To Pay or Not to Pay, that is the question
Huw said, 1726756429
Is diversity good?
I mean in photographic terms ;)
Ansel Adams made 3,500 colour landscapes, and a few BW portraits.
Do you remember any of them?
https://www.artsy.net/artist-series/ansel-adams-portraits
FiL said, 1726760544
It's all relative. For instance, if I was a model and you requested a TF I'd either politely decline or ignore your request (depending on my mood). Just as you decry others who seek TF yet have a dire portfolio of work, there are people who will decry you for the same reason.
Personally, if I was approached by any of the models in your portfolio for a shoot, I'd question their judgement, since you seem to warrant that you only shoot TF. It's highly likely I'd decline their request for that reason alone (their judgement about what constitutes good imagery).
Perspectives depend on your vantage point.
Edited by FiL
Aardvark🎯VonEssfolk said, 1726760910
Huw said
Is diversity good?
I mean in photographic terms ;)Ansel Adams made 3,500 colour landscapes, and a few BW portraits.
Do you remember any of them?https://www.artsy.net/artist-series/ansel-adams-portraits
It is one thing for living photographers to be overtly smoke-blown, even ones outside of the PurplePort bubble 😂😂 ... but the almost obsession with dead or long dead photographers is often a step too far for me.
I admire many photojournalists and sports and wildlife photgraphers (and other genres) where they could come up with 'the money shots' time and time again ... sometimes even in frontline war zones (no pressure then!).
Not so much (often black and white) photographers that toiled (or got someone else to toil) with crazy long negative stage work (and mostly 'zone system' at printing stage). Clever and determined YES, but so is stacking many images for a super DOF macro shot, multiple landscape exposures blended in Photoshop (or even how these days my Pixel phones do great sunsets and have great wizardry in order to capture awesomeness in HDR+ mode).
If Ansel Adams and others where about today - do you think many of them would gain even a smidgen of their hero worshipping they get after being dead for ages thereafter? NOT having the (back then) advantage of being one of very few to be able to own / have access to a larger format film camera and or any camera/lenses combo with a fuller degree of adjustments to hand? Able to use them 100% intuitively? AND have full access to both film and print processing, including way more than just dodge n burn techniques' ?
-
Heck even in my solely film era (and maybe for at least 5 years of the early to mid+ 00s, as 'digital to the masses' came in more) you could be a fairly averagely compent photographer and successfully be either a weekend warrior (me 😂) or FULL TIME wedding photographer. Heck - I have known 1st hand and 3rd hand a LOT of very LESS than AVERAGE wedding photographers, some with a lot less photographic skillset than myself ... that got away with it for a combo of many possible reasons:
a) Believed in their stuff totally
b) ALWAYS came across as if they were totally confident in their stuff
c) Priced and marketed themselves either several leagues above where they were at (OR) somewhat almost 'beneath' where they were at.
The former was semi-blagging it to those with sometimes VERY deep pockets, the latter: knowing you'd be able to get away with even more + your audience would rarely be able to see the difference between 'best shots' (often engineered with more checks and thought) to 'rescued fails'. Sorry but just true 😞 The mostly middle ground and associated pricing (and also double guessing the degreee of client expectations vs their £spend), was where it was more tricky IMHO.
d) Consistently could bang out OK exposed images + with the right people in them and at the right times during the course of a long day. No creative or trying to be different / quirky / creative required.
Thankfully more and more, in the digital era (d) was never going to be enough. Futhermore a photographer who almost (in my eyes) didn't deserve to be called such in the basic 'capture skills sense' could be a brilliant 'people person' and 'organiser and influencer' when under pressure and with drunk disrupters all around even. His/her sometimes hideously goofed exposures could be 'rescued' by a large degree from the RAW file. Providing they had 'captured the moment', the emotions ( epsecially if they were different to the now seemigly HATED group shots 🤣 ) ... most clients would be blind to the capture stage skills and whys and why nots of (e.g. positioning people with ambient lighting behind them and using some fill flash, for exmample).
Huw said, 1726762506
Zone system is still relevant today if you want to know exactly how a shot will print at the time you take it....
It's just called a histogram now.
Feel The Passion said, 1726762995
FiL said
It's all relative. For instance, if I was a model and you requested a TF I'd either politely decline or ignore your request (depending on my mood). Just as you decry others who seek TF yet have a dire portfolio of work, there are people who will decry you for the same reason.
Personally, if I was approached by any of the models in your portfolio for a shoot, I'd question their judgement, since you seem to warrant that you only shoot TF. It's highly likely I'd decline their request for that reason alone (their judgement about what constitutes good imagery).
Perspectives depend on your vantage point.
Edited by FiL
Ouch!
Perception said, 1726770092
Im not a model, but I do think the dynamics are different. I *think* too many photographers look at this through their lens; ie, I enjoy photography it's my hobby, and therefore I assume being a model is similar enjoyment, but the other side of the lens.
However, I think the self-esteem of being a model for a photographer who values their time is a different situation than just "enjoys modelling". The satisfaction of being hired as a pro/semi pro model. The fun is probably tipping into very rewarding work rather than a hobby.
I think I i was a model; personally, Id want a photographer who is highly creative, has the ability to have multiple shoots and has lots of input, being an equal player. Theres only a handful of profiles here that really push the boundaries and who could probably hold there own in a recognised brick and mortar gallery space. . If you want a truly creative partnership chances are youl be searching for that person for years and work with just them or a tiny pool of photographers and very, very rarely appear advertising for TF
*disclaimer that ive made assumptions of models motivations without being one.
Chris Green said, 1726774538
I’m not quite clear of the point that the OP is making, but I think I’m reading an implication that only TF shoots are collaborations. I only do paid shoots, but they’re definitely always collaborations because I really don’t know what I’m doing and would be lost without the benefit of the model’s experience!
Sensual Art said, 1726774884
Chris Green said
I’m not quite clear of the point that the OP is making, but I think I’m reading an implication that only TF shoots are collaborations. I only do paid shoots, but they’re definitely always collaborations because I really don’t know what I’m doing and would be lost without the benefit of the model’s experience!
Absolutely! This site's misuse of the term really irritates me.
ADWsPhotos said, 1726775694
Perhaps we might step outside the perhaps sub optimal definition provided by the site, and compose a message along the lines of ‘hello, I’d like to collaborate on a TF basis….’ and see what happens? In that way you have made your aim clear?
ANDY00 said, 1726775987
Sensual Art said
Chris Green said
I’m not quite clear of the point that the OP is making, but I think I’m reading an implication that only TF shoots are collaborations. I only do paid shoots, but they’re definitely always collaborations because I really don’t know what I’m doing and would be lost without the benefit of the model’s experience!
Absolutely! This site's misuse of the term really irritates me.
It’s not the site misusing terms; it’s how people use them. Words evolve based on how they're most commonly used, not locked in some rigid definition. Yes all shoots are collaberations but the general population has evolved it to mean tf or use it for that purpose, you can say its not and stamp your feet but i doubt theyre listneing. This is a photography site, not a grammar workshop :-). words and meanings evolve for example professional used to mean qualified and trained, now it means ive got good camera gear and 10k + instagram followers. language evolves. has done since us humans got here.
Sensual Art said, 1726776583
ANDY00 I'm not aware of the word collaborate meaning anything of the sort outside of PP's tiny bubble! It certainly doesn't in Hollywood circles, nor in general business.
On the other hand, note how this site has chosen to use the dictionary definition for implied, in the context of implied topless. Here, the term outside of PP includes everything where the model is actually topless but covered (arm, prop, etc), but here on PP the grammarians won and insist on using covered topless.
So it's not me being stuck in the past.
ANDY00 said, 1726777090
Sensual Art said
ANDY00 I'm not aware of the word collaborate meaning anything of the sort outside of PP's tiny bubble! It certainly doesn't in Hollywood circles, nor in general business.
On the other hand, note how this site has chosen to use the dictionary definition for implied, in the context of implied topless. Here, the term outside of PP includes everything where the model is actually topless but covered (arm, prop, etc), but here on PP the grammarians won and insist on using covered topless.
So it's not me being stuck in the past.
You literally just said the site misuses the term:
"Absolutely! This site's misuse of the term really irritates me."
And if you haven’t seen people referring to TF as collaborations, then I’m not sure why you'd say that. The fact is, Some people do refer to TF as collaborations. I don’t know about Hollywood because I’m a photographer, not a filmmaker, but the site likely adopts the most common slang as accepted by the wider population—or what fits their needs best to descibe something. It’s not a grammar workshop, after all. words evolve
Unfocussed Mike said, 1726777908
ADWsPhotos said
Perhaps we might step outside the perhaps sub optimal definition provided by the site, and compose a message along the lines of ‘hello, I’d like to collaborate on a TF basis….’ and see what happens? In that way you have made your aim clear?
This kind of conciseness and clarity just isn't the done thing.
Huw said
Ansel Adams made 3,500 colour landscapes, and a few BW portraits.
Do you remember any of them?
Almost none of his colour work was published in his lifetime, but yes, I can bring to mind several of the colour photos. (Mind you one is on the cover of the only book of his colour work).
As to his portraiture, yes, several, and none are on the page you shared. Ansel Adams produced a book of documentary portraits so significantly contentious at the time of its publication that it was burned in the streets in protest. When it was finally republished, not long after 9/11, the first consignment from the publisher went missing for months, in an act the publisher and the estate interpreted as political censorship by someone government-aligned in the publishing industry.
In both cases, I remember them from up close, at an exhibition. (Which was at the same time as an exhibition of William Eggleston's work -- colour work that Adams thought was pointless crap).
To answer Aardvark🎯VonEssfolk 's point, Adams wouldn't be famous now in the way he was, because almost no photographers are famous (putting aside that most once-household-name photographers have also been forgotten, like Hoppé for example) but the quality of his work had nothing to do with his access to equipment and everything to do with his vision, tenacity and skill. I'm not really an Adams fan -- I obsess over other stuffy old dead photographers -- but he wasn't just a guy-with-a-big-camera-when-they-were-rare. Beyond that it's impossible to compare, because if you put an Adams photograph beside a contemporary black and white landscape photography genius, you can't make a fair comparison, when the contemporary photographer relies almost entirely on a photographic language that Adams essentially invented.
Edited by Unfocussed Mike
The Ghost said, 1726778085
Perception said
Im not a model, but I do think the dynamics are different. I *think* too many photographers look at this through their lens; ie, I enjoy photography it's my hobby, and therefore I assume being a model is similar enjoyment, but the other side of the lens.
However, I think the self-esteem of being a model for a photographer who values their time is a different situation than just "enjoys modelling". The satisfaction of being hired as a pro/semi pro model. The fun is probably tipping into very rewarding work rather than a hobby.
I think I i was a model; personally, Id want a photographer who is highly creative, has the ability to have multiple shoots and has lots of input, being an equal player. There's only a handful of profiles here that really push the boundaries and who could probably hold their own in a recognised brick and mortar gallery space. . If you want a truly creative partnership chances are youl be searching for that person for years and work with just them or a tiny pool of photographers and very, very rarely appear advertising for TF
*disclaimer that I've made assumptions of models motivations without being one.
I think really there are three categories:
- I make pretty pictures (or equivalent)
- I get paid to make pictures (of variable quality)
- I get paid to make pretty pictures (you know the drill.)
Now the first one doesn't entirely preclude financial gain but that's not the motivation. The second one is absolutely about the financial gain - it's better than cooking socks for money, as Mrs Malaprop would have it.
The third one is really all about job satisfaction, getting paid to do things that others would love to be given the opportunity to do for free.
Now that I think about it, maybe it's more of a spectrum.