As you can see from our site take over, we are hosting our first ever Fstoppers Workshops down in the Bahamas from May 28th - June 1st. During these 5 days, we have 10 of the top photographers teaching small, intimate classes on all genres of photography. Today Peter Hurley was the first instructor to sell out spots for his flagship course The Headshot Intensive. Every other class from the other instructors still has availability, so if you are planning on attending we don't want you to miss out. For the full class schedule including all the instructors and information about the event in general, head over to www.fstoppersworkshops.com where you can make an account and sign up for classes.
For more information about this workshop, check out our promo video below:
And if you want to travel with your family or friends, check out all the fun things Atlantis has to offer in our video The Most Ridiculous Atlantis Camera Review :
If you have any further questions or need assistance signing up for classes and rooms, feel free to contact us directly during weekdays and we can help.
I would love to have Peter Hurley teach me, but I don't think I can skip my high school graduation lol
Yeah that's a tough one....someone else had this issue and I urged them NOT to miss their graduation. You might think it's lame but I think it's an important event for both you and your family. Congrats!
Wow, most of the classes aren't as expensive as I thought they would be.
Most of the instructors are offering a variety of price ranges depending on class size and length of class. These classes are all designed by the instructors themselves so prices also depend on how much they usually charge at other workshops or speaking gigs. Don't forget everyone will be talking for Free on Friday May 30th so even if you take a less expensive class you can hear short lectures from every instructor on Friday.
I love Peter Hurley work, I think is the best. I just got one question, what do you think about David Ross Zundel? He charges $7,000 dollars per portarit session! I wonder how much would Peter charge but most of all I wonder what kind of photography skills should I have to charge that much for just one picture.
PS. David Ross was hired to photograph a municipal president here in México and was reported that this is what he charged for one picture, and charged $25,631 dollars for 46 copies of it including the frame.
I just looked up his work and for me I'm not crazy about his portraits. To each their own but they don't have much of a mood...the subjects look lit pretty nicely but the environments usually looks bland and under lit in my opinion (under as in not in an interesting way).
As for what it takes skill wise to charge that amount of money, at some point in your career you will learn that price per shoot is a completely made up number. What you charge is simply what you are capable of persuading people to pay. I think it's fair to say too that the more you charge the more personable you will probably be as well. Most high paying art buyers want to hire someone who is well rounded, exciting, well traveled, highly educated, easy to work with, renowned in their field, funny, experienced, etc etc. Sometimes it has very little to do with the actual talent of the photographer but rather they cost a lot and they are a cool person we love to work with.
In the case of someone like DRZ, he might be one of the few guys in Mexico that has a portfolio of high ranked officials, leaders, celebrities, etc and once you know "so and so worked with him" then you are more likely to fork over the money because that has become the standard.
I've been on some shoots of some very well renowned commercial photographers in the US and truth be told, they were as clumsy behind the camera as I would be and their "super secret lighting and photography skills" were actually very basic. It's all marketing and in many cases post production. Lee Morris wrote a great article on Fstoppers called The Photographers You Idolize Are No Better Than You which explains this well (http://fstoppers.com/the-photographers-you-idolize-are-no-better-than-you)
I will say this though, they are better than you in a sense because they've learned to market themselves and place themselves at that top level. But from a photography stand point, most of them are not. But Peter Hurley is.....He's one of a handful that has really impressed me with his approach.
I agree with you. You should tell Peter to market his work in México's government, there's another photographer that took the president's portrait and charged a little bit more than Zundel wich work is also not that cool (In terms of how much he charged), his name is Hector Armando Herrera. Other point to what you wrote is that sometimes good photographers aren't known, I mean, maybe in México's government they have never heard of Peter Hurley but if they knew about him maybe they'll hire him, of oucrse, if he is interested.