What do you look for in a photographer?

Ive been steadilly busy over the past couple of months with weddings and events needing a photographer. As a former photographer in RL (quit the job to go back to IT work with a well known search engine company) i beleive in using the one thing that can make or break a good photo...light.

Simple lighting can make all the difference to the mood, and overall general feeling of a picture wether it be in second life or real life.

Recently (...yeah...AGAIN...) some other photographers have once again started to give their "constructuve criticism" about the photos i was taking, first they whined about the low prices i was setting, now its my actual work.

They all said that the bulk of the photos i took look "plain". "Ok" i said..."show me your best shot. nine times out of ten the pictures they show have been wrangled, layered, altered, and generally ran through the program known as Adobe Photoshop. Most of the pics totally lost the general look and feel of a picture being taken within second life and some of them had the avatar greenscreened and then placed infront of a real life setting, like big ben, or the US Senate building.

Now dont get me wrong, i use photoshop for the tricky greenscreening i need to do for the occaisional model shot. Just today a model wanted a new photo done for her escort portfolio, i recreated the classic picture from the Profumo Affair with the chair et al (if ya dunno what profumo was all about, search for it in Google). She loved it, payed me, petted my pet rabbit that sits on my shoulder, gave me some more lindens as a tip and went on her merry way doing whatever escorts do...

The same profumo pic was branded as "plain and dull" by the same photographers.

I went to their various studios, some larger than mine, some smaller, and took a look at their various example pictures. Almost every one of them had some aspect of a major Photoshop tweak to it, again losing that basic SL feeling that i think most pictures should have. You want a picture taken in SL, it should SHOW that the picture was taken in SL and not be layered with a load of bloated crap from Adobe CS.

Still...its obvious that these other photographers are getting client in, probably at the same rate I am.

This leads me on to a couple of questions which fit 2 specific generalised picture types which i usually take...

1: Profile pictures

The classic "wide screen" profile pic which goes into your...well..profile. Whats your preference? A minimal photoshopped pic with a dang good background with good lighting which highlights your avatar or a layered photoshopped pic which literally almost takes out all traces that the pic was taken in Second Life?

2: Wedding picture sets

Snapped shots taken from a "fly buzzing around the chapel and reception" with natural angles and little to no photoshop work which means that you get the full picture set within 1 hour of the end og the reception, or, photoshopped pictures layered with names, sepia tones and all sorts of other stuff which means you dont get the wedding pictures until 3 to 4 DAYS (not hours...DAYS) after your SL wedding?

Lets see what the general forum public think of good lighting vs photoshopping

OK Personally I have never had my profile pic done so I wont comment there.

The biggest things I looked for in my wedding photography was :

a) A person who could understand the shot *I* wanted, not just their artistic vision of how my SLwedding should look

b) a photographr who could show me examples of the works that they had done includin both the still snapshots in SL and the finished products in photoshop where applicable

c) One who's shots were impecable, one who had the lighting the tone th background and the shor right in everypicthey showed me. If they picks a pic to show me which wasnt liek this then I would expect they werent as much of a perfectionist.

d) someone who would give me full perm copies of all the pics they took at the wedding, edited and unedited





I wanted both of these.i wantd a huge collection of snapshot type pics which had been well taken mixedin with some photoshopped pics which were more like a classic portrait shot.

I had no issues with waiting three to four days for my photos. The thing is my wedding unlikemost in SL didnt last a month and so waiting three days wasnt much for us (actually waited a week from memory as we had portrait shots done about 3 days after the wedding and she had had her wedding the day after ours).

I think the mix of photoshop and non photoshoped pictures is important. The thing is tha mots peopel can take a snapshot and in SL most an geta decent one. The art work often comes in the photoshopping to lighten it up, or darken, highlight things, crop etc etc etc.









Three examples from our wedding

I do quite a bit of SL photography, mostly just for myself. One thing I notice that spoils a lot of pics is when people use poses or viewpoints that don't work well in stills, with hands sunk into hips or arm sockets dislocated etc.!

I'm an artist myself and do a lot of amateur photography.

I can make some SL shots easily.

We can always arrange a tryout. Never did it for anyone here.
My services in-game are free anyway.

Wrong.

I want the best looking pic possible that is going to showcase my avatar in the way i want to be seen.
Post production Photoshopping has been standard for many SL photographers since 2003.



I want a photoshopped pic. Like my forum avatar pic, it was taken in SL, not heavily photoshopped but played with some.




Uhh. I want that "all sorts of other stuff". The best wedding pic we have was taken and photoshopped with Sepia etc. by Kris Ritter.

It's supposed to take some days to get your wedding pics. Why do i want to pay for pics from a 'professional photographer' that i could have had my buddy take with no photoshop experience but just years in SL knowing the angles for photos and such?

People want their weddings to be memorable through high quality creative photography.

People want their avatars to reflect the best they have to show in one way or another.

What does the pic 'reflecting that it was taken in Second Life' have anything to do with it? I think it is somewhat simple and amateurish if you can look at a pic and tell immediately that it is second life - i can take pics like that.

Put some effort into it. Make it special, make it beautiful, make it memorable, and whatever you do, don't over photo-shop it.

I think there's room for both ways of working and everything inbetween. If you are happy with your style and you are doing good trade, then what's the problem?

I don't normally use any photoshop on my SL pics except adding a gaussian blur to reduce jagged edge effect. I do that to all my pics and it doesn't spoil the SL look.

Occasionally I will also use photoshop to correct a detail too, but only something like hair going through arms or something.

Separate to this I am working on a handful of SL photos to achieve an RL photorealistic look (hopefully). But that's a separate project and not part of the normal photojournalism of my Second Life experience. It's really just an exercise to see how well it works.

Keeping the 'SL look' in photos is possible while still getting good images. There are no set rules, people can turn all their pictures into neon glowing pixel mosaics if they want to, it's up to them!

I'll jump in here. *grin*

There's a market for everything. When I started doing SL photography, people were amazed at their unique look. They looked different than their in-world snapshots. The difference? I worked them in Photoshop, giving the images a radiance, making the colors more vivid, smoothing out seams, etc. Now, what I do is nothing special as all the SL Photographers are doing post-processing in Photoshop.

You have a bold look that is distinctive of Second Life. So it's all personal preference. I prefer to make the images not look so much like "pixels" but rather to have an artistic flair. But, that's just me. There are millions of accounts, so create and find your market.

Let's compare it to RL photography ... and I'm talking modern photography with digital cameras, not old-school shooting MF film and all post-processing done in the darkroom (I miss those days ... and now I'm showing my age *grin* ). If you hire me to photograph your RL wedding, you will get online proofs within a week. You will get your final photos about a month later. Why? Photoshop touchups.

When you hire me to do a portfolio in SL, you will get an online proof gallery within a day or two. Your final images about 2 days after you pick / approve the gallery. Ditto for SL weddings. Why? Yup, you guessed it, Photoshop touchups.

My clients expect, and pay for, the Photoshop work that I do to all of my final images. I do not market myself as an in-world "snapshot" photographer, nor do I take jobs of that market. It's not that I can't do it, I simply choose not to engage in that market.

So, personal preference, and there's a market for everything. Make your work your own and find your market.

Honestly, I am my own photographer. My preference is for things to appear more like they were in SL, but soft focus vignettes, sepia tones, etc. are nice and if I were to pay someone for photographs, it would be because they would be doing things I can't do for myself, or have poses available that I don't have.

A camera?

added: A glamor shots diploma?

Anyone can take a screenshot, and with just a little care, can frame it attractively either in camera, or later with a simple crop.

If I hire a photographer, I'm really hiring a Photoshop artist. I want him to take that basic SL snapshot and make it more romantic, more realistic, more compelling. I want something that looks like a high dollar ad for perfume.

I want it to look like SL itself might look, five years from now.