With plenty of courses online, amateur equipment becoming cheaper, we are seeing a wave of new photographers popping up with different skill levels.
Some of them also have sales skills, so they’re able to sell corporates or private persons head shots. Often times these type of photographers don’t use studios – it’s cheaper to do it outdoors and sometimes the requests are last minute.
Disadvantages of outdoors
It’s very tempting for armature photographers who have scored a head shot gig to do it outdoors – no studio hire costs, more time and you can present it as less formal too.
However, there are serious consequences that can ruin your photography business before it even really gets off the ground.
Control the light
This is the most obvious one – a studio gives you a complete control of the light. While the natural light can be nice, you really need to be very well skilled to provide a good and constant quality of photos.
You don’t want to spend a whole day waiting for the perfect light to take a head shot – it will annoy your client and decrease your hourly rate.
Quality is the key, you want constant pictures at the same high quality and the clients to recommend you to their friends. Outdoors is not sustainable for family shoots or head shots – you cannot guarantee constant high quality to grow your photography business by referrals.
Complete control of the environment
Studio give you a complete control of the environment, there are many things that can go wrong in outdoors:
- Bad weather
- Distractions
- People outdoors distracting you
- Requires massive preparation and planning, can be stressful
- No privacy
- No facilities to change outfits
- Security issues – you always have to keep an eye on all of your equipment
For a beginner photographer, there are basically many elements that you have to keep in mind, the light, the weather, the plan, the equipment, etc – all of this is adding enormous stress.
Now outdoor pictures of course can be good, but they are simply not well suited for head shots. Outdoors is best for creative visual arts work, for a well skilled photographer that knows how to adjust to the environment.
A studio is always a safe bet for most photographers and allows you to provide supreme quality pictures to guarantee continuous business from referrals.