Recent Press

A student wrote a nice article about me, following an interview, and posted it on her blog.

Michael Rothermel, a 16-year-old homeschooled student, recently turned his photography aspirations into reality. With the support of his mother and help from many friends, Michael strives to kick off his career by doing “the harder things,” pay attention to important details, skillfully market his art, and wisely manage his business.

Continue reading the article at Teens in the Spotlight.

News of May

It has been an interesting month and promises an amazing ending.

At the end of April, actually, I had an interesting shoot with RM Lewis. He is a great guy, quite photogenic and very funny. Check out his music!

This month I’ve been around a little. York County Envirothon Competitions, and a bunch of personal work. I’ve also been working on getting my business card finished up and printed, editing my website, and getting more work.

On that note, I’m doing some promo shots for a cool guy tonight, some senior portraits for a friend tomorrow and going to prom as the photographer Friday. Should be fun!

How to Make Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans

I was looking for an article how to make chocolate covered coffee beans and found some good ones.. but all text! So here is a short tutorial with photos!

1. Fill pan with 1″ water.

2. Gather your delicious chocolate chips and coffee beans.

3. Put a double boiler in the pan (make sure the bottom does not touch the water in the pan) and put in your chocolate chips.

4. Heat until the chocolate chips melt.

5. Mix coffee beans into the melted chocolate.

6. Spread on wax paper and stick in freezer for a half hour or so.

7. Enjoy!

New Stuff!

There are some exciting changes coming to MRP! Right now I’m working on adding a bunch of new galleries and working out much of the business details..busy, busy!

The image to the right is a compilation of the thumbnails for some of the photos I will be adding to my Events photos collection. I will be adding event photography to the services I offer. Music concerts, parties of all sorts, summer camps, and more!

If all goes well the updates should be up by next week – I’m trying to keep up with my school workload as well. Getting crazy balancing everything, but God is good!

MRP – “Downsizing”

I’ve decided to cut wedding photography out of my generally available services. I will still offer it if someone asks, but I am not going to actively pursue it. I am going to focus on portraiture now – some changes coming to the website soon!

www.rothermelphotography.com

Flash Velcro Modification

After a long trip to Lowe’s (love that place) I exited with 36″ of Velcro. The idea was to wrap the Velcro around my flash head so I can attach light modifiers, but so I am able to take the Velcro strap off. Then, it looks a lot neater, doesn’t lower the resale value, and is pretty darn nifty.

1. Here lie the lovely Velcro pieces, ready to cut. I wrapped it around the flash head to get a feel for the length.
2. Two evenly cut pieces, the other strap I made, and scraps to the left. The one side sticks to the carpet nicely – peel the backs and adhere back-to-back.
3. Here’s the finished products. Sweet and simple.
4. And this is what it looks like on the flash. Start attaching..stuff!

(See the image larger) (Idea credit: Strobist)

An Obsession with Perfection

I think one of the hardest things for me, as a photographer, is perfection. Composition..that’s a big bugger. What’s really hard is when you get to the point where you can’t just look at a picture any more. If you peruse any collection of photographs, you begin to mentally critique and fix them. Even if it’s a family photo that has no thought of creativity in mind, just the documentation.

It gets worse when you view your own photos. Many will die, few will survive. When you cross a certain line, nice just isn’t good enough. Every photo must be perfect. If it doesn’t look good for some reason it’s off to the trash bin. Even the funniest photos with friends are a struggle to keep if they are not that great.

Then there comes the time when you start reverse-engineering everyone’s photos. I can remember standing in the shoe store looking at a large advertisement on the wall for shoes, of course. When you get into lighting you really start noticing little things: the direction of the light (left, right, above), the light source (florescent, bare flash, umbrella, softbox), or the ever classic, natural light. (Who would have thought you could use the sun, huh?) [Of course, Strobist is to blame for my addiction to light.]

But I think you can also reach another region of thought. . . It has taken a lot of breaking down and rebuilding, but I’ve come again to being able to keep some photos which are average quality, but hold personal meaning. It’s still hard at times the accept the norm, but it’s a growing phase.

Keep a Photo Idea Journal

One thing I’ve really started doing is compiling a list of photographs I’d like to try sometime for fun or may actually use while shooting a wedding or otherwise. (I also draw lighting diagrams on violin concert programs, but that’s a different story.)

I found this great idea while from a friend’s blog.
New Model Coming Soon
Hang a piece of baby clothing somewhere with clothespins.. via Abby

I obviously can’t take credit for this idea, but this is just a sample..so you can see what I mean. Writing down ideas is great, especially if you’ll otherwise forget it like me!

Introducing Michael Rothermel Photography!

I’m so proud to introduce Michael Rothermel Photography – www.rothermelphotography.com! I’ve worked quite awhile on this and am just very glad to get it going. The adventure begins!

Cheap Competitors & The Cost of a Portrait

I was forwarded this email awhile ago by my mom.

Hello everyone–
I have a young friend from our church body who is a budding photographer/videographer and has taken several friends’ senior portraits. He and his parents are looking into possibilities for him to pursue this as a business opportunity to help pay for college. He would like me to find out if there is any interest in the community for portrait-taking, for seniors and younger students alike. His proposed package would include up to 3 outfits, up to 5 poses/shots, and a CD of the shots for your own use, for $40 (with a discount for families with more than one child having portraits done.) Please let me know if you would be interested or have any questions I could have answered. This is not a commitment on your part nor a promise on his part, but one step in determining interest.
Thanks so much,
_______

I recently shot my brother’s girlfriend’s senior portrait. (You can see the one she picked to the right.) It was actually my first time using a “backdrop” (really a dark-blue bed sheet), but still – looking at that email all I can think is, “That’s pretty cheap for all he’s offering.” Let me break down the expense of creating one portrait.

• Approximately 30 minutes of shooting – most photographers charge around 10/hour — that’s $6 including set-up and break-down time.
• About 50 photos, post-processing time for each a little less then a minute – I currently include the price of pp’ing in the hourly charge.
• Printing – I got 8 wallet prints (that’s all she currently asked for) and that’s about 6 dollars. (If I was living by myself and driving myself I would probably include the time to get the it printed, plus the gas. As it is, I live at home and can’t drive yet.)
• Extra time (before and after the shoot) was about 1 hour – including communication, extra editing for the final photo, mailing one wallet print to her school plus uploading the photos for her viewing/choosing.

This doesn’t include any of my blanket expenses, such as the costs of equipment upkeep and purchases, learning (the time and money I spend on magazines, classes, and reading up on new techniques, etc.). It does not either include any studio costs. Also, if I were not living with my parents I would have to include the cost of electricity for the batteries/computer/office, the cost of gas, extra materials such as the postage stamp and envelope, among other expenses. Thankfully, my parents are a little easy on me. But, once I move out and live on my own these are things I will have to include in the price

The total cost it takes me (while living at home) is about $36 – with only 8 wallet prints. Usually, I would sell some sort of package, such as two 8×10, sixteen wallet prints – or however they wish to customize and add more prints. One thing that really gets me is that this guy is offering the CD of photos for your use really cheap.

It is becoming more common and expected for a CD of the photos to be included – people really like that. I’m working on including that in my pricing for a wedding, but for one senior portrait it seems highly illogical. For a wedding you will have a few hundred photos you may want to print, while a senior portrait is one time, as wedding photos continue much longer to be valuable. Basically, if I give a disc of the photos, I need to charge enough to cover how much I might make printing those photos for the person, or more likely a little less. It just isn’t reasonable to do that with a senior portrait, with the cost of licensing the photos.

Overall, this guy’s handing out a pretty cheap portrait. I haven’t seen any of his work, don’t know who he is, but it sounds like he’s selling himself pretty cheap. This not only hurts himself, but the other photographers make a living off of photography. Some people will go for the cheaper guy, even if his stuff isn’t as good, especially if it is as good or better. My advice to whoever reads this – figure out how much you’re worth and then charge that much.