San Francisco, CA: A local man who recently brought his newly acquired DSLR to the Golden Gate Bridge has announced the founding of his photography business.
The photographer, John Griffith, recently visited the famous landmark while on a hike, where he took an image of the bridge in the fog, forcing family and friends to view it many times and describing the tilted horizon and odd crop that cut off the top of the structure as "artistic choices." Despite having no prior experience in photography, Griffith announced the opening of his photography business, "Moments of a Lifetime," specializing in landscape, portrait, wedding, birth, engagement, sports, event, glamour, and boudoir photography. Griffith also announced the addition of commercial and product photography after discovering the pop-up flash when he accidentally hit the lightning bolt button on his Canon Rebel. Says Griffith of his general aesthetic:
I just like to keep it simple, you know? Saturation: 100, Clarity: -100. Print.
Local reviews of Moments of a Lifetime have been mixed. We spoke to some of Griffith's friends, who noted:
I just asked for some nice engagement shots. I'm not sure why there was a tiger Photoshopped into all of them. I mean, do we even have tigers in California?
He kept talking about how a heavy vignette really brings attention to the subject, but I couldn't really listen to what he was saying because he kept saying 'vignette' with a hard g.
All my headshots were black and white except for my eyes. He said: 'it brings out the blue of your eyes.' I wasn't really sure about it, but he does have a really nice camera...
Griffith has also appointed himself the official photographer of all family events, bringing his unique style of selective color portraits to the Griffith family reunion and offering cousin Linnie menacing glares whenever she pulled out her smartphone to snap a shot, muttering: "do you even know how much depth of field you're getting with that ISO?" Said Grandma Beth after 45 minutes of posing and 600 shots:
Would someone please get me a chair?
Griffith notes he plans to begin offering workshops next week.
why give him the time of day and the publicity, then? :D
theres a small chance that this is satire.
>97%
Satire my ass.
I know of more than one case of idiots like this. One particular guy printed business cards a couple of days after he got his brand new video camera with no clue how to use it. His first wedding shoot didn't end well, as he got punched by the groom.
satire tends to mock real life situations. it doesn't mean that it's not satire just because it is possible that it could actually happen.
Hysterical! Good stuff, thanks for the laugh.
LOL'd and heartily! Have a great day!
Wow, "Uncle Bob" actually opened up shop?!
He finally did it!
Too bad he's fictional. If it was true it would have given me a boost! Who knows? mebbe I'll leave MS Paint and JPEG and use RAW and, that photo-editing thingy thing... I might even buy a DSLR coz most of my clients frown whenever I use my iPad...
LOL. very funny.
p.s. some people are so damn serious...they didn't even know this was a joke.
It's not a joke to him and his company. My story is similar, but I took a b&w of an old chair leaning against a tree.
Then it turns out that John Griffith's great grandfather was Andy Griffith which leads to Maxim hiring him to shoot their cover spreads.
This guy is my hero...
HAHA AWSOME POST made my friday !
I think I've seen that guy around... He lives in Silver Lake and wears skinny jeans, he also wears beard jewelry.
Dude doesn't shoot architecture? He's dead in the water.
Saturation at 100 and clarity at -100. Of course heavy vignette, why didn't I think of that!? Why did anyone give me these tips before?! Now I'm starting my own photography business! ;)
You forgot to include the link to his Facebook page.
Hahaha! This is great!
In other news, I hear The Onion just put up a review of the Sigma 85mm Art...
Sounds like every single Canon owner i know
The hard "G' got me lmao. Good stuff.
Highly recommended! Five stars! :::))
I have Facebook friends right now who just started taking pictures, they crank the HDR and saturation to 100, and have declared themselves open for business. All the weak minds leave comments saying "Fantastic! You're amazing! These are breathtaking." So the satire of this great article is right on.
Who are we to stop them from doing so ? Offer and demand, if people want this, then it is their choice. Good work always comes out on top :)
Methinks we should have an actual "satire" section on here. This made me happy.
"Things that I regret doing"-list, new entry: opened C1 to find out what Saturation: 100, Clarity: -100 looks like.
Avert your eyes!!!
EL Oh EL
At least he gave it a creative name, as opposed to just his name with 'photography' added on the end. Gotta give him credit for that.
I HATE that so much! Also despise the self port holding your camera for your website.
There is an actual LEGAL reason for that. If you use our name in the business name you don;t have to register as operating under an assumed name or also known as a DBA (doing business as).
Obviously, this varies from country to country and 90% of the time they do it cause they saw other people do it not because they actually did the research on business laws ... that would be like WORK and photographers just take pictures right? We don;t do REAL WORK right? </sarcasm>
Why does he use a dslr, he can't get much better images on his smart phone.
Google Trends tells me this is satire.
Loved it.
Very funnt satire, but so true in the real world. A woman by the name of Susan holt did this. Truly disgusting.
Nice joke :)
Made my day. Thanks Alex.
The Onion?
"do you even know how much depth of field you're getting with that ISO?"
Love it.
I have to compete with bozos like this fictional guy in my business all the time.
Unfortunately, some clients take a while to realise they're not getting much better service than taking the photos themselves.
Still, they advertise a cheap rate and make me look expensive. They don't last long, but there is a constant turnover of guys like this.
This satirical article is excellent, and funny, but also quite sad because it is so true.
Seeing this kind of weak, resting-photographer-bitchface commentary on Fstoppers is disappointing. You got me to click. And now I regret it. That's not something I'm used to on this site. I came here as a beginner, and still find plenty of useful information here. But if this kind of lame-o Onion-wanna-be baloney starts clogging up the works, you won't have my readership anymore. The audience for this piece is the same group of snarky, cranky, self-important photographers who bark at me for wasting their time asking beginner-level questions. You're getting too cool for school, Fstoppers. I hope you and the popular photography kids will be able to keep the lights on. Who am I kidding? Fake news is all the rage right now. Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon. And the lunatics are running the asylum.
Tony, I think you're missing the satire of this. It's in no way a sleight toward beginners. It's a satire of those who trivialize the hard work and loads of knowledge that go into being a successful artist in our profession by assuming they can pick up a "nice" camera and be a professional. And by the way, I have just as much of an issue with the self-important photographers who snark at beginners.
Somebody needs to crank their white balance down to tungsten and chill out.
Ahhh levity...... or is it?
Funny, for sure...but in a slightly uncomfortable way for me. Completely took me back to a similar experience years ago. Not THAT extreme, mind you...but the main themes were there. The initial surge of excitement and inspiration that I experienced when I realized what was possible with the combination of digital photography and social media...it was almost overwhelming. While I never quit my day job (Marketing exec), I did focus on the craft in a pretty obsessive way. Naively accepted wide range of offers for side jobs (some free, some paid) and experienced a wide range of humility and success. Made every single one of the stereotypical mistakes (GAS, overuse of shallow DOF, heavy-handed post processing, bad video production & editing, etc). I also managed to pull out some great work that was published in various media. That was cool. Sites like this one have been an invaluable way to learn and respect the craft. TOTAL respect for the talent and hard work it takes to be successful in the long haul. I say all of this to let you know that ONE of the "John Griffiths" of the world eventually settled into a comfortable zone as photography enthusiast and family documentarian and doesn't hesitate to pay full rate for a real professional to come in and do the big boy work the right way.
Michael, you're not a John Griffith at all. I was only satirizing people who don't respect the amount of work that goes into being a successful photographer. You clearly respect it a lot. We all go through the HDR/DOF/no skin texture phases (you should see my early shots!).
To be honest that's how I started. I was asked to shoot a wedding after someone saw some of my sub par portraits ... half way through the wedding I realized I was way over my head. at least I had borrowed a backup camera and had rented the proper lenses (24-70 f2.8, 70-200 f2.8, 50 f1.4, two 580EXII ...) and some extra flashes but I realized that I didn't have the skills to do weddings ... then I panicked because I had accepted another 4 weddings already.
I then realized I was way undercharging and in reality I was LOSING money on each shoot.
I boned up, read more, practiced more and my next couple of weddings were much better but still ...
Things worked out in the end and after 8 years of mediocre sales I've pulled the plug (focusing more on corporate photo and video now and even that's more the odd shoot here and there). I'm a decent photographer but not a superstar. I've come to grips with that and have adjusted my direction accordingly but I remember the excitement ... the promise of a fulfilling (both creatively or monetarily) job ...
I try to explain this to people who I see falling into this trap that I fell into years ago but most of them are too blind ... they don't WANT to know that there is a cost to running a business, that doing events and weddings isn't the same as taking pictures at a family gathering or doing a portrait session. they don;t wat to hear that they need more gear (backups and backups for the backups) and better gear for paid work than for personal projects ...
:(
I was really hoping this was real because I wanted to see the photos :)