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BizNotes
Create a reserve bank account for product fulfillment
Too often you read about a photographer going out of business and leaving dozens of clients hanging out to dry. It happens all over the country and probably all over the world. This event has several significant consequences. Innocent clients lose their money. Photographers lose their business and their personal reputation. The photography industry gets a black eye, making it hard for the rest to do business. All quite needlessly.
The solution is simple. Create a reserve or escrow account for fulfillment funds only. …
Starting Out - the 10 biggest mistakes
Over the past several years, an unprecedented number of amateur photographers have been entering the field of professional wedding or portrait photography. The rate of influx into the profession has been estimated as anywhere between 10% and 20% per year, depending on the source. As the popularity of digital photography continues to grow, there is little to suggest that this rate of growth will recede.
Strong feelings - "passion" is usually cited - contribute to the motivation many report for pursuing photography as a vocation. …
Passion and Profit
What's the correlation between passion and profit? I think that depends, and it also varies with whom you ask. Are the two intertwined?
First of all, it is possible to own and run a business without much passion. It's not likely that one would initially start a company without a passion, but one can exist for some time without it. One can also start a business with a passion for money, a passion for the joy of just having a new venture, or a passion for the work within the business.
I would guess that most photographers started out as amateurs at some point in their lives and then decided that they were possessed by a passion for making a living out of taking photos for the rest of their days. …
Turn a Mistake Into a Customer for Life
Have you ever felt that a mistake on the part of you or your staff was the end of a client relationship? Has a customer ever been so upset that you just knew you could kiss her good-bye?
It doesn't have to be that way. You can actually convert that mistake into a client who not only becomes a customer for life, but who also become an evangelist for your business. Warning - you may find the results so astonishing that you actually start upsetting customers intentionally (not recommended).
The photography business, like any other, is always ready for potential for errors. …
Working With Wedding Videographers
It is statistically known that more wedding couples hire photographers than videographers. The "Uncle Charlie" phenomenon is more prevalent in video than in wedding photography, especially in the low to mid-price point weddings. However, as you climb up the pricing scale for weddings, you will find that more couples want both top quality photography and a wedding video. Both services can be expensive, and they expect great results from both.
You may hear frequently from many of your clients that they plan to hire a videographer but that to them the photography is more important. …
The Value of Fine Art to Your Business
As photographers, we like to believe that we are artists. Many of us are using the moniker "photographic artist" on our cards, signs, and letterhead.
Starting decades ago, creative darkroom techniques, in complement with the camera, gave us the option to create photo art. But it was unusual for a portrait or commercial photographer to mix personal work with client work. Photography for the sake of art was not to be confused with photography for clients. Photojournalists were more likely to practice a "pure" photographic purpose, presenting the world and manipulating nothing. …
Is being a Part-timer Ethically Wrong ?
Over the years, many of us have invested precious sums of money developing a full time studio or photography business. We expect to compete with other photographers who have paid their dues, sweat and tears, and who suffer similar overhead and expenses.
But in photography there has always been a segment of the business with photographers who keep their full-time jobs and go after the same clients we seek. Their day jobs pay all of their personal expenses, so they see an opportunity to charge their clients what appears to be a fair price for their services. …
Choosing Professional Photographer Associations
There are many professional photographer associations available, each with its distinct mission and purpose. You should know about each and determine their relevance to your work and your business. Keep in mind, though, that the benefits of all far outweigh the cost of membership. Regardless of experience level or time in the business, we are all on a road of learning and development. We change, we learn, we improve our art, and life also changes, with new styles, new customer tastes, and new technologies.
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Marketing
Create an idea disc for your prospects
We're in the images business. Having many sources of eye stimulation for clients is as important today as it ever was. We show them albums, portrait samples, a web site, and perhaps even slide shows on a computer or TV at the studio.
But are you offering anything that they can take with them? Do you have a visual presentation that you can mail? Here's a different twist on an old idea.
Sure, you can send them to your web site to view your beautiful samples in an award-winning (and sometimes slow and frustrating) Flash presentation. But with most prospects spending less than 90 seconds on a web site, is this really the best way? When potential clients are on the web they are under the temptation to keep on clicking, keep on researching. Their time is short and they have other photographers to check out. You cannot afford to lose those prospects that have already made contact.
The Dirty Little Secret
Today's most dangerous trend in the business of wedding and portrait photography is that your customer is increasingly being marketed to by either your suppliers or your suppliers' competitors. This applies to labs, album companies, video product companies, other specialty novelties, and just about every other thing you sell out of your studio. More and more, you will run into clients who want to handle their own final products. This trend is driven not only due to cost factors but by the clients' own creative desires and tech savvy. More and more clients want their photographer to take the images and give them digital files. While this trend may have been started by "pioneers" who were new to the business and would do anything for their first jobs, it has become an expectation from most clients outside the upper income brackets.
Bridal Shows
Wedding photographers are generally split into two camps on bridal shows. Some swear by them, while others feel they are a waste of time. Both are correct.
Some photographers are convinced that the brides who go to bridal fairs are in the lower income range, therefore not worth marketing to. In reality, there are bridal shows in most cities that attract three different wedding budget price points.
Some promoters are specifically looking for the more affluent brides, and therefore sell booths and displays to higher end vendors, including top photographers. These shows are priced accordingly. To exhibit at these fairs, and for them to benefit you, your work must be excellent, artistic or very impressionable. Couples in high income brackets will not hire inexpensive photographers, nor unknowns. A reputation among the affluent society is very helpful.
The Old and New Marketing for Weddings
If you're new to the wedding business you may not realize that studio marketing was considerably different only a few years ago. In fact, for decades there were proven formulas that photographers would follow and they generally worked. The more marketing you did the more business you had. It was quantifiable based on how often you did what the others did, or how much you outspent each other.
Today the rules keep changing frequently, and it is important that you stay tuned not only to what successful photographers are doing, but that you even stay one step ahead of the trends. It is now particularly important to keep up with these trends because in many cases it is the clients who are setting them and demanding changes to your business model. To play only the old fashioned way will mean to be left in the dust in a very short time.
Sales
The Personality Approach to Wedding Sales
How many prospects have come to your studio about a portrait or event and left without booking? It is easy to believe their excuses about having to think it over, or having appointments with other photographers, or looking for someone cheaper. In some cases the excuses may be real, but in others they are just looking for away to tell you good-bye.
So why would someone want to leave you without booking if your work is great, your prices are right, and you told them how wonderful you are? No matter what you sell, your personality is never going to click with everyone who comes through the door. This is just human nature. Some prospects prefer soft-spoken photographers, while others prefer boisterous funny ones. Some prefer artist types, others like everyday Joe personalities. There is no right or wrong.
Technique
You Still Have To Know Your Craft - Part 2
Aperture, Shutter Speed, Manual and Program (or P for Poor-fessional)
Camera Modes at Events
You noticed that Auto is not on the list. If someone had just now asked me whether my cameras have the green setting, Auto, I might have to look because I haven't thought about it in years. I am used to just feeling my way by tactile method on the knob, going second nature between Av, M and Tv. I don't even remember the direction to turn for P any more (kidding).
Wedding scenes can change every hour or faster. …
You Still Have To Know Your Craft - Part 1
Disturbing Trends
The majority of professional photography instructors today know their equipment inside out - from camera and lights to computer and software. They have the awards and degrees to prove it.
But a disturbing trend has evolved in the past few years. Some contemporary speakers at conventions and other seminars claim not to be "technical". They apologize that they're not even sure what kind of lens they are using - they use "this one" for portraits and "that one for weddings". They show you how they do their work with a portrait subject or a wedding model, but they don't really teach you how to control your camera and lighting properly. …
Pro's Gear
The Medium Format Advantage
As the number of pixels on sensors continue to increase, many photographers shooting DSLRs like Canons and Nikons believe that either the 35mm camera body sensors will approach the results of medium format sensors, or that a physical limit to pixel numbers will be reached. While the latter may be true some day, it is probable that the size of the sensors will continue to be different.
While a "full frame" Canon or Nikon sensor can be fitted today with 21 or 24 megapixels, Hasselblad, Rollei, Mamiya and other camera systems and backs are becoming available with up to 60 megapixel sensors. …
The Never-ending New Equipment Spiral
Many photographers I know were both enthused and disrupted when Canon recently announced its new category of camera, the EOS 7D. It was a particularly distressing announcement for the many Canon shooters who for several years have been trying to make a final decision on whether to dedicate their style to the APS size sensor camera models or to become a 5D and 1Ds studio, accepting no less than full frame sensor imaging. Many Nikon shooters went through the same angst over the past year, with choices such as the D3x and the D300 and D700 series.
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Columns
Don't Forget the Memories
Every week I look at way too many hundreds of images, being a combination of our work for clients, the work of other photographers I'm acquainted or friends with, and photos in publications or online. Like you perhaps, I also study some of my own professional images that I may be particularly proud of. But what about those photos we took just as documentation of our own lives?
In December, 2009, my son Dustin, who lives in Jacksonville, was married in the snow in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. …
Humor
The Real Reason Film Photographers Don't Chimp
We have all gone through the disconcerting experience of hearing or reading for the first time the phrase "to chimp". You have heard it, haven't you? No, not the short name for chimpanzee, but the act of chimping by photographers.
If you look up "chimp" in the Wikipedia, you will find only information on the chimpanzee. If you look up "chimping" however, you will find a full description of the term and its history, related to digital photography. Wikipedia claims the term was coined ten years ago by USA Today staff photographer Robert Deutsch, so it's amazing how slowly some news travels even in this very connected period we live in.
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Ways to Handle Pesky Telemarketers
Yesterday I answered an unusual, but insufferable, 17 calls from telemarketers. Mind you, not sales persons that knew my name making a professional sales call. You will probably recognize the following types of calls. I will also tell you how I deal with some of them.
If you're as busy as I am, you surely don't have time to waste on nuisance calls. And I almost had a car accident trying to answer one of these calls because the number looked like a possible client.
Options for response -
1. Just hang up right after they ask for the person handling the bottled water account, or any such nonsense.
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