Today's Guest: DJ LaDez of DJ LaDez Photography in Port Richie, FL
Today's Host: John Bentley
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DJ LaDez Photography
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DJ LaDez Expert PageJOHN: Welcome to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Today's program is brought to you by Morephotos.com the online sales solution for professional photographers worldwide. Today on the program we have D.J. LaDez of D.J. LaDez Photography, Port Richie, Florida, photographer, here on VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Welcome to the program, D.J.
DJ: Thank you very much. Nice to meet you.
JOHN: We're glad to have you on the program. Why don't you give us a basic overview of what you do as a photographer.
DJ: Well, I do have a photo studio, but to be honest about 98% of my work is done on location and the type of work I do generally involves human models, but does sometimes involve commercial work with cars and motorcycles and other venues and so I've been fortunate enough to work over these last 15 years growing my business primarily just through word of mouth advertising. So I'm continuing to get busier and busier along with more experience and growing through that process.
JOHN: The crust of your business is model photography?
DJ: I generally do mostly model portfolio images and then in addition to that the referral business I get from that, whether that be when models get married and they want a good wedding photographer, ranging to when photographers are required for commercial work, but they know I know models. So they'll call me and bring me in not only for my photographic skills, but also for my contacts with those professional models.
JOHN: Now photographing models must give you a lot of creative license. What kind of situations or what kind of look are you trying to present when you shoot a model?
DJ: Well generally speaking, because so many professional models already have head shots and so many other situation shots or lifestyle type portraits, then I need to be able to bring something unique and different to the table in order to attract their attention and, of course, their money. And so for me one of the key ingredients is being able to work on location rather than simply being refined to the studio and in that capacity I can offer a lot more variety. Now I'm on the west coast of Florida so we do a lot of stuff out on the beaches and in the natural park environment that we're so gifted to have down there, but in the same respect we also can work in a commercial environment like a corporate office or in their homes. So this gives me a lot of flexibility with giving the models something that they can't get from a typical portrait photographer.
JOHN: What are some of the locations in the Florida area that you actually do on site shooting?
DJ: Well, being that I'm just north of Tampa Bay region not on the west coast, we can make these photographs ranging from the local beaches right in my Port Richie area or some of the more decorative beaches down in the Clearwater area where they have basically nicer amenities in those regions, but nonetheless, because I can pack my equipment up in a suitcase and travel to where I need to go to take those photographs, it really doesn't matter to me and many cases, I've asked the models what their preference is and if they have no preference, then we'll also chose some of the smaller eclectic towns in our region, because that gives us a little bit more variety of old style buildings that we can shoot in front of as well as more modern street scape scenes.
JOHN: Have you done photography around the states, around the world?
DJ: Yeah, I've been fortunate that I've gotten an opportunity to travel around the world working again not only with professional models, often working with families and groups, but also even with government groups and a few famous people as well.
JOHN: Now you have a studio in Florida also?
DJ: I do have a studio at my company, but at the same time I really rarely use it. It's actually ironic that occasionally, for example, a parent might come to me and say that she wants pictures of her daughter in her prom dress or something like this, and she'll specifically say, I want a studio style portrait. Now in that respect, I can still take a background to their location and make a studio style portrait right in their own living room, but if they want to come to my studio and feel that they've made that professional transition to show up at a studio and get their hair done and get their picture taken, we can accommodate that as well.
JOHN: Sure. What are some of the situations you find yourself or how do you make a...some people don't like their photograph taken so how do you make your customers feel comfortable in a setting like that?
DJ: Well, one of the key ingredients is making it clear to your customer without being overly technical that you know what you're doing. Having the type of equipment that I can travel with which is portable lighting equipment that includes things like umbrellas and soft boxes assures people when they see me setting up that gear that this is equipment that they're familiar with seeing in the regular professional photo studio so they already have a sense of confidence in my ability and, for example, once you begin that portion of it, then the rest of the dialog becomes much more confidence building in both your customer and in your own abilities. So, for example, at many weddings I have people tell me without ever seeing any images what a great job I'm doing. Well all they know is there's a lot of flashes going off, and I must be doing a good job, but they also see those tools. They see the things they recognize that other photographers short cut themselves, don't take this extra equipment that might weigh 10 or 20 pounds and while that might be more convenient and while cameras today can certainly take good pictures in most any lighting in most circumstances, customers definitely respect that I will take the extra time and attention to bring out the big toys, so to speak.
JOHN: Now when you do a wedding, are you coming as just yourself, or do you bring an assistant, how do you approach a wedding?
DJ: Well the wedding prices are based on how much work we're going to put into it. And they range from as little as $1,000 for me to just come with a couple of light stands and some modifiers and take pictures at their event and effectively turn over the images at the end of the event to them and then the prices get gradually more expensive as we are going to embellish that with having assistants to make the whole process far more fluid and as well as in to provide a more dynamic lighting situation even on the run, for example, at the reception. And so the assistants do help, but the price keeps going up depending on one or two assistants and then, of course, there's the opportunity to make money in the post event process making albums and processing the images for them and what not.
JOHN: Sure. Are there other aspects of photography that you dabble into?
DJ: You know, I really prefer the modeling portfolio images. Wedding photography is the one type of work where you don't get any opportunity to chose where the event is, when the even is, who will be in those photographs, and it is really difficult to do any type of re-dos and it's kind of a high stress environment, but it's an adrenaline rush for me versus modeling portfolio stuff we can arrange when we suspect we'll have the best weather and we suspect we'll have the best sunsets which is a lot of what we do on the west coast of Florida.
DJ: And if it doesn't turn out to be such a nice day, we can rearrange it for the following week or if there's other issues that happen at that event, then we have a lot more flexibility. So that's genuinely my preference. And often when I ask from the models is we can do something of a personality portrait. For example if they have a nice car that they've recently purchased, I want to have that be something that they relate to and something that we include in the images as opposed to simply just portraits of them standing on the beach.
JOHN: Yeah, sure. Now what kind of lighting situations do you find yourself when you doing outdoor photography?
DJ: Well being that we try and shoot on the nice days when we have clear skies and some clouds to shoot there, I find myself regularly having to balance my artificial lights with the light that's out there in the environment which is generally direct sunlight. And so in that capacity I have to have reasonably high power equipment especially with the use of these light modifiers, and when I do that then I can create very dynamic pictures, studio quality pictures with the diffused lighting through the light modifiers and yet I can use the sun as a fill light source rather than as a main light.
JOHN: Yeah, sure. Now is there a certain time of the day that you're looking to take somebody out to the beach?
DJ: When their money is ready to go out. No, at any time of day...
JOHN: It doesn't matter to you then?
DJ: It doesn't really matter, but obviously it will direct which direction I might face a model or in which direction I might work with a model, but in many cases my schedule, the model's schedule, and mother nature are not always cooperating and in many cases I'm choosing a location based on what we want to be in the background, not based on where the sun was at that time.
JOHN: What do you think separates your photography business, D.J., from the competition?
DJ: I think it really comes down to the fact that I'm willing to put out the little bit of extra effort to bring out the lighting, because in Photography it is really just the capture of light photo...graphy is really light capture like graphing. It doesn't matter to me which camera I use or how many mega pixels other than how big we might make the enlargement, but in reality it's the lighting that is going to separate my work from that of other photographers who can get a correct exposure with today's cameras, but they short cut themselves by not making those extra steps and those extra efforts.
JOHN: Yeah, sure. What is your main goal when shooting an event? What do you want your client to come away with?
DJ: I want them to come away with not only a sense of satisfaction that earns me not only my pay and often additional tips and benefits, as well as referrals, but really as an artist I have to be satisfied with the images as well, because I find most of my customers are looking at a picture like wow, I like that smile and both my eyes are open. So I have to look at a picture far more technically to decide whether I'm satisfied if it has reached the level of quality that I would want my name stamped on.
JOHN: Now, D.J., do you have a website that people can go to to see some of your work?
DJ: Well, there's a website hosted by More Photos that is www.djLaDez.com and so you can go there and find at least a small chunk of my portfolio. Generally my work is not done by recruiting over the web. It is rather by word of mouth and referral.
JOHN: So your reputation is most important to you then?
DJ: Well, yeah, my reputation and the actual final results.
JOHN: I want to thank you for joining us today VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight, D.J.
DJ: Excellent. Thank you.
JOHN: We've been speaking with Port Richie photographer, D.J. LaDez, of D.J. LaDez Photography, and you've been listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Thanks for tuning with us today. Have a great day.
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