• The Apprentice Tries Photography! – Last Wednesday BBC One TV's The Apprentice set its contestants the task of running a portrait photography business in one of the biggest shopping centres in the UK, the Bluewater. The teams had to set up stands, get customers to pose for portraits, and then sell them the resulting prints.
The teams were introduced to the concept of photo gifts, and taught that they could print photos onto a wide variety of products, such as mugs, mouse mats and jigsaw puzzles. [expand story >>>]
The programme showed how difficult it is for new entrants with no background to get this type of photography right. It's not easy to learn how to do it by just making it up yourself from scratch! Experienced event and snapshot photographers must have groaned repeatedly as they watched the show. In particular, it was taking the teams more than twenty minutes to get from capture to print, instead of the much shorter times most eventers practice .However they did manage some good displays of showmanship, and put together some sensible packages to sell.
Well known portrait photographer Terry O'Neil sat on the panel of the follow up program, The Apprentice: You're Fired.
This Episode of The Apprentice will remain available to watch again on the BBCi player for the next couple of days. [add comment]
7 Comments:
I have just watched the show on iPlayer, and immediately picked up on Simon's comment which was something like this:
"I know about photography - I have a friend who's a photographer. I know about shutter speeds, single lens reflex - I know the terminology"
From the look of his pictures, he didn't seem to know much about lighting, composition etc. Maybe he knew the terminology, but portrait photography is so much more than technical know-how.
One obvious problem to photographers who have done schools photography, for example, is that neither of the teams devised an identification system for the photographs taken. This could quite easily have been accomplished with a clip board shot in front of each customer's batch of shots and linked by a reference number to an order form. As it was chaos reigned because they wre not able to identify which customer was which and who had ordered what!
Mike Moran, Ware, Hertfordshire
I watched this and did cringe quite a bit, but was quite surprised at the public's willingness to have there portraits taken by someone who had never picked up a professional camera before, well done to them for paying a convincing part. They did a good job of selecting the Beckam look alike. The back room printing farce was my main area of worry and can't believe they didn't sort things out between them selves and the experts.
The only main thing they left out of the profit and loss scenario was that Blue Water would have charged you a fortune to be in those locations and size pitches and back room facilities. So do the public now think, hey a photographer with no experience and a working printer will make loads of money ??
This episode would have been more realistic if it were an "only fools and horses" special.Simon "what a plonker","I know about photography .
The Idea was not realistic and shows that Portrait photography is not a buisiness you can set up overnight.
However it did show how gulable the British public are £15 for an A4 laser print,unbeleavable.
My friends told me to watch it saying that "they set up and made a profit - and they are not even pro's - isn't this what your company does ???"
One of the things my company does is produce a photo gift every 15 seconds and have it in the customers hand at the end of a 2 minute ride (8 people on at a time) - and its not automated we actually take the pictures not a machine. We have hit sales rates of over 70% doing this.
We can do this because we know what we are doing.
Once again photography is being dragged down to an unskilled level by people who have all the talk and none of the skills. None of these people would have had a chance to step into the photography world (wedding, portrait, events etc) before digital came along.
Now I have to battle to pitch for work against these type of people who are, to be honest are better salesmen than me.
Also how much would those facilities have cost in Bluewater???
I keep meeting too many people who have "decided to become a photographer" - programes like this do not help.
If you think that quality will always shine through - watch the programe again (on bbc iplayer)
and consider that I had 4 "photographers" latch onto a forum where people had asked about my portrait services - all 4 said they were cheaper than me - none said they were better. They were in fact awful but the people on the forum decided to shop on price - not quality.
Enough of a rant.
all the best,
i watched the programe and thought it was very amusing to know just how little someone knows about photographer, even if they wish to think they know alot then i suggest they take a step back and think before they speak as there are alot of items and things to know about photographer and you should always have a plan of action before heading in to a project. i laughted so much at their actions it made my day. i have been in the fleid for just over eight years now and i am still learning each day my husband is so much more of a pro than i am but he had a laught as well and felt really sorry for them what with being thrown in to it like that but i feel that they all did such a good job but the down side to it was all the bitching going on yes i know it is for a job but there is no need to be so crawl to one another as there is no reward for any one at the end if that was to carry on.
I was bemused and appalled! they were not a team no one had the sense to devise an efficient link between customer \ photo \ goods customer orders were a mess. a clip board and ref numbers by customer number would have helped school kids could have done better(no disrespect to school kids)
what worries me is that the public must think 'anyone could do that' and cheaper than a professional photographers services. As a photographer we offer a professional service we do not lose your order we do not print your photo's on A4 paper we do not take money off you unless you are completely satisfied need i say more?
I have trained, been to university and studied to be where i am today, i know this refelects in my work and approach to my business.
lastly I fear for those people who accepted an A4 print on paper and paid out their hard earned money for it, is the need to recognised with a celeb look alike more important than money?
i wish i could say come over to my studio i'll take your money but my reputation is important to me as are customer service and satisfaction.
Unbelievable!!!
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