Well I have been spanked...now what?
Well my last post came at a time when I'd finally realized that my studio was failing financially. A year later I had closed my doors.
Here's a shot of the studio "grand opening a year later." I miss that space and the old charm. But I'm going to do artistic photography again I swear.
Musings for today: the value of photography
Having been a photographer hobbyist, freelancer, semi-professional and professional over the span of 40 years, I've come to confront a few realities. I began my business underfunded in terms of cash and productive time.
1. It is investment in marketing and sales that matter overwhelmingly in the business, and that must have a 3 year minimum to succeed; thus cash or credit reserve must be 3 years operating costs including outside sales and marketing. In the case of a small studio trying for the high end of the spectrum ($2000-$8000 sale) that means planning for a studio that costs $2500 per month to operate is $100k for 3 yrs, the staffing, sales/marketing, creatives, web marketing, PR, exhibition costs, etc. would be approximately $325k per year, so $975k for 3 years should have been my minimum investment.
2. While being completely solo has its advantages, solo whilst being full time employed elsewhere has huge disadvantages; you can't meet new prospects while you are presenting to a room full of IT people. Being engaged with a busy IT department doing big things keeps the living expenses paid at the expense of my most productive window of time on a daily basis (for me, 7-noon). Organizing and selling a portrait session after a 10 hour day of IT is tough. Really tough if you aren't a natural sales person. And then, there's the actual photography, the thing I love to do...also done after an often grueling day.
Despite the shortcomings of cash and time, I still took a stab at it again, and have lost it all.
What have I learned? People with money can make money, and the rest of us work for them. I just need one good lotto hit.
Tooting My Own Horn
Ok, maybe more like a sales broadcast, but I am excited by the positive reactions from my friends who've seen my first art piece, the portrait of Kirstin Ann! I can't wait to see how Kirstin likes it:-) I have a few more sessions to do, and then I'm ready to preview her with the rest of the world. In the coming weeks I'll announce when we will have a mixer party and you can check out the portrait yourselves. I've heard wine is good for salesmanship...or something....
The thing to know about this art piece is that you need to see it firsthand to get the "depth" of the image. Digital photos don't cut it!
cheers,
Introducing: Renaissance Masterpiece Portraits by Vin Weathermon
Vin Weathermon is proud to announce his highest quality artistic wall portrait, the Renaissance Masterpiece! These fine art wall portraits are evocative of a time where painters captured the essence of their dignified subjects wearing their finest clothes, simply and beautifully. Every detail is meticulously refined and beautified, with genuine oil brushed highlights creating realism and depth of a photograph, with the richness of a painting.
The whole experience is unique. The portrait is usually a single person for the most dramatic effect, although more people can be included. Formal wear is required to make this portrait, and hair and makeup for women/girls is provided. Optionally, we can provide formal wear.
After the makeup session, your creation session will capture your most engaging and dramatic features. These are not typically "smiling" portraits, but rather you are looking like you might just know a secret or two.
We hope you enjoy the Renaissance Masterpiece portrait for generations to come.
Sony RX100 MK IV Review
Bought the beautiful Sony RX100 MK IV.
http://amzn.to/1U3mHOV
Tried it out, enjoyed the results, but returned it today thanks to Focus Camera's return policy through Amazon.
I didn't get to play with the 4k video because I didn't have a fast enough video card but I'm sure it was fantastic.
Pros:
- Quality feel- this think feels substantial and has a beautiful finish that owners of the MK II, III would recognize. It felt like a quality piece of machined metal. Buttons were well located, and easy to understand.
- Built-in flash in Auto - worked perfectly every time. Great skin tones with no fuss. Family photos? Easy peasy.
- Small. I mean stick it in your pocket small. This camera could fit in my shirt pocket, albeit a bit heavy.
- Fantastic low light images- 6400 was gorgeous. Didn't push too much in my testing, but I could see grain without nasty color shifting.
- Fast - shot quite a bit at f2.8 and had lovely sharp areas with nice bokeh.
- Good 24-70 zoom range; a pretty good walk about lens and it is a Zeiss, nice and sharp.
- Excellent EVF, especially with the focus peaking and thin DOF.
- DMF focus ring; in manual mode, the little ring around the lens was a focus ring (had to enable in the menu.) Super cool to dial in focus, and with movies and focus peaking it was killer.
- 1080P video - was beautiful and the shake reduction made for smooth handheld video. I didn't play around with this much, but Sony makes pro video so this thing was better than I needed.
- Selfie mode - ok I was not supposed to love this but I did. Very functional to flip the little viewfinder all the way up and press the shutter for a countdown. Screw that iPhone!
- Large 20mp files; plenty to crop with
- Autofocus- didn't try any sporting kind of thing but for my purposes it seemed very snappy with few false focus issues
Cons:
- Expensive. For nearly $1k it really made me think of how I could spend a few bucks more and get another 5D Mk III body on ebay. I have lenses already. I know; you can't compare the functionality, but if this camera was sub $600 I wouldn't think much about it.
- No Lightroom Support - this is annoying as hell when you have a good established workflow for RAW files. They provide Capture One Express for Sony, which is ok, but I want my catalog altogether and that means ARW files, "negatives" with jpgs. It will come eventually, but that date has not been established.
- No touch screen - normally not a big deal for me, except for the need to key in a bunch of settings which sucks big time for lovely long SSID or email addresses. Seems like setup requires way too many (see apps.)
- Apps are kludgy- at least on my copy, getting them installed was a trial, you need to have an account which to me is pure crap anyway. Then there was the failed webpages that retries eventually worked, but ugh... sell the damn camera with all the apps installed, and update them for free without accounts. No need to make it horrific. Had troubles getting the phone to see the camera with NFC; the smart remote worked much better but the kinda spastic menu to get there was annoying to me. Would rather have the mode right there to connect to a phone (perhaps assigning a button to an app would serve that purpose?)
- No flash shoe - they removed it on this model, and it is something that I was actually thinking I'd never use but found I wanted that external flash for macros, getting the DOF I wanted. So I couldn't buy an adapter to sync a strobe or use a Canon in manual mode. No flash sync port either.
- Battery burns up quick- could be all the LCD viewing I was doing, but you would need to have a few extras for a day of shooting. You will be charging your battery via USB charger they supply, or your computer. It charges really quick, like an hour, but that's about how long it will shoot with heavy use; ok I'm exaggerating a bit but I get uncomfortable at 50% if I don't have a spare handy:-)
Anyway, if money were plentiful I'd keep this camera as it is a well engineered bit of gear; check out Amazon if you are looking to try it yourselfhttp://amzn.to/1U3mHOV