Photographer sekalian.

The bride's silhouette, Kuantan, April 2008

I was stumbled upon the the email message i received. It has brought to my attention that photographers nowadays tends to grow a bit lame and unoriginal. I did not write it here because i'm being cynical or what, but, its what people do nowadays. Writing about all the not 'ease-at-heart' thingy. Ok here we go again.

The message i'd received was about the seminar, the millionaire photographer, Saiful Nang gonna do it in one months time. Its all about Professional Photography costing. Yeah. Costing. This is one of main reason why people quit their job and start off as a Freelance/Part time photographer. This is what the message shows. Originally send to me from Pak Tarm from CandidSyndrome. You can also read it at saiful nang blog.

"Some fulltimers in photography industry were badly shocked with the flood of thousands of freelance / part time photographers in our local scene. They are partimers who earned RM2-4k a month and just take a photography assignment to make an extra money in the weekend. They don’t really mind about the charges. As for the full timers, they put their life and effort to focus in photography. That’s their bread and butter. More full timers now back to their old job…they started to work elsewhere again instead of being the player of the industry. They can’t afford to be a full timers that need to compete with a part timers who don’t have big overhead.

People may think…less is better, less competition. But for me…you will run faster if others are chasing u. Thank God, I’m not so much affected by that phenomena, but I’m really sad looking at some good and talented photographers start to starve. They are jobless due to the freelancers around that really don’t know how to charge appropriate amount. Appropriate means…a fair price. Not too expensive and not too cheap. By charging appropriate amount, they can grow-up their career and at the same time…not killing others’ life (career).

It’s a good thing to happen if you’re thinking in a clients’ shoes. However, in the long run…you’ll find the good and talented photographers will slowly faded. They’ll be out of the scenes anymore. They can’t afford to take photography as their bread and butter. Then…we’ll be just like what we used to be 10 years ago. The time we have to import good photographers from Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and even from USA and pay them USD10-20k just because you want the quality.

Now, they (fulltime professional) have the quality but they need a full focus doing nothing else then photography. By that, they can grow their artistic skills, quality services and more that will please you.

Please ask yourself…what do you really want now. A cheap and bad quality or slightly more expensive but come with quality and commitment? This workshop is to educate more people the right way to do costing so they will not OVERCHARGE (good news for clients) and in the other hand…not to UNDERCHARGED (bad news to us). But getting it in a good balance…it’s fair for all people. Fair for me and fair for you."

Hope you read it. And understand what do people do nowadays, which is, sometimes, we as a regular human being, forgot what we do, and we tend to hurt others. In this case, some people overcharged their job and to tell you the truth, i've seen things very ugly, but this unparticular photographer's work are a LOT uglier.

Some were even my friend's friend's friend, some are the totally typical myspacers,and one guy used to be my idol. Lucky me, its stay only for a while. A while!. ha ha. and often i surf the internet, i've seen godawful wedding picture. I know there is no right for me to judge the photographer but clearly, you can see difference between the 'do for money and get paid a lot' and the 'do for passion for arts and get a lot'.

I've seen people shoot beautiful photograph and there was a lot of nice comment like "oh, nice!" and "OMG, speechless" and whatnot. Found out that beautiful photograph was not properly composed, and just because they used big-named camera like, Nikon D700 or Canon 5D and big-named lens like nikon/canon 50mm f1.2 and 70-200 L lens, doesn't mean they are properly composed picture. And just because there were a massive beautiful bokeh in the back of subject, this photo was agreed to be "Beautiful".

Oh come on brotha! Do learn all about Photography ideology and it will show you the 'beautiful' that you mean. Not the typical 'beautiful' or B-E-A -"UTIFUL". Bla bla bla.

Im writing this in RED just to remind you. I'm not really good at photography but after a quite sometime hanging out with the Pros, and spend most of my time on searching the greatest wedding or anything photograph, i'd found out how to see and compared the differences between the good and the not good picture. All right then.

A lot of things happened after the DSLR getting cheaper. If you asked me, yes, its good for Nikon and Canon or whatsoever but the thing is, this DSLR will often lead you to disaster. You see, what the worst thing could happen in Malaysia is, everybody going to have a DSLR. And then, something familliar happen, all people will shoot all people. And there will have a lot of cheaper, low quality photography accesories. And this will lead to the uncommon things like we used to see, become common; and typical.

As a regular human being, i was self-taught myself and my family about being uncommon rather than being the different person, same personality. This problem will cause myself to self distructing. You can't even stand to see that huge crowd wears the same thing that you wear did you?, so that what would happen to me. Think again my friend.