Easy identifier: I have some super-cool ideas for a shoot!
You talk with this photographer over a coffee and he is bubbling with ideas. You are gonna shoot by a lake with super-nice clothes, dressed as a nun in an old house, these high-fashion shots at a place he knows about, super-sexy glamour shots in front of a steel wall and more. Then he sends you an email with top-of-line photographs from world-famous photographers with super models to show you what he intends to do.
Then you check his portfolio.
One half-happy "model" with no make-up just standing next to a tree in a poorly lit picture. Another one with a semi-fit girl in a bikini on a beach, and just behind her is a thrown away white plastic bag.
You then realize, he may not be a creep, but his mind is way ahead of his talent.
It takes time and effort to become a good photographer. And it is the result that matters. That is one of the best things with photography. Now one really care how you got the shot! You can have spent hours and hours on it and people just go "Naah.". Some other times you just go out in the back-garden of the make-up artist's house, snap with a Lastolite reflector, and people go crazy about it!
Even if you fill the model with 1,5 liters of beer, yourself with just as much, watch her drunk and naked/semi-naked add more and more baby-oil in the rented hotel room, crank up sad music and bite her on the neck to get the mood right-it still wont be seen in the picture! But hey! It's fun and the result was AWSOME! :-)
And you know what? There was no plan. For the best shot of the night, I did not use any of my expensive light gear, just the surrounding much-to-yellow lamps in the hotel room.
I aimed for bringing her beauty out and show the honest her. I think I did since even her mom loved the shot! (I guess she did not give the details of how we got it.)
So what I am saying is: If the height of the ideas are not seen in his portfolio - skip him. If you see something you like in his pictures, try to get him back on the ground and maybe you can work out some pictures that will improve yours and his portfolio.
Trust results - not ideas.
How does Models-n-Shoots' Creep Defense try to keep Mr Grand Ideas out?
*Not good enough pictures-not accepted. Go home, try harder, come back again.
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