West End - Greenville SC & The glass floor.

Today we were chatting with a client at the studio about the glass floor in the photography industry.  It got me thinking about what really differentiates us from the startup photographer.  My favorite joke recently is that if you shake a tree three or four photographers will fall out.

Vision - you either have it, don't have it, or can learn it if you try hard enough...  so lets call that available to all.

Gear - it can be leased on demand so once again - pretty much open to all.

Studio - We are starting to see a little stratification there.  Some are outside shooters, some are studio shooters...  Magnolia has the luxury of doing both from the downtown loft at 123 Main.

I think the real difference is in knowledge.

A starter can have great ideas, have or rent the gear, shoot outside and have a great shot if the conditions are right.  The telling story is when things aren't ideal.  Maybe it's drab light.  Thunderstorms!  The lens you have isn't wide enough....  crowds are in the spot you planned to shoot.  Each of those situations is faced by a photographer on a regular basis.  A full time working professional knows how to handle the good and the bad to turn out a product you will be proud to show for a lifetime.

I spoke with a local business some time ago about doing some shooting for them.  Busy schedules put the shoot on hold for a bit, but I wanted to send out a little "Hi how are ya" email with a sample photo of some Greenville SC landmarks to show what direction I was thinking on their project.  The only problem was - I came up with this bright idea at 4 A.M. and wanted it in the works today.  I ran out to the site and found some pretty weak light.  Rather than scrapping the idea, I used some photo tricks to zing it all up.  Lastly, I furthered the improvements by stitching together multiple shots to form panorama's of my scenes.

I dropped the results into an email and put the project back on the front burner for us both  :-)

Below are the properly exposed images out of camera paired up with what I did as a final shot.  Click on a picture to enlarge!