Photography Business - Employee Appearance – Representing Your Studio

As a photography business owner, you are representing your studio and company at all times. So are your employees! And employees often send the message louder and clearer of who and what your company stands for because they are dealing with your clients more than you are.

As I was waiting for a plane last week, I witnessed an employee loading packages on to a plane. As they fell off the cart, he would kick them over and over again, trying to get them in to the plane with his foot. What image is this giving people who are watching him? I can tell you that as a client of that airline, I was grateful I carried on my luggage!

So how can you make sure that you and your employees give the appearance of a strong and vibrant photography company? First, establish what your studio’s values are. Every photography studio needs to establish its core beliefs, and then build their entire photography business principle around that belief. Employee manuals should be written in such a way as to provide the knowledge necessary to define the core values of the company, and what is acceptable behavior under all circumstances.

Consider the following ideas when establishing and setting up your studio’s policies.

· How do you want to appear to your client?

· Who is your target client, and what do they expect?

· How does your client dress? What stores do they frequent? What interests do they have?

· How do you want each client greeted? In person? On the phone?

· How are problems and customer complaints handled?

· What is exceptable behavior from your employees? Dress code?

· Provide each employee with a copy of the policy manual. Go over each section and provide follow up sessions as needed.

Remember that nothing is cast in stone, so continually make changes as needed. When you discover areas that are unclear, create clarification. When you discover areas that don’t exist, create them. And when you discover areas that have too much control, don’t be afraid to loosen up, and allow room for creativity.

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What Photography Field Should I Specialize In?

I recently saw a photographer advertising her business, and it made me laugh.

The ad was like a variety of other ads I've seen, but what caught my eye was her area of specialty. She specialized in: babies, families, seniors, commercial, model portfolios, weddings, events and sports photography.

Is that really specializing? How can you ever hope to be good at all of those types of photography, and make a name for yourself in any one of those fields?

Specializing means choosing one niche area, and becoming the best you can be. Certain fields can work together, but it still involves highly focusing on what you do best.

Take for instance a wedding photographer. If you specialize in wedding photography, you can spend the majority of your time looking for wedding clients. You can network with other wedding professionals. And you can show off your expertise as a wedding vendor to the local media. People will associate you with weddings, and you will be the local authority on wedding photography....more on this article....

Photography Business - Why I Love Junk Mail

I sent out a postcard campaign a little while ago. Recently I had one returned with A LOT of comments on it - all with the basic message of "please take me off your list".

While I never let people like this bring me down, I happily took this person off of my mailing list and went about my day.

But it got me to thinking about this poor business owner, and all of the knowledge he'll never receive.

You see, when you receive "junk mail", don't stand over the trash can and throw it all away. Instead take a look at it, and see which pieces motivate you to take action. What's good about each piece? What's bad?

Then keep a file and place the good and the bad each in its own folder. (Or if you're like me, it's own plastic tub.) Then when I'm in need for a new idea, I head to my tub and start sorting through my "good" file. I can always find a piece or two that motivates me to create my own campaign.

In fact, that's how I created the last campaign I sent!

Too bad one business owner will never be successful, and use the free tools that come his way every day.

Software to help you get things done faster...

Several people had referred this software to me, so I finally headed over to their site and watched the demo. Wow. I was sold. So we picked up the software last night, and I can see this is going to have a huge impact on the way that I write, and how much I get done. If you write a lot, check this out.

http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/

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Gary Fong WhaleTail - Creative Lighting using on camera flash Photography

Producing quality lighting within your photography is key to increased sales. While it is not always advantageous to setup studio light and umbrellas or a softbox that would instantly gain better, softer light, searching for other solutions might help.

On camera flash allow an instant light source for your subject, but the results can be a less than appealing. Many images might provide acceptable results; the majority share the same results, dark background and flat lighting on the subject. While capturing events, I found that bounced flash provided excellent results by increasing light surrounding areas of the portrait and added softness between highlights and shadows. Using a straight bare bulb flash provided soft even light but distance to the subject was extraordinarily restricted. In researching alternative way to use on camera flash, I ran into some interesting attachments that Gary Fong offered. I have known Gary for well over a decade and he has continued to bring new and inventive products to market. His latest, called the Gary Fong WhaleTail, is an attachment to your on camera flash. This WhaleTale Diffuser and WhaleTale Reporter are great accessories to use for more flattering light.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Quote and Billing Software for the Photography Studio

Creating bids for photography jobs has always been challenging. What will all of the expenditure associated with a particular situation total? If changes are made, how easy will adjusting the quote be? Blinkbid has taken care of all of this. With an straightforward to use interface, Blinkbid quickly modify changes and relays a new pricing arrangement. “A key feature built into Blinkbid is the ability to calculate the potential profit on a job.

Information is one of the most important aspects of estimating for creative professionals, yet it has been one mostly ignored by existing programs. Blinkbid calculates the expected profit at the estimate level, allowing users to make an informed decision before accepting a job.” – listed information from their site.

Calculate fees, crew, rentals, cameras, prints and much more. Blinkbid allows you to flow your estimate straight into invoice format for quick, precise billing.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Photography business sales for tomorrow’s customers.

Photography business sales for tomorrow’s customers.

Are you running your photography business into the ground by creating a quick sale for your work or are you planting seeds for future growth? Just like in the spring, you need to nurture the seeds planted with water, fertilizer and sunshine to see the fruit of your labors.

How does this affect your photography business? Well pretty simple. If you are in the new wedding trend of “churn and burn” photography and only care about shooting the event and handing over your original files and images on a dvd, then you are just planting the seed. You will never see any additional sales from this event. Albums, frames, large wall prints…additional sales are removed. When the client has the original image files, they will share them, print small meaning-less prints and your studio becomes separated from the art.

This trend is eroding your photography studio’s bottom line!

By adding a little fertilizer and sunshine we can add growth. Photography is an art and should be sold as such. Add your style and design! Frame the print or create a collage of images that tell a story. We are not meant to hold the image hostage but want to allow our professional reputation to stand for quality. Think about it the next time a potential client asks you to capture an event and sell the original files. Your sales will suffer and your extended marketing will be lost. I can remember countless times that I received calls from potential clients that viewed an image displayed at a past client’ home.

Don’t sell yourself short…think future…think growth!

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Adobe CS3 Shipped Today

Adobe shipped the new CS3 today! This great software package includes Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign, Photoshop Extended and Illustrator.

These packages are an amazing value for the creative professional.

Check out the Adobe website for all the latest information.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

Photography Website Facelift?

Your website is an important piece of your business should have a very professional appearance. Many photographers are tech savvy with their ability to produce well-designed, well-navigated photography studio websites.

If you don't have the capability or time for doing a website design for your own studio, looking at website templates may be an option for you. Website templates are ready-made professionally designed websites for the Internet that provide a high-quality web presence and easy to modify with your content. Templates are available in standard HTML language of design, as well as popular flash format to display your web content and photography portfolio. Templates will have the some limitations of the expansion, but for the cost, offer a great solution to many studios. These templates are fully customizable, and available for immediate download.

Designs usually have layered Photoshop files for easy customization, as well as HTML layouts, so that you can open them in your favorite Web program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. You don't have to wait for your web designer to start from scratch on your design.

As studio owners, we have many responsibilities to worry about and our specialty should be our photography. Here's a resource that you can check out the latest in photography website designs and see the catalogue of professionally designed templates.

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Wedding Photography - Be Prepared With A Checklist

Photographing weddings can be rewarding, challenging and stressful all the same time. While most events conclude with little fanfare, some precautions should be taken to prevent disaster. After photographing weddings and high-end social events for over 18 years, few surprises followed me. I was very prepared. My equipment (which included cameras, lenses, flashes, memory cards and battery packs) needed to be in great working order. With every wedding I wanted to have a pre-wedding checklist on my equipment. To ensure my inventory was complete and in them great working order.

Just like a pilot about to take off for a long journey, they have a checklist to follow. There are so many items to worry about; a checklist is imperative to ensure success. My pre-wedding list included every piece of equipment needed for the job and if service was needed to be completed.

One important check for me was to ensure that my camera body’s internal clocks were synchronized with each other. Imagine what a headache it would be to reconstruct images taken at the same event, on two separate cameras and the order and out of sync. For example, using two cameras during the bridal procession taken from you and your assistant. Every image was perfect, sharp and exposed correctly. Perfect, but you discover that your clocks were out of sync. After the event you return to your studio and download your masterpieces into a common folder on your computer, sorted by date or time and realize that the timestamp was not correct. Every file would be off! What a headache it would be to correct this. All of these issues could be avoided by one simple task. This new task is listed on your new checklist.

We had a pre-event checklist to ensure that everything was set up correctly. This is how my checklist was born to cover every aspect of the event and, every piece of equipment. All listed inventory was included; each camera body, each lens and ensure that all of the memory cards were accounted for and formatted prior to the event. Battery packs are charged and ready. Flashes and sync cords are in working order. Cameras opened and checked for dust and stray hairs. Yes, I once had a dust particles show up during a wedding and produced a white line in the many images, which created lots of additional Photoshop work for me.

The key to creating a worry free event is to have all your tools in place in the checklist is imperative. Let your next event to become profitable easy workflow and uneventful, through good planning.

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7 Items Every Photographer’s Website Should Have

A Gallery of Images

People visit a photographer’s website to see images. Don’t disappoint. Your gallery should show more than a dozen images. Let them spend hours on your site! At our high point, we had over 20,000 images online. And many people would spend hours going through every single one of them.

Contact Information

I spend a lot of time on other peoples’ sites. And I find a lot of business owners are so worried about spam, they leave off contact information in their fears. Guess what? People can’t contact you if they don’t know how. Fill out forms are great, and are the first step for contact. Give a phone number – some people prefer to call. Give an address – your prospects would love to know what city your in, and where your studio is. Give an email – you can make it a non-clickable graphic.

Content

A portfolio isn’t enough. It’s nice looking at a dozen images, but who are you? What’s your style? How did you decide to become a photographer? What’s the story behind your business? In person, you build a relationship with your prospect. The same thing has to occur online. Content is what sells your business.

Sales Techniques

Your website is more than a portfolio; it’s a sales tool. Think of how you sell in person, and use those same features online. Your website should be growing and changing all the time.

Proper Navigation

If you’ve ever been “stuck” in a website, you know navigation is so important. If you move to a page, it better be easy to move around and back out. Think like your customer. If that’s hard to do, bring a customer in and ask them what they think.

Ordering System

Professional labs and other online services have made it very easy to sell your images online. Connect to one of these services, and use this as an option for your clients. If you’re worried about upfront sales, use it as a bonus after the initial sale is complete.

Marketing

Your website is more than a portfolio; it’s a marketing tool. With over 6 billion web pages online, how will yours compete with the others? It takes marketing. Just like you wouldn’t sit at home without doing any marketing waiting for the phone to ring, you can’t sit at home without marketing your website waiting for the contacts. You have to use online marketing techniques to get noticed.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

How is your Photography Business Email Etiquette

E-mail is now common place in the photography business world, and yet it’s surprising on how little people know and understand its ability. What works in an email? And what doesn’t?

• Provide a proper subject line, one that will make a person want to open your email. With all of the known viruses plaguing emails, people will more often then not delete an email if they are unsure what it’s about.
  
• Do not make your email downloadable. Provide an email that explains what you are sending, and then use attachments. Again, with viruses plaguing emails, people will not open up a document if they are unsure of what it is.


• Keep your email short and to the point.


• Provide name, addresses, email address, web site addresses, and phone numbers. Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to contact someone for more information, and not knowing how.


• Hyperlink all web addresses for ease to the reader.


• Check all links before sending the email. If you are unsure of what you are sending, send it to yourself first, check all hyperlinks, and then send to your client.


• Check spelling! If you can’t figure out to spell check in your email program, type up your email in Word, spell check, than copy and paste the message back in your email program.


• Do not use all capital letters. So much is written on this subject, and yet I still get emails that are capitalized. Capitalized phrases are the same as screaming – you don’t want to be screaming at a potential client.


• Do not include images in your email. Instead, direct them back to your web site for more detail descriptions.


• If you are going to be emailing people on a regular basis, get permission. Simply put a clause at the bottom of the email that gives them a way of taking themselves off of your list. You do not want an irate customer if you can avoid it!

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.

How To Mark Up And Price Your Portrait Photographs

The best photographer in the world will fail if he or she doesn’t learn how to price with the ultimate profit in mind.

Occasionally I will put one of my paid reports on this site as an extra special bonus for you. This is one of those reports. I wrote a Pricing Guideline report, and currently sell it on my parent site, www.VisionOfSuccess.com. To view this report, click on Pricing Guideline.

Helping your photography business, how to start a digital wedding photography business and wedding photography business visit virtualphotographystudio.com and keep up-to-date with all of the photography happenings via our free newsletter.