charity event

I've been to a charity event tonight as a photog for the dance school I got there in plenty of time did my job and went home early as the event organizers had employed their own photog a pro they said.

they told me to cover the dancing and leave, this suited me as my wife is ill in bed and I have a cold coming.

anyway the charity event was named for Eddie the kid (sadly wheel chair bound)so I put some b.cards on all the tables. Then their photog arrived, well as soon as he got there he asked to have all my cards removed so I politely remove them as I was only commissioned to take images of the dance.So he then put his own flyers out witch I can live with.

He then ask what camera I was using my reply was of course pentax.
He then asked hay what lens are you using for tonight I had taken my tamron 28-75mm f2.8 and showed him

I could see what camera he was using and what lens he was using.

I then asked him what meg was the camera he then pulled out his sd card and said 4gb at first I thought he didn't hear me right so I left it and went back to my camera and just double check and recheck my camera settings.

About 5min later he walk over and start's making some small talk with me and then asks I can't get the Lcd to give me full size images I then spent 5min going through his camera setting it up for him as he didn't have a clue He missed the big entrance by Eddie the kid and the speeches and as I was leaving he ask why his images where all showing movement (he had a flash as well) And I said move it to sp and set it to 125sec and the flash and camera will sort the rest out as you have a dedicated flash for your camera and left

This man was clearly NOT A PRO PHOTOGRAPHER but his flyer's said wedding,portraits ect the flyer looked good from a distance until you looked closely all the images had dark shadow where his flash was direct and to strong god help the next poor soul that books him for a wedding

end of rant

James

YET ANOTHER B-LLSH-TTER. Funny really, I went through this a long time back. You still have self respect. What a cracking lesson for you.

Best regards

pro just means you get paid, it is no reflection of imagination, ability or competence.

What a shame people like that can get away with calling themselves 'pros'. This might be a good way for you to get some future work though, if the event organisers get to compare your shots to his.

Talking of poor 'pro' photographers, I was looking at a shockingly bad flyer the other day. The photography was unaccomplished, but even worse, the photographer had selectively desaturated (bad enough in itself) the BRIDE AND GROOM (rather than the church backdrop, which would have at least made sense).

Thing is, if he charges little enough for his services then he'll always find ready customers. I've heard of one locally who does weddings for £50, the resulting images are reportedly worse than the ones I was producing when I was still in green mode but the customers apparently don't know any better, and are happy.

I have photographed shows before now with no flash, just my 120mm f2.8 from the balcony and a fairly high ISO. The results were very popular with the cast, which to me was all that mattered.

excellent

hope so I don't or didn't use a flash but my images are all in focus and show a bit of movement but you aren't aloud to use a flash as I puts of the dancers.

His lens was a sigma 28-300mm F3.5 to 5.6 but he could of had the fastest lens going and still not have no clue.

James