So if it sn't for love, fame or fortune, why put yourself under this sort of pressure? My wife says the answer is simple: I must be mad! She is probably right.
What happened is this: on Tuesday I was shooting an event in Cabramatta when I got a call from a distraught lady... " I found you on the Internet: can you do my wedding in October?"
'October? That's pretty soon!'
"I know, but my wedding photographer has just cancelled ; he said he made a double booking and sent back the money."
So I checked my schedule, talked it over with my wife and called her back that evening to accept the job.
When a wedding photographer lets down their clients it isn't just bad for their reputation, it is bad for the reputation of every good photographer.
And it is wrong! OK, it is possible that unforeseen circumstances could arise - sickness or personal tragedy; an accident or a fire the destroys your cameras - maybe there is a reason you really cannot fulfil your obligation; but does that mean you can just cancel a contract?
Maybe (I want to say "no", but legally its depends on how the contract was worded) ... but does that make it all right to leave your clients in the lurch? Of course not!
You should never put the onus for finding a replacement on your clients! You should find an alternative professional. and if they charge more, YOU should pay the difference. That's ethical and reasonable: this character just said 'sorry' and sent back the money. Not good enough!
But I wouldn't be much better If I just complained about the other person's lack of ethics and did nothing practical: so I took the contract.
It isn't the first case like this I've come across recently, and they were all low-cost affairs: $400 to $600. That is too cheap to sustain a professional studio, it is the province of the week-end snapper and the part-timer earning a few dollars on the side.
Done properly, it costs more than this to provide a decent service. Break-even for a small operation without promotion costs and basic overheads is about $800, and I cant help being suspicious that the clients got dropped because the photographer found a more lucrative job. Even a couple of tickets to a big game might be enough of a temptation for a part time snapper to get out of the job that has no real profit margin in it.
That's the hidden danger in taking the cheapest price; not only are taking a big chance on quality, but you may find yourself hunting for a replacement photographer at the last minute, and having to pay whatever they ask; not that a reputable professional is going to take advantage of your situation, but with good photographers typically accepting booking 6 to 18 months out from the wedding, your choices may be quite limited.
There is a growing trend towards "Shoot-and-Burn" wedding photography. If that is your photographer's typical or preferred approach, then be careful. Shoot-and-Burn is about cheap, not about quality. It is not about service.
If the photographer never has to commit images to anything but a CD, the time savings are enormous. You can get away with never having to work on a single image after the shoot.
Few clients understand the technical qualities that determine how the images on their disk should reproduce, or what processing they require. By the time they actually get to see their photos it is too late. The photographer has accepted the fee, and has no further commitment or responsibility to the images or to the client. The client has a set of JPEG files; the RAW files from which they were produced are gone: actually most Shoot-and-Burners don't even bother to shoot RAW; the time and skill involved in converting these professional files into jpegs is just one more step to avoid, and one more "efficiency" they can apply.
A digital image straight from the camera is not ready to print. No professional truly proud of their work would ever allow these to be seen even as proofs until they had been colour corrected, sharpened and spotted at the very least. Only selected images ever make it through the editing process to the point of being presented to a client.
Every week I have someone tell me about how their 'cousin was so upset' by the quality of their wedding photos, and again and again, they were shoot-and-burn weddings. And every week I am asked to photograph a wedding and supply "just the CD". Will I do it? Sometimes: but only after I have spent enough time with the couple to ensure that they understand the options and choices they have. But not happily, and not often, and never for the kind of prices the typical shoot-and-burners offer.
At the budget end of the wedding market, photographers who care about their work and about their clients will always lose a few weddings to unsustainably cheap contracts, but not many; the quality and value offered by true pros more than offsets the higher prices they ask.
A realistic budget for an "economy" package is between $1000 and $3000; the high end of the market starts around $5000-$8000. Neither of these markets seems to have suffered much in the recession. The intermediate photo market ($3000-$6000) may have been effected more, with people looking very carefully at the value-for-money aspects of their packages, but it remains strong.
I am not sure, but I suspect the Shoot-and-Burn brigade are marketing to people who would not have considered hiring a photographer in the past; unfortunately, it may ruin their attitudes towards the legitimate professional for many years to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment