Your Opinions on a Photoshoot, Please. (page 4)

SixofNine

"Zoom out and add some props/colors."

.

No.

.

Ok, maybe I'll zoom out a touch to give more cropping variables. But no props or colors. I'll leave that to PrimateDave ;)

SixofNine

This is very good work. If she were my kid, I'd want to buy a lot of them and would expect it to cost me a bunch of money. The pix capture a variety of moods which shows off the child's personality.

Thanks Willy. Sounds like maybe you've done this before.

Some (above) said they were too much alike, but I "get" that this is a photo shoot and the goal is to yield a handful of extremely good shots for a porfolio and the rest go in the file.

Yeah, and honestly, I'd probably edit this down more before showing the parent, myself. But this kiddo was exceptionally into getting her pics taken, so she gave a lot more good expressions than most kids are going to. The good news is, from a business standpoint, if you get one great shot your work is pretty much done. My friend tells me his biggest complaint is that 'there are too many good ones to choose from'. lol, I hope to find ways to translate that into "so I'll just have to buy more".

SixofNine

"By using a larger aperture (smaller number), notice how the face is tack sharp, but his feet in the background are not."

I made a vow when I went into the photo monastery to only shoot at f11 and 2/3rds. I am allowed, however, to use photoshop to simulate wider apertures. In this particular series, we did not show the childs feet (although I suppose I could photoshop some in, out of focus, of course) and the background is D-Min, as we like to say in the biz. Your parrot is dead.

SixofNine

Parents and grandparents would love them because the child looks like she is really smiling, really happy-but the natural-ish poses against the very neutral background seems a bit off. To me it seems like it needs to be one or the other-if you know what I mean.

Parents and grandparents are the target audience, so I hope you're right! I'm not sure I follow about the "neutral background" vs the natural expressions... but hey, I might get really crazy someday and allow parents to choose a white background or even a color ;) (but believe it or not, those things actually interfere somewhat with the guaranteed getting-of-good-spontaneity in the expressions dept)

SixofNine

Purps:

I suppose it is each persons individual likes, I am not huge on a wall full of posed kids with props and fake backdrops. I had years of photos like that of my kids, and much prefer the spontaneous snapshots I have of them.

Yeah, that's a totally different target market, and not something I'd ever be interested in doing.

The same color photo before the B/W is very good IMO, the color of the little girls eyes, lips and hair are beautiful.

When you shoot more editorially, you sometimes convert a color image to B/W and immediately you know; "that's it, it should be B/W". With this stuff, the pics should all look great in color or B/W so it really just comes down to each customers preference.

SixofNine

JamieBowers: "I really liked the black and white ones."

.

thanks!

lisavegas420

The black and white ones are also my favorites. Very classy.

This year the g-kids school pictures turned out the best ever. We paid 50.00 for each package, of course there all just one face shot. But it included an 8x10, 2-5x7's and a bunch of wallets.

lisa

PrimateDave

Now I understand what you are after. This is a niche portrait market with a gimmick lens for shooting young children. You have a specific formula that apparently works for your targeted clientele. Well, why didn't ya just say so to begin with? You didn't really want my opinion or those of Vinny and a few others, at least not the opinions proffered. Anyway, considering what you are after, I think it is a good idea and wish you well in your venture.

Dave

SPAZnik

I love how "real" they look. If I were shopping around and found these, they'd be tough to turn down. Staged photos that look like everybody else's staged photos are really corny and almost seem like why even bother. These really capture the kid, which seems closer to the point. Very nice quality. This seems like the level to be at if doing it at all. (Other than being retouched, they also seem great for the security type "if lost" photos due to their quality and variety of angles.) I was going to say a lot depends on the sitting fee ... but just checked and I'd say it's worth it. Would you shoot moms that are preggers for the same deal? And how would the fee change if going out of studio?

willyloman

Thanks Willy. Sounds like maybe you've done this before.

Yes, in fact one of my photos won an award recently. I'm not as good as you are, though! I usually just keep shooting and hope I get lucky.

Your Opinions on a Photoshoot, Please.

Share this