Hey, how’s it going? I’m Andy Jones, and this is episode 178 of the Photography Side Hustle podcast.
This week, I have two things for you.
The first one is tricks. All pro photographers need to have a few options when posing people or an effect or style they can use.
The second has to do with the number of megapixels your camera has.
So, let’s start off with tricks.
Tricks
When my daughter was small, she played soccer. That’s football if you’re British. But seeing as 85% of the podcast listeners are in North America, I’m going to call it soccer. You’re welcome.
Anyway, she was playing soccer and was getting frustrated. So, it was time to teach her a few tricks. These were tricks that made an opponent commit to try and tackle her. Then, she would move the ball and run off with it. It transformed her game. She loved it because it made it easier and fun.
That is exactly what I want for you. I want you to have lots of tricks that you can use to impress your clients.
It doesn’t matter what you shoot. You need some go-to tricks you can use.
Family Portraits
I remember my first-ever portrait session. It was very difficult. I had no idea how to pose subjects. Luckily, it was for family members, but it made me realize that I had a lot to learn.
What I did was search the internet for portraits I liked, save them, resize them, and then print out a dozen of them on a letter-sized sheet of paper. On my second attempt at a portrait session (family again), I pulled out my pieces of paper with my favorite poses, and it went way better than the first one.
I kept those printouts in my bag for a few months. When I ran out of ideas, I would go to my bag and take a peek. Later, when I had my own versions of those poses, I would hand them out to clients during a session so they could choose the next shot.
Weddings
When I started shooting weddings, I found some photos I loved but couldn’t figure out how the photographer took them. Then, when I stopped shooting weddings, I watched a YouTube video in which the photographer revealed how he took his signature shots.
I thought he used presets, but he didn’t. For one type of photo, he carried a large wine glass with him, and he would partially shoot through the glass, which gave a cool-looking effect.
The guy would hold the bride's flowers around the camera lens. I thought he was using plants and hedges at the venue, but I didn’t consider the bride’s bouquet.
One photo I used to take was holding the bride’s veil in front of the lens and taking a shot of the couple kissing.
Other options you can use are putting the camera close to the ground or high above your head. The different angles can really make a photo.
Real Estate
When I started shooting some real estate, I was asked to do a shoot by a realtor who had always done his own photos. I did the shoot, and when he saw my photos, he asked me to re-shoot them.
He had always taken the photos with the camera at arm's length above his head. So you were viewing the room from close to the ceiling. He used a Sony Mavica camera that was 0.3 megapixels and saved the images to a 3.5-inch floppy disk. He asked me to do the shoot because his old computer died and his new one didn’t have a floppy drive. What a character.
Anyway, I used the high-angle photos on my next shoots with other clients, and they liked them.
So that was a new trick I had learned, and I used it for realtor portraits as well. Now, I didn’t stand in front of the subject with my camera above my head. I used a step ladder.
You’ve probably seen realtor portraits taken from above with their arms folded in front of them. Once one realtor has one, they all want one.
That ladder went everywhere with me, including weddings and family portraits.
Your job is to collect and use as many different ways as possible to capture images of your clients.
These are the tricks of your trade.
Okay, let’s look at megapixels …
Megapixels
How many megapixels do you need?
I watched a video that answers that very question. It was put on YouTube back in 2021, but it’s still relevant today.
It was made by photographer Chris Hau, who shoots commercially for big brands like Audi, Mercedes, Apple, Google, and Adobe.
He shot identical photos using a 12 MP Sony a7SIII and a 102 MP Fujifilm GFX100S. He then got three YouTube photographers to check them out and guess which camera took them.
The photographers were Lizzie Pierce, Peter McKinnon, and Daniel Schiffer. I’ll put a link in the show notes, and over at photographysidehustle.com/178, you should watch it.
They looked at the photos on a computer screen, small prints, and then huge prints that looked like 36” x 24”.
Most of the guesses were wrong. They thought the best quality would be from the 102 MP camera, but it was actually the 12 MP Sony. Even the guy who took and edited the images got 3 out of 4 wrong.
He said he had used the 12-megapixel Sony a7SIII to shoot ad campaigns for Toyota and Corona.
So don’t get hung up on getting a large megapixel camera body. You really don’t need one to shoot professionally. A 12, 16, or 24 MP body is more than enough.
What I would like to see now is a YouTube landscape photographer doing the same test. A lot of them are obsessing about Fujifilm and Hasselblad's 100-plus megapixel bodies. The Hasselblad X2D 100C will cost you $9,000, which is out of the reach of most photographers.
There are still a few landscape photographers using the Canon 5D MkIV, which is an incredible camera with 30 megapixels. I might message some and see if they will do the comparison.
Anyway, from now on, spend your hard-earned money on good lenses.
Right, I am pleased to say that the Photoshop course is back up and available. Soon to follow is my Lightroom editing course, and before New Year, a “How to Shoot in Manual Mode” course.
I mentioned last week about a possible membership group. If you are interested, sign up at photographysidehustle.com. There is a form on the home page. This is so that I know how many people are interested.
Okay, I’ll be back next week. Talk to you soon, bye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Sej2TEes4
