3 Reasons To Not Hire The Wrong Photographer

I’m going to tell you a story. One that will hopefully save you thousands of dollars, and way more time than expected.

Not long ago a potential photo job was presented to me. One that required photographing a metal product.

I have photographed many products before, and continue to do so. But I definitely do not claim to be a master product photographer. So when I looked at what the product was, I quickly turned it down. Here’s why.

1. The product is metal, which is extremely difficult to photograph without fingerprints or dust.
2. The product is extremely shiny, which is extremely difficult to photograph without reflections.
3. The product is not one that just anyone can photograph, so I recommended someone with a product photography speciality.
4. The product is designed for animals, so I also recommended someone with a pet photography specialty

As it turned out, the product designer did not want to go in my recommended direction.

Maybe that person was out of the budget. I don’t know.

Instead of hiring a product photographer, or even a pet photographer, the product designer hired a boudoir photographer.

If you don’t know what a boudoir photographer is, do a quick Google search.

After reading about what a boudoir photographer is you are hopefully asking yourself why the product designer hired that photographer. Or what promises were made. Or what the cost was.

Don’t get me wrong, I have many friends who photograph boudoir. But I can pretty much promise you that none of them would have taken on this job, because that is not their speciality.

Who would you hire to photograph a car?

After declining the project and even sending links to photographers that the product designer might want to have conversations with, I didn’t hear back.

Then came an email confirming everything that I said.  I don’t feel right sharing the entire email, but here are the points which were made:

• The photographer far under budgeted the project.
• The photographer’s contract was for 3 hours of work and is already over 7 hours. I don’t think the photographer is nearly complete.
• There were a lot of fingerprints that the photographer couldn’t remove
• The photographer believes more retouching will be required to remove the imperfections in the metal
• The photographer didn’t think to schedule multiple pets and assumed one pet would be used for the entire project. That could have been miscommunication, though.

3 Reasons To Not Hire The Wrong Photographer

So now that I have shared all of that, here are the 3 reason to not hire the wrong photographer.

1. You will waste a lot of money
2. You will waste a lot of time
3. Your photographs may not turn out how you expect

Think about it like this…

Would you hire a product photographer (who never or rarely photographs people) to photograph your wedding?

Hopefully you said no.

Don’t get stuck without a paddle

In a later article I’ll share tips on how to hire the right photographer. But until then, I think this photographer and this product designer have both learned lessons. Unfortunately, the lessons were learned the hard way.

My hope is that by sharing this article you will learn the lesson the easy way.