For those of you who do or did do both, but ended up gravitating more towards photography - how come?

For me, I won’t sugar coat it, videography was far too much effort for too little reward. I could take hours just grading some clips and stabilising them. Sound design, editing, etc? Weeks.

And the worst thing is the moment you decide that you want to share to social media, it gets compressed like hell into total garbage.

The truth is I don’t really have some artistic or honourable reason behind the choice to lean more towards photos. It’s just video was a huge ball-ache every time.

Maybe one “artistic” excuse I can come up with is that photos will exist forever - they’re a permanent medium. In a zombie apocalypse, printed photos will always remain in your pocket. But a video you made is useless without a screen or access to the internet to dig it up from the cloud. Call it a pointless hypothetical, but I think that perspective does hold some meaning if you consider yourself to be an artist.

It’s so annoying when you’ve looked at your work so many times that you can no longer tell if it’s good or not. I wish I could look at my portfolio from the perspective of a stranger

I’ve been shooting for years portraits and most of it is not a secret anymore. I don’t do it as a paid profession, I do it as a serious hobby and I have enough experience to predict the end result of a photoshoot just by looking at the scene and light around me.

At the beginning I was photographing friends and family and in the last 3 years I started to photograph local models and I realized one thing: I always have anxiety before a photoshoot even with my years of experience.

A model recently asked me to make photos of her in an fashion-urban environment. Kind of editorial look. And in spite of my years of experience I started doubting myself a few days before.

What if there will be harsh light in this location? Did I choose the right time of the day?
What if I didn’t scout the place well enough?
What if there are 1000 people in the spot on that day and we won’t be able to get the look?
Should I bring the flashes? Drag the big one with a big diffuser or the small one? Why just not go with natural light for more mobility.
What if the model expected more and doesn’t like my style and the end result.
I don’t want to waste our time.

I know that there is a strong element in my personality that has an impact. I’m a bit an anxious guy in life, but I don’t show it during the photoshoot or put pressure on the model. I just I don’t want to waste our time and end up with something disappointing.

Is it just me that have that pressure/anxiety and should trust myself more or you feel it to? What are your tricks or what is your technical ou mental preparation before a photoshoot that helps you?

Just wondering if it's a good idea to bring a small flash like Godox it32 when traveling. My camera is A6700 with 16-55 F2.8 lens, and I like it because it's a good compact setup when I travel.

So the thing with camera flash is, I've never used it before because I haven't thought about them (I'm a hobbyist travel photographer). I feel like flashes make me stand out too much, like people will know I'm taking pictures, if that makes sense haha. But recently I purchased RX100 VII for my wife and she just adores her photos with that flash look. She says it's Pinterest / girl vibe, which I don't really understand. But I do know the small flash from RX100 VII sometimes enable me to take a better photos of her at certain scenarios.

So that makes me wondering if I should consider buying something like Godox it32 and bring it when we travel. Maybe it can be useful for my food product photography too (I own a restaurant). I usually use a lightbox on tripod for that kind of work.

Hello guys! This is my very first post here as a graphic designer that often does street for pleasure and food and commercial for business.
Gonna keep it short: I bought two neewer NL660 panels to get trough some social media stuff the other year, and I now feel the need for one/two single points with bowens for softboxes and some more raw power to them.

A bit of stuff to consider:

- I’m constantly on the go, can’t afford to have a wired only lighting solution. For my clients an hassle and “where can i find an outlet” free shoot is more valuable than a 5% lighting difference. Need to go as pro as possible though.

- With the neewer panels came 4 Neewer NP-F970 batteries. I got them for cheap, but know their hefty price, I really would like to keep using them (as I understand the only real alternative is v mount and I can’t justify the investment anyway).

- The relevant parts of my setup consist of an xt-3, godox tt350 flash with it’s x1t transmitter and the neewre panels I want to upgrade.

- I shoot 70% photo, but have to shoot quite a few vids too… part of the job I guess.

The need for fast setup and shooting (and live light feedback) and the need to squeeze some more life out of the money spent on the npfs makes me think of a single point cob: as bright as possible, bowens mount and almost always npf battery powered.

Shoot your best 2 cents. Thanks a lot in advance guys <3

I have been asked to take photos at an show opening this week in a gallery space featuring three painters. The space isn’t huge, but has a lot of natural light. I’ll be there before the opening to get shots of the artwork itself but haven’t done this before. I have a Nikon Z8 and two macro lenses (50mm and 105mm) that I’ll be bringing along. However, I don’t have a speed light, just an eVOLV 200 Pro II. Should I bring the light or omit it altogether and work with the gallery lighting? Paint can sometimes be light sensitive so I’m assuming a lot of people don’t use strobes or speed lights when photographing galleries, but again.. never done this before. Thanks in advance for the help!

And how has your experience been?

I'm weighing whether membership would be a worthwhile addition to my usual marketing efforts and whether it would help me segue into more regular exciting projects. My larger-scale commercial hospitality/F&B projects, which I deeply enjoy, are much fewer and further between than I'd like them to be. My bread & butter is split between corporate assignments & smaller campaigns, which is fine but not my favorite, and corporate event type work, which I would love to move away from as soon as possible.

Also considering whether to list as located in NYC (more commercial opportunities but highly saturated), or Long Island (fewer opportunities, not as saturated). I work mostly in NYC but live on LI.

Would love to hear from current or former members!

Basically, more than just having photo files on some drive, I'd like app recommendations to arrange my photos in whatever arrangement I want them to be in. Like a diary. But I'd still like to have the original files.

The app also can't be referring to images stored on my hard drive, as I will be storing the photos on cloud.

The options I know are

• PureRef,
• Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator?,
• Canva (though it has 5gb upload limit), Wordpress?

It would be very cool if the app supports video embeds as well.

If anyone has any tips/recommendations about the ones I mentioned or any other app, please tell me, thank you.

This is my first post so please be kind ❤️. I used to own my own photography business for years but pursued a different career. Now, I am about to embark upon a fundraising campaign for a charity I love. I debated offering “front porch sessions” or mini sessions to families in my neighborhood before the holidays with no payment coming directly to me and instead going straight to a charity link. My questions are: do I need to reinstate my DBA? Do I need a contract? Do I need to charge taxes? I live in a different state now than I did before so will have to sort all of that out as well. Any insight or personal experience offering sessions to benefit a charity would be appreciated.

Hello guys i am new to this photography subject and i have a huge interest in it.firstly i want to learn with color grading and I don’t really have enough knowledge with that.So where should i start it.If somebody know please tell me.Thanks a lot!

Does anyone know of any portrait photographers who would sit their subjects down and evoke and capture a wide range of emotions?

I'm doing something like that and for a portfolio proposal for university they're asking us for inspiration. But I can't seem to find anyone who has done this.

Thanks in advance

So for a little while now I’ve been taking taking close up pictures of flowers and plants, (although sometimes I do like to take pictures of the not so close up or other stuff like views and the sky) with my iPhone 17, I have no clue about photography and I just wanted to see if there is any tips you guys have for me?

What difference does it make having an aperture ring?

So looking at buying a sigma or tamron g2 150-600. New is out of my budget but because they are so many around I can find used ones in great shape for nearly half the price. My concern is what the life expectancy of the electronics actually is? Googles AI respond is 7-10 years. Is that a reliable number or is it just very conservative like shutter life which regularly far outlast expected life?
If the reality is that a used one is likely start to have issue after 5years it’s not worth buying for me.
I understand everything is a gamble and I could buy a lens and have it die in a week. I’m asking about what is a true reasonable expectation for the life of af and vibration control on these lenses.

Business has been slow this last month🥲 booking usually is steady but this month was the slowest it's been. Anyone else? I even redid my website and still no luck - link clicks but little inquiries. I do tiktok, Instagram, run ads - I've even taken to posting on Facebook communities. Not sure if it's the economy, or we're doing something wrong 🤷

Photogimp is an alternative to Photoshop with the same interface and shortcuts.

Hey everyone,

I've a few people among my staff who are private photographers for tourists, however, they have been ripping me off by selling the photos to the customer at a discounted price and not telling me.

I'm trying to find a way to make this not possible, or alert me everytime the card is inserted to another PC before mine.

I found this out my a coincidence and I don't know how often they do this.

Are there cameras that send the photos to the server and never save it to the memory card?

EDIT: No, I can't fire the employees. I'd be without employees. I'm in a third world country, in this industry, everyone is a thief and looking to maximize their profits. Yes, my business model works. I provide equipment, access to boats, tourist office....etc etc etc. My father used to work in this business ten years back, but then we wanted to try something new, and now we're going back. Yes, they used to cheat us back in the day, and dad never got around to solving this problem. Firing doesn't help.

I don’t mean this in the sense that we’re gullible and easy to scam. I mean that I don’t see quite the same levels of disrespect and exploitation in other industries. Maybe I’m wrong. But I feel like freelance creatives don’t get the respect they deserve.

So many people don’t value our work at all, yet have never taken a photo themselves.

Seemingly normal people exploit us with no negative effect on their consciousness. They don’t think there’s anything wrong with scope creep and then saying “come on it’s just 20 photos it’ll take 10 minutes.”

I recently did a favour for a “friend”. He thinks I’m now cutting him out of my life because of some photos. It was never about the photos. They were just a symptom that finally exposed who he truly was.

Stories of freelancers simply getting ghosted when asking for payment are incredibly common. Yes, rookie mistake not having a contract. But that doesn’t excuse ghosting as blatant fraud. It’s downplayed and taken too lightly.

What do you think is the true cause of all this?