Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I gave this book two stars because some reader might want to open a studio for children's photography. Anyone else looking to get into the photography business or improve photography business skills should probably look elsewhere. The author's approach is to offer a topic related to the business of photography and to raise issues, but she seldom provides answers, and when she does, they are seldom of use to most photographers. For example, the author has a chapter on lawyers. In it she indicates the legal problems that a photographer might face, from copyright to leases. Instead of telling the reader anything about these subjects, she says to hire a good lawyer. As my kids say, duhh...! Similarly she says there are several different forms of ownership that a photographer can use. Therefore... consult a lawyer. And when she does give advice, it is often wrong and dangerous. For example, she says that in determining whether a person is a contractor or an employee, one should look at whether a person does the same job for several different people. Actually, the government regulations provide 14 separate points that have to be considered with no one-point controlling. Several judicial nominees have learned how important this issue can be. But where the author really misses the boat is on the issue of marketing. For any businessperson, including a photographer, marketing is perhaps the most important function. If you don't have income, you don't stay in business. But the tips the author gives only apply to studio photographers. Marketing is different for a stock photographer and an editorial photographer, and for all the specialties in between, but Orenstein seems to ignore this. I don't understand why this book needed photographs, unless it was to meet the requirement for 320 pages. But if one is going to include pictures in a book aimed at photographers, they'd better be good. The pictures in this book are muddy black and white pictures on paper with a low reproduction quality. Perhaps it's impossible to write a book about the photography business that applies to all the specialties in the game. I know that it is possible to write a useful book aimed at a specialist, because I have the example of John Shaw's "Business of Nature Photography". Even though a little dated, it is probably more helpful generally to someone getting into the photography business than Orenstein's book is.