We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Adam Babington. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Adam below.

Adam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

There is a trend right now in the creative industry, specifically with photo and video, of people majorly overcharging or undercharging for their services. Setting your prices is always a struggle for someone just starting out so it takes some time to figure out what a good price for your service is. For the most part, this is fine. However, there are a lot of photographers that start out charging hundreds of dollars for a 30 minute headshot sessions and don’t know how the aperture affects a picture. In my area there are so many people like this that when people hear my prices they either think I have the best deal on the planet, or they assume that my pictures aren’t as good since I’m charging 1/4 of what they’d been quoted by others.

Here is an example of my price for a headshot session and what you get compared to what people have been quoted.
– I charge $75 for an hour long session | some people charge $300 for 30 minutes
– I don’t charge for extra outfits, changing time is included in the hour session | $30 for an additional outfit
– I don’t charge for extra location, but travel time counts towards the hour | $75 per additional location
– I give all the best pictures to you after the session | You get 12 pictures included and each additional is $15

Now that last one is my biggest point of contention with some photographers. If I shoot say 250 pictures in our hour session, not all of them are going to be good and I don’t like giving two almost identical pictures, so I’ll end up with around 60 or so. I have no reason to keep some photos back and tell you to only pick 12, I’m not going to use the photos that you don’t pick. So why not just give them to the client?

Adam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I got in to photography when I got to college and when I decided to change my major in my third semester, I switched in to media arts from music education. From there I got in to of course portrait photography, but also motorsports photography and shooting at other live events such as concerts. With my degree came videography in the form of mostly interviews and short form narrative work. Now I work at a local news station in the creative services department making commercials for local businesses. The nice part about the job is that every client wants a different things so I need to cater to each company’s style.

The hard part about my job is that everything is either 5, 10, 15, or 30 seconds long since it ends up on TV or as an online ad. I’d love to create longer form content and more narrative based videos so that’s what I’m working towards. Another thing I like to do is screenwriting. I took some classes in college and loved it so now I incorporate it in to my job and write on the side, maybe I’ll work towards that in the future.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

As someone who really started creating in college, I wish someone had’ve brought up photography or graphic design or anything like that much earlier to me. Middle and high school art classes were generic for me since there were so many kids per class and the yearbook club was the place for photographers but it was such a tight knit group from the outside that I felt weird just joining, also I was in band so I had little to no free time ever. It’s not a case of “how much better would I be if I started earlier?”, but more “How much more could I know about all this if I started earlier?”. Sometimes I’ll go to start a new thing or use a new technique but learning it takes forever, so I occasionally wonder if I had started in say middle school, would I have the time now to focus on learning new skills instead of just doing what I can.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

People really struggle to understand how long it takes for certain things to happen in the creative field. I’ve had countless interactions where someone assumes I can fully edit a commercial in a day when it takes a week or asks if I will have the pictures I just took for them immediately after taking them. I know that every creative experiences this to some degree. People need to understand that creative things take time and to just trust that whoever they’ve hired to do the job knows what they’re doing

Contact Info:

• Website: www.adamcbabington.com
• Instagram: @babingtonmedia
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a-babington/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChPO9VbVV1uKfIBN2ChvsCw

Image Credits
All photos by Adam Babington