Ravings of a Naked Photographer

Nothing to say just thought i could make a positive post about something and this amused me at the time.

In the finest traditions of an ever increasing number of ‘we’ve got nothing better to do/no better subject to shoot’ photographers, may i present to you, Harry. Unfortunately he’s not actually my cat, and even more ‘against the rules’ I’m not going to send the picture off for a competition prize, you see i actually do have better things to do (ok maybe i don’t at the moment, hence Harry) I’d also love to whine and moan about the over subtle softness of the lens at f4, the chromatic abrasions, the vignette…….. Good God, it’s a picture of a cat, get out more.

Regular visitors (i know you’re there!! But no i don’t want to know where you live!) will have noticed a few site changes recently, new visitors probably couldn’t care less, but hey why would you? I wouldn’t.

We’ve made it a little lighter and brighter, winters approaching and we really didn’t want to assist anyone’s seasonal disorders, we’ve added an ‘offers page’ for current special offers, we ditched the ‘news’ page because you can follow the exciting developments of the small mole on my left ankle right here! Nice. Also gone is the ‘testimonials page’, we thought it was rubbish because our clients couldn’t spell, er……..actually ignore that bit! We moved the client testimonials to the NEW gallery page, so you can see the beautiful clients with their beautiful words all in one place! Some new clients were also added, long overdue on some, sorry!

Also new, and I’m in no way responsible for any part of it (based on the fact i said i would NEVER do it) is the ‘retouching’ page. This was insisted on; at gunpoint; from our client Victoria, who says she is ‘sick to the back teeth of people saying “well i could never look like that”’ whenever she mentions her ‘cure’ for mild depression. More on this coming soon!
Social stuff…… the blog (well the last 3 posts) makes it to the front-page, yes i thought that was rather clever too, and Twitter has its own little feed box at the bottom of the site, Mrs. Naked is looking after the tweets so anything could happen, you could follow her and get all the juicy stuff direct!

(Twitter WARNING…… i have created a monster of Mrs. Naked over the years and she noticed quite a few years ago that Formula one is not as boring as she thought, it would seem that some of the drivers (O.K. Mostly Jenson) are rather nice to look at, and before you think we’re recent converts we have been following the Somerset lad since he started in F1 and the Honda team since he joined them, although it’s now Brawn, same difference to us! So please be aware that weekend tweets during the season may seem a little ‘random’!)

There’s some other boring ‘backend’ stuff that’s new too but after spending several weeks on it I’m bored of it myself so i couldn’t imagine just how dull it would be for me to tell you about it, let’s just say it works and leave it at that

Whilst I’m not going to make a habit of this issue; sorry to those who do, but it just sounds like scratched vinyl after a while, or just moaning for the sake of it; it has come to my attention (thanks Google webmaster tools) that some, admittedly very very stupid, competitor felt the urge to ‘borrow’ some text; o.k. most of the page; from The Naked Photographer site. Now normarily I’d not notice, mostly because i really couldn’t care less if a lower life form feels the need to copy the smart kid sitting next to him in the exam, but since my site statistics pointed this one out to me i thought it might be worth a little look, after all it may amuse me then i could spend some time amusing others about it.

Upon opening the afore mentioned site i hit ‘view source’ (sorry old web designer habits die hard, i like to appreciate the formatting of code (booooooring), although this guy’s was a mess) after a little while i find a link to the Naked Tog home page, interesting i thought……. switching back to ‘human’ view i discovered best part of my ‘about’ page, with a few adjustments here and there to fit the site it was residing upon, i hasten to add this is where the spelling, grammar and typo problems seemed to reside also.

It was the most perfect example of DONT ‘cut ’n’ paste’ unless you know what you are doing, unfortunately it seems i do and he doesn’t , he’d left the text link anchor where ‘The Naked Photographer’ should be and had simply written his own name as the anchor text (Like THIS), thus completely missing the fact that he has a link to The Naked Tog on his ‘Boudoir’ page, shame really.

I’m not going to lower myself to giving the guy a link, but hey, you know who you are and thanks for the link to The Naked Photographer, the invoice for copyrighting services is in the post.

Many things amuse me, when a comedian is genuinely funny I am amused, you may have noted already that I can have a dry and somewhat sarcastically skewed view on some matters, what I find most amusing of all however is stupid people, my favourite descriptive phrase for them is ‘oxygen thief’. I’m also amused by scammers of all types because they generally fall into the same category.

In many industries; although it seems particularly rife in the photographic one; training courses seem to be everyone’s new business plan, the average ‘course’ costs up to £600 per person; oh but places are limited! Up to 15 perhaps? Some are even generous enough to offer a sandwich or two!

I won’t patronise your obvious intelligence (based on the fact you are here!) so I’ll let you do the maths on that. There are of course a few nominal expenses to pay out, for models etc. Couple of hundred should cover the days expenses.

Until recently this ‘phenomenon’ seemed to be limited to wedding photography, and to a degree I find that at least partially acceptable, after all it’s better for a new wedding photographer to have a small idea about what they should be doing rather than ruin someone’s ‘special day’ completely, I still have some reservations about it but I’ll get to that….

On a recent Google I found all the usual suspects and not surprisingly a few dozen more ‘newbie’s’ and then I started noticing that some of the new pretenders had the Gaul to be offering ‘training’. At first I found this hysterical, then I became rather distressed, firstly I’ve never heard of these people and secondly the work on display was less than accomplished boudoir. Delving deeper into this just makes me wonder what exactly is on offer, similar to the wedding training situation, models are used as the subject; which admittedly is about the only way this could be done; but in REAL life these two parts of the photographic industry are dealing with ordinary people, not models. Models know; or at least should know; how to stand, how to look, how to smile………. you get the picture, they also get paid to do the job so you don’t even have to be nice to them!

Clients are not models ;they are everyday people; and especially in boudoir they are in an unusual situation, there is no training that can help with this, you need to be a people person, and with that you either are or you are not. You could be the greatest lighting guru in the world and have a team of retouchers in a darkened room, but if you cannot deal with a real live client then the rest of it is wasted.

The short of it is that we cannot teach something that cannot be taught, and what everyone else is offering should not be taught.

One of the things I get asked from time to time is why I don’t rave about awards, well it’s quite simple really, I don’t have any to rave about, and yes I’m actually not ashamed to admit it, for one simple reason, I’ve never entered any images to any of the thousand odd ‘bodies’ that churn out awards.

So why don’t I enter? Several reasons, I don’t have the time seems to be the easy reply, but I probably have got the time if I were really bothered about it. Secondly who do I send them to? The choice is almost unlimited as to whose award I’d like to boast about. My main reason however probably makes the most sense, I have absolutely no use for awards, I don’t have an ego issue and I really couldn’t give a hoot if a room full of ‘experts’ want to massage my professional ego or not, photography and any form of art is subjective matter, based on that it really doesn’t matter if every single person on the planet likes a piece of art, if the customer hates it.

Based on this philosophy I’ve come up with a remarkable scenario, I’m a multi award winner! I am of course basing this on the most important award givers there are……..clients.

We’re hearing that phrase, or the polite versions of it, more and more recently. Whilst it would be easy to blame the client for being short sighted in going all out to find the cheapest quote, it’s not always as straight forward as that. Whilst it’s true that the emergence of the £200 pro-am, have all the rubbish we took on a CD, brigade are going to upset the seasoned pro, some of the seasoned pro’s may need to look at their own dealings.

The case I’m going to deal with today is a little more worrying than the cut price weekend warrior norm, the photographer was, allegedly, a full time pro, charging a fair price for the privilege.

Without boring you with the finer points the clients were unhappy that a large number of the day’s activities were lost in translation, that is, the small number of so called images captured were badly composed, badly focused, incorrectly exposed and displayed all the flair of a supermarket budget brand box, and that was the moments the photographer actually remembered to take pictures of.

There are several options for clients who find themselves in this situation, the most common, bizarrely, seems to be, ignore it and show off your images to all and sundry, letting them know ‘you’ think they are fantastic, and hope that no one notices the truth! Secondly, argue, sue, and bad mouth the photographer into giving you some kind of recompense – good luck. Third have a look at your insurance policy and discover stupid photographers are not covered by way of clause 89.g on page 478. And finally the forth option which involves the most work, but, you may well get the images at the end of it…….. re-arrange ‘the day’ yes I’m aware this is in essence impossible, but hear me out, since this is precisely what happened with our recent ‘rescue me’ clients Suzzie and Richard.

After a great deal of pleading with the wedding venue (Comlongon Castle), the kilt shop and a florist, ‘the day’ was re-scheduled, All of the important people re attended (the bride and groom) and a new photographer was commissioned (that’d be us) to get ‘the’ shots, we of course had ample time booked to recreate the day (an hour and a half!) and were only cut short by the early arrival of bridezilla for her late afternoon wedding at the same venue (much to the dismay of the excellent staff )

Some images of ‘the day’ are below

Well it’s been a while, we seem to have had more than enough to do without blogging, shameful, but true. Well since every other tom dick and tog has been jumping on the ‘WOW LOOK AT MY BLOG’ bandwagon and the overpriced newsagent dwelling ‘advice givers’ have stated ‘oooo you must have a blog to help your business’ we thought we’d join the bloggers, again.

We’re not promosing regular updates, and we’re definatly not going to go down the PR marketing spam route, after all what’s the point of our main websites if we’re just going to junk it up here.

Something for the weekend? how about a few hours work photographing the wedding of a boudoir client? ok, you twisted my arm.

Naked Tog: Wheres the venue?

Client: Cape Town.

Naked Tog:

Client: Hello….

Naked Tog: Cape Town? you mean South Africa Cape Town.

Client: Yes.

Naked Tog:

Client: Is that O.K. ?

Naked Tog: I may have to charge some nominal expenses.

Client: No problem.

Well O.K. that conversation was a little while ago, and The Naked Tog is now back from the Cape, fully refreshed from a total of 28 hours in the air and 10 hours in airports, nice. Whirlwind tour it may have been, but i would recommend the place for anyone looking for a holiday (or a wedding ). The weather was very good without being too hot (35 degrees on the wedding day) for someone who prefers a more moderate climate! The locals are among the friendliest i have met and the food, as well as being cheap, was excellent. I will post an odd image of the wedding, but; as with my Boudoir policy; not until the clients have seen and approved them. Below are some general quick snaps for now, the view up from the city bowl hotel (and diamond merchant). My Sunday morning breakfast guest (preying mantis), and one of the Blackpool-esque beaches.

[singlepic=2,320,240,]

[singlepic=1,320,240,]

[singlepic=3,320,240,]

…and I’m going to make a big thing of it because you’ll think I’m good.

Well OK, actually I’m not, and I’m going to tell you why, and what the ‘others’ don’t want you to know.

‘Professional’ bodies, as they like to call themselves are mostly (I’m putting the ‘mostly’ in because some are worthy) excuses for photographers to make themselves seem credible or professional, but heres the thing, you may have been wowed by a naff looking ‘professional organisation’ logo or claim, and thought oo they must be good he/she’s in the XYZ club for ‘professionals’, cobblers.

Would YOU like to be in the same club?, don’t think your snap shots are up to it? Well none of that matters, because (fan fare….) for today only (OK, every day) they have a special offer…….. You can join! for just £xxx (prices vary) and then you too can be a ‘pro’!

Not sounding as good now is it, although you can ‘upgrade’ your membership to : Fellow/Licentiate/Associate/Master/Fellowship/Head Idiot (OK i made that last one up, but the list is getting endless) Just submit a few prints from your holiday in Corfu and if they like them and you pay the £xxx fee (seeing a pattern here) you can have the ‘qualification’ and another letter to go on your ‘professional name’.

You will have noticed that i have not ‘named names’ and also used ‘mostly’ as a reference, the guilty know who they are and it’s not difficult to spot them, others are worthwhile in some instances but it always comes down to the customers choice, don’t think membership, think person, do you like/can you work with the photographer and are the pictures to your liking? if not, move on.