too many of us give our work away,
or dont give equal value for how much we put into our art verses how much we charge for it.

i know i hate to take a discounted price from my friends and so why do i insist they take one from me? i guess it has to do with my feelings of never wanting to appear greedy, not thinking my work is good enough, feeling badly if someone is strapped, etc etc etc. So often i compromise only to end up feeling frustrated and or taken advantage of.

part of this is my own fault for not educating people on everything that is involved in my craft.

its not just taking a picture.
its being aware of lighting, the time of day, the comfort of the subject, the background, the foreground....and thats the easy part.
then it is loading say, 300 images on the computer, looking at each one individually, cropping, tweaking the lighting, evaluating tonal range and contrast differences, erasing little bloopers, blurring the background, adjusting the saturation, .... all sorts of tricks to give you the kind of photo that makes you happy. i have spent up to an hour on a single photo.

working with a higher end camera means bigger photos which
means image sizing the photos so they will fit on a cd.
then there is preparing an image for the web, or for print, making the prints, chosing the paper, framing, uploading, downloading, etc .

all these things are what is referred to as "post production".

some folks think because its a digital camera it should be an easy deal, take the photos and burn to a cd,. but as i hope you can see it is alot more than that.

i imagine if i explained these steps to every client they would better understand why i charge what i do for a shoot.

we as artists do not have to starve. maybe we just need to explain a little more all the sweat and blood and passion that goes into our craft.

after all, thats the kind of magic i find priceless, ....dont you?