A few questions about photography?

[Eric Lefebvre]

"You have to actually know how to use photoshop don't you?"
Not really ... the goal is to get it right in camera. Think about it this way ... you could do it right in camera by taking an extra 30 seconds or you can spend 3 hours in photoshop TRYING to fix it.
Understanding light, composition, posing, exposure ... these things are far more important.

"I need help, How should I start out?"

The very first thing to do is to sit down with a proper photographer and have them do a critique of your work. Ignore what your friends and family say about your photos ... they aren't objective enough or knoleageable enough to give you the type of critique you need. With 5000 pictures taken, you most likely have a long way to go before you are good enough to consistently produce marketable images.

Next, you need to sit down and plan this out right. You are now starting a business as a freelance photographer and like all businesses there are costs and risks and rules ...

You need to sit down and do a proper business plan. What do you have? What are your objectives? What is your target market (client types and geographical)? What do you need? How will you measure your companies success or failiure? How will you reach your target market?

"Should I start out with a session of someone I know? Or dont know?"
You need to create a great body of work ... not great in terms of quantity but quality. your portfolio is your CV ... if you have no images, poor images or a very small variation of images ... no one will hire you. how you get that portfolio/body of work depends on the type of photography you are planning on offering. There are alot of different types of photography: weddings, portraits, sports, photojournalism, product ...

"I know I should make the first few free."
You have to be careful with this ... to start you should not charge until you have liability insurance AND have the skills to consistently produce marketable images but you also don;t want to give your work away for free or else you'll be killing the market and gaining a reputation as that free photographer.

" I dont know how much to price,"
There are 4 factors to pricing:
- Your ongoing business costs.
- The cost of producing your product (your shooting costs)
- How much you want to get paid for the work you do.
- What the market can bear.

Your business costs are things like business cards, liability insurance, web hosting, domain name rgistration, office supplies (pens, paper, ink ...), a fund to replace your office equipment (printers, external HDD, computer), a fund to improve your photography equipment, a fund to replace broken or dying photogrpahy equipment, a marketing budget, your printed portfolios, cellp phone, internet access ...

Your shoot coosts is the cost of each package or service ... how much it costs YOU to provide that service. things like: travel (wear and tear plus gas), how much it costs you to print out prints, any gear you need to rent, any other services you need to hire (an assitant, a makeup artist, a stylist, a retoucher ...) ... so on, so forth ...

Your own salary isn;t as staright forward as you could think. Alot of people look at a shoot and say "We'll I'll be with the lcient for 2 hours and i wan to be paid 20$ an hour so that's 40$" but that's wrong ... a 10 hour wedding (i'm with the bride and groom for 10 hours) is actually 31 to 35 hours of work. You need to consider ALL the time you spend on the shoot ... meeting the clients, driving around, organising locations, shooting, ordering prints, post processing ... all of it and even that doesn;t cover everything ... you'll end up doing alot of work for your business that doesn;t directly generate revenue (attending trade shows, updating your website, meeting clients that don;t end up signing a contract with you ...) so don't undrevalue yourself too much.

Finally, once you;ve taken into consideration hyour business costs, your shoot costs and your salary ... you have to look at your market and see if it can bear the price you've set. If your price is too low, you cut in your salary but you HAVE to be able to cover your business costs and shoot costs or else you are LOOSING money from your pocket. You would literally have more money in your bank account by not shooting if you are unable to cover your business costs and shoot costs.

"check out my pictures and tell me what you think"
I don't want to be an arsehole but you aren't ready. Poorly composed, underexposed, lack of contrast, wrong white balance, very soft, wide angle distortion on portraits ... alot of beginner mistakes. Your "The Williams" folder is compsed of just a bunch of snapshots that anyone with a half decent camera could create, you don;t show any understanding of the art and science of photography.