This week's question comes from Jesse Starr, a Denver based people and sports photographer:

"Now that friends are aware of my abilities, they are asking me to

do free photography for them.  I am wondering how to explain
to them that I can't give away something that costs me
time and money to do. And they don't just want me to take
snapshots with a point and shoot, they expect me to use
my full lighting setup!  Any advice?"

It's astounding to me how so many people view photography as something they are entitled to for free. Would you go to a friend who owned a restaurant and ask for $1,500 worth of free meals?  The nerve!!

Okay, so how do you handle these "friends"?

Let's say it takes you, on average, 5 hours of total work to complete one photo shoot. That includes exchanging phone calls/emails, drive time, shoot time, downloading files, color correcting, editing, etc.

Offer an exchange of services: your photography for their services.  For example, if your friend is a web designer, great!  Your blog needs tweaking.  Offer a fee photo shoot in exchange for 5 hours of work on your blog.  If they're an attorney, then 5 hours of legal work. They can do yard work, wash windows, etc. You get the idea.

Here's what you say:

"Gee Sally, I'd love to do a photo shoot for you, but there's no way I can do 5 hours worth of work for free without going bankrupt!  How about we exchange services? I'll do a family shoot for you in exchange for your help at my office for 5 hours?  I'm doing some direct mail and really need help addressing and stuffing envelopes."

This strategy accomplishes several things:

• It will discourage them from asking for free sessions in the future.
• It will make them realize what jerks they were for asking in the first place. I wouldn't be surprised if they withdrew the request and offered to pay your normal rates.
• Barter isn't a bad thing!  I hate pulling weeds - I'd gladly exchange a photo session in return for weed pulling.
• If they get indignant at your offer and turn away in a huff, GREAT!  You've just freed yourself from wasting time on an unhealthy relationship with a "friend" who just revealed themselves as nothing more than a blood-sucking leech.

Just remember that YOUR time is just as valuable as THEIR time.  If your "friend" is willing to ask for free services from you but not willing to provide free services in return, were they truly a friend?

This week's question comes from Seshu, a talented Connecticut wedding photographer:

"What kind of tips can you offer for photographing a short groom and taller bride?"

I wouldn't presume the couple is bothered by this unless they specifically told me that it was a concern.  I would shoot my normal style. However, I would make sure to include some poses that minimize/obscure the height differential.

What I would absolutely NOT do is a cheesy trick like putting the groom on a box. That would make the image obviously fake, somewhat ridiculous, and would actually make their height differential more apparent, not less.

Below are some poses you might want to try. The objective here is to obfuscate (confuse, bewilder, make unclear) the height differential, not eliminate it through artificial means.

Disclaimer:  none of the couples you see below have the short groom / tall bride syndrome.  I'm just using these images to illustrate the poses.

(1)  Have your bride and groom sit down. Let's state the obvious: men and women are built differently!  (thank God!)  Most men have proportionally longer torsos than women.  Take any man and woman of equal height.  I guarantee you that the man will have a longer torso and the woman will have longer legs. When you have them sit down, the man's longer torso will definitely help even out their height differential.

(2)  Bride on chair, groom sitting on the arm.  

(3)  Bride taller than the groom?  No problem, make her even TALLER!  Putting the bride way up into an obviously taller position eliminates the height differential.  Not my favorite image (I had to dig deep into the archives for this one), but you get the idea.

(4)  Groom sitting, bride standing (or vice versa).

(5)  Shoot a few close-ups. Nobody can tell who's taller. (or cares, for that matter)

(6)  Groom sitting on ground (with legs spread), bride sitting in front of groom between his legs. This pose will naturally make the groom sit taller while the bride is forced to sort of slide down in almost a semi-prone position.

(7) Get low and shoot up!  When you alter normal perspective like this, strange (and sometimes good) things happen.

(8)  Bride lying, groom sitting.

(9)  Bride sitting on groom's lap.

(10)  Alter perspective by putting groom (or bride) several steps back.

(11)  One of my favorite poses.  Even though Josh is only a couple inches taller than DeeDee, he had to spread his legs and squat down a few inches in order to get DeeDee's entire head above shoulder level for this pose. If you have a shorter groom, all that means is that he has to squat down less to get in this position. He'll still appear taller than the bride.

(12) Create action!  In this image my bride and groom are holding hands and running down a hill. The bride is only slightly shorter than the groom, but the bobbing up and down caused by the running (combined with a low camera angle) obscures this and in this case makes the groom appear significantly taller.

I hope this has given you a few ideas to try. Just remember the most important principle:  obfuscate, don't eliminate the height differential.  Camera angles and positions are what trick the eye into minimizing height differentials.

ME!  Actually, it wasn't exactly a wedding. MaryBeth and I decided to renew our vows in Maui on our 10th anniversary.

The girls got all done up at our hotel by a professional hair/makeup artist, which was the highlight of their day.

(1) Annika (left) and Theresa.  (all these indoor shots were taken, by the way, with my official vacation camera/lens combo: Canon 30D w/Tamron 24-135)

(2)  Theresa couldn't stop looking at herself in the mirror! It was the first time she ever had professional makeup.

(3)  My bride MaryBeth.  I'll bet you all have been wondering what she looks like!  (Her hair doesn't normally look like this).

(4) The ceremony was right on the beach just before sunset.  I hired a terrific local photographer Hanne Ruhnau. I'm a big believer that events like this need a professional!

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(14)  Annika and Charlie didn't quite get the concept of the ceremony. They were too busy playing in the water.

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(1)  5D, 24mm f1.4L, ISO 800, f2.8, 1/400 sec

DeeDee getting ready. Isn't she gorgeous? I've always been a big fan of simplicity - removing as many distracting elements as possible. That's why I love this location.  A beautiful bride in a beautiful white dress in a completely white room - what could be better?

(2) 5DmkII, 70-200mm @ 73mm, ISO 1600, f2.8, 1/50 sec.

Photo by my second shooter Ning. DeeDee has an emotional moment while walking down the aisle with dad.

(3) 5D, 70-200mm @110mm, ISO 1600, f2.8, 1/250 sec

(4) 5D, 24mm f1.4, ISO 640, f8.0, 1/200 sec.

Shot at f8 because I wanted everything in this shot in focus, including the background. The secret sauce in this shot was in getting the big smiles.

(5) 5D, 24mm f1.4L, ISO 640, f8.0, 1/250 sec.

There are a lot of bridesmaids here, and most of them were - at least in their heels - as tall as I am, and I'm nearly six feet! Such a tall, elegant group deserved an elegant shot. Thankfully I had the perfect backdrop in the gorgeous Holy Names Academy. I literally placed and posed every single one of them within about a minute.  Much longer than that and you'll lose them. Take ten minutes to pose them and then you (the photographer) become a bad memory.

(6) 5D, 35mm f1.4L, ISO 1000, f3.2, 1/125.

This was taken inside the Holy Names Academy. Given the elegant setting, I was going for a Town & Country magazine kind of look.

(7) 5D, 70-200mm @200mm, ISO 500, f3.5, 1/500 sec.

This shot is the opposite of #6 - natural, relaxed and friendly. Even though it's posed, your job is to make it look as if the bride and groom were doing this on their own and you just happened to stumble upon the scene. Years from now your couples won't even remember they were posed for this. They'll look upon it as one happy moment among many on their big day.

(8) 5D, 70-200 @200mm, ISO 500, f3.2, 1/3200.

DeeDee looks phenomenal here. If I didn't tell you this image was posed, would you even know??

(9) 30D, 17-55mm efs @17mm, ISO 1250, f3.2, 1/1600.

Follow DeeDee's eyes and you'll see the fish flying through the air! No photo shoot at Pikes Place Market is complete without a visit to the fish stand by the brass pig.

(10) 5D, 70-200 @135mm, ISO 500, f3.2, 1/640.

Remember to vary your angles - don't always shoot at eye level! Whenever you have a great floor like these cobblestones, find a way to get them in the background.

(11) 5D, 70-200 @195mm, ISO 500, f3.5, 1/640 sec.

You'll notice that every shot with my 70-200mm was at ISO 500. On a cloudy day don't go lower than that when using a long lens if you want sharp images. A negligible bit of noise is far, far better than a blurry picture.

(12) 30D, 17-55 @24mm, ISO 640, f3.2, 1/100 sec. A bit of "Spartan" from TRA2.

(13) 5DmkII, 70-200 @200mm, ISO 250, f3.2, 1/640 sec.  

Photo by Ning. When you ask your B&G to put their arms around each other, have the groom put his hands around the bride's waist and have the bride put her arms around the groom's neck. If they both put their arms around each other's waist, then they'll look like 2 kids at the junior high dance.

(14) 5D, 70-200 @200mm, ISO 500, f3.5, 1/640 sec.

I've written this before, but the moment just before the kiss is a much more attractive image than the kiss itself. Be ready for it and pull the trigger before the faces start mushing together. Another trick - to convey a relaxed feeling, have the bride point the bouquet down instead of up.

(15) 5DmkII, 70-200 @95mm, ISO 250, f3.2, 1/160 sec.

Photo by Ning. A great way to look for things to shoot is to look for people posing for someone else's camera.  

(16) 5D, 16-35 @20mm, ISO 1250, f2.8, 1/10 sec.

Photo by Ning. The flash ghosting actually adds to this image. Shoot with a flash coupled with a very slow shutter speed and you'll get this effect.

Just got back from Maui - my first 2 week vacation in nearly 5 years.  Like most professional photographers, I don't take many pictures while on vacation.  I was there to relax.

Of the pictures I did take, 90% were with my little LX3.  Lugging around a big dslr is too much work on vacation.  

The results were about as I expect. I love the LX3's ability to shoot at 24mm - rare in a point-n-shoot. It also took reasonably sharp images with decent color.  The biggest drawback versus a dslr - which should be apparent from the images below - is the lack of dynamic range. It struggles in high contrast situations.

(1) ISO 200, f3.5, 1/400 sec.

(2) ISO 400, f4.0, 1/50 sec. This was the luau at the Wailea Marriott, one of the better ones I've been to. Pretty decent ISO 400 performance from a point-n-shoot.

(3) ISO 200, f3.2, 1/100 sec.

(4) ISO 200, f2.8, 1/200 sec. One reason many photographers don't like point-n-shoots is that the small sensor means it's hard to get a shallow depth of field. I don't mind this, actually. Consider it's advantages. Here I'm shooting at f2.8 to get a reasonable shutter speed, yet I've got both Theresa and Annika in focus.

(5) ISO 200, f5.0, 1/500 sec.

(6) ISO 200, f2.2, 1/1000 sec.

(7) ISO 200, f4.0, 1/200 sec.

(7) ISO 100, f3.2, 1/80 sec.