My main computer has been in the shop a month now. And for once, I was prepared and life was not a disaster. I had recently moved all my email accounts to Gmail, so no hiccups there. I have all my software duplicated on my laptop which is powerful enough to run it all. Hooked my lap top up to my big monitor, installed my latest backup of my desktop and Bob’s your Uncle I was back in business in five minutes.

I’ve learned to make use of any business downtime. When you’re not shooting, and not marketing yourself, you should be preparing your business for any and all disasters that can happen from time to time.

There are two key factors I use when developing my price list. One, how much is the gal/guy down the road charging? And, two, how much do I want to make per hour?

So how do I figure that out?

First, how much is everyone else charging? Google has made this formerly painstaking task so much simpler. Back in the day you would need to phone through the Yellow Pages to check out the competition.  Now a simple Google search should bring up your competition, and if they are smart they have the prices clearly stated. For those photographers that don’t publicize their prices on the web you’ll have to pick up the phone and do it the old fashioned way.

When I first started I made a list of services I would offer and then listed the prices of my competitors beside each service.  In my first year, I charged the same as the lowest priced competitor, each year I have raised my prices.

What is your hourly base rate going to be? How much do you feel you should earn per hour?  It could be $25.00 per hour, or $50.00, or a $100.00 or whatever you feel your skills and talent are worth.  This is something only you can decide.

Once you come up with that number you need to add to it. As a business person you won’t be eligible for unemployment insurance, workman’s compensation, health or dental insurance or any benefits that people who work for someone else generally are entitled to.

You are also going to incur costs most workers don’t. This is your overhead. Equipment, insurance, supplies, advertising, etc.  You need to factor this into your hourly rate. I doubled my base price to come up with my final hourly rate. So if I figure I want to earn $50.00 per hour, I add $50.00 to cover my overhead and come up with an hourly rate of $100.00.

The biggest mistake new commercial photographers make is not accurately estimating how many hours they need to charge for. Setting the number of hours for the shoot and sticking to it is the easy part but how many hours are you going to charge for the post processing?

When you price an eight hour wedding package you need to bill for more time than the eight hours you spend shooting. Don’t find yourself working for pennies because you didn’t factor in the time you will spend dealing with the client, running around picking up prints and books, processing photos, colour correcting, retouching, burning DVDs, matting, putting albums together, etc. etc.

Special prices for special people and jobs.

There are going to be jobs that you really really want to do, even if it means less money. Maybe the subject is something that really interests you, or it would look fabulous in your portfolio, or perhaps it is a cause near and dear to your heart. Let’s separate these into three categories, pricing for friends, pricing for cool things you would love to do and pricing for charitable causes.

Pricing for friends.

This one is easy; I give them my friend’s discount of 10% off. Or more depending on how friendly they are to me. This is easy to manage, doesn’t take a lot of fancy math, and it shows right on the invoice what the actual price was and how much I discounted. Your do write up an invoice right?

Pricing for the job you want really, really bad!

You’ve been asked to give a quote for shooting promo shots for a rock band you’ve idolized for years. I’d offer them a deal, a great deal. Discount it by whatever percent represents your desire to do the work. Or offer to do it for free but with a model release and you own the copyright. Make sure they know what a deal they are getting by making it clear on your quote and invoice.

Pricing for charitable causes.

Similar to friends or for jobs you want badly. You may choose to do it pro bono, but make sure you provide a quote in writing so they know what the donated services are worth. You’ll get a lot more respect if people realise how much you’re donating to their  cause.

Quotes

How about quotes? When people ask you for a price that doesn’t fit into your packages you need to give them the price in writing. Never give an estimate or quote over the phone. Take time to think about it and write it out. It is far better to send them an email with a written quote than to give some number off the top of your head over the phone.

Of course there is fancy software for pricing and invoicing for photographers. I’ve not found it necessary to go beyond a MS Word template but the software is out there if you need it.

When I get some more time, I’ll write a bit more about copyright and limited usage rights. Oh and contracts! You need to have contracts! And model releases!

I wasn’t alone. These kinds of photographs raised an entire generation of us to care about the world around us and the people in it. Photography has brought the world into our living rooms and provided us with stronger emotional connections than any previous generation. Photography allows us care about that which we can’t sense or experience directly.

But these days, the connection between photography and the real issues of the world has changed. It is no longer simply about bringing the crises to light. Most of us already care about the problems, but may not know how to address or solve them. Wonderfully, photography now plays a part in the solutions. Now we can document how conservationists are making a difference, and illustrate the fantastic successes of many conservation efforts, not to mention humanitarian aid and relief programs around the world. These photos show us what is possible and encourage us to become actively involved.

This issue brings us John Lowman’s photography of Maplewood Flats and the diverse wildlife there. This kind of photographic effort serves to keep the value of these natural resources fresh in our minds. And that awareness is vital to ensuring that they are protected and remain natural marsh and mud flat habitats instead of becoming boat marinas and parking lots.

Likewise, Chris Harris explains in his article that the goal of his book was to increase awareness of British Columbia’s grasslands. After gazing at the landscapes in his photos, one can’t help but to feel the importance of protecting them from urban expansion and inappropriate land management.

Today, there is a worldwide ban on the driftnets that killed turtles in the past. Similarly, a moratorium on whaling is in place. Doctors without Borders was born out of the suffering in Biafra. Thanks to photographers, the people and environments of the world have never been so real to us.

It’s impossible these days to turn a page, click a link, or compete without encountering photographs we commonly call HDR. Love it or hate it, it’s everywhere. I noticed photos described as HDR popping up with increasing frequency on the web in 2008. Wikipedia’s first entry on HDR dates 2003. The first photo I could find on flickr.com with the HDR tag appeared in 2005. Both Photoshop and Photomatix appeared on the scene in 2007 with HDR capabilities that made technology accessible to photographers.

HDR is a set of techniques that can be used to greatly expand on the natural range of your camera, and present the captured images in a way that more closely represents the way our eyes capture the dynamic range of the world. It’s a funny truth that what we usually call HDR is really LDR (low dynamic range)! Real HDR cannot be seen on a monitor or printed page, the images we see are the result of tonemapping (compressing the tones of) an HDR file into the limited range that can actually be displayed.

It’s worth noting that HDR is by no means new, and it all started with film. In the 1850s, Gustave LeGray was manually combining exposures to create seascapes that are thought to be the first HDR photos. Charles Wyckoff created multi-layer film and invented darkroom techniques for tonemapping. These techniques were used to photograph the early atomic bomb tests, photos of which appeared on the cover of Life magazine in the 1940s. Much of what we think is “new” in photography is just the old in a thin disguise.

My early experience with HDR was to use it in a commercial application, my real estate photography, to get a wider range of exposure in my photographs of interiors with ocean views. I’ve since added it to my tool box for landscape photography and am intrigued with the results I can get. I know many of you out there are also experimenting with HDR. I’m inviting you to show us your best HDR photos. In our next issue we’ll devote a section to HDR, how to do it, and what results you can get from this technique. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ve got!

If you haven’t tried HDR yet, please take advantage of the 20% discount on Photomatix, a special offer for CAPA members. You can get the discount code by visiting our web forum on the CAPA website.

And up until this decade, slides were the standard way to provide photos for many competitions as well as inclusion in printed publications such as this one. If we shot negative film, we might be able to submit the prints produced from it. We didn’t send unprocessed negatives; we wouldn’t know what they looked like, and nobody would want to deal with processing someone else’s photos.

These days, many of us have made a transition from film to digital photography, and processing photos is an activity for which photographers now have far more responsibility.

As most of us are finding out, walking into a lab (or a big box store), and handing someone a memory card will often result in prints which are passable but not great. And because raw images are today’s unprocessed negatives, we really must process and output them appropriately them before sending to a publisher, a skill which is not found in camera manuals. The following guidelines and steps will not cover the conversion of raw files, nor the many possible ways of manipulating a photo. We will only concern ourselves here with the output process. Of course there is no one true method of digital output; once you understand it, there is room for personal preferences. Consider this one starting point for someone who has not yet wrapped their head around the subject.

First, let’s discuss the importance of pixels. The pixel dimensions (resolution) of a digital file determine how large it can be printed. To use this magazine as an example, our pages measure 8.5 by 11 inches. If we want to print one of your photos on a full page (or the cover), your file would need to at least 2550×3300 pixels. This is the size produced by a camera with an 8.4 megapixel sensor. The smallest size we are likely to use for a photo is 1/4 page, which requires 1275×1650 pixels, or about 2.1 megapixels. Photos with fewer pixels than this can only be printed at diminutive sizes which won’t do them justice.

Second, on the important subject of resizing, or resampling: Don’t do it. Increasing the number of pixels by upsampling may seem like a way to meet the pixel requirements of a larger print size, but the new pixels added by upsampling do not add new detail, and the print will not be sharp. Don’t downsample either. Labs and publishers will downsample as necessary for their output devices, and repeated resampling reduces the sharpness of your photo.

Third, what about cropping? Keep in mind that if you crop your image, you reduce the number of pixels it contains. This is important when submitting to a magazine. Since magazines may need to crop your image for layout purposes, it is generally best to send the uncropped image and give the designer the most pixels to work with. On the other hand, when preparing an image that you plan to print at a specific size, it is almost always necessary to crop, at least slightly. If you do not, the lab doing your printing will do it for you, without any consideration for your composition. To crop an image in Photoshop for 8.5×11″ printing:

1. First, choose the crop tool from the toolbox.
2. Set the width to “11 in” and the height to “8.5 in” in the Options bar (reverse these for a vertical orientation).
3. Make sure to include the “in” (but without quotes).
4. Click and drag from near the top-left corner of the photo toward the lower-right and release.
5. Adjust the crop box by dragging the square points at the corners. When you’re happy with the crop, press Enter.
Finally, whether you are taking your photos to a lab, or sending them to a magazine, you must save them in a particular format. In most cases, JPEG is acceptable, and it’s easy to do with Photoshop.

1. Go to File>Save As. Choose JPEG as the Format. Enter an appropriate name such as yourname_subject.jpg and click Save.
2. In the dialog window that pops up, choose the highest quality setting and click OK.

You can post your photo assignments and participate in the discussions. This is a way for us to all keep in touch after you’ve completed your course.

Here are instructions for creating a Flickr account if you don’t have one and for joining the group:

Step 1 – Sign In as a New User at www.flickr.com

Click on the “Create Your Account” button that is located at the top right hand corner of the screen. You will then be directed to sign into your Yahoo! Mail account due to the fact that Flickr is owned by Yahoo! If you do not have a Yahoo! email account you can create one by clicking “Sign Up” at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. If you have already have a Yahoo! email account enter your user name and password then click on the “Sign In” button, then skip to step 3.

Step 2 – Sign Up

To create a Yahoo! Email account click on the “Sign Up” button at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. You will then enter your personal information into the boxes on the next page. You will need to enter your (real) name, birth date, gender and location. Next you will select a user name that you will use to access your email account as well as a password. Both pieces of information should be unique. However, they should also be easy to remember.

Lastly, you will need to agree to the Terms of Service. You can do this by clicking on the check box next to “I Agree” at the bottom of the screen. You should take the time to read this document and understand the Terms of Service for the Yahoo! website. Once you have done this press the “Continue” at the bottom of the screen. On the next screen click on the “Continue” button after reading the introductory information. You are now ready to use your Yahoo! email account.

Step 3 – Choose a Screen Name

Now you will choose a Flickr screen name. This screen name will be the user name for the site, therefore it should be something that you can easily remember. Next you will click on the “Create New Account” button on the bottom of the screen. You are now ready to use your Flickr photo sharing account.

Step 4 – Join the Photo_Gurus Group

Now to join the Photo Gurus group you need to sign into your Flickr account, then click on the “Groups” tab at the top of the screen. Go to the search window on the right side of the screen and type in Photo_Gurus then click on the “Join This Group” link on the right side of the screen. Since the group is invitation only you will receive an email giving you access and then you are on your way.

If you have any problems please let Sheena know.

This six-week course takes the mystery out of producing better photos. Tailored for beginner to intermediate photographers, this course teaches you simple techniques for great lighting and composition, and how to get the most out of your equipment.

Learn the exposure triangle and make great photos regardless of the lighting. Discover how to use depth of field to your advantage in creating interesting and exciting photographs. Unearth the mysteries of your histogram. Gain the confidence to stop using your DSLR as a point and shoot, get out of Program/Auto mode. Use those “bells and whistles” to make photos people will “ooh” and “ahh” over. And you don’t have to be a geek to take this course, we take the geek out of photography! This course is perfect for you if:

• You’re just getting started with photography.
• You’re moving from film to digital photography and want to build on the skills you’ve already got.
• You have some experience and want to keep learning and improving your abilities.

Each week we will start off with a group critique of the previous session’s assignment, so you get feedback from not only your instructor but also your peers. You’ll leave the session with an assignment so that you can practice what we preach.

Your course fee includes class notes, so that you can study and refer to them later, without worrying about forgetting what you’ve learned in class.

Course Outline

Equipment

All participants must have a DSLR camera with manual controls for shutter speed and aperture. Please note that this course will teach you about the functions that all DSLRs have in common, but it’s not possible to point out where every function is found on every camera. It’s important that you use your manual to become familiar with the specific controls for your camera.

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Photographers of any level can learn how to make their photos shine using Adobe Photoshop. In this six-week, hands-on course, we’ll help you understand the key concepts like layers and masks, and show you how to choose the right tools and successfully apply them to your own images.

Each week’s session will include a hands-on step-by-step tutorial covering specific tasks and aspects of the software. Your course fee includes a CD containing the files and notes for all the tutorials, so that you can study and refer to them later, without worrying about forgetting what you’ve learned in class

Course Outline

This class is limited to ten students.

Equipment

All participants must have and bring to the sessions a notebook computer with Photoshop CS2 or higher (Not Limited Edition or Elements) installed. Students must have the Adobe Camera Raw plugin installed and be able to open raw files before the class begins. Photo Gurus cannot provide support for installation of Photoshop, ACR, or other computer issues. If you are having any difficulties with this, Photo Gurus can recommend a local computer support person who can take care of the requirements for a reasonable price.

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