Browsing my favourite site of all photography, DPReview, I came across their posting about craigslist ad and respond published on PetaPixel. It is a topic of wedding photographers: how much they charge and how some people think that those prices are outrages.
My first reaction was: why DPReview, professional site, would post “news” not worthy nor professional enough to discuss. Opinions about “over-priced” products could be everywhere: Walmart vs Gucci, Hyundai vs Bentley, Dom Perignon vs Henkell Trocken.
I shot wedding before and I do realize how much work it is, but I am not defending nor supporting photographer Nikki Wagner, I actually think it is unprofessional to try to defend your prices – if you are professional, and you value your work, that’s the only reasoning behind your prices, not how much it cost you to run your business.
Here are two examples:
Scenario (a) – with today’s technology and power of photo editing software you can take photos with Canon T2i – perfect little camera. Cost: $869,99 CDN, and you get two lenses. For additional $126,99 CDN you can get good enough 50mm portrait lens. This camera shoots in RAW, so using great software DxO Optics Pro, you can ‘fix’ distortion and even color process images like it came from 5D Mark II, all for $99. As for photo manipulation, there are tons of software out there, which perform same functions as Photoshop, if you know what you are doing: free Gimp, or PixelMator. At the end of the day, as my mentor Terry Cioni once said: “the most important thing in photography is not camera nor lenses but two inches behind viewfinder”. For other points outlined in the article: hosting – I pay only $8,95 for DreamHost and it has unlimited space and bandwidth; don’t buy car – rent it at the time you need it, it’s like $30 per day etc.
Scenario (b) – when photographer is charging 5K for a wedding, it is not just equipment and supplies that are included in that price – it is years of experience, hours of photo manipulation and experimenting and strive for perfection as an artist. As a perfectionist in my own photography, I do understand that it’s not pure hardware/software cost – it is much more than that.
So with all that said, my final thought is that both craigslist ad poster and photographer who wrote the article both have valid points. But both DPReview and Nikki Wagner lost their argument, failed to make a point and came out as un-professional. Real artist do not have to ‘explain’ to others why his/hers art cost that much – the price is set and people have freedom to choose to either pay it or not. And as a professional photographer news site, dpreview, please stick to what you do the best – review equipment, post photography news, and provide interesting professional grade articles. Leave ‘childish’ arguments to somebody else. People have choice to either wear Walmart $29 jeans or pay $400 for D&G, drive $13,000 Hyundai or $400,000 Bentley – and it does not make them as suckers to spend that much money nor cowards to charge that much.
Happy shooting!
Tags: Photography
These are official photos of new, 2010 Mazda3 revealed 
We’ve got another family in our apartment, better said – on our balcony… Yes, birds…
It started quite interesting, I had my ashtray hidden in that bird’s house, in my smoking days… Then, all of the sudden, earlier this year, when I stepped out on the balcony to smoke a cigar, I reached into the bird’s house, to get my ashtray and found something soft, it was bird’s nest…
This afternoon, as usually, I glanced into a hole of the bird’s house, and, in usual spot where the bird was, I’ve noticed something yellow. I guessed that it was little birds, so grabbed my camera and, try not to disturb them too much, took couple of shots.
