I am just curious to know if there are any.
If there are - do they (you) have a website where your work is located?
Sorry if this is too short/munndane, I am just quite curious as I am a bit of a wannabe myself (here and in my ‘www’ button below)
What kind of photography are you talking about in regard to a professional - Studio, Newspaper, Fashion, Magazine, Sports, Wildlife, Wedding…?
For a good portion of my life I have shot for a varity of magazines and newspapers (I almost never do/have done studio work and I hate shooting things like weddings or fashion). You may have seen some of my stuff in different publications.
I don’t have a website, sorry. Never really thought of it. I guess I am, or at least was, well enough known prior to the concept that I kept busy without one and now that I have my own newspaper, I stay pretty busy that way, but I still get four or five commissions a year from people familiar enough with my work to help pay the bills.
So I guess I was a professional in one or two aspect of the game.
TV
If all are done by professional photographers, then - all. (maybe not wedding. I don’t know, they don’t seem like the same ‘breed’ as all the others you mention. Correct me if I am wrong)
I don’t mean to offend anyone there - Its just that weddings are always more or less the same, there can’t be much variety in wedding photography.
I’ve done 2 freelance gigs (so far) if that counts. One event, one promo shoot (or rather, several promo shoots for the same group).
You can get to my website by clicking the button, but the for-pay work isn’t up in the gallery yet. The fine-art stuff is though.
Heh, heh, heh, try doing a wedding. No reshoot. None. Has to be perfect the first time. And you have to be a decent director…
Never put down a wedding photographer. Except for the cuz’n Bubba type who is doing it “Cause I’z a photographer, too!”
I hated doing weddings.
I am a residential remodeler. But, I ran a photo studio and custom B/W lab for two years during a building industry slump. I specialized in portraits. But, to make money, I had to do anything from industrial to rodeos. I even taught a course at a local community college. Every now and then, I was asked to do weddings. I have great respect for good wedding photographers.
I’m still asked to do all sorts of stuff for old clients, and occasionally I do. Sorry, no web site. (No scanner even)
Gunslinger is a newspaper photographer. When he gets home, I’ll point him to this thread.
You can sometimes catch his work on the website of his employer, the Longview News-Journal (www.news-journal.com). He’s not on the front page right now, though.
OK, a question for professional photographers…
Over at Wal-Mart, they won’t copy a professional portrait without a signed statement from the photographer. So, do the rights to all professional portraits reside with the photographer?
I don’t mean to disrespect Wedding photographers.
I was actually thinking of the type you mention NoClueBoy the old scruffy guy who is sometimes related to the people getting married, and only does weddings. Not people who do weddings as well as other things. It looks like I have developed an incorrect stereotype of these people from my own experience of weddings, and from TV.
Still - I somehow can’t put a guy who mostly photographs weddings (average-joe weddings) into the same category as the famous photo-journalist or glossy-magazine photographer. That was my point.
I know, Lob, I was just enlightening the people. It’s hard to charge real prices when “Bubba” will do it fer a coupla hunert. (A real wed photog can make upwards of 2 to 5 grand per wedding, gotta have the reputation for that kind of price, tho)
I idolize National Geographic type of photogs, myself. And Galen Rowell was a god.
The copyright to professional portraits resides with the photographer, yes.
Yep, I’m a photojournalist, and I do a bit of fine art stuff on the side (haven’t sold any of the latter yet, though). None of my newspaper photos are online, except for the occasional one on the paper’s website racinchikki linked to. Some of the artsy ones are here. Newspaper work isn’t as glamorous as you’d think; for every fire, murder and the like, there’s 50 boring portraits, award-winning squirrel-hunting dogs, retirement parties, etc. On the plus side, I get paid for mileage to all that stuff, and some weeks the mileage check is more than my regular pay…
Thunder: Yes, unless the photographer gives you a signed statement saying otherwise (and will charge a helluva lot more, too).
Like my college photography teacher said, the only difference between amateurs and professionals is that we’re arrogant enough to ask for money. 
You can find some of my stuff here.
I do mainly photojournalism, and you can find some of my stuff in February’s issues of Stuff or Car and Driver magazines. I must agree with No Clue Boy about wedding photography. It is very stressful. Not necessarily overly difficult, but a hell of a lot of work and a hell of a lot of pain. I hate it and respect anyone who can put up with doing this kind of work for a living.
Oh, I so agree…
It is one of the hardest types of photography. I have shot wars, revolutions. I have sat in a blind for days freezing my butt off to get a series of photos of a bobcat in winter in the wild. I have had professional runningbacks crash into me. I have had police pull guns on me and firemen hit me full on with water from their hoses…and I would rather do any of those again than shoot a wedding.
A good wedding photographer is a true artist. He not only has to deal with the technical stuff like we all do, but he has to deal with people who are certain they could do his job just as well has he can, if not better and will not hesitate to tell him so.
He also has to deal with people who love their daughters so much that they think it was the photographer who made their 320 pound daughter look “heavy” or made their bassett-hound look-alike daughter look “unattractive”.
I understand what you are saying Lobsang, but the good wedding photographers, they are truly photographers. I respect them so much more than more than a few of my compatriots who just are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
TV
(I have been toying with the idea of doing this ever since starting the thread. I was hoping someone would take the hint, but not so far. I will probably regret it, but what is life if we don’t take risks)
What do you photographers think of the sunset/lambs/pigeon pictures on my website (they are the ones that in my biassed view - look most like ‘professional’ photography. I apologise for any offence caused to professional photographers by that statement).
Bear in mind that I am just a guy who happens to have a camera. I am not a photographer.
(I am trying to say “what do you pros think of my wannabe photos” without sounding like a naive idiot)
And this thread was not a ruse to get some pros to judge me photos. I really do want to know who on the boards are photographers and to see their websites.
Thankyou.
And in my prosecution - I happen to live in a very beautiful place, and was lucky to get the lambs and the pigeon. I have never got that close to a pair of lambs before without a camera, let alone with!
And the pigeon arrived after me. (I was up there to take pictures of the town from the high vantage point)
(hey, maybe these animals are posers. Maybe they saw the camera and made their way to me)
I love the one of the pigeon. It might’ve been better without the car, but the car does help give the viewer a sense of the location.
Well, you want an honest critique, I’ll tell you what I see…
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Sunset. OK. You got a sunset. You captured a bit of the mood. There’s a bit of interest in the sky; the clouds aren’t completely boring. Overall, however, there’s nothing really that makes this stand out as an exceptional sunset picture. First, your horizon is crooked. No problem; easily fixed. Second, there’s really nothing that grabs my attention. Often sunsets can be made more interesting by silhouetting something in the foreground. You have some landmasses in the picture, but compositionally, they don’t relaly gel for me. The water is also a bit boring. Also, the colors are a bit dull. This was taken on negative film, right? For sunsets that pop, try using Fuji Velvia (50 ISO) film. It’s slide (aka transparency/chrome) film, so you have to be absolutely spot-on accurate with your exposures, but you’ll get the most gorgeous and saturated colors with that film.
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Pigeon - The light’s kind of nice, but the auto is distracting and, well, I don’t find the pigeon particularly interesting.
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Sheep - Good job on getting close enough to the sheep to get a decently framed picture. However, the light’s dull and the sheep aren’t really doing anything interesting in particular. Good animal photography usually involves capturing interaction between animals or with an animal and its environment. (Note the word “usually.”)
What I notice about your photography is that you have a tendency to center your subjects. Get away from that. That often makes for boring, static compositions. While there are no real compositional rules in photography, there are some basic guidelines which are worth remembering. First, look up the “rule of thirds” or the “golden mean” and learn how to use those compositional devices. Once you learn them, these will be the first rules you’ll break, but they are worth knowing.
Second, the most mundane pictures can be made all the better by simply paying attention to light. Photogs love the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset because the light quality is so nice during those times. Look at any issue of National Geographic and note how many photographs are taken during this time.
For example, take your picture “Dougal at Night.” Everybody has a sodium-yellow night picture somewhere in their collection. Pros, amateurs, everybody. One of the secrets to taking a good night photo is to take it while there is still some light left in the sky. I’m going to toot my own horn and refer you to one of my nighttime photos. Notice how much of a difference a bit of color in the sky makes. This is the time most good night shots are made. Once again, look through those Nat Geos, and notice how many night shots are made JUST after sunset, while there is still some detail and color in the sky.
Just some general pointers. I hope I’m not being overly critical, but I do hope I also point you in the right direction. I firmly believe that anyone can be taught the basics of taking decent, professional-quality photographs.
I am a professional photographer who specializes in weddings, although I have also shot a handful of senior portraits and family portraits. My job also entails architectural photography, and as a hobby, I photograph nature, animals, friends, and miscellaneous objects in creative ways.
I work for a small, but well established architecture-photography company. The website is here.
I have been photographing professionally for 3 years and have shot about 105 weddings during that time frame. My boss (the owner) and I are the only professional photographers who regularly work for the company. If three or more weddings are occurring simultaneously, then my boss hires an outside professional to cover what we cannot.
We are not the average-Joe charge $200 per wedding kinda place nor do we frequently get 5 grand a pop. We’re somewhere in between. It’s not uncommon for me to do a wedding that costs the client over $1000, but I’ve only shot two weddings for over $5,000. Price depends on many factors including time, distance traveled, quantity and size of desired prints, etc.
I try not to think about it this way, but what my boss and I do is very brave (especially him since it is his business). In retrospect, I have been fortunate to work with good clients, and I have not experienced any major or even minor disasters. There’s much that can go wrong: batteries run out, film runs out, equipment breaks or malfunctions, photographer gets lost, etc. Most problems can be avoided with ample preparation. My boss, who of course has photographed many more weddings than I, once shot an entire roll on medium format with a strand of hair between the film and the inner part of the lens. All of those prints had a conspicuous line through the middle. That incident frightens me so I try to be careful with all that I do.
Working with people is more challenging working with equipment but like I said I’ve been fortunate. When it comes to people, I never know what I’m getting in to. Prior to a ceremony, people are sometimes antsy or pre-occupied with an unsettled matter: someone or something hasn’t arrived yet, the flowers aren’t big enough, the ring bearer gets a grass stain on his suit, etc. But this time period before the wedding is generally an easy one to spend working with people. The most challenging part of the day is after the ceremony; everybody wants to get to the reception ASAP…plus everybody is together at once in the same area. The least challenging and most fun part of the day is the reception.
My strategy is always to remain relaxed, maintain order, work quickly (especially for post-wed shots), be careful, be humorous, and be friendly all at the same time while staying focused on my main goal of taking spectacular photographs.
Geez, I could talk all night and day about this.
Any specific questions for me…feel free to ask in this thread or email me.