first big paid photo shoot

greenpea

This past Friday I got to do my first big paid photo shoot for a local real estate company. They wanted portraits of all their sales people and all of their directors, and photos of each team, a few candid shots, and shots of several offices in their building and shots of the outside of their building. This was one of those deals where someone said to the director of marketing, I know someone who is a photographer... so they emailed me.

The old me wouldn’t have even considered accepting this job in the first place. I largely think of photography as a hobby that’s gotten a bit out of control; this was a job that was going to require some basic lighting (something I have very little experience with) and I would need to work with a lot of different people (something else I don’t have a lot of experience with when it comes to photography).

Some serious reading on dgrin and strobist helped to give me the confidence that I could pull off the lighting, and reading posts of dgrinners and talking to a number of you at Glacier gave me the confidence that I could pull of the business aspect of this.

What I learned:

• It’s not easy to put someone who is in front of the camera at ease, let alone 40+ different people (you start using the same dumb jokes again and again).
• Be prepared for anything; in my case Barack Obama ended up had a rally where we were planning to do our outdoor group shots so they all had to be moved inside (and everyone kept sneaking out to go to the rally).
• Have a big mirror handy, or better yet, have a big mirror handy AND find someone who knows what they’re doing to help you with hair and outfits (someone will always have issues).
• And like I’ve heard so many people say on dgrin, whatever you think you should charge is not enough, it’s going to take a way more work than you think.
• The smugmug pro-account features really do make you look a lot more professional.

Icebear

Congratulations!

Real Estate people are notoriously cheap about photography 'cause they are used to those guys who run around all day shooting snapshots to go on the MLS sites. Don't EVER do that, cause you'll be branded.

greenpea

Icebear wrote:

Congratulations!

Real Estate people are notoriously cheap about photography 'cause they are used to those guys who run around all day shooting snapshots to go on the MLS sites. Don't EVER do that, cause you'll be branded.

I've done a few small real estate shoots for the same company. I did have to initially fight the "why should I hire you when MLS will do this for me", in the end they pretty quickly saw the difference in the quality of the photos.

gman33

Congratulations...I am sure you were nervous....I know I would have been

zacker

congrats.... feels kinda good though, doesnt it.

schmoo

Congrats Andrew! Not so much on the opportunity (because those will come in time) but because of your approach and newfound wisdom. You can't buy that

greenpea

gman33 wrote:

Congratulations...I am sure you were nervous....I know I would have been

Thanks. I was very nervous, but to be honest, I think most of the the people in front of the camera were even more uncomfortable than me though.

zacker wrote:

congrats.... feels kinda good though, doesnt it.

Thanks. It definately feels good! but now I've got 600+ images that I need to finish going through.

schmoo wrote:

Congrats Andrew! Not so much on the opportunity (because those will come in time) but because of your approach and newfound wisdom. You can't buy that

Thanks. The experience is probably is the best part; the experience getting to deal with the business aspect, and the experience of getting an oportunity to play with lighting, stands, reflectors and backdrops stuff that I rarely have an excuse to use.

Ultimately the goal remains to make enough money to pay for the hobby and I'm going to need to do a lot more jobs before I get to that point.