UK 'Togs - Tempest Photography?

[Swisstony10]

Have any of my fellow Brits had any experience of working with/for Tempest Photography? I know that they're pretty big in terms of school/college/military photography - they're advertising for a 'tog to cover schools in my area, so naturally the position is part-time and only during term time, which for my purposes would be ideal, giving me a little stability and security while I do my own funky thang the rest of the time.

So - has anybody worked for them before? Are they an evil high-pressure sales-based organisation like a certain well-known franchise chain that does all the high-key high-price stuff, or are they actually quite reasonable as employment overlords?

Cheers,

Russ.

[candidrachel]

The only experiece I have had with Tempest is that they produce cheesy, bog standard, naff school photos. I would much rather pay a little bit more and have a candid photo of my son and daugher actually participating in an activity such as a science project or art project than have them siting on a stool looking silly and having those awful cloud backdrops although nowadays they have swapped the cloud backdrop to a white one to make it look more "arty".

[Swisstony10]

I know what you mean - although I had a look at their website, and it looks as though they've brought themselves up to date a bit further than just going for a white backdrop. I think a lot of it depends on what the school is happy to allow too.

Incidentally - the use of white-background high-key photography has been made fashionable by big photography companies not necessarily because it looks arty, but mainly because it's cheaper to print, if you do all your printing in-house (like bigger companies tend to do). For those of us who get our prints done by a lab, and pay a fixed price per print, it doesn't really matter, but if you're doing your own prints and 60% of every image you print requires no colour at all, then you're already slashing your ink/dye/pigment bill by 60%. The big high-profile places have effectively told people that this is fashionable, this is contemporary, this is what you want. I might be sounding a bit cynical, but business is, by and large, cynical. Fashion houses don't tell everybody that they need to be wearing purple this season because it looks better than the green they told you to wear last season, it's because you've got the green stuff they were selling last season, so now they have to make you need something different that they can sell you this season. It's how the world works.

I just don't want to get into something and find that I'm expected to be more of a salesman than a photographer. I appreciate that sales is an important part of the business of photography, of course, but I'd rather be a photographer who's able to sell his services, than a salesman, who sells his ability to take pictures, if you know what I mean..

Russ.

[candidrachel]

To be honest I think (just my opinion) that school photographers are more interested in getting sales than happy parents buying prints! Thats just from speaking to other parents about the quality of the photos after the proofs were handed out. For me when my son was 6 he was crying! WTF?? Why the heck he couldn't then go back to the end of the line and have a reshoot was beyond me. Another time he was shot wearing his outdoor coat! Other parents have said that the photographer has got them to smile in stupid ways for example one parent said that her daughter had lost the 2 front teeth at the top and she wanted to have a photo of the gappy grin just for good measure but the photographer told her to keep her mouth shut needless to say she ended up looking gormless. Loads of parents have complained to the school but nothing gets done about it. I don't know if the school have some sort of contract drawn up or what.

I think it really all depends on who you get on the day. If the photographer is anything like the one at my son or daughters school is like Click! Next! Click! Next! Click!