Working on My Website

I’ve been working on revamping my website.  I’ve changed a bunch of the galleries mainly by reducing the number of images.  I’ve been trying to only present the best of the best for each of the categories.  I’ve also added a Weddings gallery showing off some of my wedding work.  I’m not but wouldn’t mind a little feed back at this point as I’m kinda stuck on where to go next.  Thanks in advance for checking it out.  I look forward to hearing what you have to say.  www.fullframefotography.com

You Can’t Please All the People All the Time.

It’s in my nature and I imagine a lot of photographers to go to extreme lengths to please the client.  The question is when is enough enough?  When do you put your foot down and refuse to do further work for want of feeling taken advantage of?  It’s a fine line.  Very fine.  Since the passing of my friend and cohort Reid Mason, I had taken it upon myself to complete the weddings that he and I shot before his passing as well as several others that were in some state of completion.  Well let’s just say that no good deed goes unpunished.  The first one I had to deal with was actually the last one Reid shot.  This bride was literally stomping her feet, screaming at me via email.  “I JUST WANT MY PICTURES!!!!” was all her last email  said.  So I gave up trying to explain to her that none of the images had any post production and sent her the images.  I knew that there were issues with some of the images.  Exposure. White balance.  Things of that nature.  I sent her jpegs sized for 5×7 prints only.  Bride two went off without a hitch.  She went through and made her selections I did the post production and sent her a dvd.  Doing good I thought 1 for two.  Not great but I’m batting 500!  Bride 3 has been nothing short of a nightmare!  The kind of client every photographer dreads.  A little back story is necessary here.  Reid died on Sept. 24th 2012.  Her wedding was on August 11th, 2012.  So there was a little more than a month  had passed since I delivered the images to Reid and his passing.  So upon my return from WV retrieving Reid’s computer and sorting through his things I created a private viewing gallery on my website and posted some 300+ images.  I sent the client the link and password and explained that she should go through and make her selections of for her album and prints.  Didn’t hear back from her.  Didn’t hear back.  Didn’t hear back. Finally after almost two months I hear back from her that she can’t open the gallery and see the images.  OK since I used to do technical trouble shooting I attempted to help her.  I looked at the gallery to see if there were issues.  Files too big, etc.  Nope not a problem.  The entire gallery took less than 2 minutes to load on my old PC with only a 100 Mbps connection and a download speed of about 24Mbps from the server.  Not bad.  We go back and forth several times with her not really answering the pertinent questions I was asking.  She finally gets back to me a week later telling me that her system says its going to take 3 days for her to download the gallery.  “No problem.”  I send her a zipped folder of the proofs via You Send It.  No word.  Don’t hear back.  She finally gets back to me telling me that her system is telling her this is going to take 18 hours to download.  WTF!  Long and the short of it she had a very slow DSL line.  Now the panic sets in.  She wanted the images so she could make calendars for Christmas presents.  So I FedEX her a dvd of the proofs. (Complete with watermark at this point) to the only address I had for her.  You guessed it.  Wrong address.  She had moved and forgotten to tell me.  So when the first dvd didn’t arrive when it was supposed to I sent a second one.  This time via USPS with over night delivery to the correct address. (I’m sure by now you’re saying to yourself OMG!)  This is not where it ends.  If you’re keeping track of time this is about 1 week before Christmas.  She receives the dvd.  I get a nasty email from her saying “What am I supposed to do with these?  They all have “PROOF” all over them.  I can’t make prints with these.”  I told her that was correct that she should make her 50 selects, tell me which ones she wants for the calendars and I’ll get them printed for her out of the print credit she coming from the package she purchased from Reid.  I checked with the lab and they said they could have things turned around in 2 days for me and so I passed that information along to the bride.  You know the routine by now.  I don’t hear back from her.  4 days go by and still no word.  I drop her an email asking what’s going on.  I get an email back where she’s blaming me for her not being able to get her Christmas presents done in time and that I should have just sent her all of the images.  That’s all she wanted.  I explained politely to her that that is not how it works.  I didn’t hear back from her for more than a month and a half.  Now she wants to order a canvas print of the formal image of the family.  No problem.  I send her the 3 options for canvas prints styles that I offer along with the pricing for the different sizes to her at a significant discount to my list price.  You guessed it.  Again I don’t hear back from her for days.  This time she’s telling me how “frustrated” she is over the whole process and just wants to be done with it.  At this point I’m done.  I’ve done everything possible to make this bride happy.  I figure she’s either not getting my emails or just ignoring what I have to say. I’ve come to realize that in none of our correspondence does she actually answer any of the questions I ask.  So I politely tell her that I’m done with this favor and that I will send her a dvd of her select images (she finally did pick 75 as her selects) sized suitably for printing at 5×7 and that I would be removing her gallery from my website in 30 days.  Amazingly I got a response within minutes.  This time she was apologetic and explained how she and her friends were going to order all sorts of prints through me and I’d be able to make some money that way.  Thanks but no thanks.  This was the first time in 5 months of correspondence she had gotten back to me in a timely fashion.  WTF!!  I was just fed up.  The amount of time this was taking was no longer worth it.  Especially considering the only money I had made on the deal was my shooting fee.  I’m sure this woman will slander my name all over West Virginia but I can’t care.  As I said no good deed goes unpunished.

It’s Almost Time!!!!

For weddings that is!  The time when photographers who specialize in weddings go absolutely sideways.  That time of year when ordinary women turn into “Bridezillas” and “Mother of Bridezillas”.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it just can’t be helped.  It’s the biggest day of their lives and they want everything perfect.  Who can blame them.  But it really doesn’t have to be that way.  I have been watching Craig’s List and Mineeds and Wedding.com as the season starts to ramp up.  I’m getting hit with multiple requests daily for quotes.  The only problem is almost all of the contain this phrase in one form or another  “Must work cheap”.  And by cheap most of the time they mean “I’m only gonna pay a couple of hundred dollars.”  Why?  Why cheap out on the only lasting memories of your very special day?  When the day is over you’re not going to have any of the meal left.  None of the booze.  You might have a piece of the cake that you throw in the back of your freezer to find again a year or two covered in ice and drier than a fist full of sand.  Oh you’ll have the video too.  That might get played a couple of times the first year and then again on your anniversary or when friend’s who weren’t there come over to visit.  But that too will be forgotten as time moves on.  To this day my parent’s have their respective wedding day pictures on their dressers.  51 years later!!!!  So why trust your special day to an amateur or Uncle Henry or a student?  These images will last your lifetime and beyond.  Do yourself a favor.  Cut out your Aunt Helen’s third cousin twice removed and her family from the guest list and splurge for a good photographer.  You won’t be disappointed.  I promise.  A professional photographer is going to spend the time with you to make sure that your wedding is captured the way you’d like it.  They are going to take the time to meet with you and maybe even come up with some nice creative ideas to take advantage of the venue, to coordinate the formal portraits and most of all make sure you have some incredible images.  Today I’ve included a little PDF that my late friend Reid put together that he would give out to his prospective wedding clients.  It’s short and to the point.  And I think every bride should read it before hiring a wedding photographer.

 Picking a Photographer

The Cover shot (maybe)

Well last week was an exciting week.  I received a phone call from one of my realtor clients asking me if I could do a shoot for them.  Not a problem.  So we scheduled the shoot for last Thursday.  Well Thursday came and it was your typical grey, overcast late winter day.  Not that  I was thinking the Sun would come out but I was hoping.  I arrived at the property to be greeted by the owner and a woman by the name of Jo Anne Durako.  At this point I really wasn’t sure what was transpiring.  My initial thoughts were that Jo Anne was part of the realtor’s team and was there to kind of oversee things.  Well after talking with Jo Anne for a few minutes it turns out that she is the editor and VP of County Lines magazine and that I was there to provide photographs for the magazine as the property was being featured in the April issue.  Wow!  Awesome!  So I was given relatively free reign.  There were a couple of shots that they asked for specifically but other than that I was told to do what I normally did.   Meanwhile Jo Anne interviewed the homeowner about the features, designer, architect and contractor.   It was a really nice, clean, contemporary home that was actually a conversion that started off as an early 19th century farmhouse.  I would have never guessed that in a million years if I hadn’t inquired.  The day never got any better and I got some exterior shots but they weren’t anything to write home about.  I was really hoping for something that “popped” but I wasn’t going to get it that day that was for sure.  So I went back on Saturday hoping to get something more dramatic.  Again the Sun did not cooperate so I waited for a nice dusk or night shot.  No such luck.  It got cloudy and there was just no color to the sky.  So I sent what I had off to the magazine on Monday morning.  It didn’t take long for Jo Anne to get back to me saying everything looked good except the exterior.  I was expecting that.  Monday afternoon brought out the Sun. Unfortunately I was already committed to another shoot on the other side of town but I told Jo Anne that I’d get over to the property and get a couple of night time shots.   Well what a difference.  Had beautiful clear skies and managed to get this shot.

Jo Anne liked it so much it might be the cover shot for magazine next month!

Here are a couple more from the shoot.