Hey, how’s it going? I’m Andy Jones and this is episode 90 of the Photography Side Hustle podcast.
This week I’ve been working on some courses. The first is going to be on Photoshop, and the second will be all about Lightroom. I was going to start with How to Shoot in Manual mode, but I’m going to leave that until Spring when there is more color. At the moment everything is covered in snow and it isn’t ideal.
Anyway, this week’s episode follows on from Common Mistakes, Common Mistakes 2, and Common Mistakes 3.
I spent at least 4 seconds coming up with the title, which is …
Common Mistakes 4
These are things I come across that make me think, Hmmm, that was a mistake.
Let’s get started with
There is nothing wrong with placing your subject in the middle of the frame, especially if it’s taken in Portrait (Vertically). But, taking a photo of your child standing in front of a hedge 20 feet away from you isn’t good. Try filling the frame with your child, either zoom in or take a few steps toward them. You could even ask them to take a few steps toward you that’s if they’ll listen to you, and maybe turn your camera from Landscape (Horizontal) to Portrait (Vertical)
Separating your subject from the background will make your composition way better. Filling the frame with your subject will also improve the result.
The Rule of Thirds
When composing your shot think about the rule of thirds. If you don’t know what that is, it’s two horizontal, and two vertical lines that divide your image into 9 equal pieces. The idea is that you place points of interest on the lines or the junction of two lines.
When I say points of interest I mean if it’s a portrait the viewer will look at the subject's eyes. If the eyes are in the middle of the frame it can cause the image to be unbalanced. Check out some portraits and even old paintings, they all work on the rule of thirds.
If your subject is an old tool chest, place it on the lower horizontal line or on one of the two lower junction points. The viewers will focus on the subject easily because it’s positioned there.
So if you are taking a portrait you would want the eyes to be on the top horizontal line.
I see lots of different types of photos where the point of interest is stuck in the bottom corner or close to the edge of the frame. This draws the viewer's attention to the wrong part of the photo.
Now, this won’t work for every photo you take, but it will for 95% of them.
If you have ever shot weddings or family portraits I can safely say this has happened to you. You have a large group of people and one or two of the group have their eyes closed or are looking at someone way off to the side of you.
This bugs the heck out of me. You really shouldn’t use images like that but sometimes it’s the only group shot.
My cure for this is to take three or four shots of the same group. Constantly ask for their attention and take another shot. Hopefully, there is one good shot of everyone in the group. Then I choose the one with the least people that are distracted. In photoshop I copy the faces of the offending people from the other images and paste them into the main photo.
It takes only 5 minutes to do and will please your customer.
I had another idea for wedding group shots that involved an assistant using an electronic prod on distracted people, but it didn’t go over too well.
I saw this on Facebook. A photographer posted five or six photos that were so under-exposed they were totally black, you couldn’t tell what they were a photo of. He was asking for help to correct them so he could give them to his customer. Apparently, he forgot to change the settings after he was shooting outside.
This is absolute lunacy. If you could save the image it would be of terrible quality. Your customer is spending money and they deserve the best quality images possible.
If your photoshoot depends on these 5 or 6 images you are in trouble. Be honest with your customer, or maybe forget about photography.
When you are online looking at other photographers' work and comparing it to yours don’t put yourself down.
One of my early weddings was at a local community hall. The walls were grey concrete blocks and bare fluorescent lighting about 12 feet overhead. The couple was great fun and we had a great time shooting it.
When I had finished editing the images I was comparing them to a photographer that had shot a wedding at a beautiful resort with a couple that looked like supermodels.
You couldn’t get further apart for two weddings. I was a little down about it until a couple of weeks later when I shot an outdoor wedding in a beautiful backyard on a lake. The images were striking, and I realized it’s the weather and location that controls the overall look of a photo shoot.
So don’t compare your images to someone living in a tropical area. Only compare yourself to photographers in your area.
Instagram is full of images that look great in that small size, but an awful lot of them will look terrible in full size.
Only compare Apples to Apples
When you are just starting out the hardest thing to do is delete an image because it’s not a good enough quality.
One of the first things you need to do after downloading your images to your computer is a cull. You need to go through all the images and delete the out-of-focus, badly timed, and anything that isn’t good enough.
Sometimes it feels like you won’t have any photos left to edit. But, you need to do it. The longer you are working in photography the easier it gets. When I started out I would spend hours trying to save images in Photoshop.
So be ruthless, only the best images should be seen by your customer.
I hear lots of very good photographers say they are not good enough to charge for their work. If you feel this way, ask yourself why people are asking you to take pics of their family.
Start charging $25 a shoot. It’s not much, but it’s better than zero dollars.
Now there is a very good chance that you are listening to me drone on because you want to start a photography side hustle. If you are living paycheck to paycheck and a couple of hundred dollars a month can really make a change in your life, then offer photoshoots for $50. One $50 shoot a week will do it.
At some point, you need to draw a line in the sand and start charging for your time and talent.
What’s the worst that can happen?
If nobody books you, you make exactly the same amount as you did before a big fat ZERO.
If you are doing free shoots every week for friends you need to make a change.
So come up with a name for your business, and make it official. When you have a business name people will expect to pay.
This is your business, you can make it as big as you like, or just keep it simple for some extra cash.
If you still don’t think you are good enough, contact me through the Facebook group and I’ll give you an honest appraisal. If you want to keep it private use Facebook Messenger.
Right, that’s it for this episode, I’ll be back next week, talk to you soon.