What is Custom Photography?
Quite simply it manifests itself in the final product. There are many photographers out there (most of them with quite basic training and skills). But precious few who can claim to be custom portrait photographers.
It is in the range of styles that the photographers are able to execute; it is the understanding to customise the portraits to what the client desires; it is in the skills, training, qualifications and experience of the photographer; it is in the equipment - camera, lighting, filters, editing - that will be used; it is in the eye to capture the right picture at the right moment; it is in the ability to make the clients feel and look at ease, comfortable and natural; it is in the skills to perform painstaking and time-consuming post-shoot editing of each image so that each portrait is heirloom quality. It is in the overall experience.
Excerpts from the “Professional Child Photographer Consumer Guide” web site:
Custom photography is more of a luxury than your entry level cookie cutter chain experience. Custom photography truly is not for everyone, it requires a level of commitment, investment in time and money, forethought and planning on the part of the subject/client and requires a larger time commitment for the photographer as well.
There is a great deal of time involved in creating high end custom photography sessions for a client. The luxury of great service, better choices and a superb end product. The result of all this are heirloom quality images. The time invested at the session is only a small portion of time involved in this process.
Custom photography has been likened to purchasing a fine vehicle. To get to point B from A let’s face it, even a bus ride would suffice. If you want to luxuriate in a finely appointed vehicle, customizing your own experience by listening to smooth jazz while sitting in a climate controlled setting adjusted purely for your comfort in a body hugging leather interior, perhaps that Lexus you so desire is your cup of tea. Custom photography is much the same cup of tea. It is the Lexus of the photography world.
It is where the intangibles make the experience truly wonderful and the images themselves make the investment of money and time truly worthwhile.
Custom photography can be broken down into even more levels. There are on location, studio, mixed studio/on location, speciality location and destination type photographers. The beauty of custom photography is in the choices and in the luxury of those options. The customized service level you are sure to experience will be amazing. The knowledge that your final images are the result of someone caring about those moments so much that they take extra time ensuring that the artwork you receive is good enough to stand by with their name on it. That level of quality and commitment is all but lost in the age of “mass produced,” “mass marketed,” corporate “everyone is a number”. Custom photography is based on being unique to you. How great an experience would be, to be able to sit back and allow a photographer to do this highly custom work for images that you will most likely cherish for a lifetime?
Why Does Custom Photography Cost More?
Digital technology is brilliant. The digital revolution has brought amazing flexibility and amazing amounts of control for the photographer, the hobbyist, the professional, the amateur. With flexibility comes a price though. Camera equipment is still considerably more expensive when you factor in its’ lifespan, the need for additional resources for processing those images, the time it takes to get a usable image and the effort that goes into all of this.
The answer is multifaceted and has a lot to do with the time, aforementioned equipment costs, artistic vision and reputation of the photographer, expertise and the usual costs of running a legitimate business.
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