We’ve been getting a lot of the following lately so I am just going to publicly address each “issue.” I feel like I’ve done this before but I am sure my answers have somewhat evolved and my personal perspective and philosophies have changed a bit since then so here goes…
Misconception #1: “You charge a lot of money to shoot. You must have a lot of money! Can’t you afford to charge me less?” Actually, we are still a little under industry standard rates and after you boil it down (factoring in time for planning, prep, the actual shoot, the interaction after, the editing time, and often times the long commute time) we only make somewhere between $10 and $16 per hour. The amount varies considering commute time, interaction/planning time and how much editing each client requires, of course. You may only be with us for a couple hours but that does not in any way mean we only put a couple hours of work into your photo shoot.
Misconception #2: “So many alt photographers are cheaper and include everything so you should too!” Just because a lot of people are offering astronomically low rates that include everything under the sun does not mean you are getting more for your money. We do our best to be genuine “quality over quantity” photographers. “You get what you pay for.” We try to offer an experience, not just a service. This makes all the difference as far as our regular clients and friends are concerned!
Misconception #3: “If you decide to visit my city I would like to shoot with you.” We don’t decide what cities we are visiting. We have never been the ones that decide all of that. We go where the bookings are… so if you want(ed) us to visit you would simply need to book a session. We’re not going to just wake up and decide we feel like visiting Little Rock, AR or Cleveland, OH. I assure you of this! I know a lot of people “tour” this way but to us that’s more of a road trip. And we don’t have time for road trips… so we tour. We go where the bookings are.
Misconception #4: “You guys say you’re done touring but you have always been touring photographers and we all know you will be touring again within 6 months!” We used to actually be based in Boston and did pretty alright for ourselves. We are not just “touring photographers” and I assure you that after this final tour we will be based in Philadelphia, Boston and Miami and won’t be doing any country-wide tours anytime soon… if ever again. It has been awesome but it has also been draining and it has truly exhausted our car. So many people say, “buy a new car!” Please see misconception #1 and then factor in the fact that we have a ton of bills. Buying a new car is probably one of the most unrealistic things we could do right now. This is…. our final country-wide tour.
Misconception #5: “I worked with you last month so why am I not published yet?” We work with approx 40-120 lovely women, per tour. The end result for each shoot varies from 3 final images up to 50 final images (per client.) This leaves us with a lot of submittable content but we can only send in so many images to a publication at a time. Some people get published 24 hours after we edit an image (magazines will see a teaser online and e-mail us asking for the set) and then other times it takes a magazine 3 years to pick up some of the content. We have some pretty heavy galleries that we consistently feed for certain publications and it’s all a matter of what they are looking for at that moment. They may not want to use your images right now but in a few months your set might be just what they are looking for. Patience is a virtue.
Misconception #6: “You only get big models published and give them higher priority.” This is probably the MOST untrue of all the misconceptions. If you look over all of our tear sheets you will quickly see how untrue this is. It is actually quite the opposite! “Popular models” get published ALL THE TIME so we really try to pull for the newer models and the up and comers! We get especially excited to get people who have NEVER been published before in magazines!
Misconception #7: “You could shoot me for $80 and you know it you just don’t want to.” OK actually, this isn’t a misconception. You are totally right. We don’t particularly want to work for $1.75 an hour after everything is said and done. Would you do your job for $1.75 an hour?
