Spending the weekend with Gary Blair at our house, we obviously talked a lot about photography and especially how much things have changed.  There were moments, when talking about the past,  I was sounding like my grandfather when he would say, “I used to walk three miles to school every morning!”  But let’s face it, there has been a serious change in the quality of the finished product as more and more photographers jump into the industry and think they can deliver mediocrity!  The difference comes in a lot of new photographers not paying attention to the quality in the same way a good lab would do, especially back in the old days, the film days.

The issue of outgoing quality is so serious, that industry icon Tony Corbell, at IUSA not too long ago, put his program aside and just talked about quality to the point where he made everybody pledge to stop taking the shortcuts and “stop producing crap!”

Fortunately, Tony, along with countless other icons are starting to get the message through.  I think a lot of people are slowing down a little and paying more attention to what they deliver.  They’re also working with some great labs, instead of trying to do it all themselves,  but here’s a challenge I saw recently that everyone needs to pay more attention to:  inconsistent flesh tones.  

Recently I was looking through an album being submitted for competition and there were at least six different versions of the bride.  At one extreme she looked anemic, then Asian and finished the book dark complected with a horrible sunburn.  The solution to the problem was all in the photographer’s hands, but he pushed to get the book done and never paid attention to flesh tones.

Okay, here I go sounding like my grandfather… 

In the “old days” the lab would print to the Shirley.  Shirley was the nickname for the manikin Kodak used for flesh tone balance – she was the standard.   Shirley, was sadly caught in a horrible accident.  She was run over by the 18-wheeler of digital and came back without a consistent flesh tone, as thousands of photographers, often on uncalibrated monitors, stopped paying attention to her and eyeballed her images and said, “Yeah, that looks good!”

So, the thought this morning is this:  When a potential client looks at your work, either in a real album or on line and they see an inconsistency in quality from image to image – don’t you think they wonder which photographer they’re going to get if they hire you?   Don’t you think they might just question how they’re going to look in your images?  I’ve seen images on websites so inconsistent that as a potential client I’d wonder, “Will I get Jekyll or Hyde?”

It was inconsistent flesh tones that got me going today, but think about quality in general, on everything you do.  NEVER compromise on the quality of the finished product.  We’re in a word-of-mouth business and there’s no stronger calling card than consistent great quality and exceeding your customer’s expectations!