sarah dobbins | what’s current

See that little link up there that says “ask me anything?”

I mean it–ask me anything.

I get a lot of questions via email from other photographers (and moms too!) so I thought I’d start doing some public Q&A. Submit your question or questions and I will pull a few every Monday to answer on the blog.

For today I will answer two commonly asked questions via email.

I have been working on my photography as a hobby and now people have started asking me to take their family pictures. How should I do this? What should I charge?

I am a strong believer that photographers who charge money–no matter how little–should be professionals. That doesn’t mean you have to have a degree or have a bunch of formal education under your belt, but it does mean you should be not only completely competent with your equipment, but have a solid business base in place as well. And that will mean having a business plan which includes your goals and a very detailed workup of your pricing system. Too many photographers arbitrarily pick numbers of “what sounds good” to charge and when you sit down and actually do the math, they end up making less than what they could make working at McDonalds.

And until you’re ready to make the plunge and go into business… really, truly ready… then keep shooting for free and for fun. You don’t have to say yes to everyone who asks you–you can always just shoot what you want.

Most importantly, if you do go into business, be yourself. Don’t try to imitate other photographers–bring what’s uniquely you into your business, and shoot what you love. Everyone has something different to offer in this industry and I think that is a wonderful thing.

I struggle with skin, especially newborns. How do you keep the skin creamy and not blotchy?

Exposure is everything with skin. If you underexpose skin, when you bring it up in photoshop to where it should be, a lot of times the ruddiness and blotchiness in skin gets even worse. So be sure your exposure is correct in camera. (And keep in mind exposing for skin can be tricky–you have to tailor your exposure to the skin tone.)

In photoshop you should only need to do some minor tweaking–maybe some selective color adjustments if you have red blotches, and occasionally a little bit of gaussian blur on some uneven parts. But correcting your in-camera work should really make a huge difference.