One of the items from my Bag of Solutions That I never leave at home is a pair of Walki-Talki’s. I’ve had a pair near me for years, and when I use to buy them they were $1500.00 for a pair of Motorola’s that had a five-mile reach. Today, you can buy a pair for under $100.00, and the investment would be well worth it…why, you ask?
Because it will add another dimension to your photography. I often like to put someone in my photo to either give scale to my composition, or just to be able to have someone standing, riding, or sitting exactly where you want him/her to be so i can get back and shoot with a telephoto lens. Whether it’s indoor or outdoor, to have that kind of control could be the difference between a good photo and a great photo.
What I do is hook one of the Walki-Talki’s to the subject (somewhere out of sight), and hold the other in my hand while I compose my shot. If I want my subject to move over a step in either direction, or to rearrange his or her body language, or to create some Negative Space between them and whatever it is around them that’s making it hard to define their shape, I merely direct them through my Walki-Talki.
Of course, this means that I’m on a tripod so I can have one hand free. As I’ve said a thousand time to the online class I teach with the BPSOP, or in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, I want complete control of my photography and be able to do whatever it is that I’m able to conjure up in my imagination. That means any combination of shutter speeds and aperture settings I want, and be able to have my hands free to do whatever…like holding a Walki-Talki.
OK, the top photo: I was shooting an advertising campaign for United Airlines, and for five weeks all I had to do was to come up with pretty pictures for their upcoming ads. We chose this location as it was a favorite among tourists. I chartered the sailboat and put one of my assistants on it (tough duty). He had a Walki-Talki with him, so I could direct the sailboat back and forth around the lighthouse. All the tourists around me went nuts because they thought it was accidental that the sailboat was there and gave them the opportunity to take back home a memorable picture. I think I was the only one there with a 600mm F/4 lens!!!!
Here are a few examples of using Walki-Talki’s to create interesting photographs that anyone can take without the expense of chartering a sailboat or having an assistant!!
Shadows that are the center of interest and provide visual direction.
In the past year, I’ve written a couple of posts on the importance of using shadows to create drama in our imagery, and as a result, leave the viewer with a memorable experience.
In my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, I’m always stressing the use of shadows in their photos. Shadows are our best friend, and the sooner my fellow photographers embrace them the sooner their photos will go what I always refer to as “up a notch”. I’ll occasionally be writing some additional posts about the use of different kinds of shadows, starting with this one.
This first post has to do with the type of shadow that’s the center of interest and it can often tell a story on its own. In the above photo, the shadows are from a group of photographers that were taking my “Springtime in Prague” workshop. We were down next to the Charles River at sunset and there were several young kids that were climbing up the wall of rocks. As I walked up to them, I immediately noticed their shadows on the ground and the fact that they led my eye to the kid climbing on the wall.
To me, the story is obvious as it clearly shows the shadows as the center of interest, and leads the viewer to the person.
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and check my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoots some shadows with me sometime.
When I’m teaching either with my online class with the BPSOP, or with my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, students are always asking me the best way to use fill flash when shooting portraits outdoors. I have a simple and quick response to them.
I tell them that in my fifty-three year career, I’ve never, and I mean not once used fill flash outdoors. I don’t even like to use it indoors. I can honestly say that I’ve never missed it because my portraits do just fine without it. So, you’re thinking, what do I do?
Here’s my set-up. How much simpler can you get?
I use a collapsible reflector with white on one side and silver on the other. 90% of the time I use the white side. I’ll occasionally use a larger piece of Foam-board when I have a larger area to cover, as in a full-length shot. All I ever need is a stand that won’t fall over, an A-clamp, and a reflector. It’s a hell of a lot easier than figuring out ratios when I’m losing the light. Why complicate my life? There are enough things I have no control over that does a good job messing with my head. Why cloud it up even more with something that I love and have control over.
It’s unbelievable how many times I see an outdoor portrait lit with a flash. It’s a look that’s been beaten to death, and usually, the photographer doesn’t know what he or she is doing which makes it worse. I realize it’s a matter of personal preference, and for me, I like a natural look. The kind of look that has never gone out of style and never will.
Take a look at some of my portraits lit with only a white reflector or a larger piece of foam-board:
In one of my earlier posts, I talked out how it was before the invention of digital cameras and Photoshop. That’s when you had to create whatever idea you had in the camera. In my online class, I teach with the BPSOP, and the “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, I ask my students to not use post-processing. It’s not because I don’t like or use Photoshop, because I use it all the time; my favorite tool in CS5 is the Content-Aware Tool!!!
I just want my students to be better photographers, not better digital technicians.
However, as much as I like to use Photoshop, I always try to fix whatever problems in the camera. For example, why take a distracting telephone pole out later with Photoshop, when all you have to do is move a step to the right or left. That is, if you can without being run over by a very large truck, or falling into a vat of acid.
The photograph pictured above was part of the full line catalog for BMW motorcycles, shot before the days when you could shoot the motorcycle in the studio, and with the help of CGI, make it look like it was actually moving, and then drop it into a landscape.
How very sad!! How very boring!!! What fun is that???????????????
Here’s how we did it back then:
Most of you have either used or know what a softbox is and what’s it for, but how many of you out there have ever seen a softbox this big? It took three and a half hours to set it up by an independent company so the motorcycles could run through it while I shot on continuous. I matched the exposure coming out of the twelve 24oo watt/sec Speedotron heads to the ambient light. That way, I could stop the action and still have the wheels turning and water coming up from behind the bikes.
Now that was fun!
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog, and come shoot with me sometime. You’ll have fun too.
For those that like to smoke cigars, drink a bunch of whiskey and bird hunt, or for others that would rather kill a clay pigeon, you know what I mean by “leading it”. In other words, don’t shoot where they are, shoot where they’re going to be. Well, that same thinking applies to photography…how you say????
As I’ve demonstrated to my online class with the BPSOP, and in person with my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, the next time you’re out shooting action or anything that moves whether it be a person or object, try aiming your camera where your subject is going to be and not where it is when you start shooting. Try giving he, she, or it a destination; someplace to wind up. That way you’ll keep the viewer interested, and the more interested the viewer is the longer he’ll stick around. I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly what I want to happen.
As I say this, Ansel Adams once said, “There are no rules for good pictures, there are just good pictures. In other words, sometimes I do this and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I have the subject leaving the composition so it will imply ‘content’ outside the frame.
I digress:
Put your subject on the far right or far left and point your camera (a wide-angle would be the lens of choice) towards the horizon, or at the end of directional or converging lines. These types of lines are a perfect vehicle that can move the viewer around the frame.
Try different shutter speeds that will vary the amount of background blur. One of the best ways to achieve the feeling of speed is to get in a car (a convertible is best, but not mandatory) and follow along at the same rate of speed. Btw, you don’t need to go more than a few miles an hour to create this.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com and check out my new workshop schedule at the top of this blog.
One can’t shoot advertising and corporate photography for fifty-three years and not have amassed several funny stories during this time. Some included the client, some the designer or art director, and some when I was sent on my own to shoot whatever I wanted. This was the case when a graphic designer and his client (a paper company based in Houston) hired me to work on a brochure that was featuring a new line of paper. It was to be called “Kromekoat”.
The idea was to shoot things that were chrome, and it needed to somehow say Texas. Those were the only stipulations, and besides those two, I could shoot anything I wanted. I had read that the Texas State Fair was coming up in a few days and one of the main attractions was the giant Ferris Wheel that has the word Texas in large letters on one side. Now all I needed was something chrome to take with me.
I found what I was looking for when I walked into a CVS Pharmacy near my studio. I was walking by a rack of sunglasses and spotted a plastic pair that looked just like chrome. As I tell my online students with the PPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, follow my Did It Do It list for good composition. One of the points I mention is to Pre-Visualize.
I quickly imagined the finished photo in my mind and the next morning my assistant and I took off for Dallas and the Texas State Fair.
My idea was to find one of the Carny men that worked the games in the carnival section of the fair, and have him put on the chrome sunglasses so I could take a portrait of him in front of the Ferris Wheel. As the sun was starting to set, I still hadn’t found just the right man to pose for me. When I had less than twenty minutes of late afternoon light still available I started to get nervous. I had one afternoon to get the shot and it looked like I was going to miss it.
The sun was getting low enough that there were only a few places left that had sunlight. I was about to throw in the towel and call it a bust when I took a quick look at my assistant and there was this epiphany that hit me over the head like a big pizza pie…”You’re perfect”, I said. “Quick JD, put these glasses on and look towards the sun.” He did and I got the shot.
Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and be sure to check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
I wrote a post in 2018 about creativity and a man responded to it with words that put a spark in my imagination. He said that we all should be more than we are.
You can interpret that lots of ways, but I found it to be relating to the online classes I teach with the BPSOP. In a manner of speaking, it also fits in with the “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I teach around our (round) planet.
Why you ask?
I recently did a zoom class with a large camera club in a city I really shouldn’t divulge. At any rate, it really doesn’t matter because through the forty-plus years of conducting workshops and zooming with fellow photographers, I have found that there are no geographic boundaries when it comes to photographers sharing the same issues.
It seems that the older we get, the more we are set in our ways and are not willing to “be more than we are”; walking down the path less traveled. These photographers I’m referring to have reached the pinnacle of their creative thought process. They have become shutters pushers that shoot either what they have seen others shoot or what others have told them the way it should be shot. They love their camera club meetings and look forward to sharing the same ideas, munching on Goldfish while washing them down with Diet Coke.
I’m certainly not judging them (well sorta,maybe just a touch), it’s merely an observation.
Years ago while I was conducting a workshop in Provence, the day before the start a woman living nearby, that had taken all my online classes, drove to where we were having dinner. During dinner, she said that the reason she drove to meet me was to answer my question in person.
Towards the end of my part I class, she had said that the photos she was submitting would not be accepted in any competition, or even approved of in her camera club. My question to her was, “Why don’t you start your own camera club?”
She said that she had taken my advice and along with several others that felt the same way, did start their own club. She laughed when she said that they all knew what Monet and the rest of the Impressionist Painters felt like when their work wasn’t initially accepted.
So, my fellow photographers, don’t take the path well-traveled. It will only lead you down a one-way path to mediocrity; purgatory for the creativity in you.
Visit my workshop at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
On pretty much a daily basis, I create video critiques for the students that take my online classes with the BPSOP. During my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around our perfectly round planet, I also have daily critiques of the photos the people are shooting each day.
I invariably see images where the photographer didn’t pay attention to the four borders that create their composition. I call it “Border Patrol”. What I see are small parts of something they didn’t fully put in or completely take out…leave it in or take it out is my standard phrase. When I have no idea what the small part is, I refer to them as a UFO. In other word, “What the hell is that sticking into the corner of your frame”?
Maybe it’s part of someone’s hand coming into the frame or a piece of a sign, or how about most of a street light left out. Whatever it is, most of the time it’s discovered while sitting in front of your computer. I can tell you that it’s not the best way to become a stronger photographer.
You’re a director that directs still photos. If you were a film director you would be responsible for everything that goes on in your frame; that goes for still photos. It’s your responsibility to make sure everything you want in a photograph is in there, and the things you don’t want in you leave out. What you don’t want to do is to rely on post-processing to fix things.
There might be times when you can, based on your skill level. There’s going to be more times when you can’t no matter how adept you are with your mouse….trust me on this!
In the above photo, if I was only paying attention to the two gondoliers, I might have cut off most of the street light. However, I was also paying attention to my four borders.
Visit my website at JoeBaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
When I first started out in photography some forty-four years ago, I shot primarily Black and White. I worked for AP, UPI, and I was a Black Star photographer, a national photo syndicate. It was several years before I started working in color, and in that beginning period of time, all my favorite photographers shot black and white.
Among them were:Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorthea Lange, Walker Evans, Ernst Haas, most of the photographers in my favorite photo book called The Family of Man” to name a few. Having said that, my all-time favorite photographer is W. Eugene Smith. His images speak to me like no others living or dead. As it happens, one of my all-time favorite quotes was said by him. He said, “Available light is any damn light that’s available.”
As I tell my online students with the BPSOP, and also in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, light is everything. You find the light and you’ll find the shot. I’ll often have a discussion with one of my fellow photographers (who insist that an on-camera flash is the way to go), that in my long career I’ve never, and I mean not once ever felt that I needed this kind of contrasty harsh, bluish, hot ancillary light to make good photos.
To digress a moment, don’t you just love it when someone a couple of rows down from you uses a flash to record what’s way down on the stage…and all he’s lighting up is the back of a few heads a couple of rows in front of him. I get a better shot with just the available light.
I’m mostly an available light photographer. I’ve always found a way to use whatever available light is around me when I thought it was needed. The problem is that photographers these days just don’t take the time to look around them for help that may very well be hitting them right in the face. Remember that if you can see it, you can take a picture of it…especially now in the digital age where cameras can record images in very low light.
Any damn light that’s available.
Even in situations where there just isn’t any actual sunlight, look for man-made light like a flashlight over on a table, or a desk lamp, or as in the photo above, a welding torch laying over against the bags of cement. I had him pick it up and make it the brightest flame he could. As I say, you just have to open your eyes and look around…somewhere lurking in the shadows is the answer to your problem.
You just gotta…Stretch Your Frame of Mind!!!
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. come shoot with me sometime.
One of the most important areas I cover in my online class with the PPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet is knowing where the light is coming from before raising the camera up to your eyes.
I give my fellow photographers a clock to install in the back of their minds. To me, light is EVERYTHING!!!!. If you look up the definition of Photography, you’ll see that it means “painting with light”. Unless you’re street shooting where ‘the moment’ is critical, and more important than the direction of the light, knowing where to put your subject is the key in taking your photos what I refer to as “up a notch”.
Ok, imagine a clock in your viewfinder, but if it’s easier, imagine the clock on the ground with your subject standing in the center…imagine your camera and a subject set up just like it is in this drawing. Now, imagine the sun (or light source) coming from behind the 11,12, and 1. This is ‘backlight’. It’s probably the way I light almost all the time…why?
Because backlight makes everything glow: water, grass, hair, or anything translucent. It adds so much energy and can be effective even if your subject is a touch on the boring side.
Now, imagine the light source behind the ’10’ and the ‘2’. This is what is called “the Law of the Light”…light from the “Angle of Reflection”. When the sun casts light on a subject it comes at a specific angle, and that angle is called the “Angle of Incidence”. It’s the light falling on the subject.
When that same light bounces (reflects) off the subject and hits the lens, it also bounces off at an angle to the camera. When those two angles are the same, it’s called the “Law of the Light”…also known as “The Angle of Reflection”.
Now, imagine the sun at either ‘3’ or ‘9’. This is sidelight. If I can’t backlight or put my subject in the Angle of reflection, this is the light I go for. When the sun is at ‘4’ or ‘8’ it’s ok, still somewhat side-lit, but bordering on front light…to me, this is the worst way to light…5,6, and 7 is front light and I avoid it like the plague…why? Because there aren’t any shadows or shading.
Form is an important ‘element of visual design’. Form refers to the three-dimensional quality of an object. When light hits an object from the side, part of the object is in shadow. The light and dark areas provide contrast that can suggest volume. Without shadows, the subject will be recorded without Form…appearing flat. Without shading/shadows Form exists in just two dimensions, height and width.
This is what happens when you front light. now, I’m not saying that you can’t take pictures that are front-lit…I’m saying that those times for me are rare, and the sun should be low on the horizon.
So as I said, THE VERY FIRST THING I EVER DO when I get to a location…before I ever raise my camera up to my eyes…is to determine where the light source is coming from. Then I position myself to get the right/best light.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. come shoot with me sometime.
For those of you that follow this blog, you’ll know that I put a lot of time into writing about the Light. You’ll also know that I always will say that Light is everything unless you’re out street shooting and capturing the moment which can possibly be more important. Humor is one other genre that can be as effective as beautiful light.
Having said this, that type of light is not the subject of this post. I’m talking about the light that can actually take away from your subject or center of interest. The light that’s not part of your main message but actually competes with it.
Over the past fifty years of teaching my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops and in the fifteen years of teaching my online classes with the BPSOP, I have seen a lot of photos that demonstrate this phenomenon and have often brought it to the attention of all my fellow photographers.
Just like a moth to a flame, the viewer will be attracted to the brightest part of your composition whether it’s your subject or not. Just like a moth to a flame, we are drawn towards the light or in some instances the value of a color; value meaning the lightness or darkness of a color. It’s an unconscious effort because it’s inherent in our DNA.
To know the basic reasons is to take a look at human behavior. As a species, we are Diurnal. In simple terms we are day creatures, spending the majority of our waking hours in daylight. As a result, light is an instrument used for our survival; as in sitting close to the fire so the monsters won’t get to you….a residual belief from the pre-historic times when you could be eaten by a really big predator.
So back to my point about light taking valuable information away from your thought process. If you rely on the meter in your camera to make all your exposure decisions (a big mistake) you will undoubtedly run into this. You might have the right exposure on the subject in your foreground, but what about the exposure in the background?
What if you’re shooting under some trees, or in open shade where your subject just happens to be in the shadow. You might get lucky and have your subject exposed correctly but out where the sun is shining it’s three or more stops brighter…making it way too overexposed. The viewer will not look at your subject, he will be drawn to the overexposed area…the not-so-pretty part of your photo.
Changes in the light levels can be an indication that something has happened in the immediate environment. The viewer will rely on the perception of the environment that surrounds him and that’s why he will re-focus his attention on bright areas of light in our images.
Where does your eye go first?.
As I said, the value of a subject can and will direct the viewer’s attention away from your subject. A good example would be a group of people in a photo and one of them has a very bright colored shirt compared to all the others; that’s where the viewer will look.
It’s so important to remember my pearl of wisdom…the whole enchilada. It can become easy to concentrate so much on the message you’re trying to get across to the viewer that you fail to see other things that can take away from the same message you worked so hard to get.
There are some good things you can do with this scenario. By putting the light in just the right place or places you can get the viewer to interact with you. This is one way to get and keep the visual information that we lay out to the same viewer in the form of a photograph.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
In the first part of my career, I shot a lot of oil and gas-related photos, and the one that always made me shudder was the oil rig. If I had a dollar for every rig I’ve shot over the course of my fifty-three career, yours truly would be writing this while looking out at the incredible view from my house on my private island somewhere in the Caribbean.
The only thing that kept me sane was the challenge of always shooting a particular subject that I hadn’t shot before. As I tell my online students with the PPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet is what Marcel Proust once said, “The only true voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”. This has always been one of my mantras, and I adhere to it every time I go out shooting.
I was asked by the design firm working on Apache’s Annual Report to go to Louisiana and take a picture of an oil rig that was sitting in one of the bayous that inundate the state. My assistant and I packed up the gear, and everything else I could imagine that might be of some creative value: A xenon light and fog machine were put in the back of the Suburban along with various power packs, umbrellas, and softboxes that I hoped and prayed I wouldn’t have to use.
As we approached the company office, we went over a small bridge and I immediately stopped, for there rising out of the swamp was an oil rig sitting on the horizon. Could that possibly be the one, I hoped.
We followed our directions ( way before Google Maps) and pulled up to their office. I went in and was taken back to the small conference room that looked out to a small boat that was moored next to a dock. After meeting our contact, I asked what the boat was for. He said that they used it as a shortcut to go to one of their rigs. I asked him if it could be the one we saw coming over the bridge a couple of miles away. He said let’s find out and we jumped in the boat and headed to the rig.
Sure enough, it was the same rig. We stopped so I could take a reading. I pulled out my Sunpath chart as well as my Morin 2000 Hand Bearing Compass. As luck would have it, the sun would come up directly behind the rig the next morning. I arrange for two boats to head to the small bridge prior to sunrise. One for the worker, and one for me to be in. Right before the sun came up we laid down some fog and waited for it to settle. I had the man take my Zenon light and act like he was looking for something. I wanted to create some visual interest while the subject was actually the oil rig off in the distance, and I knew that the fog would make the beam stand out.
As it turns out, it’s one of my favorite industrial shots, and it was completely done in the camera with absolutely no post-processing done to it.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog.
Gordon Parks was a well-known African-American photographer who broke the race barrier shooting for magazines such as Life and Vogue; he then went on to directing and screenwriting.
What struck me when I first read some of his thoughts was a quote he had once said, “If you don’t have anything to say, your photographs aren’t going to say much”.
When I’m critiquing images submitted to me in my online classes with the BPSOP, and during our daily critiques in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around our (round) planet, I can usually tell right off that the photo they took had no meaning. No real meaning because the photographer didn’t have anything to say.
This will usually occur when someone has taken instead of making a picture. I have seen it when a photo has been submitted for a critique in my online class, but more importantly when I’m walking around when one of my workshop participants.
I understand that these photographers want to take as many photos as they can since they’re in places where most people don’t ever get to see. However, I would rather take fewer images that say or mean something, just enjoying the experience, than bringing the cameras up to my eye because that’s what it’s there for.
It boils down to editing my photos before bringing up the camera or deleting them when sitting in front of a computer. For me, taking precious time to stop and ‘take a picture’, is just burning a lot of daylight. After all, I figure that the best picture I will have ever taken up to then is the one just around the corner enveloped with beautiful late afternoon light.
Having said all this, there is something to making your family slide show last awhile. Describing your feeling at the time of conception in other words when you click the shutter, to the people that you bribed with dinner and wine, can take the place of the photo standing on its own conveying what you were thinking at the time you clicked the shutter.
Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, follow me on Instagram, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.
I have four grown kids ranging from thirty to thirty-eight and four grandkids ages one month to thirteen and have been taking pictures of them most of their lives. Not so much with my three daughters and one son as they all have “flown the coop”, and leading grown-up lives!!!
There was a time when I took lots of pictures of them, and my fellow photographers that have taken my online course with the BPSOP, and my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet always are amazed when I show them some of mine in response to some of their submission they always have the same disclaimer…”It’s all they would let me take”, or “After one shot they wanted to quit”, or “This is the only pose they would give me”, or finally, “They had a complete meltdown when I asked them to smile”.
“What’s your secret”? They always ask.
It’s easy, pay them!!!!! I’ve always felt that if you were going to take them away from what they were doing, it seemed only fair to pay them for their time; and it has ALWAYS worked.
When my kids were just past the walking for the first time stage in their life, I was taking their pictures for family personal use as well as using them for some of my jobs. At first, they wouldn’t hear of being photographed. Covering their eyes and laying on the ground was their way of saying no. So, I offered to pay them twenty-five cents. It worked like a charm. Then as they got a little older, it went to fifty cents. Around the age of ten, it became a dollar, and that meant they agreed to be photographed for as long as I needed because it was mostly for my work.
By this time, they were as good looking and better all-around models that took direction better than any model their age a client could pick. This held true for all the modeling agencies in Houston.
The dollar became five, then twenty-five, fifty, and finally one hundred dollars by the time they were teenagers to young adults. You ask why? When a client wanted to look at model portfolios, I would always put in whichever of my kids would fit the profile of who they were looking for. If one of them was picked, I would tell them it was one of my kids and the rate was one-hundred dollars for whatever use they wanted. A price my kids gladly agreed on.
The difference in price between a model registered with an agency and one of my kids could be quite a lot. One of my kids charged a hundred dollars and the modeling agency would easily charge a thousand dollars or considerably more depending on all the different places the photo would be seen. There was never an issue concerning Nepotism with the advertising agencies. It was always about the money.
So, next time you want to photograph your kids, pay them for their time. A quarter can go a long way, which is exactly what my daughter (photo shown at the top) charged to get on the teeter-totter with our dog Lucy.
A fifty cent charge by another daughter.
Visit my website at www.joeBaraban.com and check out my workshop schedule. Come shoot with me sometime.
