How often do photographers get clients who call up and ask to just do a few shots? Quick and cheap. Often times photographers will feel the pressure to work and justify unreasonably fast shot times to get the assignment; set up the camera and a few lights if any and then onto our screens will magically pop a finished image. Even I fall into this trap in spite of the fact I am a lifelong learner and expert in this business. Yet over and over again I find that great shots take time, they take time and patience to find just that right angle and lighting approach. Try to rush them and you are sure to end up with sub-par results in line with the plethora of new “photographers” work out there. But how do you get to that perfect composition and why does it take time? I decided to put into writing a mostly fluid and intuitive process as best I could. These 5 metrics only skim the surface of the complexities of a great image but they are a great primer to building a great composition, to help you become a more informed client or better photographer!

Portfolio websites are a facade of perfection showing only the successes of one’s career. They show the work after all the work sweat and sometimes tears are done. After any mistakes are polished out the work is hung in a digital “glass” box and preserved as if in a fountain of youth for artwork. But what happens when things don’t quite work out? I don’t mean some amateurish mistake. I the inevitable shoot when you did everything you could but the cards were stacked against you.