I'm hot-blooded, check it and see...

An Unfortunate Truth

Above is a photo from my latest shoot that I booked. I really think this one speaks to a lot of us in the photo industry... Clients, Artists, Photographers....

No, there's nothing wrong with your browser. There really is nothing in that photo.

Here's why:

I had a lovely woman book a boudoir shoot with me recently. She was so excited to book a boudoir shoot for her dude that the opportunity had both of us spinning with ideas. She had seen some of my previous work that I had done for a friend of hers and just wanted me to create something unique for her. She trusted me to be a badass photographer and make something beautiful, classy, and artistic. She was, in my mind, the perfect client.

Then, her dude caught wind of the shoot that we had booked... and was furious. The same shoot that she wanted to do for HIM and he was furious. Why? Jealousy. He insisted that I, as a male photographer, was going to sleep with my client and was using "being a photographer" as an excuse to get into the lady's pants. When my client let me know about the argument I was crushed. There are many MANY things wrong with this scenario that I'll apply generally across the board:

1. I have a wife a three kids, whom I love and cherish. Do you honestly think I'm going to ruin the life I've been working on to sleep with your wife/girlfriend?
2. Exactly how confident are you in your relationship with your wife/girlfriend that you don't trust anyone (men/women) to be around her?
3. This boudoir session was a gift to you for being awesome to her and for supporting her through everything that you've been through together and you react so negatively to it. Do you think she'll want to do anything nice for you in the foreseeable future?
4. The "I got a camera, I'll take naked pictures of you... Ain't no way I'll let some sex-hungry asshole take pictures of you...Go Arkansas!" argument makes you look like a fucking moron. Yes. F-U-C-K-I-N-G   M-O-R-O-N. I'm a professional photographer... and I make a living with the skills that I've been honing for years. You could have the exact same equipment I have and have no fucking clue what you're doing with it, make horrible photos, and then have your wife/girlfriend feel like shit about herself because you're too proud to hire a professional, you fucking moron. 
1. When your car is broken, you hire a mechanic.
2. When your roof needs replaced, you hire a roofer.
3. When your plumbing needs done, you hire a plumber.
4. When you need a massage, you hire a message therapist.
5. When you need your dress hemmed, you go get it altered.
6. When your computer crashes, you hire a geek.
7. When you punch a hole in the drywall cause you're drunk, you hire a drywall company.

Yes, you can learn about those things and do them yourself... You might be talented enough to follow directions in a book or on YouTube and figure it out... But there's no way to hand you experience and inside information over time that you could possibly do the job with the same expertise and quality that a professional can. When you decide that your wife/girlfriend doesn't deserve the professional treatment that an expert can provide you are devaluing her. Ask her how she feels about being devalued.

No, really. Go ask her how she feels about being devalued. I'll wait here.

Ahem.

People in general make these mistakes on a regular basis... We should consult not just one expert, but many experts, before deciding that we can do this stuff ourselves or hire that expert to do it for us. Human beings are capable of many things, but it's very difficult to master more than one thing at a time, let alone many things. 

Let the experts do their jobs. 

Let ME do MY JOB and make beautiful photos of your wife/girlfriend so that she can present them to you and spark a little romance in your life. (You do want to get laid, don't you?) If she doesn't do it for you, she might just do it for herself and not share the results of her efforts with you. Maybe she'll keep them to herself since you didn't believe that she deserved the best-possible experience. If you don't treat her how she deserves the only pictures you'll get look just like this:

/rant

(Oh, and for-the-record: JCPenney, Kmart, WalMart, and Target don't hire photographers. They hire button-pushers, interns, teenagers that took a "photo class", anyone that can check email.... Anyone that can do as their told. They aren't photographers. Anyone that takes their kids to those places obviously doesn't love their kids enough to hire a professional either. Want to support Small Business? Hire a Local, Real, Professional Photographer.)

/endrant

/rant

(Yes, I cuss. I swear. I say mean things, but I'd rather that people that know that the guy behind the camera is a real person and not some fake brown-noser out there to make a buck off of you. I would rather you not hire me because it bothers you that I cuss than run around pretending to be someone that I'm not.)

/endrant

What is my style?

One thing that I've been struggling with is this: What is my style? Everyone has a style. Style of hair, clothes, music, art, life.... and I think I have all of those nailed down for the most part, but one thing I haven't even found yet is my style of photography. I know I have one. I didn't even realize that my style was definable until about a month ago: I was meeting with a potential client and she said,"I just need to make sure that you can take the photos I want; You're style is very particular." It felt weird that someone recognized my style of photography before I did.

Here's what I know I like in my photos: (I'd post my own, but I didn't ask my subjects for permission to do that.)

• High Contrast - Even in Color; blacks are black and whites are white. I sometimes even go as far as to take shades close to whites and blacks and force them.
  
• Grain or noise - I like 400 ISO films, but it should all look intentional, not a lighting failure.
  
• Loss of detail - I love making portraits where you can't see the dark side of the face at all. I love a portrait I made for an expecting mother last year where your imagination creates the rest of the photo and forces the viewer to wonder what the rest looks like.
• Reality/Believability - I prefer to shoot real people in real situations. Fantasy shoots are awesome, but make them believable. If it looks faked, over-posed, or propped it's because it is. (See section on "ballerinas" below), and for the love of God keep your photoshop nonsense to a minimum. It's a tool to help communicate something, it's not supposed to be distracting or get in the way.
  

Here's what I know I hate in other's photos: (note you may have to log in to flickr) NSFW

• Blatant Nudes - Front shots of people are not flattering. Flickr is full of these shots. Tactful means tasteful. Better yet, make a photo of a person and not their junk.
  
• Plastic skin - No one looks like Barbie. It's the differences in us that make us interesting. Bring on scars and battle wounds, even if it was a fight you lost to your dishwasher! Whomever decided that we should start airbrushing everything away started the decline of humanity.
  
• Stargate Eyes - Again, another heaping pile of cow dung from "Photoshop Wizards." If it doesn't look real, it looks fake. I know that guy's eyes aren't brushed-his-teeth-in-chlorine White. Sure, hide the red eye, veins, and all that; I get that no one wants to look like they were high when they had the photo made, but for the love of Pete stop blowing their eyes out.
• Models are not Dancers - My wife is particularly hard on photos made of "Ballerinas" for this reason. Putting a model in a dancer's tutu does not make her a dancer any more than putting her in a garage makes her a car. Dancers everywhere cringe when a photographer puts a model in tights and a leotard and tells her to point her toes. Photographers: Please stop this practice or my wife (who has been a dancer most of her life) will come and punch you in the face. If you want a shot of a dancer, HIRE A DANCER.
• Stupid Boudoir Photos - Really, the whole point is to communicate the beauty of the subject and that's how you did that? Correction: That's how you failed to do that.
  

Beyond this stuff, I really don't know what my style is. Maybe even working photographers of 30 years don't know what their style is. I haven't met any in person. But I know that it takes 10 years to become a photographer and the rest of us are flailing around until something make sense and we cross the 10,000-hour/10-year-line. Until then, I'll keep using the "Favorite" function on flickr as a way to bookmark photos: Favorite to Love and Favorite to Hate.

What's your style? Do you have any idea what it is? Share it with me and we'll flail around together. :-)