Anyone can be a photographer, or can they?

I blogged about unethical wedding photographers a while ago. How about incompetent ones?

Case 1

A friend studying medicine was complaining to me about the photographer at his clinical school graduation dinner held last Sunday at Crown. This is a scanned image of the group photo.

I guess I can see why.

• dark shadows in the background, to the point where it obscures some guy on the top right hand corner. Probably improper positioning of the strobe in the front. It should have been from the top instead.
• Imbalanced exposure. The people in the foreground are very brightly lit while the ones at the back are sort of properly exposed.
• Wires hanging on the top half of the picture. Looks like a security camera or some form of lighting.
• White projector screen not taken away on top right hand corner
• The lines on the floor are not properly framed at the bottom corner of image.
• There's a grey mark on the lower right of the image, and every photo has it. What the heck is that?! (No.. its not the scanner's fault)

Since the guests are quite important (its the Med. school of the University of Melbourne for God's sake!), they should deserve better treatment. One of my med friends is a photographer and he'll be graduating next year. So if you're the organiser,  please get someone competent to do it. If you'd like some recommendations, you may contact me personally ;)

Case 2

A friend went skydiving in Queenstown, New Zealand this year, and he paid an extra 200 dollars for a few photos / videos to be taken while he was doing the jump.

This seems to be a technically competent photo, but on closer inspection, you can see some ugly dust marks on the lens. And they're pretty large ones too. Kinda reminiscent of the state of pollution in our skies nowadays, don't you think so? ;)

Maybe you could argue that 200 dollars isn't that much to pay for a job that requires some cloning / healing to get rid of the dust spots since the photographer also has to act as a skydiver too. But from a photographic standpoint, I would've expected more.

Whats the moral of the story?

One of my friends said that this is "proof you can earn money as a photographer even though you are pretty sh*t". I kind of agree with him in some way.

On the other hand, there are lots of crap photographers out there. Don't always hire the cheapest one at first sight, but always examine their work with a keen eye, and ascertain if their portfolio (and price) suit your requirements and budget.

Cheers.