Tanya,
You're right to ask these questions of yourself as you are presented with
your first opportunity to make a few dollars through photography. I'm going
to make a few observations, not to discourage you, but to hopefully
enlighten you.
1.) If your friend with the two daughters showed the shots off at school and
the other mums want to hire you to do the same for =their= kids, that means
they want you to DO THE SAME FOR THEIR KIDS. They want you to do the same
poses, the same expressions, the =same=. Mums often pay a lot of lip service
to having "different" portraits done of their kids, but most of them
actually fear anything that will make the kids appear different.
2.) When you hung those wings on the kids, you already jumped over the
cheesy line, so it's too late for that particular dilemma.
3.) There's Business, and there's Art. Rarely do they wind up in the same
county, much less on the same shoot. Look at it this way: When you did your
friend's little girls, it was probably as a sort of practice, like, "Hey, I
need to do some fairy photos, mind if I borrow the girls?" In that
situation, the girls are models, there to prop up your Photographs. This is
your Art. Now, when the other mums want you to shoot their kids, those kids
go from being models, or props, to being Subjects. Notice the shift. Now the
photo has to be built to support the subject. This is Business.
4.) Charge real money. Decide what your prices are and stick with them. If
you give your work away, you'll get a rep as a "cheap" photog, and nobody
will want to pay you a fair price later.
5.)It's harder than Anne Geddes makes it look.
Doug "been there, done that, still paying the back taxes" Brewer
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