The Documentary Photographer » Photography

Lapland Wedding – Day 4: The 3200

Roger Overall — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 10:28:06 +0000

Yesterday I was in uncharted waters, far outside my comfort zone.

Lapland is a dim place this time of year. It is even dimmer when it’s overcast. And that dimness only lasts for six hours or so. Otherwise it is dark.

Inside, things are only marginally better. Lights are mostly of the low-power tungsten variety. They are intended to glow rather than illuminate.

For an ambient light photographer, that makes things tricky.

I was in a world of 1/20th at f/1.8.

And that at ISO3200 or 6400.

If you’re a photographer, you’ll know that those are numbers to make you go unstable at the knees. If you’re not a photographer, curl up in a ball on the floor and roll around for ten minutes whimpering, “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.” That’ll give you an idea of the horror those numbers represent.

The angels on my shoulder

A decade ago, I would have had to bite the bullet and photograph the wedding using flash.

I hate flash for documentary work. It produces photographs that bear no resemblance to what things looked like.

This was a dark wedding. The photographs had to show that.

Digital camera technology has progressed dramatically, though. While I can’t say the three cameras I had available to me are entirely comfortable at ISO3200, they did their job. In one instance, beyond what I felt was possible. That’s a post for another day. For now, it is enough to say that as yesterday’s murkiness enveloped me I was in good company.

Here is a quick selection of files that I worked on last night while backing up all of the files on to two separate drives. They are rough cuts and there is an imbalance in the coverage of the day. I’ll post a more complete set when I get back to Ireland. For now, these will give you a flavour of the day.

There weren

The groom and his son getting their ties on © Roger Overall 2011

The two stars of the day. That

Talk about practical. A torch mounted in a lipstick applicator to help overcome the murkiness in the cabin © Roger Overall 2011

When this happened, my mind just went,

Natural grace and poise. I couldn

When luck meets the prepared, special things happen. I

Flash would have ruined this © Roger Overall 2011

The final act of the day was the release of about 30 of these lanterns © Roger Overall 2011

The Lucky Photographer

Roger Overall — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:52:30 +0000

Aodan Enright got a plug here last week when he invited me to write a piece for his own blog. He gets another one for sending me a link to an interesting article about luck that appeared on the New York Times’ website. Essentially, the article asks whether stellar business performers are luckier than those who perform to the industry’s standard or maybe just above it. Turns out that answer is ‘No’. Something far more interesting is going on. Superstar performers in business capitalize better on their luck than others – and that includes bad luck.

That got me thinking. Does this apply to documentary photography? Does successful documentary photography rely on the photographer’s ability to exploit the luck that comes their way, rather than them just being lucky?

For instance, a wedding day is a fluid event that has a loose structure. The structure gives you something to hang on to, but generally no collective of people will ever behave the exact same way as another. Circumstances, location and personalities are always different. That makes things very unpredictable. A good documentary wedding photographer is able to process a lot of information quickly, draw out a story and lock it down in a single frame. That skill means they are able take full advantage of any luck that comes their way – that unexpected moment of joy, coincidence, light, circumstance, whatever it is that makes a photograph special

This is the exact opposite of the photographer who sprays a wedding at ten frames a second, hoping to get lucky. Rather, this is the measured approach of a photographer who seeks to tell a story in each frame, priming them to exploit that lucky moment whenever it occurs.

Can it be learned? I think maybe it can. And that has got me thinking about something else.

More to come …

Here's an example of good luck exploited for a particular purpose. It's from a recent wedding assignment in Adare, Co. Limerick. However hard I tried, I couldn't get an engaging photograph of the church. Then a mini-coach from the hotel arrived and wedding guests started disembarking. The sun came out and lit up the church creating a strong reflection in the vehicle's tinted windows. (c) Roger Overall 2011

Housekeeping

Roger Overall — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:27:06 +0000

This is David Cahill, who owns Spa Lighting and Living in Farranfore, Co. Kerry. Taken as part of a commercial assignment, it struck me as a fun idea to ask my assistant at the time to swing a light bulb around his head. It's a competent PR shot, but not representative of who I am and what I'm doing now. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Non-photographers would be astonished at the amount of hard disk space photography consumes. It’s an insatiable beast.

I don’t want to bore you, but I do need to throw some numbers out there. My own office system has at its core a very modest 4 terabyte (TB) of primary disc space, which in turn is mirrored onto a 5 TB back-up device. (As an aside, each of these is internally arranged in a RAID configuration as an additional mechanism to offset an individual disc failure.)

That sounds like a lot of space. It isn’t, really. According to the International System of Units, a terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, which is in turn 1,000 megabytes. My main camera produces a 20MB file per photograph (give or take a megabyte – seriously, at this level of space consumption, who cares?). Given the volume of work that I produce (close to 1,000 frames for a wedding, for instance, and close to 10,000 for a long-term corporate documentary project), a terabyte doesn’t go as far as it used to. Don’t get me started on the space video can occupy.

All of which means that I have to do some occasional housekeeping on the office computer system to keep it nimble and effective by shifting completed assignments on to external drives/optical discs/the cloud/any combination thereof. It depends on the project.

I’m in the middle of a big clear out at the moment and I’m faced with an interesting conundrum. What work do I select for long-term archiving? My wedding work, for instance, has little promotional or commercial value going forward. And do I really want to archive seven years’ worth of weddings? Not especially. Similarly, I have commercial work that is of a standard, but has no bearing on where I am as a photographer now, nor on where I want to go. For the first time in my career, I have to make a choice about which photographs are relevant and deserve space in the archive. (I also have to devise a long-term archiving strategy, but that’s a separate matter.)

So, Dave Cahill’s portrait, above, would be out. This one, which, believe it or not was shot indoors in January on the kitchen floor of a catering company client of mine, is also out:

Yes, this really was taken indoors at night on a kitchen floor in Twickenham. The giveaway is the highlight in the balloon created by a light being bounced off the ceiling for fill. A second, gelled light was placed behind the boy to give a rim light effect, kinda late afternoon in the summer. The grass was added later in post-production. (c) Roger Overall 2008

I have to say, though, it’s been fun looking at my older work and seeing how much I’ve changed as a photographer.

Three In A Row – Day 3

Roger Overall — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:52:59 +0000

There were two subplots to today’s wedding story. The first involved an injury to the groom, sustained in the run-up to the day; the second concerned the weather, which was horrid. The air was filled with particles of water that were swept around by the wind all day. You wouldn’t call it rain. Rain tends to fall downwards. This stuff just hung there and swirled about. It even seemed to go upwards at one point. The really peculiar thing was that the sun was there, just beyond the droplets. It had enough presence to be bright, but not enough to disperse the water and punch through.

That’s what today’s photograph is all about. It’s a scene-setter. Nothing dramatic, but it will in the years to come help the couple recall the odd weather of the day.

Summer in Ireland (c) Roger Overall 2011

Three In A Row – Day 2

Roger Overall — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 22:14:58 +0000

The picture below is a complicated one. It was shot on day two of my three-day wedding marathon and is so packed with story you’d almost think it was a mess. Yet it does hang together.

What drew me in initially was the reflection. The bride and some friends were posing for a group shot, which on its own makes for an interesting image. One of the group is looking up at the bridesmaid on the stairs (the bride’s sister, in fact), which transforms her from a mere spectator; she’s now connected to the group. The piano player is looking straight ahead. You’d almost think that he’s looking at the reflection of the bride. But of course he can’t be. The reflection only works as it is from my position, much lower down. For the photograph, it works though and ties everything together.

Les Rencontres Arles Scrapbook – The Last Page

Roger Overall — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 07:05:05 +0000

This final post comprises quotes and photographs from the 2011 Arles photography festival. The quotes are from conversations that I had with photographers from around Europe during my week in Arles, or snippets I picked up at the exhibits. The photographs are mine.

I’m taking a break from this blog for the rest of the week to concentrate on no fewer than three others. See you back here next week.

Disused engineering shed, Arles, 2011 - (c) Roger Overall 2011

“Professional photography is dead.” More about that one on this blog in the coming weeks, as you can imagine.

Window Light, Engineering Sheds, Arles, 2011 - (c) Roger Overall 2011

“The problem with being in the shallow end is that you don’t know whether you can swim.”

Artelier Mecanique 1, Engineering Sheds, Arles, 2011 - (c) Roger Overall 2011

“You’ll meet a lot more interesting people in the deep end.”

Artelier Mecanique 2, Engineering Sheds, Arles, 2011 - (c) Roger Overall 2011

“If you buy a camera, you are a photographer. If you buy a piano, you own a piano.”

Book Exhibition, Arles, 2011 - (c) Roger Overall 2011

“Been there, done that, this is the T-shirt.” (On a T-shirt)

Stairs, Arles, 2011 - (c) Roger Overall 2011

“Finding the photographer who has the skills to cover an event is not the difficulty. Finding a photographer who can deliver a certain kind of look, a certain kind of feel, that offers both analysis and interpretation can offer the greater challenge.” (New York Times Magazine exhibit)

Abbey, Arles, 2011 - (c) Roger Overall 2011

“Do something, because then you are doing something, which is better than doing nothing.”

Behind The Scenes At Fota Island Resort – Part 2: The Golf Course

Roger Overall — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 08:36:24 +0000

One of the key attractions of a stay at Fota Island Resort is its original championship-level golf course designed by Christy O’Connor Jr and Peter McEvoy. The great and the good of golf have played here. Padraig, Monty, you’d recognize them even if you didn’t play golf. You can see photographs of them on the first floor of the clubhouse.

Luminary visitors and players are all well and good. But without the beating heart of the golf club, the greenkeepers and the golf pros, they wouldn’t come. Without them, the course wouldn’t look as spectacular as it does. Nor would anyone learn to be good enough to play a double-digit round on it.

A golf lesson in progress at Fota Island Resort's golf academy. (c) Roger Overall 2011

The carpark next to the greenkeeper's shed is located between two fairways, and especially exposed to errant shots from one. A huge net protects the cars.(c) Roger Overall 2011

The resort's head golf pro finds time to hone his skills on the putting green. (c) Roger Overall 2011

The marketing manager set me the challenge of photographing a red squirrel. (c) Roger Overall 2011

Food Friday – Inch House Black And White Puddings

Roger Overall — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:35:51 +0000

Inch House black and white puddings. (c) Roger Overall 2011

My daughter has been described by her art teacher at school as “a ticket”. I think that means she’s a character. Or, more exactly, a disobedient charmer.

Yesterday she charmed her way into a free batch of Inch House black pudding while out doing the weekly shop with Anne, my wife. Nora Egan, who produces terrific black and white puddings from her mother’s recipe, had traveled all the way down from Co. Tipperary to cook up and hand out samples at our local supermarket. She got talking to Anne and they spent a good bit of time chatting about the wholesomeness of the puddings. Meanwhile, with no one paying much heed to the freshly-fried sample batch, my daughter helped herself. To all of it.

Anne was mortified. Nora, though, took it all in her stride. She was about to pack up anyway, she said. By the way, she had a small block of uncooked pudding left over that she would have to throw out. Did Anne want to take it away with her?

I don’t know Nora. I’ve never met her. I like the sound of her, though. And I have to say, her puddings are delicious. Not only did Anne arrive back with the left over black pudding sample, she had bought a pack of white pudding too – feeling guilty that our daughter’s appetite had brought a premature end to the sampling session.

It’s probably just as well that she decided to do the grocery shopping late in the afternoon.

Food Friday – Raisin Bread

Roger Overall — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 08:00:30 +0000

My wife and daughter are great bakers. Actually, my wife is. My daughter does participate, but left to her own devices she would likely mix ice cream, flour, some glitter, a doll’s shoe, and possibly a daisy or a beetle to be baked.

We ran out of bread the other day. We could have gone to the shops to buy more. Instead, Anne prepared this in less time than it would have taken me to buy some.

Raisin Bread. (c) Roger Overall 2011

How Should A Newcomer Enter The Market?

Roger Overall — Mon, 23 May 2011 23:03:17 +0000

I recently wrote a post about how I face the possibility of being pushed out of the wedding market. It generated a little bit of comment and a couple of private email exchanges. One of the comments was this, posted by Rick Bennett:

“When a young photog has very little portfolio and no word-of-mouth, it seems to me that price is the only way to attract attention. The alternative is to charge nothing while the portfolio and word-of-mouth develop, and that is difficult to sustain for very long.

I take it from your footnote that you disagree with my perspective (as a new photog with a fledgling portfolio and the whisperings of word-of-mouth). I do hope you’ll expand in a future post what you think the right choice would be (and that isn’t meant as sarcasm–I do hope you will).

Cheers,

Rick”

I promised Rick that I would. Here goes.

When anyone comes into a market that is new to them, it can be overwhelming. This is definitely the case for photographers, regardless of whether they are self-taught or fresh out of college with a degree in photography. The business side of photography is something they simply haven’t experienced yet. So, without guidance, it is tempting for them to base their business on the most obvious unique selling point: “I am cheaper than the next guy.”

It is tempting to do so for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it is an easy model to work with. Find out what others are charging and place your own prices lower.

Secondly, it means you don’t have to face up to the arduous task of figuring out what your own cost of doing business is and building a pricing scheme that matches what you need to earn. By the way, basing your prices on those of others is folly for exactly this reason. You don’t know what other photographers need to earn to cover their own expenses. They may need more than you, or they may need less (their overheads may be low, their spouse may be a high earner who covers the mortgage, etc). If you base your pricing on a photographer’s whose revenue needs are lower than yours, you’ve set yourself up for financial failure from the start.

Thirdly, competing on price means we don’t have to worry about that trickiest of questions: “What is the value of my photography?”

I think that basing a business strategy on low pricing stems from one thing. Fear.

Fear that you are not good enough to charge a sensible rate for your work. Fear that others won’t agree with your valuation.

That fear can come from several sources, but in the case of a new photographer it most likely comes from angst that they will not do a good enough job. They worry that they lack the experience. This may well be the case. After all, if you don’t have a portfolio of wedding work to show, chances are that you are inexperienced.

Inexperience is of itself not a bad thing. It can be overcome.

Yet if you are inexperienced, should you be offering yourself as a professional wedding photographer in the first place? Wouldn’t it be wiser to gain experience as a second shooter for an established wedding photographer before striking out on your own? Wedding photographers, or any photographer for that matter, shouldn’t really be learning their trade on their client’s dime, regardless of how small that dime is, should they?

So, what should they do instead?

Like I say, inexperience is not a permanent state. Enquire with established photographers about shooting for them, or accompanying them as an observer. In some cases, you’ll be met with apathy or even hostility. Don’t worry. Not all established wedding photographers are so insular. Many will agree to let you accompany them. It will be on their terms, but they will let you in. As a side note, make sure you find a photographer who shoots in the style that you are drawn to. No point following a documentary wedding photographer if your heart is set on a more fashion-shoot approach.

Ironically, your goal here, in my opinion, is not to produce a body of wedding photography to show brides. Rather it is to gain experience of what happens on a wedding day and the role of the wedding photographer. Photography is the easy bit. Understanding the mechanics and sensibilities of a wedding day is the real expertise of a wedding photographer.

If your wedding photography doesn't give you a proper yield, you will find it hard to survive. Charge properly from the outset. (c) Roger Overall 2011

But what about photographs?

You’ll probably end up with some pictures by doing this anyway, but even if you don’t, I don’t think you need to worry.

Your key selling point, the one that nobody can compete with you on, is your photographic eye. If you work hard enough at building your own style and interpretation of photography, you will stand out. You will be unique.

That has at least two benefits. One: you can charge a sensible rate. Two: you will be able to attract the right kind of customers

Go out and produce the kind of work that you want to. Build a portfolio of work that is an expression of you as a photographer. Ask friends to model if you want to go down the fashion-shoot route with your wedding photography. If you want to shoot documentary weddings, go and shoot some personal documentary projects. Strengthen your voice, your eye, your style.

If you need to fund this by taking a part-time job in another field, that’s fine. Do what you need to do to pay the bills until you are able to quit the part-time job because your photography is generating sufficient revenue.

Once you have a unique voice, you should value it. That means that you should value your photography. Charging cheaply for your work is the same as admitting that your work has little or no value. And that’s simply not true. Every photographer should be able to stand behind their work and fight for its value. Nobody else will.

Eventually then, you’ll end up in a position where you have experience of what a wedding day is, along with a portfolio of your own singular images.

That leaves one final ingredient; one that is most often overlooked by newcomers and established professionals alike. Your passion. Why do you want to photograph weddings? What is it about them that appeals to you and connects with you deeply? If you can’t answer the last question, wedding photography is not for you. Seriously. Weddings are too important to be tackled by someone who doesn’t connect with them personally. Someone who is dabbling in weddings because it seems an easy business to get in to is no good to the bride and groom. They deserve better. If you aren’t passionate about wedding photography, find another outlet for your photography.

If you are passionate about weddings, you’ll find that your enthusiasm is going to help you tremendously. Sure, you may not have the bulging wedding portfolio, but if you’ve attended enough weddings with an established photographer, you’ll know and appreciate the complexities of the day. You will have experience of weddings. And you’ll be offering quality photography with a style unique to you. If the couple connect with your style and they get the sense that you know what a wedding is all about, and they get your passion, you’re on your way to making that sale. “Listen, your day is going to be fabulous and I would love to capture it for you in this style of photography. Just imagine your wedding expressed in this way.” Some won’t get it. They aren’t your clients. Others will. They are your clients.

Now we’re ready to talk price. This is a blog post in its own right. For the moment, let’s just go on the rule of thirds. It’s a rough rule of thumb, but statistical analysis done in the US by the PPA does bear this out. Two-thirds of what you charge (ex-VAT) goes on costs associated with being in business and undertaking assignments. So roughly one-third of your ex-VAT price is left over for you (and the income tax people). You need to price your work so that that one-third is a sensible amount of money for the effort you put in. In the case of a wedding, that’s easily 40 hours.

Does all of the above guarantee success? Nope. You could do all this, only to discover that the combination of you, your style, your voice, your passion, your photography doesn’t connect with enough people to sustain you in the wedding business. That is what prompted me to write my original post to begin with. However, I do believe you’ll stand a much better chance than if you base your entry to the market on price. That will only work for a while – until the next lot come in and undercut you.

A final note. I want to thank Rick for asking the question. Without such interaction, our profession is going to be poorer. I don’t have all the answers, just strongly held beliefs. I think Rick, by merely asking the question, has shown himself to be engaged with his future as a photographer. He has also afforded me the opportunity to speak my own mind. Thank you, Rick.

The comments are open.