I'm having a problem with some of the clients I shot candids for during the Florida Circuit of Dog Shows. These are Poodle clients. Which explains a lot
.
They love the images I captured of their dogs. But they want so much retouching -- of both the dog and the background -- that they are moving beyond the point where my photography fee makes sense. Which gets to the point of where I have to decide when does the "photographer" retouching stop and when does the "digital artist" retouching come into play.
The problem is, we also do ad make-up and in that work, we do a lot of Photoshop work: cutting dogs out, putting them on new backgrounds, blending several images, etc. For clients, it's difficult to distinguish what part of that is the "photography" part and what part is the advertising part.
What's the difference? I charge $25 for an 8X10 (in addition to any shooting fee) and we charge $100/page for ad make-up. For us, that's a big difference.
I'm wrestling with the problem of where to draw the line and how to explain it clearly to these clients. However, it gets to the fundamental problem with digital that we never had to deal with using film: the endless process of making something good even better. Or, just because you
can do something in terms of editing, doesn't mean you
should .
I'll let you know how this plays out.
Jim