Fast Food Friday - For Professional Photographers

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Missed any past blue-plate specials? They're all just a click away.

​by Skip Cohen

It's a new Fast Food Friday, and the "chefs" in the SCU Diner have whipped up another tremendous blue-plate special this week. Each week we've been presenting ideas to help you become a better business owner. Today's special is a little different. It plays on your abilities as an artist more than developing your business/operational skills.

This is one of those posts that's deeply anchored in me "shoulding" on myself. So, I'm suggesting you learn from a mistake I made so you can create new ones of your own! 

Here's the backstory: My Dad passed away almost four years ago and my Mom, two years before that. My grandparents died many years before that. At this point in my life, there's nobody left who knows any of our family history. I have lots of stories over the years, but what I don't have is a video collection of my folks telling us about their lives, both as a couple and individually. I wish I had those stories, and my grandparents' too.

Ancestry.com can trace my roots, but that's not what I want. I want video coverage of me just sitting with my folks and talking about our family and their lives. I want all the stories.

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It's a four generation shot. I've got plenty of pictures - but not the live stories to go with them.

​I've referenced the Senior Friendship Centers here in Sarasota in several past posts. They're a nonprofit and each year deliver 200,000+ meals to hungry elders, provide health care to over 10,000 patients through their medical and dental clinics, provide adult daycare, and the list goes on and on. I couldn't more proud to be on their Board and support the way they give back to the community.

One of the programs they've been doing for the last few years, much more on the communication side, is called "My Journey." It's a recorded interview giving seniors the chance to talk about their lives and create a legacy recording for their children and grandchildren. 

I love the concept, but to take it a step further, ALL of you can do something similar. And, you have the gear and the skills to do this in more depth than a recording. You've got the ability to create a family video with virtually whatever level of sophistication you want. 

​This has so much potential to capture memories, starting with your own family. Don't wait until everybody is gone to say, "I should have taken the time!" Plus, there's an outstanding side product here as something for your client base. 

A year or two before my Dad passed away, Bambi Cantrell spent some time doing a short video of Dad taking a look back. It's a great service/product idea to pitch your clients as something new for the holidays. Take advantage of all the family time coming up. Use your blog to write about it and share, obviously with permission, some of those stories.
 
This is especially important If you've got grandparents or great grandparents alive. Make it a point to get time with them and capture those stories. Ask them questions about their childhood and growing up. Have fun with questions about the kind of kids they were; things they did in school; specific friends, pets, and places they visited. The list of information it would be fun to have and share is virtually unlimited.

​Don't make the mistake I did - Take the time to become your family's historian. You never want to be looking back and wishing you'd captured/created a video about your roots!

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