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added: Wed, 21st September 2005 | 4660 views | 0x in favourites
feed url: http://www.photoincome.com/blogs/xmlsrv/rss2.php?blog=2
Making money with photography
http://www.photoincome.com/blogs/index.php?blog=2&title;=make_money_with_graduation_pictures&more;=1&c;=1&tb;=1&pb;=1 Coming up, there is an excellent source of photography income. Most high schools have graduation ceremonies coming up the end of may or early June. There is a good source of income if you have great organization and negotiation skills. I have a picture taken of me when I graduated from college. I had just been handed my diploma from the Dean of the College and was shaking his hand. The shot that was taken by a professional photographer had the perfect angle…you could see my face and the face of the Dean. In my left hand, I have the diploma cover (You never get the actual diploma until you have paid all of your fees). I am shaking hands with my right hand. Of course I am all smiles, and my Dean looked happy too, although he had probably handed out 100 diplomas so far that day. The photographer obviously walked through the event, got there early, shot several test shots to get the angle and lighting right and then just sat on the edge of the stage and shot tons of images. He had a backup camera right next to him and every time his memory card was full, he just swapped cameras and an assistant plugged in a new card. I imagine he had several extra batteries with him just in case. The photography is actually the easy part of this opportunity. The hard part is the organization required to keep track of which graduate belongs to which image and billing the students for the image. After I walked off the stage, an assistant handed me a tag with a number on it and an order form. I was able to go out and look at a watermarked image online and order a 5x7 for $10 or an 8x10 for $20. Immediate follow up is the key. The closer in time that you can get the selling opportunity to the new graduate, the better chance that you have of closing the sale. This opportunity takes work, but it can be lucrative as there is only one photographer up on the stage shooting the event. You will have to negotiate with the school to be that photographer. You will definitely want to make the contact early. The graduation ceremony for my son’s high school has been planned for several months, so the contact to the high school should probably take place in the fall with follow ups around the holidays and a signed contract the first part of the year. If you are successful in landing the contract, shooting the graduation combined with great organization and follow up could result in a great day for making money with your photography. I know I ordered a couple of images - one for me and one for my Mom. Graduating doesn’t happen every day and I wanted to remember the event with a photograph. Keep shooting!
http://www.photoincome.com/blogs/index.php?title=team_up_with_graphics_arts_instructors_1&more;=1&c;=1&tb;=1&pb;=1 I attended a dinner at a local technical college to provide some input on their programs. They teach a Graphics Art Instructional program that includes courses on Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, Web Page design, and Quark Express. As we discussed the program and the benefits of each course, I saw an opportunity to partner with the college, instructors, and faculty to facilitate learning opportunities for the students. Some ideas that I had: 1. Provide a guest lecture on the basics of photography, exposure, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. It is always better to design when you understand the basics of how a photograph is put together 2. Provide digital images that the course could use to manipulate and/or do layout with 3. Onsite set design - understanding qualities of light, how to setup a photograph to minimize the Photoshop work afterwards, etc. 4. Be able and willing to participate in lectures, provide guidance, mentoring, studio tours, etc. All these activities will help identify you as an expert in the field…one that the student can leverage when they need a photographer to shoot assignments after they graduate. Oh - being the staff photographer has its benefits too. As part of the evening, they hired a photographer to come in and take pictures of the members of the advisory board. Not a bad gig - 1 hour to shoot ~15 pictures. It took the photographer longer to setup her equipment than take the portraits. She also took advantage of the opportunity and handed out her business card to the members of the advisory board as they left the set. Team up with the other professionals in the field to increase your photography revenue opportunities. Have fun shooting!
My family and I traveled to Phoenix, Arizona for Spring Break. While I was there, I shot some images that I planned to upload to my stock portfolio on iStockPhoto.com. There were two that I wanted to feature on my blog. The first one was an image of a vibrant blue sky with 4 palm trees featured in the bottom right hand corner. The incredible blue sky was achieved by shooting late in the afternoon when the light was warmer - and using a polarizing filter. I purposely framed the image so that the trees were in the bottom corner so a designer could leverage the rest of the image for copy and other images. Some of the keywords that I thought were appropriate for the Palm Trees Stock image were: Palm Tree, Clear Sky, blue sky, Summer, Day, tree, plant, tropical climate, and Tree Trunk The other image that I uploaded to my stock portfolio, was an image of the Phoenix, Arizona downtown skyline. This was a fun image to shoot. My brother-in-law and I drove around for several hours trying to find the best vantage point of the downtown skyline to shoot when the sun was in the late afternoon sky. I took this particular picture for a couple of reasons. First of all, I wanted to follow the rule of thirds. I focused the Phoenix skyline at about 1/3 of the way from the bottom of the picture. I also included a ton of blue sky to give designers plenty of room for copy. After taking this picture, we traveled across town to get a picture of the skyline looking from the east with the sun setting behind the cityscape. The sunset turned out to be a total dud. We raced back to this location, but missed the sunset reflecting off of the downtown looking from the west by about 2-3 minutes. Some of the keywords that I thought were appropriate for the Phoenix Skyline stock image were: Phoenix, Arizona, Downtown District, skyscraper, building exterior, window, architecture, tall, Business, skyline, retail, town center, urban scene, City, Cityscape, City Life, people traveling, business travel, travel, tourism, tourist, horizon over land, horizon, day, clear sky, sky, office building, office I am not the best at picking out keywords, so any suggestions are much appreciated.
A couple of days ago, I wrote about an idea to use a video iPod as a wedding album. This idea is only one of many that I think are perfect upsell items to the “normal” wedding album or Family Portrait Picture package. The world is changing (depending on what generation you are - the world has changed) to an electronic world. I don’t read the newspaper anymore. All of the news that I read is online. A lot of the audio that I listen to is blog content on my iPod. To celebrate a Paperless world, what if you added the option for the results of a family portrait setting to be distributed on a digital photo frame in addition to the normal 5x7, 8x10, wallets and large framed picture. You could provide up to 50 images of the shoot preloaded on the frame. What a great upsell item! Digital photo frames run from about $69+ depending on what size, what resolution, the brightness of the images, and other features. Some have wireless upload capabilities. Some have remotes. Some have ability to play movies and have built in speakers. If you decide to do this on a regular basis, you might consider becoming a dealer for a brand of digital photo frames. Most of the digital picture frames available today are low resolution - less than 800x600. This means that your customers will not have a high quality image that they can just take and print (especially enlargements) without the quality being compromised. I will write more about the benefits and features of digital photo frames later, but wanted to get the idea out there that a digital photo frame is a great upsell item to a normal picture package – or it might just BE the picture package. All the best and keep shooting!
http://www.photoincome.com/blogs/index.php?blog=5&title;=bring_your_camera&more;=1&c;=1&tb;=1&pb;=1 The biggest element of being successful in many kinds of photography is simply showing up ready to shoot - with your camera. Whether you are a freelance photojournalist working for a local newspaper, a stock photographer looking for the money shot, or simply shooting pictures of your kids if you don’t have your camera, you won’t get the shot. In my classes that I teach on basic photography skills, my first point is always to have your camera with you. I have missed so many incredible shots that were only there for a few minutes. My latest miss was just a few weeks ago. There was an incredible sunset and I wanted to get the reflection off of an office building for my stock portfolio. Of course I didn’t have my camera with me. I was only a few blocks from my home so I thought I would run home and get my camera and sneak back and catch my shot. I learned that the real color of a sunset is only available for a few minutes. By the time I made it home, got my camera, and got back out to the car, the color of the sunset was gone. I had missed the money shot because I didn’t have my gear with me. I bought my wife a point and shoot digital camera for that reason. She has a digital SLR, but she doesn’t like to carry it around unless she is planning on shooting a specific event. She carries a Nikon Coolpix camera in her purse for the cute spontaneous pictures of my kids. It works well for her - now I just need to get one to carry with me. The phone on your camera will do in a pinch, but not for any real quality and you certainly won’t be able to enlarge the picture to any real size - maybe someday as camera phones will get better.
http://www.photoincome.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title;=hunters_panel_stock_image_in_use&more;=1&c;=1&tb;=1&pb;=1 It is always cool to see where one of your stock images ends up being used. The latest image that I found being used was My “Hunter’s Panel - Indian Petroglyph” Image. This image was used in a book called Archery For Fun available from DedicatedTeacher.com. Click on the “Download Sample” Link to see the image in use. Feel free to visit http://www.istockphoto.com/legacyimagesphotography to see my other stock images available.
http://www.photoincome.com/blogs/index.php?blog=2&title;=use_the_ipod_as_a_wedding_album&more;=1&c;=1&tb;=1&pb;=1 When I got married - a long time ago - wedding videos were very popular. We had a videographer come and shoot an hour or so of video of my finance and me walking, talking, hugging, kissing, etc. The video production company was at our wedding and wedding luncheon and shot a whole bunch more footage. They spent the afternoon furiously combining the footage with some of our favorite music in order to have a 30 minute video available at our reception that evening. I thought it was great back then, but I watched it the other day and it was so sappy. But, the wedding video combined with our wedding album is what we have to remember our wedding by. Fast forward almost 20 years and you have additional options. Of course there is the wedding album…that is a foundation of the wedding memories. Combined with that is the wedding video. Digital recorders and the drop in price in video production tools has made that very easy to learn and include as part of a wedding package. But let’s look at some other options that you could use as a photographer to differentiate yourself from your competition. What about taking the video that you make as part of the package and provide his/hers video iPods with the video of the wedding pre-loaded. You could even “wrap” the ipod with an image of the couple together. What if you took the images/video and populated a wedding web page with the domain name of their choice. You could convert the video to flash, include some royalty free music, and provide a message board for their guests to write them messages or notes. You could combine that with a blog that the couple could use to document their experience and of course link to your photography website (advertising). At the time you deliver the album, hand over a CD of a backup of the site combined with usernames/passwords for the site. You could point them to someone to maintain the site if you don’t want to do that yourself. If they don’t want to maintain a separate webpage, you could accomplish the same thing by using an online blog site that is free. Just a couple of ideas to round out your ala cart menu for a Wedding Package. Best of luck and keep shooting
http://www.photoincome.com/blogs/index.php?blog=2&title;=turn_your_hobby_into_cash&more;=1&c;=1&tb;=1&pb;=1 What do you like to do? I ask that question to people and get so many different answers, i.e. hiking, fishing, hunting, stock car racing, slot car racing, basketball, painting, sewing, cooking, swimming, sleeping, watching my kids play sports, reading, etc. So, how can you take your favorite hobby and make money from it? Lets pick a real world example - Fly fishing. What if you were to go to your local fly fishing store (I actually have one about 2 miles from my house - honest!) and introduce yourself to the manager as a fly fisherman photographer. It helps to have purchased equipment from the store to break the ice. Offer to trade fly fishing photographs in return for trade or cash. You could trade photographs for the hottest new fly fishing rod and reel, or that collection of this years hottest flies, or new waders, or even that tackle box that you have had your eyes on for a coons age. Trading photography for products is as good as cash because you would have purchased that equipment anyway. In the fly fishing example, you could offer so many different types of photographs. For example: Early in the morning with the fog just lifting off of the river with the sunlight glistening off of the fishing line as it trails behind the fisherman What about capturing a rugged looking man’s man sporting the latest clothing that they sell in the store that they can use for advertising What about doing some macro photography focusing on some of the mini fishing flys that they sell within the store. Have the store blow those images up and display them to encourage customers to purchase the hottest new fly - a must have for the upcoming season What about offering to go on a guided expedition with customers to photograph or video the event and have that as one of the benefits of the trip. Free fishing - what could be better than that? The list of options is as long as your imagination and creativity. You would definitely want to shoot some images of Fly Fisherman and Fly Fishing so you could show them as samples of your work to jump start the discussion. The early settlers in the United States functioned almost exclusively on a system of barter and trade to survive. Adopt the same approach and have fun linking your hobby to extra income (or that new reel that you have been trying to convince your wife that you absolutely have to have). Have a blast, but bring your camera!
http://www.photoincome.com/blogs/index.php?blog=2&title;=photographer_marketing_ideas&more;=1&c;=1&tb;=1&pb;=1 Lifetime customers are the best! You have to work for them, but they provide a ton of income for you over the years. But, they have to hear about you first. You can start this process with some organization and constant reminders. Many local newspapers feature new baby announcements, marriages and anniversaries. Take the time to harvest that information, store it in a database, and act on it - regularly. Lets think through the possibilities with a newborn baby announcement in the paper. As soon as you get the paper, scan the births section of the paper and send the new happy couple a color card in the mail (using the address out of the phone book) with several beautiful pictures of newborn babies and a coupon for a discount for baby pictures, birth announcements or whatever is appropriate for your community. The beautiful thing about it is you can use the name of the child, birthdate, and the name of the parents on the card, but make sure you capture that information for future reference. When the couple comes in, get an email address from them and a list of any other children and their birthdays. Shoot an amazing picture of the newborn, suggest a special mother/baby picture as well, and encourage the father to have a shot taken with the newborn. They are only that small for a few months. Remember, these pictures have to be amazing for the lifetime customer to exist. After that photo session, think about the next 20 years. What if you sent an email reminder at about 6-7 months with pictures of babies with big toothy grins reminding the parents to capture those new teeth with another quick shot at the studio. A birthday reminder at a year (and every year thereafter)is a logical marketing step. Kindergarten is such a huge step, what about a reminder at the beginning of the year just as school starts to get that school photo taken. The picture is going to be taken - why give the business to the school photographer when you can collect that revenue by getting there first. What about scouting, starting junior high, senior portraits, etc. You might alternate between email and letters to give some variety to the contacts. Make sure you indicate the child’s name on the emails and letters. Suggest family pictures once a year. Capture the mothers ideas about the kind of pictures she likes. Does she like outdoor pictures? Formal, casual, spring, fall, etc. There are computer programs that automate this for you and several hours of brainstorming will result in many opportunities each year for you to photograph that family and their children. You can start the process simply by putting the child’s name and birthdate into the program. Dentists are great at this. You get a postcard every 6 months from your dentist reminding you of the 6 month checkup. Restaurants are using this as well. Children get a postcard that they can fill out with the purchase of a kids meal. This postcard is sent out about a week before their birthday. The goal of the restaurant is to get the whole family in to celebrate the childs birthday. Thats a pretty good return for a postcard and stamp. This is a great formula that you can replicate for your business. Focus on building your customer list and creating a lifetime relationship with your customers. Get to be the family photographer where you are asked to capture the memories during every significant lifetime event of the entire family - from the birth to the wedding and everything in between. The list can start with several entry points taken from the local paper: the newborn announcement Eagle Scout announcement Marriage/Engagement announcement Anniversary announcement etc. Collecting information in a database and sending regular, appropriate announcements (via snail mail until you get an email address) can create regular, repeatable, sources of income.
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