"All photos speak a thousand words. This one contained a library."
by Skip Cohen A few times over the years I've talked about my blog being therapeutic, often written for my own benefit as much as my readers. Well, today is one of those moments. Most of the experts will tell you that a blog, while personal, should stay focused on a consistent core theme. For me that's always photography, but I need you guys to work with me this morning because it's a stretch today. The subject is my mother and Alzheimer's. She's fighting her last round and was admitted into hospice care a few days ago. Within the next week or two my Dad is going to lose his best girl of 66 years and I'm going to lose my mother, but please understand I am absolutely NOT looking for sympathy. Every family goes through similar challenges and at 87, my sadness is more about the destructiveness of Alzheimer's, which comes into so many lives and literally robs us of our memories. This post isn't about our pain, but the importance of making sure you understand the incredible value of your ability to capture memories. I've been spending a lot of time looking at old photographs. In fact, moving her into Hospice, the first thing we set up in the room, before she even got there, were a dozen prints. Photographs of her children, grandchildren, weddings and grab shots over the years. Every picture has a story, but more important they're little hot buttons of snipets of her life. Some connect, some no longer have any awareness as a result of the Alzheimer's, but they all serve an amazing purpose of bringing her life into focus whenever she looks around the room. Even with moments that completely lack recognition, those pictures serve to remind each of us that we're not alone in the love as well as the pain we're feeling. I'm reminded over and over again that "a picture is worth a thousand words." It's all thanks to each of you and the contribution you make every day to millions of people around the world. So, as I've written dozens of times, never compromise on the quality of any image. Expand your skill set to be the very best you can be so that you never miss a shot. Cherish what you've learned to do and be so proud of the path you're on as an artist. ...and so important to me personally, thank you for your support, your feedback, your prayers and giving me a reason to escape to my blog this morning. *Rivera Sun, Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars - a story of our times
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This post hits on such a serious topic for so many photographers. You've got to listen to your target audience and pay attention to the trends, working hard to figure out what's coming next. I'm amazed when I still hear photographers discussing the issue of giving clients the files. It's a moot point if you want to stay in business. Every day the market changes. Every day we deal with another paradigm shift. It's no longer about survival of the fittest, but survival of the most creative and best listeners! Skip Cohen
by Scott Bourne Photographers are all about selling their services based on what they learn at the big conventions, or what their competition does. The problem with this is that your customers want you to be ahead of them. I talked about business models last week and how they need to match up to buying models. This is an extension of that idea. Your customers want digital files. You sell prints. You are focused on your process and your business model not THEIR needs or THEIR buying models. Concentrate on the benefits you can bring to your client not the process by which you work now. Step away from how you work today and ask yourself, "What will my customers want tomorrow." If you only go this far, you will be ahead of the curve. But if you want to win big, extend this further and start trying to build products that your customers will learn to desire. You have to teach them. You have to educate them. Most importantly, you have to be focused on them, not on your process. I always keep it short on Sunday. I used to think I was keeping it lite, but in all honesty, there's nothing low calorie this morning - this is the Boston Cream Pie of Sunday Morning Reflections. Edgar Allan Poe wrote: They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. It's Sunday and while I make it a point to daydream a little every day, this is the day I really allow myself the luxury of thinking about something new. It's a great day to just sit around and "what if?" One of the challenges we have as members of the photographic industry is there are just too many frustrations. We get so buried in dealing with technology, the economy and business that we too often give up the luxury of dreaming. If we give up dreaming for too long we become trolls! It all started when we were kids. For many it was a grandmother or parent who didn't understand that daydreaming is the foundation of creativity and slapped us into reality to "go do something useful". Then it was a teacher who caught you daydreaming and coloring outside the lines. As we grew up we were trained more and more to stay on task and *poof* one day we woke up and our daydreaming gene had been removed in a life along dreamectomy. Here's your goal today - take an hour, sit in your favorite chair in the house and just stare into space. You're going to work on being creatively catatonic! You're going to think about ways to better market yourself. Maybe you're just going to think about changing the way you light your portraits. Maybe you're going to think about all the clients who have loved your work or better yet, the ones who didn't and what you could have done better. Maybe you'll just daydream about your kids as they're growing up or taking more time off to be with your family or getting together with old friends. The world is all yours - so sit back and enjoy the show for an hour! Here are a few of my favorite quotes that might help you bring those daydreams to the surface! Things are only impossible until they're not. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. G. K Chesterton Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! Never underestimate the power of Dr. Seuss! Happy Sunday everybody - make it a great day. Illustration Credit: © Igor Zakowski - Fotolia.com
This video has been everywhere, but I'm hoping if I never saw it, then many of you never did either. It's a take-off on Humans are Awesome and I've already clicked the "follow" button for this crew. There are no words that describe the smile this put on my face. You'll need to watch it twice to appreciate the narration! I ran across a quote from Buddha a little while back: The mind is everything, when you think you become. It's a heavy concept, but now take the same thought and listen to Chevy Chase from one my favorite movies, Caddyshack, "Be the ball!" I'm sitting here as I'm writing this today and I'm laughing. It's pretty bizarre that Chevy Chase and Buddha are on the same page, but they're helping me make a point or two about marketing. Don't give up on me, because there really is a strong message here!
There are some of you who are simply trying too hard. You're jumping from one marketing concept to another because you're not seeing results fast enough. You're planting the seeds, but not waiting for them to take hold and grow. You're analyzing so many different aspects of your business without having a marketing plan. Take some time and just stop what you're doing and dissect your business into the various components necessary to succeed. 1) Do you really understand photography? In other words, are your images good enough to stand on their own, right out of the can, or are you spending hours and hours cleaning them up and creating on your monitor? 2) Do people know who you are? Are you involved in your community? Are you working on building your reputation? 3) Do people know your work? There's a big difference between knowing who you are and people admiring your images. 4) What are you doing to market your business? This is about everything from generating publicity, to creating marketing promotions that get people in the door, to being involved in your community. 5) What are your short and long range plans? How do you want your business to look a year from now? And what about five years out? 6) Is your website all it could be? Do your brochures and ads represent the look and feel you want to portray? 7) Along with your website what are you doing in social media? Is there logical continuity in your blog or did you start it and then simply stop keeping it up to date? Are you consistent in your timing for new posts and tweets? What are you doing on Facebook and Twitter? (This is a whole blog post on its own!) Each one of these questions touches on a component of your business. Each one requires that "force in the universe" that Chevy Chase is calling upon. I'm not suggesting you go after the challenges blindfolded, but to get in touch with the energy to focus on just one thing at a time. Okay, so it's a little stretch this morning, but it sure was fun to write! And, if you haven't seen Caddyshack, go rent it this weekend...it's a classic! Just Be the ball! by Skip Cohen A whole lot of years ago I started in the photo industry with an amazing group of guys in the emulsion development group at Polaroid. I was just out of college, actually on academic suspension, after being every parent's worst nightmare. (I went back to school at night years later.) There were no jobs anywhere and Time Magazine that summer had a picture of a college grad in cap and gown pumping gas. It was my start in photography and involved some of the greatest people I've ever worked with. I can't help but wonder where they all are today...Charlie, Ron, Frank, Joe, Joey, Willy, Smitty, Big Gene, Ronnie - the list goes on and on. Polaroid at that time had 23,000 employees world wide and Ali McGraw was the celebrity in their TV commercials for the Polaroid Swinger. Polaroid was incredibly healthy. They made a whole series of different films, all of them peel apart. SX-70 wouldn't come along for another six years. And, Kodak was the only brand of non-instant film anybody seriously considered. In fact, their colors for their consumer films were so saturated, we used to say "Kodak makes your vacation look better than it really was!" Bell-bottoms, platform shoes and an Afro were all the look for yours truly. I looked like I should have been in the cast of "Hair" - not working in a research lab. Photography was hot, but I was more excited about my Super 8 movie camera! Anybody really interested in photography dreamed about owning a Leica or a Hasselblad. When I got married we got an album of 25 8x10s and for $65 the photographer sold me the proofs. The album is filled with special effects, especially the ever popular starburst filter in front of a candle or two. I remember a gas crisis in the early 70s and one of the guys I worked with waiting in line at the pump for over an hour before realizing he was in line for a funeral procession - NOT the line for the gas station. Times might have been different, but the enthusiasm we all had for life, our jobs, our families is still the same. While I'd like to think of them as the "good old days" I'm having too much fun right now. That leads me to think that the "good old days" are whenever you take the time to appreciate them. I know that years from now I'm going to look back and the "good old days" are going to be 2013 with friends from this year's Summer Session, various conventions and the pure fun of things we're all working on now. It reminds me of Don Blair and I just used this quote recently - when asked what the best photograph he'd ever taken was, answered, "I don't know I haven't taken it yet!" So, in answer to somebody asking me, "So, when were the good old days?" My answer has to be, "I don't know, they're still happening!" Enjoy today and appreciate the fact that no matter how tough your business is right now you have the power to make it whatever you want it to be - not without work and not without the risk of disappointment and change- but still within your power! The good old days might just be this week! There are a few times I've written in the past about things I've learned from Molly the Wonder Dog. Well, here's another lesson that's so basic, I'm just glad she never learned how to type! This is about demographics and although I've written about it before, I'm still amazed at how many photographers still don't understand their importance. From the home page of The Wedding Report We moved a few times, before buying a home here in Sarasota. When we did this last move I remember going through my own withdrawal, being without my computer for a day or two. Meanwhile, Molly was busy checking out every corner of the new house. There wasn't one inch of the house she didn't check out. As furniture came in, especially her toy box, she began to relax and adapt to the new environment. Trust me, I promise there's a logical connection here. Think about your market and your target audience. Do you know your market as well as Molly made sure she knew her new home? Do you know everything about your potential customers? How many of you started your business never thinking about the demographics in the area? "Demographics", it's one of the oldest words in marketing - the dynamics of your target. How old are they? What's the split between men and women? What percent are married versus single? What's the average household income? What's the penetration of Internet active households? What's the percent of high school, college and post college education? The list goes on and on, depending on how detailed you want to be. Just like Molly getting to know every corner of her new home - you need to know every "corner" of your market. If, for example, you're a children's photographer and you're opening up in Bay Harbor Island, Florida, where the average age is probably 80, no matter how optimistic you want to be, it's going to be an uphill climb! (Which reminds me of the definition of optimism - it's a couple in their 90s who want to live in a neighborhood with a good school system! Sorry, some times it's hard to stay focused!) If you're a wedding photographer, but you've been advertising in Men's Health - give it up - you've got less chance of success than the couple in their 90s starting a family! A Kodak survey years ago, and the numbers haven't changed, showed women make 98% of the purchase decisions to hire a professional photographer when it comes to the portrait/social category! It's all about the demographics! Here's one more to think about as a wedding or family portrait photographer. Knowing your primary target is primarily female, what does your reception area look like? If you're male, I'm betting it's too masculine looking, missing some pastels, albums in other colors, etc. You've got to remember your target audience and create an environment that appeals to them. This includes your blog, your website and your booth at a bridal fair. Marketing is so important in today's noisy environment - you've got to know everything about your target audience you can learn - BEFORE you spend a nickel on advertising and promotion. But relax, it's not hard to find the information you need! 1) Start with your local Chamber of Commerce to see what information they have about your area. 2) Check with the best established realtor in town. First, they have great information available. It's often a combination of census data, together with their own resources. Second, you're networking and realtors, like salon owners, tend to know everything going on in the community. 3) Go to the library and the Internet, Google - you're looking for local demographics. In fact, just Google the words "local demographics" and you'll be surprised at what comes up. You may have to refine your request, but this the data that's fun to mine for! Here's a site that I found in just 20 seconds on Google. City-data.com. Check it out and you'll see what I mean about demographics. 4) If you're a wedding photographer check out The Wedding Report. It's well worth the information you'll pull out about weddings in your area. The data is sortable by zip codes and it goes right down to the average money being spent on everything related to the wedding. Here's another benefit - just read one report for your area and you'll also pick up ideas on who should be in your local network, partners for local promotions. If Molly could sniff every corner of her new "market" then so can everybody else! Get to know your demographics and you've got the first "double secret" ingredient major corporations pay mega bucks to learn about! by Skip Cohen The last few years have been tough for everybody in professional photography. It's not just technology and the economy, but the shift in consumer trends. Every day there seems to be another story that challenges the industry. Last week's announcement of the Chicago Sun Times dropping their photography staff and teaching reporters how to use their i-phones left us all shaking our heads. Then, the week before we had the comment from the CEO at Yahoo. I remember Sears letting go of their in-house photography staff and deciding to go freelance fifteen or so years ago. And children's photographers were forced to accept the challenge when companies like Sears and Kmart opened children's portrait departments right in the store in the 70's. Four years ago Walmart announced it's own wedding department and even WPPI two years ago had Costco as a lab exhibitor. Over and over again everyone's dedication to the craft gets tested just a little more. Fortunately, we're all tough enough to weather the storm and hopefully realize this kind of stuff will always be happening in our industry. I'm not minimizing the challenges in any way. I hate hearing stories like these, but when stuff like this happens, you have to look at everything you're doing to strengthen your business and your skill set. There is a growing group of photographers who have been working hard to find "new cheese". That statement won't make an ounce of sense if you haven't read Who Moved My Cheese? The summary is simply the mouse who went out and looked for new cheese found more food and survived, but the one who refused to change habits and just waited for the cheese to be put back starved. I'm convinced, as are thousands of professional photographers, part of the answer is in diversity in your business model. It's tough to be a one trick pony in this economy, but a little diversity brings in new clients, new applications and challenges your skill set. Have you thought about the high school senior market? You don't need the entire school system, just a handful of enthusiastic seniors. But you need to do it right - and nobody does it better than one of our own SCU faculty, Kirk Voclain. Check out his faculty page and images. Then there are photographers like Larry Peters and this year's president of PPA, Ralph Romaguera, just to name a couple more. Check out the look and feel of their images - all different, but each with his own style. You can catch all three of these great photographers on the speaking circuit and it will be well worth your time to pick up ideas on how to get started with seniors. Here it comes, my annual use of my own senior shot! It was a LONG LONG (notice the use of double "longs") time ago I had my senior shot done. And, as always, I want extra points for having the nerve to share the image here! Notice how the glasses hid the unibrow. My left ear used to stick out even farther than the one you can see, but that's the way it was. The photographer came into the school and sat us down one at time, knocking off the entire senior class in half a day. Photographs came in an envelope with the usual combo of 8x10's, 5x7's and wallets. Everybody's images looked exactly the same. In fact, while everybody's mother wanted the 8x10 shot, it was the wallets that we all shared with each other, like kids today with Pokemon cards! Today, it's all about personality and capturing who the subject is as an individual. You still have to know how to do a more traditional head shot, but for the most part it's about the interests of the senior. It's about capturing who they are more than how they look. It's about their hobbies, friends, achievements and their aspirations. Most important of all, think about the impact you might have on a future client. In most cases a full portrait session for a high school senior will probably represent the subject's first truly professional photographic experience. If you do it right, it might just open the door for future business from Mom and Dad or the student themselves. After all they more than likely are going to get married some day or have other needs for a professional photographer. Photographing seniors and doing it well expands your skill set, forces you to learn and understand lighting/posing, even photojournalism and best of all gives you an opportunity to fine tune your creative skills! It's not about survival of the fittest any longer. It's about survival of the most diverse and most creative. Photo Credit: © Rido - Fotolia.com by Scott Bourne
I am often amazed that many professional photographers don't understand this simple truth. If you make it hard for someone to do business with you, they will visit your competition. It's not enough to have a great camera - a great studio - a great portfolio. You also need a great business model. And that business model better be customer-friendly or your business will be short-lived. Here are a few steps you can take to make it easy for people to do business with you. 1. Be easy to find and easy to reach. Plaster your phone number, studio address (if you have one), website address, and your email address all over everything that you print, share, distribute or publish. If the customer can't reach you, they won't do business with you. 2. Have business hours that meet your customer's needs, not your own. I consulted with a new studio in Seattle several years ago. The family that ran it told me they wouldn't open on Saturdays because that was their day to have fun as a family. What? Saturday is the busiest day in most wedding and portrait studios. Your clients aren't professional photographers. They have other jobs and those jobs typically force them to work 9-5, Monday through Friday. That means you need to be open for them evenings and weekends. Yes that is hard. Which is why we call it a JOB! 3. Be sure your terms of service are customer friendly. Don't force your clients to sign 15-page contracts. That will scare them away. You should be able to get the basics down to one page or less. 4. We live in a digital age so get used to the fact that digital products are going to be important to your clients. The old days of hanging on to the files to force customers into a print sale are going away. And there's no reason to fear this change. Just charge more money to cover the cost of the print sales you might have made when you release the digital files. It's the money we care about not the format of the sale. Guy Kawasaku and I were talking about this recently. He made several good points speaking strictly from a consumer's point of view. He has a family. His wife and children have their portraits made. He wants the digital files. He's willing to pay for them, but the photographer says, "That's not my business model." To which Guy replies, "That's not my buying model." If your business model doesn't match your client's buying model then you are on your way out of business. 5. Have samples to show prospects. Remember that just because YOU know what that frame looks like, doesn't mean your client does. Good vendors like our partner Venice Album will help you with samples. Take advantage of this and make sure you have something to show your clients. You can't sell what you can't show. Conversely, you always sell what you show. 6. Accept all forms of payment. Worried about bounced checks? Do some due diligence. Ask for photo ID, only accept checks with the correct name and address on them. If it's a large check, excuse yourself while the client looks at samples and call the bank to verify the check. Accept money orders from major companies, then familiarize yourself with their samples so you know what to look for in case of a fraudulent instrument. Again, excuse yourself and call Western Union or the Post Office with the Money Order number and ask if it is good. Accept cash, and get one of those pens that verifies US currency if you live in the USA. Accept credit cards. A company called Square has made this terribly easy compared to the old days. All you need is an iPhone and a bank account. Accept online payments, while the default for many is PayPal, you can also try others. My favorite online payment gateway is Braintree.' 7. Offer guarantees. Zig Ziglar taught me that fear is the number one reason people don't go forward with a purchase. So help eliminate fear by offering guarantees. Most of your vendors will offer guarantees on the products they sell, so pass them on to your clients. Guarantee your prints. Since the incremental cost is so small to remake a print, it's worth the occasional make good to keep customers happy. (During 15 years of operating a retail studio I offered lifetime guarantees on my prints and never ever even once had to replace a print for a client.) I could easily go on here, but I think you get the point. As I've shared in other posts on this site, when it comes to marketing, you are not important; your customer is. It's THEIR comfort and safety that matters, not yours. If you make THEM happy, then you'll end up happy. Make it easy for people to do business with you. It's simple. It's a choice. Make it.
by Yosuf Karsh
by Skip Cohen I recently ran across a great quote by Winston Churchill: "All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." I was thinking about how these words would apply to some of the icons in our industry who we respect the most. Clearly "honor", "duty" and "hope" stand out, but there are a few other great and simple things these people have that earns our respect and admiration. How about integrity, focus, sincerity and passion? Then there are a few photographic terms that jump in when you look at their work. Single simple words that refer to their images...composition and impact. Their composition is often so strong, they literally see scenes many of us miss. Their mind's eye is unique and continuously provides us with images that time and time again cause us to stop, stare and wonder how they saw what we failed to even notice. Churchill was so right about the simplicity of great things. The most impressive photographers and people in our industry include many of you who I have yet to meet. You may not have made the headlines yet, but your passion inspires us. The new Young Guns are setting the pace and pushing the envelope every day in terms of creativity. At the same time, the "old dogs" are definitely learning new tricks as technology keeps pushing everybody to the edge of the envelope. Great things in photography truly are simple and can be described in single words. It might be just another Friday morning, but it's never just another day - every day is unique, challenging and who knows what door might open for any of us before today is over! For those of you who know me personally, you know that it's rare I do anything half way. That's not meant to sound like a characteristic I'm bragging about, more a quality that I wish I could tone down a little. I don't seem to have a gauge on passion...when I get into something I love, it's all or nothing and at times downright obsessive. SCU has become that obsession and it's definitely a labor of love.
May just closed our fourth full month as a website and blog. It was another milestone month, but what amazes me is how the weeks simply fly by. This past week was one of those weeks and it was amazing. What I'm trying to express is how grateful I am to so many different people. It's my "network" of friends and associates who make my little corner of this industry such a kick, along with some amazing companies in SCU's growing list of partners. The week started out with the launch of "Save Me a Seat" followed by BYOB (Bring Your Own Buddy) a program for SCU Alumni. Then came some great posts, the growing downloads of Cindy Harter's guest post and podcast. It all came together with great pick up on a press release on Save Me a Seat, Blog Talk Radio picking up the SCU Podcast as one of their featured programs in photography and new faculty joining the SCU team. Charity Fest launched with a request for guest posts and right out of the blocks there were two emails in my box. New videos joined the archives in the Profoto Theater and Ilford Showcase. It was even a great week on a personal note, catching up to Doug Box and Randy Kerr for a day on their way to teach for a week at the Florida School. Deanne Fitzmaurice, Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the founders of Think Tank, joined the faculty along with Ed ONeill and Dustin Meyer. A new podcast aired yesterday with one of the country's leading boudoir photographers and SCU joined the ranks for great photographic sites and blogs on Guy Kawasaki's Alltop site. The bottom line is that no project any of us can do will ever succeed without great support from our networks. It's the old Hilary Clinton line that, "It takes a village!" For me that village includes so many amazing friends, associates and manufacturers. The common denominator is the obsessive quality I started talking about in everyone's passion for imagine and an industry we all love. So, make it a great Sunday...enjoy your family, cherish every moment and fire yourself up for a new week starting tomorrow. It's going to be the best one of the year so far, but I can promise, not as good as the week after! Illustration Credit:© bloomua - Fotolia.com by Skip Cohen
I know everybody would love to just close the book on 2012, but even though we're almost half way through this new year, think about last year for a minute. As you analyze last year, think about what you really need to do better, instead of blaming things on what you think is a boring name, logo or site design, the "frosting". So often we all do the same thing - we blame the challenges on the "low hanging fruit", the easiest things we might have done wrong. Here are a few examples:
The list goes on and on, but blaming ad design, logos, company names etc. because you believe they're old, tired and "everybody's seen them" is your absolute last resort. Maybe you do need a makeover, but look at your execution of marketing projects, creativity and your skill set before you blame things like your name. Companies get tired of their look, advertising and tag lines and find the need to reinvent the frosting, often long before the public is bored. I'm betting for most of you, these disappointing projects have nothing whatsoever to do with your actual branding, but your execution and brand awareness. Don't waste time with name changes, new logos and website designs if you haven't first defined your goals and your target audience. Lauren Bacall said it all, "It's not an old movie if you haven't seen it!" Photo Credit: © apops - Fotolia.com |
Our Partners"Why?"Check out "Why?" one of the most popular features on the SCU Blog. It's a very simple concept - one image, one artist and one short sound bite. Each artist shares what makes the image one of their most favorite. We're over 100 artists featured since the project started. Click on the link above and you can scroll through all of the episodes to date.
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