Mar
08
2010
Just a quick update to let everyone know that I removed the photo gallery for the time being. It was getting spammed left and right for the past few days. I was quite frustrated trying to deal with it and just decided to throw in the towel. Either our website, the photo gallery software or our internet was getting hung up whenever I tried to maneuver through the admin section and it was taking forever to make sense of it all. I had just re-done it anyway and it had no comments and I had only gotten 3 photos re-loaded. Thankfully it’s not a big loss. At this point I’m not sure if I will re-install the software or not. With Flickr and the built-in photo functions of Wordpress it may be worth it for me to just try to work something out within the blog.
Feb
13
2010
There’s a possibility that Tom will have to leave for training soon after Little Miss arrives. Because of this I have really been itching to get a new family photo done. Obviously it makes more sense to wait until after she arrives to have it done. We haven’t had our picture taken together since Anthony was 18 months old, right before Tom left for his 2nd deployment to Iraq. The boys haven’t had their photos done together since Alex was born. We just couldn’t afford to take them like we wanted.
To help offset that I wanted to take more pictures of them, better pictures. Tom must’ve thought this was a great idea because for Mother’s Day 2006 he gave me my first DSLR. I loved it. Soon after I was already making a list of lenses I wanted to buy. That Christmas, Tom gave me a 50mm 1.8 lens – I fell even more in love with the whole thing.
Right now I’m searching for a family photographer that also does great newborn work. Our session will mainly focus on shots of the family, but I would like a couple newborn shots also. I am going to try to do the majority of her newborn shots myself, but I know that everyone has different ideas and I am open to trying them out. I’ve found quite a few family photographers that fit into the style I want, but they are expensive. One I contacted because I could afford her sitting fee and she mentioned her pricing started at $25 a la carte. Which seemed totally reasonable to me. She directed me to another portion of her website with more information for clients. There I saw her package details and pricing, I was immediately discouraged. Tom and I had agreed that we would try to just order the digital negatives so that we could order what we could afford when we could afford it. Her digital negatives were over $1000. She cut you a break if you placed a print order of $1000, the digital negatives were then only $800. After the session fee, and the additional monies for prints and digital negatives it added up to nearly 3/4 of Tom’s monthly pay. We just couldn’t justify it, no matter how much I loved her work.
I recently contacted another photographer who listed her location as San Diego and had rates that we could afford and her work was what we were looking for. I emailed back and forth with her a few times and explained what we were looking for, the date I was interested in was open so she sent a money request through Paypal for the session fee. This is where I found out that she’s located an hour south of us, an hour with no traffic that is. I know San Diego is a big area, and it’s easy to generalize, maybe this is on me for jumping the gun and not asking in advance? I don’t know, but I have to wait for Tom to get back from his ship op before I can commit to anything with her.
Now I don’t expect anyone who is a talented photographer to put themselves out there and charge next to nothing. I know that you get what you pay for and I’m more than willing to pay for someone with a great eye to take some wonderful photographs of my family (that include me for a change! lol). It is just completely discouraging that I look at their rates and I can’t even save for the costs in 4-6 months.
Though, I have to say that this cements my desire to make my own mark in this business. I have re-committed myself to practicing more. I’m going to sell my 85mm lens so that I can replace my 50mm, or maybe get a different one – I have to sell the 85mm before I can do anything else. I am going to be on the hunt for great props for newborns. I am going to try my best to take some great shots of Little Miss once she arrives. I just hope that I can make it all work.
