Isn’t that leica lens for rangefinder?

Mars landscape photography

Ask photographer to hold a mirror so you can have some comparison.

Joke aside, your eyes have compression effect that is similar to 50mm lens which is rarely used by phone photographers. That will make some distortions in perception.

Also, your eyes are not on the center of the face but rather on higher side. That by itself add some distortion and makes features around eyes look bigger = bigger forehead, smaller chin.

Salt to injury, phone photographers never raise their phone to eye level, which means it will exaggerate the features that is closest = bigger chin, smaller forehead.

This is assuming that your photographer use phone… If the photographer use 50mm and use same lighting as your bathroom and always use viewfinder, the result should look rather similar to what you see in the mirror.

It’s not quite clear if this is ranting or question. Please make it little more clear about it.

If it is question, what is your main focus here? Getting income through concert photography? Getting income through any photography? Getting access to bigger concert despite no income? The know-how of how to be a good concert photographer? How to make other photographer answer you in more personal level? Would be great if you can rephrase the question so it can be a bit more clear.

It’s reddit here. If you rant, you will hear the rant back.

It’s hard to see the whole picture from your description but this is the way I see:

10 concert is not much. Did you make portfolio as a concert photographer and is it good quality and unique enough to the level that the host would specifically hire you for that specific look?

Don’t ask what lens other pro use. They usually use whatever that gets the job done. Focusing on gear gives the amateur vibe and they will take you as a beginner. You should know your tool by heart and you should know what parameters of lens make what features. On top of it, most of characteristics are added in post process. Also, you can always rent lenses for few days from camera shops if you are curious of some lens.

Time is money. I don’t think it’s weird that pro photographers gave half baked answers.

Tell them you don’t have time for real and put whatever reason that you prefer. If you do it few times, they will get the hint.

No need for ugly bill to sent to family and such. That’s just awkward.

For that, wouldn’t it be nicer to have a margin at the bottom and put name there instead of ruining the picture? Unless you have a very nice looking autograph.

I never put watermark because it looks too ugly and ruin the picture.

But if I somehow really need to protect it and it has to be watermark, I’d put big translucent watermark that stretch through the whole image so the AI will not understand which part is watermark. But again, it ought to ruin the picture.

These days, because of modern technology, (more from recent lightroom update than sensor) I don’t even worry until ISO 3200. It’s more important to have right shutter and aperture for the subject than have lower ISO… unless we are talking about ISO25600 unholy noise slush.