Hi there,

If someone could point me in the right direction about the following that'd be awesome....

I work as a freelance graphic/web designer and over the last year and a half my work has demanded the use of a lot of high quality original imagery, so to cut the expense of outsourcing a professional photographer I decided to learn this ancient art myself!

I brought my first DSLR about a year ago, and the freedom of using this compared to using my point and click digital camera utterly amazed me! I now consider myself  a semi professional photographer (very very semi, I still have so much to learn!) and am able to produce shots that are of suitable quality to use in my design work. (mostly food, beverage and location shots of various restaurants and hotels around the city that I live).

Now the issues that are causing me trouble..

1 - Although I understand the manual settings on my camera (canon eos 350d), when i shoot photos I rely heavily on the automatic capture settings. I find that as long as i capture my subject with good focus and exposure and with plenty of extra room around the edges of the frame, I can make any adjustments I need to in photoshop post editing rather than worrying about it when I'm actually out on the shoot, I just run enough shots off to cover myself. Now I'm not sure whether this is bad practice or not, I seem to get what I'm after, but from what I read, I should take more control at the shooting stage. What is everyones opinion on this and why??

2 - After my last project which featured a lot of my photography, I have been approached by several companies to do pure photo shoots for them to use in promotional media and marketing. I know how much I charge for my design work, but have no idea how to structure a quote for a photo shoot, or even how much to charge, and should I incorporate this in to design package prices or keep it as a separate service? Can anyone point me in the direction of some resources or forum threads which will help me? I live in Perth, Australia, so something oz based would be perfect!

Sorry about the long post, but any help would be greatly appreciated!

and remember....

You'd be helpin' me out..... :)

Hello Volante !

I can just give you my point of view for the first point...

At my begining i was shooting everything, many many pics in a day... It was possible to shoot 300pics in a day of approximately the same landscape (same location)...
After that, at home, i've used my eyes for hours in front of my mac, to sort the good pics, the bads pics, te 'may be' pics lol ... and postwork them.

Today (about 5years of dslr later), I do sometimes some exercices like 'i have just 5 pics possible for today... no one more ! or 'just one pic today, 'THE pic' ! .. so it's just an exercice and it is very hard to stop taking pics lolllllll !!
When I'm walking outside in the search of pics, i ever try (today lol) to take the 'rights' pics, but not 30 or 50 pics of a subject because i don't which one will be the nice one ...

So, now it is for 'my' style of photography... Because a style is not another one, may be you need to take more pics to create your fully personnal point of view... In fact it depend on you ... and may be on your experience ..

... hope my pov could help you a bit...

I'm sorry, i have no idea for the second point, shame on me !

Olivier

The 'P' on the mode dial stands for Profesional, so there's no problem with you using that.

Seriously  - if you are getting shots which you want, and others are asking you to do some for them too, then you ain't doin' a lot wrong.  I don't see any reason to change unless change is what you want. If others can produce better shots then let them put their photographs where their mouth is and start producing them. Product photography is very rarely straight from the camera type stuff.
Images for the type of scenario you described are not fine art photographs, the clients will want representative photography to sell their business.

LOL The 'P' on mine stands for 'probably going to need plenty of photoshopping'...lol.

Just kidding, on mine they all stand for that...  ;^P

Sorry. I have nothing else to add  and I think Richard said it all.  Good luck to you!

@Marlene...ROTFLMAO!....yeah, mine too!

How about "Pictures probably perfectly planned, previously Photoshop predetermined"....

Think that about covers all the settings on my cam.....

Darn...too late to edit....

"Plentiful positively pretty pictures probably perfectly planned, previously Photoshop predetermined"....

If you have a large enough card then it is perfectly alright to just shoot away with it on P and then edit back on the computer. Yyou could even go as far as to do exposure bracketing (look it up in your manual if you dont know how to do it on your cam) so you have 3 slightly different exposures of basically the same shot - i found that a very effective way of doing studio product shots when i worked for a shop which sold stuff on ebay - tis quicker to do the choosing of the shot on the computer afterwards, than fiddle around with settings on the cam.  Also i would look into/play around with the different type of light metering the camera offers so you know what to use in certain situations. 
Those two things will help to get you a better pic out of the P setting, depending on your quality expectations you could also look into shooting raw - but raw shooting with exposure bracketing means you need a LOT of memory.
Personally i prefer Av - just change the aperture - the sweet-spot for most lenses in terms of sharpness is around f/8 so just put it to f/8 and let the camera work out the exposure - similar to P but you have more control of both keeping the aperture nearer the sweet spot - or if you have a really decent low aperture (and by that i mean a crisp f/3 and below) lens, having a lot of control over the DoF. Which is something i know product shots take advantage of ;)

Cant help with the second point tho sorry - never done it myself.

Apparently, as Richard(Onslow) said, you are doing something right using your methods. For shooting practice, my number of shots has declined much with experience but still I do not depend on one shot to do it. I will shoot Apeture priority and Spot metering most of the time. I will take a couple of readings to shoot for exposure since my guess as to the correct "middle gray" for spot metering is getting better but not perfect by any means.  Of course, compo is already worked out but exposure is what it is all about at that point. I choose spot, others choose other methods. No need to be locked into one only since other methods are needed in other circumstances.

I watch out for stupid miscues, like I did today.  Shooting some distant and terrible pov shots at a high f stop for bettter depth of field, I did some further shots and forgot the apeture was high. So, exposure was fine but shutter was so slow I ruined the first one due to hand shake! I simply forgot to reset for the new place I was standing, not needing high apeture for focus.  To avoid these simple miscues will cut down on shots taken.  Still, take a few extras and be sure!

Seems the style is one liked by those who have asked you do to photos for them.  Don't try to change yourself suddenly into the "super shooter" or you might miscue again and not use what got you there!  If "P" worked then, try it for starters for those shots but mix a few other A or S priority shots in...practice a few of these first.  You need the confidence in what you have already done to work with.   No need to try to start from scratch expecting it to suddenly get better with a new method unless practiced first...at least, that is how it is with me.

What does the "P" stand for?  Maybe prematurely posting poor photos without prognosticating as to why..passing photoshop prematurely, too.

Go  for it, sounds like you do have a handle others are reaching for.         TomDart.

Cheers for all the feedback and encouragement guys, its a great help and its nice to get some comments from fellow artists! (which is all too rare when your going solo freelanced....)

You are all funny with your defination of P.lol.
Hiya Volante
Well i use auto alot. Specially on my frog shots.
Water shots i pefer shutterspeed priority and apperature.
Portraits i use apperature priority.
In other words whatever gives you the best results. Sounds like you doing great anyway.Practice makes perfect. But i always shoot in raw mode.

I noticed no one has answered 2.
That is so hard to put a price on your work. My teacher told me to charge 100 dollars an hour for my work. That is Aussie dollars. But i found that so hard to do. Depends on subject eg wedding.

Also dont forget copyright of your photos. They paying for that?

Hope i have been on a little assistance.
P stands for perfection.hehe.
Chris

It seems like I post this recommendation often, but I'll do it again.  I highly recommend Bryan Peterson's excellent book called, "Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition)".  It's easy to understand, and is almost certain to reward you with better photography via creative use of the features of your camera...which you paid handsomely for.

Since acquiring this book, I shoot in full manual or aperture modes 90% of the time.  Truly, exposure is what it's all about.  If one can't grasp the concept of light, exposure, focal length and Depth of Field, then one certainly can't progress into a better photographer.  Learn to trust your camera's meter!

'P' mode should be outlawed :)

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Exposure-Photographs-Digital-Updated/dp/0817463003/sr=8-1/qid=1168883443/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6338668-3571244?ie=UTF8&s=books

Kind Regards,

Steve

1 seems pretty well covered here. :) 2 -- check your local area photo studios and see if you can get some rate sheets for their services. That should give you a good guide regarding what to charge clients.