Can one be successful shooting only B&W portraits?

cramej · Aug 9, 2016

This is pertaining more to the business side of portraits rather than being successful making *good* portraits.

Those of you who make money from photography - whether it is just to fund the addiction, part-time job or full-time occupation - are you successful with traditional B&W portraits? I've thought about marketing myself in this way after I am able to get my darkroom set up but I've never been quite sure of the demand for such a product or service in my area.

The area I live in is not very active with film photographers so it would be seen as a unique product (1 pro lab that seems to be stuck in the 90's and 2 photo stores that hardly stock any film (side note to a side note, I wanted 1 pro pack of Portra 400 for a vacation and neither of them had it) - all for a metro area of ~4-500,000). There are plenty of GWC's* in the area that want to do all the trendy electronic stuff with senior pictures - they can keep the seniors and their instagram filter actions for Photoshop. I decided long ago that I didn't like trying to keep up with that stuff. That's why I think it might be worthwhile for me to pursue the traditional B&W portraiture track at least for a few dollars to fund the hobby.

*Both genders or however many there are now.

Assumptions:

While 35mm has a distinct look in B&W, I believe most fine portraiture would call for at least medium format unless a specific 'look' is desired. If you use 35mm, I would be interested in your perspective on this.
This is from loading the film to drying the print. I'm not sure it would be cost effective to outsource a part of the process possibly with the exception of film processing.
Paper type is not of much importance. I believe this is more of a personal or workflow preference and does not make any difference to the customer.
Either studio, on-location or outdoor. I don't have a studio and likely won't have one for several years so all of my work would be outdoor or natural light indoors with modifiers (all light is available!)

Questions:

Do you make a point of telling your customers your process and how it is different?
Do customers balk at not having a color portrait option?
How about creativity? Hand coated papers with sloppy borders, "freelensing" as mentioned (there was a url link here which no longer exists) recently, high contrast, etc. Are customers accepting of your creative techniques?
Camera choice - Assuming all equipment in this scenario is reliable, do you stick to 1 or 2 systems or whatever floats your boat on that day. Vintage folders, SLR's, TLR's. rangefinders etc.
I suppose this one depends on the market, but with respect to print sizes do customers expect standard paper sizes with the portrait filling the sheet or do you print whatever you're cropping to on a larger sheet (i.e. 10x10 on a 16x20)?
Proofing - contact sheets (or contact prints for LF), small prints, large prints, electronic?
Any notable photographers to look up or be inspired by? (Including any APUGger's!) Not looking for the famous ones here. I know of and can find plenty of them on my own.

Don't feel obligated to answer all of the questions. I'm really just looking for some input on how other people operate since I really don't know anyone else that has this type of workflow. Looking forward to some good conversation on this.

Pioneer · Aug 9, 2016

Sure you can. Think it through, be ready to sell yourself constantly to everyone you meet, and think outside the box. Can you provide a beautiful, black and white portrait while they wait? Those are the types of things that will make you special.

But it might take awhile so I hope you like Ramen Soup.

vdonovan · Aug 9, 2016

I answered this question for myself as follows: I need to take home about $50k per year (before income tax) to survive. That's $4200 net from the business per month, call it $8k gross per month after rent, expenses, taxes, equipment, etc. $8k per month means a $2k worth of bookings per week, maybe that's 4 bookings per week at $500 per booking. Week after week, month after month, year in, year out.

That seemed impossible to me. $500 is now considered a lot of money for a photographic portrait, and drumming up four bookings a week at that rate seems impossible unless you are already a famous photographer.

Jeff Bradford · Aug 9, 2016

There are plenty of photographers in Hollywood shooting "head shots" for aspiring actors. Many aren't very good. Someone who can produce good work quickly and isn't "difficult" or "creepy" can do very well there. It's drudgery. Imagine printing business cards for salesmen all day long.

Slixtiesix · Aug 10, 2016

I think that it´s definitely possible to make some money from this. B/W portraits are still regarded as "classy" and therefore they have a certain appeal to people, even people that do not know much about photography. If you stay regional, I doubt that you can earn a living from that, but it may certainly bring in some money to fund your hobby.
Part of the secret of success I think is using a fancy camera. A friend of mine shoots a lot of portraits (mostly strangers) and some time ago he bought a Hasselblad 202FA with the 110FE to use it along his Nikon DSLR. He prefers to use the Hasselblad now because everyone has a DSLR these days and the Hasselblad really sets him apart, he says. That said I don´t think it has to be Hasselblad, most people can´t tell the difference between the various MF brands anyway, but it should be some classic and "old-school" looking camera that fits into your concept. The camera should not be too big either since some people can find that intimidating. 35mm should do as well, use whatever you feel comfortable with.

cramej · Aug 10, 2016

Pioneer said:
Sure you can. Think it through, be ready to sell yourself constantly to everyone you meet, and think outside the box.

Aaannnd this is why I'm not an insurance agent. I actually thought about doing that when I was changing careers and interviewed for the agent training program.

vdonovan said:
I answered this question for myself as follows: I need to take home about $50k per year (before income tax) to survive. That's $4200 net from the business per month, call it $8k gross per month after rent, expenses, taxes, equipment, etc. $8k per month means a $2k worth of bookings per week, maybe that's 4 bookings per week at $500 per booking. Week after week, month after month, year in, year out.

That seemed impossible to me. $500 is now considered a lot of money for a photographic portrait, and drumming up four bookings a week at that rate seems impossible unless you are already a famous photographer.

I have gone through that thought process before as well. When I was doing a few weddings a year I considered what it would take to make it full time and it wasn't pretty. I've known other photographers who started small and made a good business out of it but they ran themselves ragged until they were big enough to hire people and then ended up doing school portraits for the bread & butter.

Slixtiesix said:
I think that it´s definitely possible to make some money from this. B/W portraits are still regarded as "classy" and therefore they have a certain appeal to people, even people that do not know much about photography. If you stay regional, I doubt that you can earn a living from that, but it may certainly bring in some money to fund your hobby.

This, I think, is the answer I've known all along but it certainly is a nice thought of doing well enough that I don't have to sit at a desk all day.

Slixtiesix said:
Part of the secret of success I think is using a fancy camera. ... but it should be some classic and "old-school" looking camera that fits into your concept. The camera should not be too big either since some people can find that intimidating. 35mm should do as well, use whatever you feel comfortable with.

I have that aspect covered. A RB67 (now with red leather), a couple of Mamiya TLRs, a 645afd and a small stable of Minolta and Nikon 35mm.

Bob Carnie · Aug 10, 2016

Tony Hauser in Toronto specialized in BW and PT PD portraits , and has had a great career.

I do not see why you cannot, if you are good at something , there are always people willing to pay for quality. If you are offering exactly what everyone
else is giving in quality and product then it would boil down to who is the better salesperson.

I have been in small business for a long time now and can tell you the only advice worth keeping is ( work very hard each day at your craft, and try to be the most honest vendor you can)
If you have any talent then things will sort themselves out for you.

good luck

frank · Aug 10, 2016

I would say that in order to be successful, one would have to specialize in some form of retro photography because nowadays everyone has a cell phone with a camera and is a photographer.

Slixtiesix · Aug 10, 2016

cramej said:
A RB67 (now with red leather)

Now THAT will definitely do!

cramej · Aug 10, 2016

Slixtiesix said:
Now THAT will definitely do!

Props to Aki Asahi for the leather. Even though he has a limited selection of precut kits, the uncut sheet product is nice. At least one of the TLR's will be getting green or blue lizard soon and my YashicaMat will for sure get blue. Vivid blue on a black camera is pretty sweet!

Bob Carnie said:
Tony Hauser in Toronto specialized in BW and PT PD portraits , and has had a great career.

I do not see why you cannot, if you are good at something , there are always people willing to pay for quality. If you are offering exactly what everyone
else is giving in quality and product then it would boil down to who is the better salesperson.

Tony's work is interesting. Looks to be very high quality. The Monty is very strong in him!

I'm hoping that I can bring in some of the customers who appreciate the quality of a wet print. I hesitate to use the word 'handcrafted' grrr, I hate the word. Even fast food restaurants use it now. Need to think of something better. Photonically bombarded art maybe?

Diapositivo · Aug 10, 2016

cramej said:
I hesitate to use the word 'handcrafted' grrr, I hate the word. Even fast food restaurants use it now. Need to think of something better. Photonically bombarded art maybe?

Portraits produced the old artisanal way;
Portraits guaranteed to come out from the good old witchcraft cauldron;
Have your traditional black and white portrait carefully manufactured in pure old stinking photochemistry, like your grandfather did when he was in the army and wanted to impress your grandmother at home;
Hang to your wall good old silver!
They found silver for this! (you add a TM and make of it your slogan)

well, you get the point... brag brag brag it's not digital from the top of the belltower

DREW WILEY · Aug 10, 2016

I frequently get approached by pro portrait photographers working in digital media who want to get coached in film and darkroom in order to give them a niche competitive edge. It's not quite that simple, because you need to get immersed in it to do it well enough to gain a foothold in reputation,
or at least an outstanding sample real (not web) print portfolio. Tons of wannabee student photographers trying to break into this, with predictable hit
and miss success. Their biggest problem is that they can't afford to buy or lease real estate with darkroom space. This is an extremely expensive area, but even here I do know a handful of people making solid middle-class incomes (and the definition of middle class here is very very different
than in much of the country), and maintaining at least small studio leases in upscale neighborhoods (not downtown SF!) by doing strictly black and
white MF film portraiture, mainly with darkroom print output as their main commercial product. I wouldn't term them world-class printmakers by any
means, but tasteful, competent, and mostly importantly, with good people skills. If I hypothetically set up a studio again, I'd expect several thousand dollars a print to make it realistic relative to overhead.

DREW WILEY · Aug 10, 2016

Now to a few specific questions on the original post. First, if you need to tell people your work is different, or why it is, you've already lost the battle.
They should be able to instantly recognize the qualitative difference relative to anything routine. Present it first class, matted and framed. Don't adopt
any corny pranks like scratched borders. Keep things elegant if you're trying to impress potential clients with real money rather than geeky cronies at a comic book convention. Every kid on the block already knows how to do Fauxtoshop better than I ever will. Forget the cutesy fads - they get old
and boring just as fast as they get invented. With camera or lighting choice the main factor is, first, what you are personally comfortable with already, and can operate spontaneously, and second, what is reliable. I don't do portraits very often, and my preferred camera is an 8x10, which sitters take seriously. But I always have either a Nikon or Pentax 6x7 with a similar perspective lens nearby and loaded with film, just in case. How
you proof and edit your work, then potentially present the choices to clients is again really up to what is most comfortable to you. Digi wedding photographers take a thousand shots and tell them to do it. I don't give them a choice at all. They're paying me to shoot it and print it. If they don't
trust me to do that, why not just grab some random photographer from the "phone book" (now likely a web search). Have an old-shool portfolio album with real prints in it, to see examples what you intend to do, but make certain it's one helluva nice album and its not something vinyl from
K-Mart. One trick of mine is to hand them a pair of white gloves to even handle the album or drymounted sample prints, so they get the distinct impression their own final piece is going to be something really special.

Terry Breedlove · Aug 11, 2016

When i was shooting portraits on film before the digital days. I would shoot and make 4x6 prints and put them in an album and the client would order from there. Nowadays it seems everyone wants a digital file and prints not so much. Anyway that is the feed back I am getting from friends still in the business which I am not. So I wonder if shooting film portraits why not go all the way and make the entire presentation something special. I do know that people get a kick out of contact sheets maybe they can bring one home. I don't know really but I do know that people like to feel like they are getting something very special. Try to make that happen and you will get plenty of clients I am sure.

removed account4 · Aug 11, 2016

hi cramej:
it takes a while to get established but if you can hold out long enough ( it used to be 7 years, now i think it is 10 ? )
and can find a niche and something constant you can do for bread and butter work anything is possible. where i live in RI
there used to be 40 portrait photographers in the phone book in the 1980s, now there are i think 3, and then there is the
retail chain studios mills that crank them out.
if you can establish your brand as making something unique, and you do it well, you will stand out against the MOCs ( moms with cameras )
and the millions of people with point and shoots ( and cells ) and the portrait mills that sell 1 8x10 and 2 5x7s on 1 sheet for 9$
people might not want the full boat of a silver print split toned with gold and uranium, but they might want someething printed with modern tech, but
still made with a camera and film. you might have to be creative about how you approach just shooting black and white portraits, become a
customer at a pro-lab so you can spend more time shooting, learn a new process or 2 so you can really stand out ( making pt/pd, cyanotypes or salt prints or ? )
and you might need to find a storefront or location if you don't want your insurance company (or neighbors ) to be kind of cranky you are bringing tons of foot traffic to your home.
not sure where you live but a storefront that is deep enough ot put a camera and light cost between 1-4K where i live, unless it is in the middle of nowhere
or in a desparate location.

good luck !
john

summicron1 · Aug 11, 2016

to answer your question briefly: No. Unless your name is Yousuf Karsh.

You need to have a patron, someone willing to pay you to do it, not work by the shot, or your portrait work has to be part of a much larger business. Ansel Adams got his big break working on contract with the government to shoot all those lovely pictures in the National Parks, for example.

Unless you can get yourself made into a celebrity in your own right, someone whose work is fashionable, merely shooting portraits will never pay the nut, no matter how good you are or how much you can get away with charging.
Not to mention, merely shooting portraits would get awful boring after a while, don't you think?

Bob Carnie · Aug 11, 2016

A lot of great portrait photographers would not agree.

summicron1 said:
to answer your question briefly: No. Unless your name is Yousuf Karsh.

You need to have a patron, someone willing to pay you to do it, not work by the shot, or your portrait work has to be part of a much larger business. Ansel Adams got his big break working on contract with the government to shoot all those lovely pictures in the National Parks, for example.

Unless you can get yourself made into a celebrity in your own right, someone whose work is fashionable, merely shooting portraits will never pay the nut, no matter how good you are or how much you can get away with charging.
Not to mention, merely shooting portraits would get awful boring after a while, don't you think?

cramej · Aug 11, 2016

DREW WILEY said:
They should be able to instantly recognize the qualitative difference relative to anything routine. Present it first class, matted and framed. ...With camera or lighting choice the main factor is, first, what you are personally comfortable with already, and can operate spontaneously, and second, what is reliable. I don't do portraits very often, and my preferred camera is an 8x10, which sitters take seriously. But I always have either a Nikon or Pentax 6x7 with a similar perspective lens nearby and loaded with film, just in case. How you proof and edit your work, then potentially present the choices to clients is again really up to what is most comfortable to you. Digi wedding photographers take a thousand shots and tell them to do it. I don't give them a choice at all. They're paying me to shoot it and print it....Have an old-shool portfolio album with real prints in it, to see examples what you intend to do, but make certain it's one helluva nice album and its not something vinyl from K-Mart. One trick of mine is to hand them a pair of white gloves to even handle the album or drymounted sample prints, so they get the distinct impression their own final piece is going to be something really special.

This is good information.

jnanian said:
hi cramej:
it takes a while to get established but if you can hold out long enough ( it used to be 7 years, now i think it is 10 ? )
and can find a niche and something constant you can do for bread and butter work anything is possible. where i live in RI
there used to be 40 portrait photographers in the phone book in the 1980s, now there are i think 3, and then there is the
retail chain studios mills that crank them out. if you can establish your brand as making something unique, and you do it well, you will stand out against the MOCs ( moms with cameras ) and the millions of people with point and shoots ( and cells ) and the portrait mills that sell 1 8x10 and 2 5x7s on 1 sheet for 9$. people might not want the full boat of a silver print split toned with gold and uranium, but they might want someething printed with modern tech, but still made with a camera and film. you might have to be creative about how you approach just shooting black and white portraits, become a customer at a pro-lab so you can spend more time shooting, learn a new process or 2 so you can really stand out ( making pt/pd, cyanotypes or salt prints or ? ) and you might need to find a storefront or location if you don't want your insurance company (or neighbors ) to be kind of cranky you are bringing tons of foot traffic to your home. not sure where you live but a storefront that is deep enough ot put a camera and light cost between 1-4K where i live, unless it is in the middle of nowhere or in a desparate location.

good luck !
john

Don't get me started on a particular retail chain... But then again, I have to tell myself that cheap and mediocre portraits are just fine for them. All that type of customer wants is a picture and that's what they get. They'll never be my customer because they don't value the product in the same way.

Just yesterday I was looking at salt prints. I like the look but I don't think I want to get into digitizing (ha, didn't catch me Mr. Word Filter) and printing enlarged negatives to contact print. I suppose that just means I have to start shooting bigger!

summicron1 said:
to answer your question briefly: No. Unless your name is Yousuf Karsh.

You need to have a patron, someone willing to pay you to do it, not work by the shot, or your portrait work has to be part of a much larger business. Ansel Adams got his big break working on contract with the government to shoot all those lovely pictures in the National Parks, for example.

Unless you can get yourself made into a celebrity in your own right, someone whose work is fashionable, merely shooting portraits will never pay the nut, no matter how good you are or how much you can get away with charging.
Not to mention, merely shooting portraits would get awful boring after a while, don't you think?

I'll disagree with you here. Success, for me, doesn't mean I have to achieve celebrity status. I merely want to have my work desired by someone - they come to me because they like what I do. About portraits getting boring? Well, I think it's what you make of it. Sure, they can be boring if you shoot the same poses, same lighting day after day. I would like aspire to be one of those photographers who can bring out the personality of the subject.

removed account4 · Aug 11, 2016

cramej said:
Don't get me started on a particular retail chain... But then again, I have to tell myself that cheap and mediocre portraits are just fine for them. All that type of customer wants is a picture and that's what they get. They'll never be my customer because they don't value the product in the same way.

hi again

believe it or not some of the photography that comes out of the one down the road from me
is pretty good. yes it is inexpensive, but the experienced portrait photographer using their equipment
is able to make outstanding / creative portraits. IDK 15 years ago i worked at one for a while
at that point they were still using 70mm film and sending it out and they had a video feed so people could buy
ahead of time ... now they don't send the film out but still ... i worked with a few people there who could
put a lot of hard core portrait photographers who have / had a stand alone studio to shame. and the problem i have
with them ( the retail chain ) isn't that their product is inferior ( dye sub prints i think )
but that it has cheapened the market so much that someone who makes hand crafted images whose materials alone
cost as much as a finished print ( which might be a sheet of 7 -8 prints ) ... its not easy, and often times people, unless it is something
special, a special day, special occasion &c don't really have the $$ to spend a ton on photographic portraits. a woman i apprenticed with
back in the 1980s was still in business shooting PR head/shoulder work and formals ( she was trained in the great depression via NYIP correspondance classes ) ... there were banks and insurance companies all around
so they could just walk to her busy downtown studio. she retouched with leads so the portraits were "nice-nice" and the head-shoulders was her bread+butter
very maybe 1 out of every 200 wanted a formal portrait. AND the kicker is that her rent was locked in to what it was 20 years before
and her prices were so low it was like 20 years before too ( art directors and pr people who i used to talk with werne't sure how she could survive ).
and then there were rich millionaires she did "spec" formal portraits of after their headshot ... full blown karsh lighting, 5x7 ortho tri x sheets, retouched so at 16x20+ you couldn't
see any pencil. hand printed even with some with special techniques that made the images look almost painterly &c ... matted and offered for $150 each
" you mean i can't have both for $50 ?" was the the reply ....
i guess all this to say, make sure you have good bread+butter work, and realize that people don't part with their $$ too easily ...

DREW WILEY · Aug 11, 2016

No. You don't need to be world famous, nor do you're clients have to be mega-wealthy. I have had a number of opportunities to briefly interact with billionaires on a business basis, and they're the first one who are likely to haggle you down to nothing, or outright cheat you. The general public is
far more likely to pay you promptly and fairly. But it does help if they're educated and have had some exposure to quality photography beforehand.
Yet even in a large urban street fair, anyone offering good optical darkroom prints would stand out from all the wannabees with their desktop inkjets.
Nowadays, people are just accustomed to the mediocrity of web imagery and the visual "thud" of ink. A lot also depends on where you live and what
your overhead amounts to. Back when I was still single, I could dedicate quite a bit of my house itself to operative studio space. Now I have to look
elsewhere, since my formal role inside my own home is now Head Executive Cat Butler (and cats never tip) or else convert some of my lab building, itself a potentially expensive undertaking.

cramej · Aug 11, 2016

jnanian said:
hi again

believe it or not some of the photography that comes out of the one down the road from me
is pretty good. yes it is inexpensive, but the experienced portrait photographer using their equipment
is able to make outstanding / creative portraits. ...

Lucky for the customers that the location has a photographer who cares. The work I've seen from a couple of the ones near me is abysmal. The subjects are nowhere near the lights and they just bounce it out of the corners of the room so they can shoot anywhere and at least get a decent exposure. No catchlights, shadows in the eye sockets, stuff in the background, etc. Most people could get a better portrait with their iPhone in the back yard. And to think I almost interviewed for that place . I cancelled my interview when I realized how they work.

removed account4 · Aug 11, 2016

cramej said:
Lucky for the customers that the location has a photographer who cares. The work I've seen from a couple of the ones near me is abysmal. The subjects are nowhere near the lights and they just bounce it out of the corners of the room so they can shoot anywhere and at least get a decent exposure. No catchlights, shadows in the eye sockets, stuff in the background, etc. Most people could get a better portrait with their iPhone in the back yard. And to think I almost interviewed for that place . I cancelled my interview when I realized how they work.

yeah, it helps !
believe it or not i almost didnt' work at this place too, it was a grind them out kind of atmosphere and selling sheets
is not what i want to spend 80% of my time doing after the fact ... but believe it or not i found it to be a good experience
being able to make portraits of anyone who walked in the door. its like anything the more you do it, the better you get,
and after i worked for them, i started to do newspaper work again, which is a similar thing, you need to make
a portrait of everyone and anyone who you are assigned to, and do it almost without thinking about it and being on autopilot.
the shop near me the camera, lighting background, EVERYTHING is set to pre-sets and there is a magic light pen
they hit barcodes with, so if the it is a silhouette on a black background the photographer
hits that bar code, the black background rolls down the lights situate perfectly on rails and all the lights are perfectly set up
so the photographer just has to get the perfect expression. karsh lighitngt the same thing .... its all up to the photographer
to know what to do with the lights and background and props or whatever ... near me there was a few kids who worked there after school and 9-5
who blew the doors off of most portrait photographers in the area. there was also a gal who somehow had rigged the in-house lighting system
to work with the pc on her camera, and she was doing her best to use the in house system to shoot her personal work and sell the photographs on her own
after a month or 2 she was "let go" ... im not sure what the retail chain is you are talking about, but the one
locally is pretty much the only one left in our area, and it is based out of minisota ... and most of the photographs were baby and kid photos
every few months they marched them in ... the kids were their bread/butter. not to say they didn't do total cheezy photographs too
parents saw the photographs of the little baby in the big hands or angel wings and cotton balls, or "noddy" or soft focus and sepia toned ..
you just gotta roll with it because that's the gig, someone goes to you with a photograph they want to have you make, and you make it ...
YMMV

Vaughn · Aug 11, 2016

Get yourself an 11x14 camera and set it up with all the lights, etc.

Then after focusing on the GG and while still under the darkcloth, use your iPhone to photograph the image on the GG. Then just PhotoShop the iPhone image and print on highly textured canvan injet material.

They'll never know...

PS -- whoops, forgot...after snapping w/ the iPhone, also 'click' the shutter and tell them they have to hold still for 10 seconds

DREW WILEY · Aug 11, 2016

I thought iPhones were illegal in the state of Jefferson. Don't tell me you guys have capitulated too!

Ko.Fe. · Aug 11, 2016

Quote from OP: "I've thought about marketing myself in this way after I am able to get my darkroom set up but I've never been quite sure of the demand for such a product or service in my area".

Why do you think what bw and darkroom portraits will sell better? Just because it is analog? Usually portraits sessions sell well if they are good ones.
In other words, if you already know what you are commercially good at portraits, then bw and gelatine silver might be your marketing tool. But not in the opposite.

MF? Is your darkroom set for large prints to be sold for the owners of mansions?
I was studying Yousuf Karsh bw portraits taken with 8x10 camera and right after it switched to portraits work of Jane Bown taken mostly on 135 bw film. Honestly, both are Masters, but, IMO, Bown gave Karsh some ride with some of the portraits. Where is more dynamic in some of them. And I think it is related for how quick, light and easy 35mm SLR is comparing to LF, MF gear.

Good luck! You aren't the first one who was thinking what getting darkroom is the key

Can one be successful shooting only B&W portraits?

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