An Aside: How do clients find me?

It never ceases to amaze me how new clients find my photography services given the hundreds of professional photographers they have to choose from in Colorado. I've made it a habit to ask all of my clients how they came to find my studio during our initial consultation, primarily to gauge how the success of my Google or Facebook Ad campaigns. It lets me know where I might want to beef up money for my ads or change some keywords to help make finding me easier. For instance, since most of my recent clients have found me just by typing in the words "Denver event photographer," I would want to make sure to optimize those words by having them appear all over my website or blog items so Google picks me up.

This past weekend, I shot a family reunion for The Dermers. I asked my client about how they located me and was shocked and pleased by the results. Turns out one of the family members (based out of state) was on a forum asking about photography services and how much he could expect to pay for having his reunion shot. A comment led him to a photographer directory site where I had added my studio's name to the list. He checked out my photos, liked what he saw and suggested his Colorado-based mother to contact me.

Ian found me on photography directory and persuaded his mother, Janet, to hire me.

Voila!

It's good to know all that time and effort I put in to diligently adding my studio to various photography directors or even links I post to my website in photography forums can help lead a trail of bread crumbs directly to Picture Your World Photography!

Get Connected: Wedding vendor features my photos on their website!

I got a great call yesterday! Elisabeth Montoya, owner of the Bella Sera Event Center in Brighton, will feature several of my shots from Patience and Jack's wedding on its newly designed website! Three photographer assistants and I shot the couple's wedding at the center in January. I blogged about how fantastic the Bella Sera was, virtually overflowing with great shot opportunities to showcase a wedding and reception. The wedding was amazing and was very easy to shoot because of its wealth of unforgettable characters and special moments. From traditional African dances to adorable flower girls, this wedding had it all!









Elisabeth would like to feature a collage of her favorite images from the wedding on her site, which is in the process of being redeveloped. She chose 58 photos, including her personal favs as well as others she believed best represented the couples story and showcased the event center. Several of her favs are shown here in this blog post. It's not clear how many of those will appear on the website once her developer gets ahold of them, but my photos coupled with my business logo, links and contact information will be a great marketing tool to hopefully help me secure more weddings at Bella Sera.











Even though the center only has two preferred photography vendors, Elisabeth's referrals of other photographers she's worked well with is exactly the kind of reassurances taxed brides- and husbands-to-be rely on when they need help choosing vendors. Elisabeth's knows what photographic styles will fit with her clients' needs. Plus, her large photo album showcasing 12x12 prints of different photographers' work from various events held at the center helps get even more business for the vendors she partners with. Referrals continue to be my studio's best source of advertising and securing new clients. Elisabeth's willingness to help my studio as well as other wedding vendors' businesses grow is amazing and truly sincere. It's connections like these that help businesses thrive. Thank you Elisabeth for this wonderful opportunity for my studio and thank you Heather, Susan and Jamie for your fantastic work! Couldn't have done it with out you fabulous ladies!

Get the Job Done: Testing out a new work flow

Jordan's senior yearbook picture before:


Jordan's senior yearbook picture after post processing:

In an effort to conserve my time and energy during the hectic senior session season, I'm trying out what I think will end up being a major workflow overhaul for my studio. It's still a work in progress, and I may end up adapting the workflow again as I find new ways to manage my time. But I'm going to give this a try for a while.

Currently, I'm running a senior special where I am only editing select photos chosen by the client, including the yearbook picture, two 8x10s, four 5x7s and one sheet of wallets. That's a big change from my old way of doing things. I used to spend days editing every single image from a session (which could mean several hundred). I'd present the client with all the images only to find out later
that they may have only loved 30 to 40 select images. It's inevitable that the clients never seem to like the images that I prefer and everyone you speak too prefers a different image! While I certainly believe a client is paying me for my vision, you just can't ignore the client's personal taste and the decisions they make based on those preferences.

Before, when I had fewer clients, I didn't sweat editing hundreds of images from a single session. I really do love post processing in Photoshop and it helped me gain experience! Clients never saw any of my unedited product until I was completely done post processing it. But since my client load has picked up, and the Rocky Mountain News has closed (meaning everyone still left working at the Denver Post is doing the work of at least two people), I realized that I just couldn't afford to keep editing like that.

So now, I'm trying out a proof method where clients choose a specified amount of photos they want retouched. I have been using the synchronize function in Adobe Camera Raw to auto correct all the files for global edits such as sharpening, noise reduction and exposure compensation. I won't do any blemish fixing, eye or teeth whitening, cropping, etc. unless the client choses that image for the extra work. I am ruthless about culling down the images to the very best because I just don't think it's a good idea to overwhelm a client with hundreds of images from a one- or two-hour session. I cut out duplicates, and if I immediately see that I want to change an image to black and white, I will do that to give the client an idea of what the finished product would look like.


BEFORE


AFTER

It takes less than 30 minutes to batch edit and export the files to a private online proofing gallery this way. The images are watermarked and resized automatically. Some photographers don't agree with this method because they don't want a client to see a less than perfected image. But I think your work flow may ultimately change based on your situation and what the client expects. I know that my senior portrait clients this season have been over-joyed to see their images a day after the shoot while the excitement over the session is still fresh. The process has especially worked great for several seniors who were on a tight turnaround schedule to get their photos into yearbook staffs in a matter of weeks.

Of course, the best way to make a workflow like this successful is to make sure you get as great an image in camera as possible instead of relying on "fixing it later" in post-processing. That may take a little more prep time in the front end, but it's worth it when you get compliments like this from clients:

"OMG, we had a hard time trying to decide what photos we wanted! They are all so good!! U did an awesome job!!" says Monique D., the mother of one of my seniors named Jordan. I had Jordan's final chosen pics edited in less than an hour!


BEFORE


AFTER

I'm also contemplating taking the workflow one step further by editing my favorite 15to 20 and only showing clients those images in a final format. If they're not satisfied, I would allow them to see all of the proofs to select others to edit. New marketing research has shown that reducing the range of options by offering only a limited selection of products keeps the client from getting paralyzed by too much choice, leading to lackluster sales. I don't want my clients to get so overwhelmed that they decide not to purchase anything at all.

What's your proofing and editing process method?

Growing Pains: Reaching Customers Online and at Home

This weekend, I came in contact with two new clients in very different ways.

A plumber who fixed a leak in my bathroom noticed the 20x30 black and white print I have hanging up in my home of Teri and Avery (the photo on my blog banner) as well as other images I have on display in my hallway and home studio.

"Are you the photographer?" he asked. Yep, yep I am! We talked for a few minutes and he told me that he and his wife for looking for a photographer to take family portraits of them and their 3-week old baby boy, and he was struck by the image of Teri and her child. He asked me how much I charged for a session and was shocked when I told him $150. Another photographer he had contacted wanted $900 just for the session! He said he could tell I did great work and that he would be calling me to set up an appointment this Saturday once he consulted with his wife.

LESSON LEARNED? Find some creative way to display your work in your home. It could be an easy way to gain new clients or give existing clients ideas on more photos they could take (and purchase!). The same thing happened when one of my brides who had come over for a bridal portrait session liked a boudoir image I had hanging up, and decided to get a similar image done as a surprise for her new hubby.

Also on Saturday, I got an email from a client who wants senior portraits done for her son. My blog allows me to backtrack and see where my visitors are coming from. Turns out, my new client did a very simple Google search for "senior portraits, discounts and Denver," and my blog was the first item on the hit list.

LESSON LEARNED? Never underestimate how important and vital labels, tags, and keywords can be for your business. Think about the kinds of things potential clients might be looking for, or Googling online to help them narrow down their search, and write those "tell-tale" gems in titles of your blog post, throughout the post itself and in your tags and keywords. Make it easier for potential clients to find you!

An Aside: CD Conundrum

I simply wasn't prepared for it when I got what my photography colleagues are now telling me was an inevitable request: "What will you charge for a CD of all the wedding photos including the reception?" It seems like an innocent request, but it's not. The potential fallout in loss of sales related to that one question is why so many digital photographers do not offer CDs in their contracts.


I sell prints and digital downloads on my business website and a professional printing company makes the prints and mails them out to clients. Many clients think that the photos should belong to them, so it shouldn't cost anything for a photographer to give them a CD. However, clients need to be made to understand that they are paying for your service to photograph the wedding and not the price of reprints or ownership rights unless that's clearly stated in the wedding contract.

The bride told me she understood what she was paying for, given the fact that I only charged her $500, and that she would have to purchase prints from my website. It helped her understand the situation better when she tried to hire a previous photographer and found out she couldn't possibly afford the $3,500 price tag for those services.

A quick search of online photography blogs and forums netted these responses to whether or not a CD should be sold:

1) NO -- because the client will take the CD to the nearest drug store and print up hundreds of low quality pics for their friends, relatives and wedding guests for mere pennies. That means no print sales for you. And the print quality will most definitely be terrible, making the photographer seem at fault for terrible workmanship.

2) YES -- but only after a certain amount of predetermined print sales have been made.

3) NO -- sell a DVD with an AVI files or a CD with a slide show of low resolutoin images instead that cannot be reprinted.

4) YES -- include CDs only in predetermined packages

5) YES -- but only at fair market value, making it clear that the client is paying fo reprint rights, not the actual CD.

Let's look at the numbers. I ended up with a little more than 600 shots taken between myself, Mike and Jason for that entire day worth of photography, not to mention the bridal portraits I took a week before the wedding. Even if I charged just $5 (waaaay too low) for each of those high resolution images, that would still run a client $3,000 for the CD.

So here's what I told my client: The high res images on CD would cost $3,000 due to shared ownership and reprint rights, BUT, it might be more economical to buy the actual prints you want from my business website where you will receive pro-quality prints.

So far, all I've heard is crickets chirping out in the audience. I may run the risk of losing more sales this way, but I think I've reached my limit in offering freebies and selling myself short.

This Weekend: Portrait Shoot

I am going to introduce a new section of my blog this morning called "This Weekend." Since I do most of my paid shoots on the weekend, I thought it would be fitting for me to let my readers know on Fridays what I've got planned. Then I could write about my successes or ways I hope to improve the following Friday.

Tomorrow, I will be shooting a client that was referred to me through Teri. Teri is the lovely woman gracing my banner, as well as the first client to allow me to take glamour and artistic nude shots. Teri's happiness with the shoot was so infectious that her neighbor decided to have photos taken of herself as well. Initially, my new client asked to have some business portraits taken of her to use in her marketing and promotions. But later this week, she whispered into the phone that she had been thinking about some artistic nude poses she would like to try out as well. ;)

I think my colleague and fellow blogger Dave Scott may have been right on when he suggested that glamour and boudoir portraits could be a profitable market for me to explore. This weekend's shoot will be the third I've done in less than a month. The photo above is a shot of a client who gave boudoir shots to her boyfriend as a gift. Dave shot 11 boudoir sessions that were used as Valentines gifts this year. "Start getting prepared for next year!!!" he wrote to me in an email.

Get the Job Done: How Much Should I Charge?

Something has continued to plague me ever since I decided to start my photography business: How do you know what to charge clients for your services?

A lot of my anxiety comes from past experiences. I remember seeing lovely artwork and photography hanging in exhibits and displays at restaurants. I always wanted one or two, or 10 to buy for myself....but I would cringe when I saw listed prices of $100 or more for a single print (and not even a framed one at that!) I knew I could never afford to pay for such a luxury. Now that I am the one peddling my own art for a profit, I often feel guilty asking others to pay for my work.

I charged a client $350 for a shoot, and then couldn't stop myself from saying things like, "let's barter or make a deal if you think that's too much!" Even the editor of the Denver Post balked when I charged him only $150 for a family portrait session where I even traveled all the way to his house to take the pics! He told me I wasn't charging enough! I basically sucker punched myself.

According to photographer Julia Woods, because every studio's product is different, "cost of sale is the only way to accurately price what you sell." Woods and her husband photographer Jeff Woods are official spokespersons for Canon USA, Explorers of Light. In her article, "The Mystery of Pricing," Julia Woods says to start with the truth of what it cost to produce an image. Adjust your prices based on the cost of the photograph itself, retouching time, spraying, shipping from the lab and packaging, then multiply that number by 4 in order to reach a profitable price point of 25% COS. The 2005 Financial Benchmark Survey put out by the Professional Photographers of America shows that successful studios all have a COS at 25% or less of their gross income.

Using this example, Woods estimates that an 8X10 should cost a client $98.80. Here is the break down:

8X10 print: $3
Retouching: $15
Spray: $.95
Lab shipping: $2
Packaging: $3.75
(box $2, tissue paper $.25, sticker $.50, bag $1)
Total: $24.70 X 4 = $98.80

My current clients would never pay $100 for a single 8X10! So Woods suggests reducing the amount of retouching or the quality of packaging. Woods created a three-tiered pricing structure, offering cheaper 8X10s with little or no retouching, a middle priced 8X10 with average retouching and a higher priced 8X10 with all retouching. Woods and her husband Jeff used that system to gradually work their way up to more affluent clientele that would pay the asking price for a completely retouched 8X10.

Need more advice? My new friend and photographer Dave Scott offered me this in an email:

"Many newer photographers shoot themselves in the foot that way...You need to make a living. You are not selling prints. You are selling your ability, your time, and
if for editorial or commercial usage you are licensing the rights to
use the photograph. The price of a print pales in comparison to those
three.

Many photographers complain about the lowball photographers that
charge $50 for a portrait session that lasts an hour and includes 4
8x10 retouched poses. I like those photographers. They weed out my
customers because they would never hire me in the first place. They
only shop by price.

You offer a valuable service to a certain set of clients. You just
need to market to bring in those clients!!"

Located in the Portland Oregon metro area, Dave Scott Photographic provides photography for commercial, editorial and private commission clients Worldwide. He has nearly three decades worth of experience photographing architecture, interiors, real estate, product, fashion, business and executive portraiture. Dave's blog Business for Photographers includes ideas for optimizing a successful photography business. I've already learned some great tips to help get me started in advertising my company. I think this postcard marketing strategy is a great idea! I enjoyed reading this one too about finding money to start up your business. And Dave is very responsive to his readers, answering their specific questions while at the same time offering information that everyone else can relate too.

Dave and I are cooking up a plan to begin writing as guest columnists on each other's blogs. I get the feeling my readers are probably going to get more out of this deal than his, given his 26 years of experience. But he assures me that even though I've only been at it for a year, other noobs like me may be able to relate to my stories of triumphs and frustrations. I'll let you know more about this soon! For now, subscribe to his blog and his business site for more ideas.