"You just take pictures though..."

How many photographers have heard that.. and how many of you as a client have said or thought that? These days with everyone having camera phones and DSLR cameras it's easy to think "but you just take pictures". How many photographers reading this have received this replay after sending your pricing, "oh, my friend has a nice camera, I will just have her do it for free"? Just like anything else, you get what you pay for. We put hours into making your images perfect. A tiny portion of my job is taking pictures, the rest is editing, emailing, ad building, website building, invoicing, planning, location scouting, blogging, posing ideas and design. Being a photographer is so much more than going out for an hour, taking some pictures, throwing a quick edit on them, charging the client and calling it good. We stress about lighting, kids nap times, the perfect location, dads not smiling, cards failing, the weather, realizing our ISO was too low or high when the sun changed and everything else under the sun!

I promise, before I even get to your session, I have put in at least a couple hours to make sure your session runs perfect. I location scout, know everyone in the shoots name & age, figure out lighting time, figure out what you plan on doing with the images & which poses and games will work with your group. Showing up at location and shooting your families session, maternity shoot or your birth is the fun part!

The hours behind the scene is what no one sees. For a simple family session I have sat behind the computer for up to an hour simply culling their session. For those of you that have no idea what culling is, it's going through every single picture and keeping the best ones. Once I've gone through 500-1,000 images, kept the best 300 or so, guess what? I do it again! Then I cull them down to the ones I'm going to edit and deliver.

Then comes the editing! For a full family session this can take anywhere from 2-5 hours. Yeah I said it, 5 HOURS! When you have your style down editing becomes a breeze, until someone's hair is out of place in every image or we found the perfect location but there was signs or fencing in the way. I make sure hair, teeth, skin and underclothing lines are good in every picture.. every. single. one. Don't get me wrong, I draw a line, and lots of extra editing gets charged extra for but even just the basics takes time.

Next time you ask for a quote from a photographer understand there is reason behind that pricing, it doesn't just come out of thin air. Their pricing comes from their own individual CODB (Cost of doing business) and they have bills to pay too. No two are the same, no two should charge the same & no two will do the job the same.