Many civilians often hear about photography pricing approaching the stratosphere, and they often say things like, “I don’t get it, They just take a picture with their fancy camera and they charge $XX,000”. The fancy camera is only a small part of the equation. The other factors are vision, lighting, and an experienced photographer to pull it all together. And even after the shoot is done, the same amount of time can go into post production.
Some of you have asked how I go about retouching portraits for eliminating blemishes, acne and dark eye circles. Sean Armenta of FStoppers has posted a few great quick video tutorials on using various techniques in Photoshop. Depending on the model and lighting, each photo can take up to 20 minutes of retouching. For a client or model that requires 20 images, that means 6 hours of JUST post production to get the beautiful, flawless, magical images that everyone wants to remember. Never mind the 6 hours of shooting, and other countless hours spent on planning, scouting, negotiating, and coordinating a shoot. All this effort and expertise is what separates a professional photographer from your craigslist garden variety shooter, who just bought a dSLR.
Great post!