Maui photographers now have a wide variety of top professional in all areas, from Maui family photographers, Maui wedding photographers, and even some wonderful Maui fashion photographers. When you compare the top mainland photographers, there is a very different approach and a completely different behind the scenes. Some of the top photographers in advertising and fashion who travel the world with magazines shoots, for advertising campaigns have a good sized entourage who set almost everything up for them. I have worked for many top photographers years back who are well known for their style and commercial image. Many times the photographer would approach us assistants and show us a magazine clipping they like and tell us to copy the lighting and style with props etc. We would then set up all the lights and the whole set and do some polaroid test shoots and have it all ready for the model or celebrity to enter the stage. The photographer would just show up and click away, sometimes we would click for him or her as they directed the photo-shoot to get the right look and feel they were striving for. The direction or words you say to the client for any photography shoot on Maui or anywhere in the world, the most important skill to have is people skills, what to say, how to react, what mood or humor to throw at your clients to set the scene.
Many Maui photographers will be so excited to shoot with an 85 mm lens at 1.4 and feel they are on top of the world for shooting a cool image with bokeh blurred background. I also love this kind of Bokeh look, but we can not always shoot with this kind of wide open shooting, as some clients want to see what the background looks like as they paid to be in Hawaii to see the gorgeous landscapes and beaches with stunning blue waters and glorious sunsets. Each week Hawaii produces new photographers who spring up with a new website with their proud new amateur / Professional camera gear they bought from Costco and they actually get clients and they grow and grow into a busy professional photographer. Hundreds of Hawaii photographers on Maui| Oahu | Kauai | Big Island are all over the internet and they work so hard to achieve what they have built today, so good luck to them all, I feel there are enough tourist to keep us all happy 🙂
We have all started from nothing and when you finally make it as a professional photographer on Maui | Kauai | Oahu | or the Big Island of Hawaii, it’s a huge relief that you can now actually live here and make a living as a professional photographer. But to stay at the top of your game we must keep up with the rest of the world and see what others are doing. We find most of our inspiration from magazines that have been around since the early 1900s and we find great inspiration from classic movies with the gorgeous lighting shot in the classic tungsten style. I don’t really use social media like Instagram as it’s filled with fake likes and fake followers, and I don’t like places that judge you on the number of followers or likes you have. In Instagram, everyone seems to want to show off their butt or abs to gain attention. Lots of Crazy influencers who get paid a fortune for having zero talent and it’s actually sickening to see it.
We have a lot to learn from the great masters of photography simply because they paved the way with their craft and used simple cameras like the Leica M or other great film cameras from Hasselblad and the old Nikon and cannon cameras all using great quality film that is hard to find and develop these days. Masters like Alfred Stieglitz,
Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Hurrell, Robert Frank, we owe a lot to these great masters that have shown us a lot about art in photography. We learn a lot about a picture by spending time with it and looking at all the details and feel what the story of the picture is telling us. When I see how fast people scroll through their Instagram account and pay little respect to art or photography, I worry what the mind of human will be like 100 years from now. Scrolling through images at warp speeds and missing out on lots of important details in photography, especially the simple details of an image we often overlook. Appreciate and respect the extraordinary in the ordinary and the same goes for the Ordinary in the extraordinary.
Setting up a website as a Maui photographer | Kauai photographer | Oahu photographer | Big Island photographer has never been so challenging to be at the top of your game yet is much easier to get your work seen than it was 50 years ago. Back then the yellow pages and word of mouth or direct foot traffic shopping was the only way to be seen or heard. Google rules the world these days and we all rely on Google to get our work out there. Google can make us or brake us with good and bad reviews. We all need good reviews of course but the minute a tiny mistake happens, people love to threaten you with bad reviews that are always completely unfair and Google doesn’t do much for unfair complaints. People now know they can try to get their money back by threatening to give a bad review. The bad review could be as simple as “The wind blew hair in my face” and “you didn’t tell me or my bra strap is showing in some of the pictures” or “my baby wasn’t looking at the camera on all the shots”. All photographers know of these issues we all see and have but we must continue on with a positive aloha smile and keep the clients happy and satisfied as they keep coming back and they refer others. Our clients have been referred to by hundreds of other clients over the years. We photographed one couple about 7 years ago and thankfully her Jewish friends all from the same temple all refer each other, year after year, so it feels like we have photographed the entire Jewish community in New York. 🙂 Thank you, clients, for all those referrals and wonderful five-star reviews, we appreciate your business over the years with great respect and pride.
