ApatheticAbsurdist

When you first start out you work hard to make a single portfolio. But pretty quickly you start to realize you need multiple portfolios often to show different types of work. If you are dealing with clients that want super fast turn around you should not show them a portfolio of things that took you a week to plan, a full day to shoot, and a day of post. You should be able to have a portfolio for them that shows the kind of work they’d expect… your best shots of that but stuff that you could turn around quick if that’s the client’s needs, and have a separate portfolio for the larger stuff for clients who are looking for that.

If I was hiring a wedding photographer I’d also ask to see their portfolio but also ask if they have an example from one wedding, so you see more of the whole picture.

But also regardless of how much you try you will get clients who have different expectations and you will have to deal with those at some point in your career.

I was wondering how much to charge for photography

People don't pay for "photography." People pay for product photography, people pay for portraits, people pay for digital restoration of an old photo, people pay for retouching of beauty shots, people play for photography of a baseball game. Each market might be different.

I currently shoot on a canon t5 with manual settings

Forgetting your age entirely. This is a tell-tale statement that usually reads to me that why you are making an effort to learn, you have very limited experience as you're putting emphasis on the wrong priorities.

I'd negotiate with each client on the needs. Maybe you made some money that can help you buy a new filter or put some money towards a new lens. But at the same time you may find some jobs that give you more experience to learn or opportunities to expand your portfolio may be worth taking a job that pays less.

Charging by the hour may be problematic at your point as you're still learning. The first time you do a job you haven't done before you might spend 5-10 hours retouching cause you're spending time figuring stuff out. By the 10th time you've done it, you might be down to 1-2 hours. So if you do charge by the hour, try not to charge for time spend figuring things out. For this reason, charging for number of final deliverable files might be simpler. I don't know if you want to spend a ton of time calculating hours worked initially (later you may move to that). And again, you can negotiate with each client and set a rate for each as needed.

A museum wouldn’t face mount an unmounted photo, but it won’t stop them from acquiring a photo that was face mounted by the photographer. Contemporary photographer may have their prints mounted in DiBond. Which will keep them flat and have a nice look. Causes a few headaches with handling and storage, but museums deal with it if that is what the photographer wanted.

I just strongly advise make sure the framer is using actual brand named DiBond. If seen knock offs delaminate which creates a whole new set of nightmares.

I would like my monitor to accurately reflect the print I'll see on paper.

There is a lot that needs to go into that, so we'll come back to that.

The ICC profile for a specific paper, on your specific model of printer, with the specific inks designed for your printer (not 3rd party ink as that will change the colors), and with the specific settings that come along with the ICC profile will make it so that when your printer says "This area is THIS specific color of teal and that area is THAT specific orange" the printer will do it's best to make that happen to THIS teal and THAT orange are produced on the paper. (there's a bit with gamuts, color adaptation, and rendering intents... but for now stick with perceptual or relative color metric and they'll be close without having added headaches to avoid that absolute calorimetric brings)

Now you want to calibrate your monitor so that when your file say THIS teal and THAT orange the monitor produces it. But the monitor doesn't make a reflective color, it produces emissive light. So you have to calibrate TO some values... you have to specify a white point (eg: color temperature) and a brightness. But if you view the monitor in a room under a different white point and different brightness of lights, your print won't match.

If you hold a white piece of paper in room with tungsten yellow lights, your eyes adapt to the yellow lights and you recognize the paper is actually white. But a monitor might be calibrated to make a MUCH brighter and MUCH more blue white. If the white on your monitor is very bright and very blue compared to the light in your room, there is no way a print will match the monitor.

If you really go down the rabbit hole of printing, people who are super serious will have a print viewing booth next to their monitor with calibrated lights that the monitor is calibrated to. Short of that people will black out all the windows and fill the room with D50 or D65 light and then calibrate to that.

ICC printer profiles will help make your prints be more consistent between papers and if someone else printed somewhere else using ICCs they'd match better. And you can calibrate your monitor, but you need to view the print under the same lighting that you calibrated the monitor to in order for a print to match the monitor... and that takes a bit more work.

I don't use a gray card because I shoot raw so I believe I won't need it (correct me if I am wrong)

YOU'RE WRONG! Ok you shoot RAW... how will you know what is neutral? THAT'S WHAT THE GRAY CARD IS FOR! You shoot a gray card in one of your shots under the same lighting as everything else, then IN RAW you set the white balance on the gray card. If the "gray spot" you choose in the photo is a hint yellow then your photo will be a hint blue, if it's a hint green your photo will be a hint purple. You use a gray card cause you know it's gray. You also can use the gray card to help set your exposure.

When processing you can also try to set RAW to Natural/Faithful as opposed to standard or vivid which will try to keep the processor from over saturating colors.

What does mirrorless give you that your current camera does not?

Are you dealing with cars outside lit by the sky or indoors under artificial lights. Polarizers will cut down reflections if the reflections are polarized, but while reflections from the blue sky are substantially polarized. Indoor lights will be much less polarized. The sun itself isn’t very polarized but the blue sky (which does cause a lot of reflections) is however it will be more polarized 90 degrees to the sun than it is 180 degrees to the sun, so a polarizer will work best if the sun is to your left or right and not in front or behind the camera.

Make sure your pelican fits the carry on sizes. Make sure you're not flying on any E-145 or CRJ-200/700 or similar tiny planes because many of them cannot even fit a normal roller bag in overhead in which case you may need to "valet check" which is only slightly better than "gate check"... they still take your bags and put them in the cargo hold, but instead of having to pick them up at baggage claim, you'll pick them up at the end of the jetway when you get off the plane. (and sometimes they'll just gate check). A standard roller bag or pelican 1510 will fit into the overhead of a E-175 and maybe a CRJ-900 but space is limited so get on the plane as early as you can, if you're not in premium boarding, be a jerk and camp at the line until the millisecond they call your boarding group. But keep in mind that I've seen situations where they've just said "we're making everyone gate check cause we're tight on time to board" so you may end up being forced to check regardless (you can try to play oblivious and get the tag and try to bring your bag onto the plane and it may still work but you can get shut down).

Keep in mind you're allowed one overhead and one under seat... so if you can break up the equipment that way and check your cloths (which worst case you can buy at your destination if that gets lost).

Look into if you can rent some equipment on location. It might not be bad to investigate what your options are for renting at your destination, just incase something does happen in travel.

If you have an iPhone get some AirTags to put in the case. If you're android, check out Tile trackers.

There are Camera Stands, there are ways to mount cameras to walls or ceilings, and there tripods with reversible that let you mount the camera under the tripod or 90-degree columns that let you turn the column sideways to point down.

I'm sorry but either learn how to deal with these situations or get out of the game. Complaining after the fact on the internet is not going to help you.

It sounds like the person who hired you told you not to use flash. You will get people who don't want it cause it's distracting, and you'll have to know to address it in contract or work around situations like that. If it was cause they thought they knew more about photography than you, you need to find better ways to communicate with the client.

If it wasn't the client, you need to find ways to deal with whatever the situation is that you want to be vague about, cause no one here can read your mind or help you if they don't know what the situation is.

You format a card blank and realize it: There is a good chance to recover it with recovery software.

You formatted the card and took some shots: There is some chance you can recover some photos but if another photo was written at the same location of where a file was that you want to recover (you really cannot tell where a photo was from most information that is normally presented to you, so the best way to do is try to recover and see what you get but it's a roll of the dice, many cards will try not to write in the same location all the time to even out the use of the card so you may have some luck, but you won't know until you try).

If you formatted the card and then shot until you filled the card with new photos: you're most likely hosed.

The mount where the lens physically connects is usually very solid. The stuff inside the camera is much more delicate, fortunately it's nearly impossible for the lens itself to reach inside far enough to damage anything. Just don't go poking inside with your finger or a stick.