Advertising yourself as:
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Bad at internal budgeting
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Full of yourself
… is a bold marketing strategy during an economic depression, for a freelance/contract worker.
Best of luck Nat.
business is business
Submitted 2 weeks ago by Buage_@piefed.social to [deleted]
https://media.piefed.social/posts/6w/4i/6w4iG7Hq4SHiOpF.jpeg
Comments
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
… is a bold marketing strategy during an economic depression
Never undersell the possibility that this person is lying.
Or that this is a stock photo and the text is clickbait.
Aqarius@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It is. Last time I saw thisnpost, the photographer was different.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Apparently her name is actually Kortney. But reality doesn’t matter when a bunch of redditors get together to hate a woman
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is really taking a pretty harmless comment too seriously. The point is shit is expensive and clients want everything cheap. Any freelancer can relate to this particular framing. I used to have people want $300 websites and they didn’t care that it would take potentially a week to build their site. Surely just abstractly we can all relate to shit being expensive though?
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I mean she’s got a point. I used to do web design and the number of people who reckoned that it should cost the equivalent of $40 was ridiculous. I’d required at least 10 times that just as compensation from having to work with shopify.
ch00f@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
One of the main reasons I got into hardware is because there’s an inherent bias that digital things have no intrinsic value.
Like, you might expect a calculator app to be free, but nobody expects a calculator to be free.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
… did you market yourself as a stuck up prick who can’t budget well?
Or did you maybe save that for some stage of contract negotiations?
There are ways to dance the dance; hers seems to be the equivalent of loudly complain that no one is picking her to dance because no one can afford her.
Just not a good strategy.
tea_n_typewriters@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Don’t you dare question Nat of “Insert Last Name Photography” of being bad at marketing.
otacon239@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If my photographer can get me the picture I need with the $300 camera. I’m hiring them first. Not everyone needs their pictures on a billboard or TV ad.
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
FellowEnt@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Nice shots but if you’re wanting gorgeous candid shots of fast moving action (like weddings/events), you’re gonna struggle without the expensive glass/body.
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve got a nifty fifty which can open to 1.6, and that’s pretty good for getting as fast as 1/250th in dim light, and I got it for free! :D
Catch is, the zoom controls are at the bottom, on my feet.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Yeah but for all we know she’s a wedding photographer, photographs wildlife or something uncooperative, unlike a bridge which tends to sit still most of the time.
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Man, I wish bridges sat still. Shit bounces.
That said, wedding wildlife does sound notoriously uncooperative; trying to get a bridal veil on a rhino sounds, well, difficult.
Seleni@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Those are really nice! I especially like in the first one how you captured the city lights on the water and filled in that potential darker space on the left with the bridge span.
Of course, there’s scenic photography, which is basically having really good composition skills, knowing good locations, and timing, and then there’s people photography, which is… extra. I don’t blame photographers for charging more for that shit lol
‘I want our wedding photos to be the two of us on a cliff at the beach at sunset with really pretty clouds behind us!’ And you’re thinking, okay, drive time, waiting for a good colorful sunset instead of a cloudless or too cloudy or foggy one (always a fun game of roll-the-dice in Oregon at least), and they want their backs to the sunset, so that’s extra lighting (that you’ll have to carry to the location) and extra time in photoshop to be sure you can still see their faces clearly…
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah, I don’t do people cause they’re hard to look at, what with the brain damage and all, so scenery’s more of my thing. Scenery doesn’t stay put, but it’s a hell of a lot less wiggly than people.
And I mean, I’ve never seen the Oregon Coast look bad, you just have to take what it gives you when you show up, no expectations.
Fuuuuck, I think I’ve gotta go there this weekend, just to get out of town.
darntootin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hey man, I support your hobby, but uh, this is embarrassing to boast about. Be humble, you’re an amateur and that’s okay.
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Seriously, I don’t care if you’re Gregory fucking Crewdson, you do not say that shit to aspiring artists.
Cultivate us goddammit.
DO NOT DEMORALIZE PEOPLE OUT OF THIS FIELD.
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hey, you might want to reset the password on your account, someone used it to post something absolutely idiotic under your username. Just letting you know, so that you get this sorted out.
neuromorph@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
how do you white balance your shots/ seems overly sepia
tanisnikana@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s a preference. I’m biased away from cool light as a person, and like my work to be a bit warmer.
I turn off QRedShift when I’m working, then I ultimately end up re-creating it by hand, cause I’m just like that.
snowdriftissue@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
tbf I doubt many Uber drivers actually profit, especially the ones driving $40k cars
altphoto@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
On the Uber and transport topic, I sometimes get to ride the light rail and I have to drive to the park n ride to leave my car and ride the rail.
The trip from my home to the park n ride is a quick 10 to 15 minutes by car. By bus it’s 1 to 2 hours. By foot it’s probably a few days.
The light rail takes me 30 minutes from north king county to Seattle downtown. If I drove there it would take an hour of mostly just sitting in traffic.
Progress is slow but if there was a light rail from bothell to Kenmore to the I-5 corridor, that would basically eliminate my need for a 40 to $90 Uber. We only pay that if we a traveling. That way we get a car from our house to the link and then easy 30 minutes to the airport.
The whole Uber thing is great unless there are only a few riders or a few drivers. Plus the cut that goes to Uber is probably stifling innovation. I recall that there’s an open-source Uber system called…
Hupf@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
a quick 10 to 15 minutes by car. […] By foot it’s probably a few days.
Just as a raw ballpark estimate. By car could be 50km/h on average, with a walking speed of roughly 5km/h, that’s 10x the time it takes by car, i.e. 2-3 hours.
A few days usually takes you trough a few adjacent townships. Do you have to take a humongous detour on foot?
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
At my house there are no buses. There are no light rails. There are no sidewalks, no bike lanes. You can walk in the easement of people’s front yards but it’s mostly a ditch, full of water when it’s raining. I live inside the loop highway that runs around my 2+ million population city. Cars are the only option, even most of the homeless have cars here.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
light rail from bothell to Kenmore to the I-5 corridor
that’ll be st12? 15? lol.
after the excavate under the mountain of queen anne to connect ballard…
honestly the real solution is to move out of the sticks, or stop working in downtown.
InFerNo@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
She wants her investment repaid in 2 or 3 gigs?
darntootin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Taxes, assistant fee, mileage, you own more than one lens and one cam body…no lol not even close. We haven’t even talked about post processing, delivery, rights, etc.
Cosmonauticus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
She should’ve mentioned that instead of just listing a single piece of equipment
Michal@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
You’re right, but it’s not the argument she’s presenting.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My education cost 200,000. You think I made all that back in one paycheck? Cry me a river, Natalie.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
shes probably rich or well off, of course she afford to this.
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Only 5k? Sound like a hobby, because most professional photographers have a body that is already 5k by itself, plus several lenses ranging between 2 and 20k. I mean, I’m a hobby photographer and my gear already exceeds at least 8k. So stop bitching Karen.
honesthenery@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
All of your silly little lives are hobbies. Peasants… fuck your wedding hahahaha. Stupid idiots don’t get it. You eventually will. I Quit… Here’s Why the Technician Shortage Is Getting Worse
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Nobody is going to watch your youtube video, just type the relevant info.
Thats nearly as obnoxious as dumping AI slop into a discussion.
distal@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Photography is harder than most people think. You need to get to the places where you are doing your job, there is tons of communication involved, then there is editing and proper archival stuff you need to do, accounting is also completely different from that of an uber driver’s, and it’s not just the camera that costs more than 5K (looking at you BRIESE and Profoto). It’s really a whole thing.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And then there’s lights. A decent portrait setup will run you thousands easily, and if you want to do anything even slightly abnormal (colored lights, say) it can be astronomically high. Art is expensive.
scrion@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s absolutely not. You can take perfectly fine, artsy photographs with a bunch of cheap gels and Chinese import lights.
You’ll be shocked to learn that people took fantastic pictures before an $8.6k M.ZUIKO lens came into existence.
Go ahead and tell me what a setup the likes of what Evans or Miller had at the time would cost today and stop putting art behind a paywall. Stock photography and repeatable product pictures are expensive, but that’s not art.
Professional photographers have expensive equipment because it makes certain shots commercially feasible, not because it’s impossible to create art without money.
jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
the prices they charge and the inability to give me the damn RAWs is why I just got a camera instead.
hansolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
For the price of one shoot, you can buy someone’s lightly used $5,000 kit on ebay. I’ve had a Canon I bought a decade ago that’s still works great. Maybe got it for $250 or so IIRC.
jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Ohhhh this pisses me off soooooo much. I decided to do family photos and specifically asked for the raws before I went into the shoot. They still gave me a hard time after the shoot to get the raws. They gave me a stripped down .dng without any camera settings. Ohhhh that pisses me off so much.
FellowEnt@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I found a guy willing to chuck me RAWs for a lower price, still felt a bit ripped off. He shot 90% of the day on a walkabout zoom and the photos were nothing special.
chewypoops@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The audacity to ask for the raw, unprocessed photos for a lower price, and then complain that they look boring.
You wanted the raws. Process them yourself.
FatherPeanut@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Okay real talk here, how tf is this Xavier guy basically everywhere? Did he go to meme school?
fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 2 weeks ago
Does he make up content to react to? Is that his thing?
WaitingToHappen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
he is an OG bot, a pioneer bot
xav@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
There are loads of us ! At least two.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
When I used to film pornography I got sloppy seconds.
It was the definition of win/win.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A man after my own heart. Plus, dinner and a show.
Paddzr@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Ah, so that’s why you’re known as the cum farter, you were the sloppy seconds.
Etterra@discuss.online 2 weeks ago
Yeah and that Uber driver can’t afford rent. Photographers often have less business in the winter, too, and they have a ton of extra equipment to lug around. I know a wedding photographer and it’s a lot of work day of and post work to make sure it’s all nice.
jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Pppffffssshhhh… 5k?!?that is hobby level money. I’m over 15k into just my lenses and I do this as a hobby and shoot friends and family for free.
Larry@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Bro… Shooting your friends and family is messed up… Whether someone pays you to or not…
TrippingBalls@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I kill people for money… But you are my friend… So I will kill you for free
greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I don’t really understand photography. Like it seems too broad of an art form. Like the guy who takes pictures of food is different from action photography is different from a wedding photographer. I feel like I don’t have the context to know she’s full of shit, but it kinda feels like it.
Diddlydee@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
My house cost 300 grand and you want me to look after your kids for 60 quid a day?
robomuffin79@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If this photographer can reduce her time spent to the same level as a 10 minute Uber journey, then yes - she should not be charging more than $12
neuromorph@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
the camera doesnt matter. are your skills any good?
Master@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
A 10 min ride home is not the same as a 3 hour wedding and 12 hours processing images and video.
f314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Using the price of the equipment as a reason was not a great decision 😅 Sure, the deprecation of your equipment is part of what the customers pay for, but any sane person would value their time much higher than that (unless the equipment is something ridiculous like an oil tanker).
And living with a photographer has taught me that it takes a lot of time! Just picking out which of the 800+ images from an event you want to show to the client for final choice is quite a job. And that’s before you even start to look at editing, which is always needed.
And then there is expertise. My SO knows what to do and how to do it because of her experience. You pay for that as well, and it should be worth quite a bit if you care about the quality of what you’re purchasing.
custom_username@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
You may have bought an expensive camera, and spent a good amount of time honing your skills, that doesn’t mean I’m paying you $6000 for 3 days of work.
MeatPilot@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Really depends though.
I do photography as a salaried employee with my personal $5k camera, so my paycheck is technically what I’m paid. But I do a lot more than just photos and videos.
When I do side jobs, I don’t charge much. Corporate headshots for example are about $100 per person or $300 for a certain amount of time for everyone on the same day. So depends how much of a pain in the ass they’ll be, lot more work to setup multiple times and try to match looks over long stretches of time.
But I base that on who I’m doing them for and how picky they’ll be about it.
I have worked with scheduling photographers by the hour, photo journalists, not your wedding/graduation people. I’ve booked shoots all over the US and it’s regional and based on demand/completion in that area. So someone can cost $1,000 for 2-hours on-site in Boston and someone can cost $400 for 2-hours in middle nowhere Kansas.
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
Hire whoever took the picture of her.
They’re obviously better.
spontaneoushumancombustion@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not every gig is gonna earn you the cost of that camera. And it doesn’t need to.
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
If people just want the uber price for pictures, hire the uber to pick you up and ask him to take a picture of you with your cellphone. Then you’ll have a $12 picture that you can do whatever you want with.
FluidBeef@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
Is the weight of the $5000 camera how she got the permanent kink in her neck?
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Twelve bucks? That’s … Probably not a livable wage with cost of operating a vehicle. Let’s assume you do four of those in an hour for 8 hours, that’s 32 jobs a day, grossing 8 hours a day for $384/day and just under 100k/y… But you have overhead. You have to pay for the vehicle and it’s operating and insurance costs, and your own operating costs and insurance. If you live in any sort of American wider metro, 100k alone isn’t cutting it.
So let’s say you drive 6 miles per $12 on average. Operating a new car for a business is about $0.76/mile, so you subtract $4.56 of your $12 right off the bat, leaving you with $7.44/job.
That doesn’t include accidents or your tax, either. Let’s assume you get in one medium accident a year and you have minimal insurance. You pay out of pocket for your own repairs glhf.
Now you also pay 15.3% tax on your earnings because you aren’t an employee and Uber says to go fuck yourself. So on your 100k a year, you pay another $15,275 in tax.
That leaves you $46,625/year, driving full time.
If you bought the car on a loan, you make negative money.
If you get in an accident, you make negative money.
For full time.
Enjoy.
KokusnussRitter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Isn’t 100-300 pretty costly/ a good value for a photographer? Am I out of touch?
Asafum@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean duhhh! It’s a business, I spend $5,000 on the camera that means I deserve $6,000 for one picture. This isn’t a hobby, it’s a business I must turn a profit. It’s not rocket surgery guys.
MrSulu@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Uber effectively corner a market and have drivers working for very little.
gigastasio@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Nobody cares what your camera costs, Nat. You can still take shitty pictures with a $5000 camera. Charge what you think your service is worth and work for clients who pay it.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Exactly.
There is real skill involved in photography, and it takes real time even after being skilled. A 1-hour shoot in a new location still requires probably an hour of planning, maybe an hour or two of logistics, and maybe 2-3 hours of work after the fact to get the photos processed and distributed. And it’s basically the opportunity cost that will eat up the entire day, because you can’t double book the same sunset or other lighting conditions or whatever. There’s seasonality, too, if you want specific seasonal conditions in the shot, if you want to book the Saturday that other clients want, etc.
That’s before expenses like insurance, the amortized cost of the software and hardware (including the cameras and lenses and computer), web services for distribution of the files, etc.
It’s fair to charge a full day’s fair pay for a job like that, and that might mean wanting to charge something like $1000 for an experienced photographer, maybe $500 of which actually represents “profit” for the sole proprietor. But that only happens at that price if there are clients willing to pay that price.
For bigger jobs like parties or weddings, it gets a bit more involved, which is why a 2- or 3-shooter wedding job can cost several thousand, or even above $10k.
But for easy jobs like anything in a high volume studio where the lighting is already known, and there aren’t any logistics involved, it should be much cheaper. It just all depends.
a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I did a gig for a while doing Photoshop clean up of wedding images and portraits.
Just that one step can be an exceptional amount of work.
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I’ve met too many people who think the number they associate to a thing somehow makes them a better user of it.
Tons of people take amazing photos with tons of thought and skill involved in composition and everything, with a phone camera or shitty digital from 2010.
People who use the price of the equipment to justify expense instead of the quality of their work are usually bad at whatever it is they’re charging for.
SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
You can shift the quality a lot with great equipment, but that requires you to know what you’re doing first. And it still depends on what you’re trying to shoot. Somebody trying to capture a great moment in high speed sports might need a better camera than a cat dad. But without knowing how to use it, it is worth nothing.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
At $100 per shoot she can pay off her camera in one year doing one shoot a week. That’s if it’s a hobby.
But since it’s not a hobby for her, as she points out, that means she can do 3-5 shoots per week. If she charges $300 per shoot, and averages let’s say 4 shoots per week, that’s over $60k per year. A small salary, but people get by for less.
If she wants to make more, that’s fine. But she has to convince people that she’s worth a higher price by doing quality work and demonstrating consistency, professionalism, building a network of returning clients and recommendations if she wants to be fully booked each week. Not by telling them how expensive her equipment is…
Soulphite@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
Just playing devils advocate here, there should be more involved than simply taking pictures. There will be editing, and putting together an album that makes sense to the customer as well; therefore she could charge more for her time and upcharge for album features such as hard copy decorative stuff.
Then again, there is that saying “starving artist” and all…
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Assuming you don’t value your time, sure. Pro-photographers charge a lot more than that. Also, who wants to give up a year’s worth of weekends for a fancy camera?
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Wedding photographer is an interesting job. With a lot of jobs, people buy the minimum viable equipment they need to get the job done.
But, people who get into wedding photography seem to generally be people who are really into photography. Rather than a $5000 camera being the requirement for the job. The $5000 camera is a present you can justify getting yourself if the wedding photography game is going well.
It’s not a tool that goes into the case and stays there until the next wedding. It’s something to be used for the kinds of pictures that don’t pay the bills but that you love taking: nature shots, architecture, abstract art, gritty realism, etc.
socsa@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
$5k is also literally hobby money. I’ve spent way more than that snowboarding and hiking over the years. My lab setup at work is literally worth more than I will make in my entire career. Sit down bitch.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s certainly a curiosity. Like, what’s the value-add of a $5k camera relative to a cheaper model? What’s the step-up or step-down in price? What features are you prizing? What brand are you favoring? What are your clients looking for that someone else can’t necessarily bring with a cheaper device?
Whole books have been written about the industry, the technology around the industry, and the kinds of people who pursue it.
Finding clients who pay well is half the work of any freelance job.
GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
On the flip side, Uber is basically a hobby. Do these people buy their cars just to drive for Uber, or do they drive for Uber to make some extra cash with the car they already have/need?
BooBees@fedinsfw.app 2 weeks ago
The math has been done and the wear on your car isn’t worth the pay, either, so it’s a net loss that desperate people are using in an economy where jobs are harder to come by. So uber is taking advantage of people and subsidizing their wages by taking advantage of the impoverished, similar to how the biggest company with the most people on welfare is Walmart. It’s not a hobby, it’s a blight on our society because rich people created a broken system that they then use to further increase profits.