Water cascades over the top of the Evergreen Lake Dam, driven by high winds.

Gears to control a spillway or other valve at Evergreen Lake Dam.

As seen through the trees at the base.

Last week I wrote about Photography For Real Estate entry by Larry Lohrman..  The subject of the entry was “How to Survive in a Competitive Environment. Along with the usual good advice, Larry quoted a comment from a Flickr PFRE group discussion by Fred Light (still haven’t watched his DVD yet).  A piece of the quote:

For Realtors, it’s not about ‘the art’, ‘the creativity’, ‘the process’, and you can’t base your pricing on something Realtors don’t care or know about. The only people that care about that are the photographers, OTHER photographers and those who really appreciate photography as ART.

Realtors care about PRICE. Realtors care that the photos look GOOD and look better than what THEY could take. It’s really that simple. As long as a photographer (pro or semi pro or amateur) takes BETTER photos than the Realtor could themselves, they will get hired.

Price discussions notwithstanding, Fred hit it squarely on the head.  Photographers really are the only ones who care about the artistic side of an image when it comes to real estate or portraits.  The buyer (agent/ family member) who commissions you just does so because they believe you can do a better job than they can, or than other people they know can.  It’s that simple.  So make sure you give them what they want, charge fairly for it, and you shouldn’t have any problems.

All of life should be this easy, no?

A friend of mine recently had an impromptu family reunion photo shoot come up. Her background, like mine, is traditionally more of an artistic type of photography. She indicated that she had trouble switching to photographer from artist and wanted to know how I managed it.

I was a bit taken aback by this, as I don’t really see myself as being good at the portrait thing (although people are loving Megan’s senior pics - the photo above is one of them). But that isn’t very helpful to anyone, so I thought about it and gave her my gut reaction. I have since thought about it more, and my gut reaction is the same, so here it is.

The focus of a portrait should be the person/ people/ animal that the portrait is supposed to be of. This might sound obvious, but it isn’t always that way, especially in post processing. It is easy for creative people to start saying “what if I cropped here, what if I applied sepia there?” and pretty much forget about what it is they are there to do. When I was doing the processing of the Senior Pictures for my daughter Megan, I had to look at it from my view as a parent. I want a tasteful image that reflects who she is, and where she is the focus.

Another reality with portraits is that people are going to be less likely to have any custom framing done. As such, any cropping you do should have a resultant image in a standard “frameable” size. Not to say some people won’t do the custom thing, but since portraits get sent to a larger audience (parents, grandparents, etc.), it is more helpful if you can keep it standard.

One of the cool things I love about Adobe Lightroom is the easy ability to create and work with virtual copies of an image. This is great for portraits. If I see a shot that might look better with a certain crop, displayed in black and white or sepia, or any other artistic variation, I can apply it to the copy, and upload that with the original and let the buyer choose which they like better. These people are the art directors, not you, and you need to give them all the options. Some might sell, some might not, but at least they will know the options. And if they like it, they will buy it from you instead of trying to do it themselves with whatever photo site they like.

I do still think there is room for being artistic in a portrait situation. I think the example above highlights one such opportunity. As Megan was climbing out into the stream, I saw this shot in my mind. So I stayed put on the banks of the stream and took this shot from further out. Then I clambered into the stream and did the up-close shots before we called it a day.

So in a nutshell, I guess the answer to my friend’s question is “don’t forget that it is about the people and what they want, not necessarily your vision.” But if you offer options, you are that much more ahead of the game.

As we were driving into the Bear/ Sprague Lake area on Sunday, we drove alongside Mill Creek and I noticed that it had a significantly-sized channel with a lot of boulders in it. I filed it away in the back of my mind, thinking it warranted more inspection. I think Megan noticed it too.

After we wrapped up with all the shooting at Bear Lake and Sprague Lake, we started to head out of the park. It had rained pretty good, and the roads were pretty wet. As we crossed the bridge over Mill Creek, Megan and I agreed that we should at least check the site out. I was a bit concerned because of how much it had rained. The rocks looked pretty slick. We walked all the way from where we parked down to the bridge (where I took a photo of the underside of the bridge because of George Barr and his book. I still had reservations because of the wetness of the rock, but Megan wanted to do it and was confident she could if she went barefoot.

Throwing caution to the wind, we went out into the boulder field/ creek. I wouldn’t want to try this in May/ June when the runoff is raging through there, but at this time of the year the creek was pretty tame. I found what I thought was a good rock for Megan to pose on. I got a good number of shots of her on that rock. Some laughing, some serious, but all good I think. I decided to “think outside the box” a little and moved her off to one side of the frame. That resulted in the picture above. When she saw it in camera later, she was really excited. Didn’t catch what she thought of it full size on the screen. Guess I’ll have to dig into her myspace page - I am sure it is there if she liked it.

For me though, this image could be used to convey so many thoughts. I could easily see it being some type of album cover (or something along these lines at least), or an advertisement, or just an interpretive piece for the viewer to decide what it means. For some reason this image is very powerful to me. Maybe I am reading more into it since I took the image. Definitely possible. Doesn’t matter though, I really like it.