Sweet Abby

My coworkers super beautiful baby girl. THanks for letting me photograph her!

Beautiful Maternity

Beautiful Maternity. It was amazing and fun. Thanks guys! I can't wait to meet Lucy!

Texas Blue Bonnets

Beautiful blue bonnets and a beautiful family to go with them! We had a perfect day, and perfect light. It was beautiful. Thank you Sankey family for letting me capture your family again.

Downtown Historic Grapevine

Night time is a great time to take some interesting shots. The proof is in the images. Check out the beauty and intrigue of Historic Downtown Grapevine.

Rebuilding

This is a year for renewal for me. I want to make sure that I am building things up in my life fresh. So in honor of starting over, refreshing and renewing the amazing things in this wonderful life that I am so thankful for I am redoing my entire website!

This means that I need beautiful fresh faces to plaster all over it!

So past, present and future clients should call and make an appointment for a free session. This promotion is only available for sessions scheduled before April 31, 2011 so call me and schedule your free session. As the beauty of Texas blooms and the weather becomes perfect for portraits , let me capture your family and your children and save these memories for you for year and years to come.

Your friend and family photographer always,

Tiarra

More Self Portraits

Is what you get when I finally figure out how to use the self timer on my camera. I think that I will do all self portraits for my final in my digital class.

More Pictures

Well I know that updating pictures is important. That is why this coming Friday is going to be my photo day! Watch for it, new photos of everyone! Here are a few that I did the other day. Enjoy!

Me

My sister

My mom

And I guess I will post me in a dress, (but I cheated and it is me and John )

Self Portrait

I was taking school pictures at Bear Valley School, and I took this shot of me. A little abstract self portrait. I like it. Pictures from the Exhibit at The Fort Worth Community Art Center are forth coming. :)

Accepted in the TCC art Exhibition

I just wanted to share with you all the piece I entered into the TCC Art Exhibition. I didn't think it would get in, but it did. So here it is. Multiple Exposure of a lamp with a toy Holga Camera on 120 bw film. Developed and printed by me in the dark room.

Thanks for reading, I'll post pics of the gallery when the show happens!

Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours! Merry Christmas! We hope that God blesses you all during this special holiday season!

Christmas Time!

I haven't taken many clients this year doing school and photography. Just my regulars and of course anyone from our church family. Well I squeezed in this one and right close to Christmas too! Thanks Melanie! I am so glad I got to come over!

Why are Professional Photographers so expensive?

This article has been very well received by the photography community, and is published in the December 2009 edition of Professional Photographer Magazine.

In this digital age where everyone has cameras, scanners, and home “photo printers,” we hear this all the time: How do professional (or personal) photographers charge $X for an 8×10 when they cost just $1.50 at the drugstore? Simply put, the customer is not just paying for the actual photograph; they’re paying for time and expertise.

The Average One-Hour Portrait Session

First, let’s look at the actual work involved:

Travel to the session
Setup, preparation, talking to the client, etc.
Shoot the photos
Travel from the session
Load images onto a computer
Back up the files on an external drive
2 – 4 hours of Adobe® Photoshop® time, including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, and backing up edited photographs. Proof photos are also ordered.
2 – 3 hours to talk to the client, answer questions, receive order and payment, order their prints, receive and verify prints, package prints, schedule shipment, and ship.
Possibly meet clients at the studio to review photos and place order. Meeting and travel time average 2 hours.
You can see how a one-hour session easily turns into an eight-hour day or more from start to finish. So when you see a personal photographer charging a $200 session fee for a one-hour photo shoot, the client is NOT paying them $200 per hour.

The Eight-Hour Wedding

A wedding photographer typically meets with the bride and groom several times before and after the wedding. And it’s not uncommon to end up with 1,000 – 2,000 photos, much more than a portrait session. Many photographers spend 40-60 hours working on one eight-hour wedding if you look at the time that is truly involved. Again, when a wedding photographer charges $4,000 for eight hours of coverage, clients are NOT paying them $500 an hour!

(Don’t forget that the photographer runs the wedding day to some extent. A comfortable, confident wedding photographer can make a wedding day go more smoothly.)

The Expertise and Cost of Doing Business

Shooting professional photography is a skill acquired through years of experience. Even though a DSLR now costs under $1,000, taking professional portraits involves much more than a nice camera.

Most personal photographers take years to go from buying their first camera to making money with photography. In addition to learning how to use the camera, there is a mountain of other equipment and software programs used to edit and print photographs, run a website, etc. And don’t forget backdrops, props, rent, utilities, insurance, etc!

In addition to the financial investment, photographers actually have to have people skills to make subjects comfortable in front of the camera. Posing people to look their best is a skill by itself. You could argue that posing is a more important skill than actually knowing how to use the camera. A poorly exposed photo can be saved, but a badly posed photo cannot.

The Chain Store Photo Studio

Chain stores do have their place. For a very cheap price you can run in, shoot some quick photos, and be done with it. But you get what you pay for.

Consider the time and effort that a personal photographer puts into photographs, compared to a chain store. Store sessions last just a few minutes, while a personal photographer takes the time to get to know the people, makes them comfortable, makes them laugh. If a baby is crying at a chain store, they often don’t have the time (or the patience) to wait because everyone is in a hurry.

The truth is that many chain store studios lose money. In fact, Wal-Mart closed 500 of their portrait studios in 2007 because of the financial drain. What the chain stores bank on is a client coming in for quick, cheap photos…and while there, spending $200 on other items. They are there to get you in the door.

The Real Deal

Professional, personal photographers are just that—professionals. No different than a mechanic, dentist, doctor, or electrician. But a personal photographer often becomes a friend, someone who documents a family for generations with professional, personal photographs of cherished memories.

Maybe we need to help clients look at it this way: A pair of scissors costs $1.50 at the drugstore. Still, most people will gladly pay a lot more to hire a professional hair dresser to cut their hair.

The added attention and quality that a personal photographer gives is worth every penny.

Conclusion

We hope that those who have taken the time to read this page will have a better understanding of why professional photographs, created by a Personal Photographer are so expensive.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.