What is a Make-up Artist Worth?

I just returned from a wonderful Glamour, Beauty and the Nude workshop in Atlanta where we had some great photographer and model attendees–not to mention one of the all-time, best, make-up artists any photographer could ask for, and like all workshops, we go for the best.

Prior to the fun and exhausting workshop, I had traveled to Palm Beach for an annual, private instruction with one of my best clients of that area. After arriving there and spending the night at a beautiful Palm Beach hotel, we did our first shoot that morning in a Palm Beach courtyard, before heading off to a wonderful resort on Captiva Island. While in Captiva, we moved locations each night before I headed out to Atlanta.

While both the Atlanta workshop and the Florida private instruction were fun and educational, photography based, they both differed in many things, from location to make-up artist budget, to obviously the group size of the photographer(s) involved. My client obviously had a larger budget, hence his decision for the one-on-one training and for flying in one of the top make-up artists from New York at a day-rate some photographers dream of achieving.

For the privacy of my client, I’ll keep the MUA’s (make-up artist) and the client’s name private, but I can assure you, the New York-based make-up artist had more tearsheets and experience than most photographers achieve in a lifetime. She came highly recommended from one of the top beauty and commercial photographers of New York, a photographer who I had introduced to my client back at the annual FotoFusion event held near Palm Beach.

Often people ask, what makes a great make-up artists and why do some, like those from New York and Los Angeles command thousands of dollars per day while others only hundreds or less per day? Well obviously the first answer is credibility, just like photography, the more credits (tearsheets, bonafide assignments, accolades, etc.) the more a creative can charge—New York and Los Angeles provide the breeding grounds for such success in credibility faster than other locations. In addition, this make-up artist from New York had paid her dues, just like the photographer of her caliber that recommended her, she had plenty of experience, she started from the bottom up too, but now she’s on top in New York.

She had gained the experience of directing, styling, and hair-styling through her career with very established publications and photographers, all an added bonus to those that hire her. Though some assignments call for separate creatives to do all the latter things, this private instruction was only limited by the passenger van we were utilizing for our driving and of course the extended-passenger golf cart on Captiva Island we rented.

Make-up artists day-rates very, depending on their base location, obviously the more expensive markets of New York and Los Angeles command greater rates than someone from hick town, USA. My client had the ability to afford the best and so he sought the best, an attitude he developed from a prior, poor experience.

While my client is no beginner, as he’s got tearsheets in other genres of photography, I have nothing against beginners working with beginners, though I highly recommend that when you can afford to move up the chain in anything photography releated, do so, it will make you better too as you can feed off someone with more experience too.

As far as the day-rate goes for a make-up artist, it all depends on the client and what that client expects the make-up artist to accomplish. I look at my A-list of MUA’s, their actual location, talent, experience and determine who is best qualified for my client while being able to meet the budget requirements.

I look at a the make-up artist’s can-do attitude and avoid those with an attitude. I look for nothing less and like my client, my decisions on who to hire come from my own previous experiences along with the goal(s) I’m trying to achieve. The make-up artist for our Atlanta workshop was as high-caliber as any photographer could ask for and she’s certainly on my A-list and she would’ve made my client proud just like the New York-based MUA, but obviously day-rates varied between the two.

Those variances were based on traditional working location of the MUA’s, their experience, their tearsheets, and their longevity of their established names. I can assure you, both have the talent my client and I would utilize for our needs—though like a patient looking for a heart-transplant would seek a surgeon with more years of experience and a bigger name, my client decided to go that course because of his own previous experience.

Much like photographers and models, make-up artists have to wait for that lucky break too, as the larger clients can afford to go with those at the top of their game, however, on occasion a chance is taken and a talent gets a lucky opportunity. It’s on these opportunities that those at the top of the A-list begin looking over their shoulders and others take notice and the evolution of rising to the top begins along with the ability to demand higher day-rates.

Passion and commitment will help bring that to life along with being at the right place at the right time and some elbow grease, but not everyone gets the luck and like a commodity, that’s why those at the top can afford to charge more—seems like a vicious circle doesn’t it? Well it can be for most creatives and that’s why some endure and others don’t.

Well I’m off to Chicago and we’re at a new location for our next Glamour, Beauty and the Nude workshop, so I hope to see you there, we have only one spot left! Thanks and God Bless, and remember to keep our military service members, their families and friends in your hearts and prayers, thanks, rg sends!

Framing Industry Conspiracy

I’ve lectured and taught photography to thousands of people over the past decade with over 250 workshops and seminars around the world and often people tell me, or I see it when they are shooting while “chimping” with their LCD screen, how they leave room for cropping their images to make the photo fit a matte and/or picture frame.  Obviously this is a problem more inherent to the United States, not for Europe.

My first thought is why? My second thought is you obviously have never worked with a photo editor for publication. My last thought is you probably bought your camera based on mega-pixel hype, or on the Jones’s standard, I have more mega-pixels than you.

Let’s look at the why part first. We’re a society that tends to be programmed as we grow up in life. Most of use grew up with (in inches) 11×14’s, 8×10’s, 5×7’s and the 3 1/2 x 5’s, the latter made famous by the Noritsu one-hour mini-lab explosion of the 1980’s. Though the 3 1/2×5’s graduated to 4×6’s, our problems with mandatory societal-cropping (think frames, mattes and photo albums) still didn’t end with our 35mm format cameras. Part of the non-ending I base on what I like to call, “the framing industry conspiracy theory” to sell us mattes with our frames. And to ground my theory, let’s look how it all developed, no pun intended, or the second part of obviously you’ve never worked with photo editors or editors before.

The first 35mm format camera was invented by Leica in 1913, not Kodak, Kodak invented film and introduced the “135” for film 35mm wide in a cartridge, but the actual images size is 24mm wide (11mm’s are used for sprocket holes and spacing) by 36mm in length. It’s based on metric units, not American and British units of measurement. It’s this format that led to the words, “full-frame” and sometimes “double-frame” in relationship to the “single-frame” 35mm movie format, which is another story in itself.

Now that you know the history of 35mm (135) film, let’s look at full-frame, because it’s this term you’ll hear photo editors tell photographers often when it comes to improper cropping in the 35mm camera in conjunction to the publication of images. A full-frame image makes (in inches) 4×6’s, 5×8’s, 8×12’s, and 10×15’s, thus to fit a full-frame, printed image in a standard picture frame, a photographer would have to purchase a matte, with an opening cut to fit the full-frame image, thus the matte would then go in a larger frame-think costs to the photographer and client here.

On the other hand, photo editors harp at photographers not to crop in the camera, or not to leave space for placing an image in a frame for several reasons. One, primarily based on the old film days, is that 35mm is so small that pre-cropping in the camera makes the useful part of the image even smaller, so when the image is enlarged, it gets grainy, or in the case of digital photography today,
is more prominent, especially with older digital cameras. This holds even more relevance if the photo editor needs to crop your image to fit a page.

But the other main reason photo editors harp on photographers to fill the frame totally when shooting is the fact that publications don’t place images based on frame and matte sizes, they place images based on column inches and percentages–to test this theory, first, notice how a magazine or newspaper normally has more than one vertical column of text per page.

Second, take a ruler and measure ten images within that publication, any ten. You’ll find various odd sizes and the chance of an image being exactly to standard framing sizes is rare. Not even the cover is a 8×10 inches, more like 8 1/2×11 inches in most cases, and the cover is one of the few cases where the original image is cropped.

Now let’s take this one step further, or the third thought, which is most cameras are purchased on the Jone’s theory of I’ve got more mega-pixels than you. Say a photographer purchases a DSLR, digital single lens reflex camera, based on mega-pixels. And since I’m not the best in math, let’s make it simple for math’s sake even though I know there are cameras with more mega-pixels than what’s needed for publication when it comes to the 35mm DSLR’s. Let’s pretend your camera is like the Canon 5D, approximately 12-mega-pixels. Let’s pretend you haven’t read this article yet, so you do what most amateur, non-published photographers do and leave room in all your images for cropping for that old 8×10-inch frame/print standard.

Now we know that a 35mm camera, film or digital, makes an 8×12-inch print when printed full-frame. But you want an 8×10-inch print, which means you’ll cut-off 2-inches from your full-frame. So 2-inches goes into 12-inches (full-frame) six times, as 12 divided by two is six. So we agree, we’ve lost two-full inches of image, or in the case of digital, 1/6th of the original mega-pixel information. Now we take that our original 12-megapixels and divide that by 1/6th loss of the original mega-pixel information and we two again. We then take that two and subtract it from the original 12-mega-pixels and we have 10-mega-pixels-in other words, we’re actually shooting 10-, not 12-megapixels and we paid for 12!

Confusing? Well it’s really not and I told you I wasn’t good in math, but in simple terms, when we crop in the camera while shooting for the print and frame standards society has programmed us for, we lose 1/6th of our original image which means we’ve paid to lose 1/6th of our mega-pixels. 

In all those years of teaching seminars and workshops I’ve had to explain my framing industry conspiracy theory to over half my students, so don’t feel bad if you spent $8,000 on a 24-mega-pixel camera and threw away $1,333 of your original $8,000 because of your shooting style (before you read this article).  One-sixth of 24 is 4-mega-pixels (24 divided by 6 equals 4) and you roughly paid $1,333 for each 4-mega-pixel block in your camera (8,000 divided by 6 equals 1,333).  Yes, I did 24-mega-pixels because the math is easier and the time of this writing only 21-mega-pixels was available, but hey, you only need 5-mega-pixels for standard magazine and newspaper publication and that’s another blog article as I have to run and see my ailing mother and time is running out today. God Bless, and all the best, rg sends!

Amy Davis–American Idol Top 24

For those that haven’t heard, one my workshop models, including for my exotic Virgin Islands workshops, Amy Davis, has made it to the top 24 of this season’s American Idol television show on FOX.  We need your votes for this seventh season of American Idol to help Davis progress as contestants are whittled down to the final two.

Now the fun begins as I’m being contacted by media sources to provide them with my “sexy images of Amy Davis.”  While I’ve shot hundreds of images of Davis over the past few years, including sexy ones, I’ve never released but a handful of images and I can assure you,
they are all first-class images. Both Davis, and her sister Ashlee have modeled for me for sometime, in fact, Davis is in my second book, Rolando Gomez’s Glamour Photography Professional Techniques and Images, that recently came out in 2007.  She’s also in my upcoming book on posing to be released later this year.

This is not the first time a model from my workshops has gained famed, though short-lived and controversial, April Florio, who did two Philadelphia workshops was involved in a controversy with Brad Pitt,  right before Pitt and Jennifer Aniston split.  Both Pitt and Floria denied the story originally sparked by In Touch magazine.  But unlike Florio, Davis’s rags to Hollywood story is real and not controversial like Florio’s.  

Davis has a captivating voice and I still remember the first time we met during a private photography instruction to a wealthy couple.  Davis showed up with her guitar and as I taught my clients photography, I asked Davis if she could play Jimmy Buffet’s Brown-Eyed Girl.  Though initially shy about singing the song, she player her acoustic guitar and began to sing for us.  When we all heard her amazing voice accompanied by her guitar talents, we forgot about the photography instruction and became speechless. 

I told her that day in Michigan that she should capitalize on her photogenic beauty combined with her amazing voice.  I was emphatic on why there was no reason she should not be on a record label at that time.  We had a long conversation about why she hadn’t progressed in her signing career and in my conversations I can tell you, Davis has confidence and most important, faith.  

I was so impressed that I invited Davis to model for my Chicago and Virgin Islands workshop, and at all the workshops she’s done for me I always required her to bring her guitar and sing for everyone–which she politely always did, leaving everyone speechless in the process.

Davis is a conservative model who always gives 110-percent into all she does, modeling or singing. She’s the sweetest person you’ll ever meet with a young, Kathy Ireland, photogenic look and appeal. Once while in the Virgin Islands we did our “all you can eat pizza on Friday night” at Pirate’s Ridge, a local eatery on Water-Island during their karaoke night.  We convinced Davis to go on the make-shift stage and when she did, between her beauty and her voice, while never looking at the karaoke monitor,  as she began to sing she left our group and the local crowd speechless–by the end of her first song everyone was ready to purpose to her.

The irony of it all, Pitt filmed parts of his newest movie last year, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, at Water-Island and the Honeymoon Beach area where we convinced Davis to sing during the July 2007 Virgin Islands workshop on our eat-at-the-beach, steak night dinner, provided by Heidi’s Honeymoon Grill.  Davis teamed up that night with other acoustic guitar player’s including Heidi’s brother to sing to all the locals and our group, again she became the star of the small island off St. Thomas that night.  Perhaps the folks at Water-Island can someday say not only did Brad Pitt stand on Honeymoon Beach, but so did Amy Davis who earned her fame on American Idol. 

Davis, along with her sexy beauty, brings passion to her modeling but even more to her first-love, singing.  You can watch as she closes her eyes while singing how passionate she is about her love for music. In fact, in the last Virgin Islands workshop she even brought a song-list and sang and played her guitar every night at dinner for our group of models and photographers. She’s always kept me abreast about her trials and tribulations including when she made it to the second round of NBC’S Nashville Star last year.

For those that know Davis personally, she’s sweet, wholesome, photogenic and very down-to-earth.  One of the most sweetest person’s you’ll ever meet that loves life and making people smile with her musical and voice talents.  She’s confident in her singing and hopefully her experience last year with the Nashville Star show will give her an edge with American Idol this year.

I wish her well and now it’s time to tune into FOX television as part of the American Idol show anchors on the television audience calling in and voting on their favorite singers, starting February 19th.  Please do your part in supporting Davis by watching the show then watching for the four-digit code that will be assigned to Davis–the girls voting starts on Wednesday–and only enter the word VOTE in your text message to the four-digit code!  You’ll have approximately two hours to place your vote that night, so please do your part and help Davis, she deserves it! 

I’ll do my best to keep you posted on her success in case you miss the American Idol show, as I have a busy travel schedule, but I can assure you, Davis has beauty but more important the musical voice and talent to play musical instruments that will leave you speechless and in awe.  She deserves to win on American Idol and move on further with her singing career.  God bless Davis, her family and friends, thanks, rg sends!  

Editorial, Commercial, Photojournalism?

I’ve been working on a new site, ShotCritic.com, and today someone posted about how to distinguish the difference between editorial photography and other genres of photography, so I replied and liked it so much that I thought I’d share it here, though cleaned up from my original forum post. First, editorial photography normally has a photojournalistic feel to it as it tells a story, often used to illustrate a concept or idea designed around the contents of a specific publication. Photojournalism is sometimes considered a form of editorial photography, though the distinction is that photojournalism often involves a news story. As an example, for magazine editorial photography for a publication like Zink, the photos would normally include models to illustrate their fashion, glamour and beauty theme while Better Homes and Garden would have images of someone working in their outdoor green house. Both are technically telling a story editorially, but in their own proper context for an editorial feature piece Often publications, like Zink, Nylon, and others have what’s called an Editorial Calendar that is divulged confidentially to their A-list photographers well in advance so these photographers can submit their editorial photos for that calendar topic to meet production deadlines, often three months in advance. Then the editorial decision process begins. The photo editor/creative director chooses "the shoot" from all the editorial photographers who submitted and it’s that chosen photographer that get published, usually paid nothing but the glorification of a tearsheet. The photographers are not chosen or rejected based on who the photographer is, more often on what the photographer shot and how well the photos match the editorial content requirement for that magazine, that month. These photographers, chosen or not, hope their editorial tearsheets will lead to commissioned (paid) assignments with magazines like Vogue, Baazar, Elle, W, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, etc., and often have thousands of dollars invested in their shoots, not to mention their time and any models, assistants, stylists, etc., that volunteered their work for the same tearsheets; it’s a gamble for future notoriety. This is how dues are paid as an editorial photographer, on the hopes to become someone like Bruce Weber shooting for Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair is considered the launching pad for many editorial photographers including, Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Bruce Weber, Helmut Newton, Mario Testino, and Annie Leibovitz to name a few. Remember, major magazines are putting together either their May or June issues right now, not their February issue (March and April are done and at the printer and/or pre-press) as most publications are three months out, working off their editorial calendar–that’s why swimwear fashion catalogs have photographers photographing models in South Beach and other areas of warm Florida during the winter months. Most publications are done months in advance. One could argue that a Playmate layout in Playboy is editorial glamour photography, as another example, while just a sole image of a model at the beginning of a story (text) is just another glamour photo in the same magazine. Take this image directly below, it has commercial use, say to sell a skin product, stock use, to illustrate a story about self-esteem as an example, editorial use, to illustrate a story on, "Beauty in the 21st Century." Without the context of a publication, some would argue it’s glamour, some beauty, some nude, some will even say it’s a picture, not a photograph. But it’s the photographer who was there (me in this case) that truly knows and the editor who utilizes the image in their publication that sometimes determines what category it will eventually fall under for the record, this image, recently shot, is going to be published full-page in Sept., more on that when it happens. Another example how editorial photography can shift is a series of images of a bride for Bride magazine illustrating her glorious wedding day to tell her story would be editorial, perhaps even mixed with fashion editorial if the story revolved around the brideÕs dress and her bride’s maids’ dresses. In the same magazine you could have a bridal shot, originally shot as that and not as an editorial shot by a wedding photographer, but then the photographer submits that image to Bride and it makes the cover, now it’s an editorial (cover-shot), not a bridal shot. Editorial photography is often considered a form of commercial photography, especially if the photo and accompanying story are trying to sell you something. As an example, if the shoot was a model for a liquor ad, the shoot is considered commercial (to sell liquor), but if the same images from the shoot were used to illustrate the model and her tastes for top-shelf liquors plus to illustrate a specific story, say, "Best Bourbons," then it’s editorial. Take the same images and use them to illustrate the same model with a drinking problem, or young girls with drinking problems, then it’s a "features article" and the images are considered photojournalism in an editorial context. Similarly, if a photographer photographs a romantic couple sitting on a park bench in love and places it in a stock portfolio for royalty-free stock, then it’s a stock shot. If the stock agency sells it for the use of advertising to a condoms manufacturer to sell condoms, then it now becomes advertising photography. If it was commissioned originally as a commercial request through an ad agency, it’s commercial. Take that same stock image, sold to Newsweekto illustrate a story titled, "Love in America," then it’s back to editorial (sold as commercial stock for an editorial and used in an editorial context). There are fine-lines in photography genres, often crossed by the actual final use of the image itself. The thing to ask when trying to determine the specific genre of an image is it for commercial value or editorial value, or perhaps both? If the subject matter is say a fashion model shot for Victoria Secrets catalogue, then it’s commercial fashion, take the same series of photos for a story in W magazine, then it’s fashion editorial. Don’t you love it? It’s all up to the content, context, and usage that normally will distinguish the specific genre of an image. Ultimately if a photographer shot it as an un-commissioned image, then it’s up to that photographer to determine if the photograph has any commercial value, or if it is stock or fits any other genre of photography. Often images fit several genres, not just one. Now this blog post is so long, many would consider it an editorial in a newspaper. God bless and thanks, rg sends!

i-Portfolios, the New Craze for Professionals

I’ve been running around lately, conducting photography workshops, shooting commercial, glamour, editorial, sports and other photography and even lecturing at photo centers and photo schools and even working with models and others professionals involved in my shoots and I’m finding out there is one common thread—some type of “I” technology. 

From I-Phones, I-Pods, I-Touch and everything else imaginable Apple Computers has put the “I” back in TEAM somehow—it’s there, you might not physically see it, but it’s there as the synergy of the Apple creatives must be keeping Steve Jobs real happy with all their creations.

One only wonders what else is next in store for us, the I-Car perhaps? I’m not real sure, but for those creatives in my field, the I-Phone, I-Pod and the I-Touch are fast becoming the new “portable portfolios” for many as it’s so easy to add images into these devices and even group the images into specific folders (genres) for viewing along with multimedia functionality.

I spent an entire week at FotoFusion often going to private dinners, lunches, and other functions watching famous photographers like Vincent Versace, Douglas Dubler and others sharing their work on their I-Folios as I like to call them—Dubler has his I-Touch and Versace his I-Phone and the presentations of their work on these smaller than printed portfolio screens were powerful.<

Think about it, as photographers when we “chimp” while shooting we’re looking at LCD screens smaller than most of the I-AppleamKingofTheMultimediaDevices so it only makes sense that portfolios have down-sized from Brewer-Cantelmo leather photography portfolios to hand-held digital devices protected in leather cases.

I’ve seen models, make-up artists, art directors and others in the visual fields carry their resume of images attached to their belt, biceps or purse as the new standard and if you’re not sporting this new look, well you’re out of fashion (style) as they say in this world and I’d suggest you get hot on this ditch your beeper. 

While I-Technology is hot, make sure you do research and make informed, educated purchasing decisions as technology changes every Monday when the Board of Directors meet. Thanks and God Bless, rg sends!