I'm with Cheesefrog. I'm an amateur, but I want photos that are classy and higher quality than if shot with a point-and-shot and flash. Sometimes I do shoots with photographer friends but most are done by myself or my husband. I do next to no retouching or editing/cropping, unless I'm going for a few killer "frame-able" shots. It varies, depending on my mood and the type of the shoot.
I find that lighting is key. As long as you have reasonably good lighting (natural, or my budget option: twin halogen work lamps from Amazon
), and the viewer isn't
distracted by poor quality, everything else can be pretty flexible. I'd rather people got that "I'm doing this myself" feel from a silly face, or a cat in the background, or a less-than-ideal cropping than from bad lighting.
A few varying examples...
