You’re going to read over and over again about how you should NOT be practicing your skills on paying clients. At least you’ll hear it from me. I’ll lecture on that, later, but for now, I’m going to tell you about the five models you will need to get chummy with while you are learning your craft.
1. Young girl – preferably high school age
2. Young man – preferably high school age
3. Man – age 20+
4. Woman – age 20+
5. Small Family – Mom, Dad, baby/toddler, one or two other small children. Look for a family where mom is expecting if you intend on doing maternity portraiture.
There, that’s it. That’s all you will need to practice on. Choose carefully. What you want to do is find someone who is willing to get together once every month or two and let you practice your recently acquired skills on them. You will need to choose models who will listen to your directives and wear the kind of clothing that you indicate. You do not want someone who is going to be all excited about being a “model” and suggest all kinds of creative stuff to do and take over control of the lesson.
For example, When I went through my studio lighting class, I had homework every week. Each week I contacted a model and said “This is my homework, I need someone who will wear a white shirt so I can learn to shoot them on a white background” (or whatever that week’s lesson was). Be specific in advance about what your purpose is and get their “buy in.”
Be up front that you will probably suck for awhile and you may not get useable photos out of the session. Offer a few 8x10s or a digital file or a restaurant gift card or the payment of your choosing for each time they do a session with you. I’m not going to tell you how to handle that part – it’s up to you.
Why only five?
Aaaah grasshopper, good question.
I see a lot of new photographers practice on everyone and their brother when they start out. They do free sessions all over the place or else they just go straight into business, but only charge $25-$50 for the session and the digital files on a disk because they are new and not that good yet and don’t feel comfortable charging more. I will applaud you if you are one of the ones that realize they aren’t worth the same as a professional photographer, but I will kick you in the ass right afterwards, so don’t bother basking in the glow.
After you have gotten skills and knowledge under your belt and feel that you are ready to charge “real” pricing, all of the people that you shot for free/cheap will be expecting those same prices. You will constantly have people wanting you to honor your introductory pricing (most call this “portfolio-building” pricing) and will give you the guilt trip until you bend.
And you WILL bend. It’s human nature. We don’t want people to be upset with us, so we will compromise to make them happy. And as a new business-person, you have not yet required the hard-nosed business skills you will need to employ in situations like this. By limiting yourself to five models, you are limiting your future “compromising” to these five people. To this day, I have a handful of people that I will always do free sessions for. They deserve it, I am grateful for all of the help they gave me in the beginning and everybody’s happy – a real win/win situation.
You will want to think this through ahead of time. Decide what you will honor in the future. Personally, I play this by ear. My models are all people that haven’t taken unfair advantage of the free opportunities. You might want to offer one or two free sessions a year, or a 16×20 a year or free sessions with a 50% discount on all products. I don’t know and I’m not going to tell you how to do that part. I feel pricing/offers is a very personal issue, so I can give you some suggestions, but I’m not going to tell you that you HAVE to do things a certain way in regards to this.
By sticking to these 5 models, and not getting into the whole “portfolio-building pricing” precedent, you will be able to start up your business with real pricing and none of your “I kind of suck so I’m cheap right now” pricing will bite you in the ass later.
You also won’t be pissing off the professional photographers in your community by undercutting them and offering GOOD ENOUGH work.
(If you missed the GOOD ENOUGH lecture, click HERE).
See how that works? Now, let’s all join hands and sing “Kumbaya.”
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* So what does that photo of puppies have to do with this topic?
One of my initial models is a man named Don. A very promising actor and dear friend. He came out to my studio many times while I was learning my craft and patiently dressed the way I asked him to and posed and smiled for many hours. He has free shoots for life.
Last summer, his dog had a litter of puppies and he asked if I would photograph them to help him find them good adoptive homes. I did individual photos of each puppy and several group photographs. I entered the above photograph in a state level competition (Professional Photographers of Ohio) where it scored an 86. I then entered it in the 2011 Northeast District competition, where it scored an 87 (and earned a seal). I then entered it in the 2011 PPA International Print Competition, where the seal converted to a merit and it was chosen for the Loan Collection. (If this is Greek to you, be patient, I will be discussing print competition in future articles).
See? Kumbaya. And TOTAL WOOTNESS!