Joshua Milligan
Well-known member
That's just not how it is in my market. Literally just the other day I was on a shoot for a large company and the first thing the marketing director said was, "Man, finally someone with a real camera."
Maybe that's not your experience, but that happens all over and it's because of the insane number of people today claiming to be videographers because they bought a mirrorless camera. There are definitely people out there creating great content with them, and I myself use them, but there's also a million people who buy them who don't know what they are doing, but want to get into the industry because now they own a camera that can be "cinematic".
Photography is the same way. We have a term we use where I live called M-WACs (moms with a camera). There's probably over 1,000 "photographers" in my town who are literally that, moms who bought a camera, and now they offer photography. 95% of them don't know how to use lights so they market themselves as "natural light shooters", most of them don't understand what shutter speed or aperture means, and most of them just shoot to whatever their camera shot in out of the box and proceed to simply drop a preset on their photos in Lightroom and call it a day.
The issue with that is these M-WACs will often get a photo job because they tell everyone they know they are a photographer now, and when they show up and conditions are not ideal, or the camera is in a mode they don't know how to change out of because they don't know really anything about cameras, they will panic and end up doing a poor job. Photography is about so much more than owning a camera. It's about lighting, posing, interacting with the people you're photographing, lens choice, camera settings, and your ability to understand how to use the file in post, not to mention the overall business knowledge needed to do it right. Because of this, people will often get photos they are unhappy with and will have to redo their photos with another M-WAC in hopes that they are better.
How then is one supposed to weed through the junk that's out there and find people who are actually knowledgable about the craft and who are genuinely a professional? Is it based off of examples on a website? I think not because anyone can snap some nice pics every once in a while or make a cool highlight reel for video cut to fancy music. How do you sort through those people to find people who really know what they are doing?
An easy way when it comes to video is to see what gear you're using. If you're a marketing director of a business and you know nothing about video, but you do know that you need to have a project done and done well, you're likely going to see what kind of gear the person you're looking to hire is using in their pics on their website, social sites, etc. And if you see them using a photo camera, but another guy you're looking at has a cinema camera, you will likely call the guy with the cinema camera. He might be worse at filming, but he has a tool that looks more like what is expected.
Even guys like me who know what to look for in people will still do this. If I hire someone, I want to know what kind of gear they have and what experience they have. If they have a RED V-RAPTOR and a cheap Manfrotto tripod, then I know where their priorities were. That tells me a lot about that person. But if they have a Sachtler Video 18 and an old C300, then that tells me they have a good understanding of what's important. As such I'm more likely to hire the second guy.
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