My daughter recently bought a $500 gift certificate at a charity auction for a well known portrait photographer. She wanted a shot of herself, a shot of her and her husband and one of her, her husband and her pets. Three photos. The photographer asked for another $900 after talking with her and agreeing to do the shoot. The shoot went well and she choose the three shots she wanted at which point the photographer told her that for those three shots printed at 20x30 it would cost her another $9000 dollars. I am not sure as I do not do portraiture and have not sat for one since I sat on Santa's lap as a child, but this seems a little steep to me for three photos. I would like some knowledgeable feed back please.

A few years ago I saw a colour photo of Antelope Canyon by Peter Lik.

At the time, not knowing that this was a well-known natural phenomenon, I was very impressed and, noting he had a highly inflated price on it I assumed this was also a very unique shot.

But that was before I did a search and found there was any number of very similar photos by many other photographers - (leaving me wondering if they copied him or he copied them).

Anyway, he's now re-processed the original colour photo, done a slight crop and applied a black and white conversion and sold it for $6.5 million! ... I know he is a master of self promotion, but I just don't get it - why would ANYone pay that much?

Here's the colour version
http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/01/27/5937543-natures-best-photography-antelope-canyon-ariz

And here's the B/W version in a Guardian article - I tend to somewhat agree with the authors comments
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/dec/10/most-expensive-photograph-ever-hackneyed-tasteless

(view them side by side)

Sounds like they are referring to a full spectrum conversion and not talking about a specific filter. Once a camera is converted, you still need to pick a suitable filter to use, i.e., 590, 665, 720, 800, 850 for example.

And you pick the filter based upon the effect you are looking for. If looking to convert to B&W, pick the larger numbers, and if desiring to keep some color so you can do a color swap of red and blue, then pick from the lower end.

By the way, I always shoot RAW + JPEG and I set the camera to B&W. The JPG is then in B&W and the RAW is unaffected. Since the camera will choose the JPEG rather than the RAW, I can immediately see what the image is looking like. If not set to B&W, the picture is skewed to a very red image and you can't judge the picture very effectively.

When I bring the pictures back for processing, the B&W again serve as quick looks at the picture to see if I even want to bother working on the RAW image.

To get the whites, you do need 720nm. The 590nm is superb for pseudo colors where you swap the red and blue channels. But the whites are now more yellow since more optical light is now in the picture. A totally different look, but really worth looking at.

With full spectrum, you do have to use a filter at all times. This should not be a big deal as I have bought less expensive filters on eBay and they are working great.

If you don't use a filter, you get a picture with a major white balance problem. You have all the regular colors and all the IR rolled in together. Perhaps you can find something useful with this result. But I don't find it very useful.

You also will need to do a white balance adjustment.

And be sure to shoot RAW! Very important. RAW allows quite a bit of white balance adjustment in post processing. If you get it wrong in the camera, you can likely compensate for it here.

Why not convert to full spectrum and then you are free to pick which ever filter you are in the mood for. That is what I have. And you are not limited to 590nm then. You can go up shorter wavelength filters of orange and yellow for other effects. If you are shooting with B&W in mind, the effect is milder than the 590nm. I also have a filter to cut off UV and IR to make the camera use only the visible spectrum, but you have to be very careful with white balance to get the results you are expecting.