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..... :)