is that any less deserving of being rewarded at a decent rate. Like that wedding photographer and that plumber who fixed your leak, I have years of experience and training to do what I do and I deserved to be paid the going rate. Photographers have to earn a living, feed their family’s and pay school fees etc.

In the days of film photography the photographers were well respected and highly valued for what they did. Unfortunately technology  has been a big thorn in the side of photography, Digital cameras as we know have have got so good these days and a large portion of the world carry a camera with them in some format 24/7 so that has made photographer of all of us. So lots of people these days don’t respect the art of photography which is a real shame, because it is an art.

For those of us that have shot film or still shoot film, I for one sometimes still do. We approach photography in a different way I think, the old school way. We aim to get the image we want in camera using the cameras settings. We are not reliant on so much in post editing software, thats not to say we don’t use Lightroom and Photoshop. We do but we don’t rely on them, they are mainly used as a digital darkroom.

With popularity and ease of access to digital manipulation  software such as Lightroom and Photoshop has given a lot of people the option to make bad pictures look good. Thats NOT Photography…… Before the days of digital this would not of happened. I don’t have a problem with anyone picking up a camera and having a go, learning and getting better we all need a hobby, thats how I started. But putting a top of the range DSLR in your hands does not make you a photographer, thats the same as putting a top of the range spanners in my hand and calling myself a plumber.

Next time you need some photography work done just show whoever you book a little respect and don’t expect them to work for free, because that plumber sure wouldn’t.