Brining Photography Weblog

Bogus Modelling Agencies?

My step-daughter (let's call her Helen for purposes of this story) recently decided that she'd like to try her hand at modelling, no doubt fuelled by the apparent instant-success culture of the American TV teen programmes that she so enjoys watching. 

As she was so convinced that she was the Next Best Thing, she was given the task of doing some research to find a suitable agency to approach. After many hours of searching and excited appearances from behind the computer with another wad of information for us to patiently sift through, she finally found one that she liked the look of.

The agency, let's call them "New Faeces", requested she send a selection of photos for evaluation purposes. No problem there then. I was duly pressed into service to provide said pictures and these were subsequently despatched to the agency with accompanying documentation.

All OK so far.

A few weeks later, just as my wife and I thought it had all been forgotten, an email turned up saying that "yes indeed, Helen could be the Next Best Thing" and all that was required now was a cheque for £125 to "register" her with the agency and for them to produce a handful of picture cards.

Note that at this stage there was no offer of a contract or any guarantee of work. At all. What the £125 fee 'guaranteed' (and this was never tested) was that Helen's details would be kept on file and when a potential client requested details of a model that fit Helen's profile she, along with the however many hundred other 'matches', would pop up and her details made available to them. 

From this, she MAY have been chosen to attend an audition, and following this she MAY have been picked and offered the contract.

The point is that there's an awful lot of "MAYs" involved, having already parted with a not insubstantial amount of cash. Now call me sceptical but there are a considerable number of young and eager aspiring models out there, perhaps more ready to shell out the money than we were in the hope of gaining a lucrative contract. You don't really need any mathematical prowess to work out how much money could be made from this - let's call it - scam.

Interestingly, a very well-known and respected agency - let's call them Storm Models - say on their website that "We will NOT ask you for any money up front - that includes NO joing fee." and that entry into their agency is purely by interview i.e. if they don't think that you are suitable for modelling work, you don't get in. But more importantly, you've lost nothing in the process. 

Even more interestingly, we hear in the news recently that the Government are currently investigating these bogus modelling agencies who charge fees to join. Makes you wonder how prevalent this is for the Government to get involved doesn't it?

So to all you aspiring models out there, I'll happily take a portfolio of pictures for you but beware who you submit them to!

The Importance of Qualifications

Further to my previous post about the benefits of using a Professional Photographer, I thought I'd follow it up with a post about the importance of using a QUALIFIED Professional Photographer.

What's the difference you may ask - surely by definition a "professional" anything must be qualified? Well no. Not in the case of a photographer. The definition of a 'professional' (according the dictionary on my MAC) is "someone who is engaged in a specified activity as their main, paid occupation rather than as a pastime" Thus the act of being paid defines the 'professional' status.

All very well so far, but this doesn't necessarily guarantee any degree of competence - this is merely implied by the 'professional' moniker. The truth is that although it is possible for a relatively unskilled person to make money from photography by using one of the latest highly-automated cameras, and thus call themselves a "professional", prospective clients and customers should always look for a measure of defined competence which only comes with a qualified professional photographer.

To gain a qualification, issued by one of the three main awarding bodies  - the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP), Master Photographers' Association (MPA) and the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) - a photographer has to demonstrate not just photographic skill, but artistic and technical ability, presentation skills and excellent customer service before being allowed to use the relevant letters after their name on business cards, letterheads etc.

From a client's point of view, booking someone who is a member of an accredited body gives them the peace of mind that, should there be a problem with a job which cannot be resolved directly with the photographer, they have at least got a third-party to go to. Also, as qualified members of a professional body, we photographers are duty-bound to uphold the high standards set by them when dealing with our clients and customers. A win-win situation.

So just as you would think twice about using an unqualified plumber who turned up with a shiny bag of spanners and a cheeky smile to fix your heating, you should apply the same logic when choosing someone to record your precious memories, capture your event or promote your products.

Let the cowboys stay with the cattle.

COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY - WHY USE A PROFESSIONAL?

In these days of affordable and high-quality digital cameras, suddenly everyone has become a photographer. This is particularly relevant in the arena of commercial photography where more and more businesses are deciding to purchase a 'pro-sumer' DSLR for a few hundred pounds and set about taking their own images for use in their brochures and on their websites.

Now this is all very good - I can see the logic - why pay about the same cost of the camera to a professional photographer for just one job? After all, once purchased, the camera can be used again and again whereas, not unreasonably, the photographer would expect to be paid every time.

The trouble is, it's not just a camera that you need to take top quality photographs. In addition to (at least one) camera, you need a selection of lenses for different images (and these ideally need to be pro=grade lenses which are inevitably expensive) lighting equipment - and this doesn't include the camera's built-in flash - backgrounds / light tents, computers, hard-drives, memory cards, software etc - all of which suddenly starts bumping the cost up appreciably.

But more than equipment, you need skill, experience and artistic ability

All the gear in the world isn't going to give the best quality images when it's in the wrong hands. As with anything else, it's not the tools that makes the craftsman. (Or should that be craftsperson?!)

So in addition to photographic skill and the ability to position, light and shoot your products to display them at their best, other considerations for using a professional photographer include insurance, backup (more on this later) and TIME. Photography is what we do - that's how we spend our days. It's our job. Your job is to make things, or sell things or to provide a service to others, and if you're busy doing your job, you shouldn't have the time available to spend taking photos!

Other considerations are what will happen with the images after they have been taken and processed (even digital images need an amount of processing) and this particularly applies as to what format(s) the final images are required to be supplied in. For example a magazine advert would probably want a 300ppi CMYK TIFF file, whereas your website people would be expecting a 72ppi sRGB JPEG with web compression. Would you know how to do this? Why should you? It's not your job!!

I mentioned backup earlier and this is an important consideration. A professional photographer backs up every job in at least two different and physically separate locations, so when a year after completion of a job a client realises that they've lost the CD of original images, they can simply ring up the photographer and request another one, as happened to me recently. If the client had taken their own photos, would they have made duplicate copies, or made additional backups? Probably not.

Ultimately, photographs of your products or services are often a prospective customer's first impression of your company, and therefore should be portrayed, literally, in the best possible light. There seems to be a growing acceptance of things being sub-standard or low-quality (generally, but that's another story) with the thought that, with DIY photography for example, it doesn't really matter what the image looks like, because once the customer sees 'the real thing' they're bound to be impressed. But will the customer get as far as seeing the 'real thing'? Would you buy bread from a baker who displayed a stale or mouldy loaf in the window and kept the best loaves inside? Certainly not.

I'm constantly amazed at some of the frankly awful pictures that appear not just on company websites, but in magazine adverts too. This particularly applies to staff photos in the popular 'Meet the Team' page on a website. Rather than having a group of consistent portraits, nicely lit against a crisp white background, or properly posed in a specific location, we get a selection of Crimewatch mugshots of people stood against a wall and blasted with the on camera flash, or gurning up from behind their computer. Not the most flattering of pictures either way.

The bottom line is, that adopting a DIY approach is not necessarily the best way to go. By the time you've factored in the cost of buying the camera (ideally two for when one inevitably develops a fault) additional lenses, the lighting and ancillary equipment that you'll need and then added in the cost of the hard-drives to back everything up, plus the value of the time spent setting up and taking the photos, you'll have spent a lot more than employing a professional in the first place.

Remember, in business, image is everything!

The final word on this should go to John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) who observed:

"It is unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little.

When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that is all.

When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it cannot be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better"

SHE BAR (Part 2)

Some time ago, I was commissioned to photograph a new restaurant which had opened in Kenilworth - namely the She Bar and Brasserie. At the time, the road outside was being altered into a new one-way layout (which many people still seem to ignore!!) which was scheduled to take 2 weeks thus rendering any external shots out of the question.

Two MONTHS later, when the work was finally complete and the front of the restaurant wasn't adorned with JCBs, traffic cones, and men in yellow jackets, we had reached the height of summer - i.e. days and days of incessant rain!

Eventually, in mid-September, I managed to catch a dry spell in between yet more rain to shoot the exterior, as owner Mahmut was desperate to finish the new website which can be viewed at www.shebar.co.uk

For more information or to make a booking, call 01926 850957

RED PRAIRIE CONFERENCE 2008

Another shoot for event organisers Conference Craft saw a trip to St. John's hotel in Solihull to photograph the stage and set for the Red Prairie conference.

Red Prairie is a world leading consumer optimisation company dealing with systems for on-demand supply of goods to customers.

For vastly more information, a visit to their website will tell you all you need to know and more! 

To see more of what Conference Craft do, please see their website