The One Secret to Professional Photography Success

I was in a discussion with some folks the other day about why some photographers succeed and so many others fail. These people mentioned a series of things. Business acumen, economics, etc. I was mostly listening. It’s a subject that is near and dear to my heart since Pictage’s mission is to help professional photographers succeed in as many ways as we can. When I got home I did an admittedly unscientific survey of photographers who’ve emailed me or messaged me through the forums. I looked at sites of photographers I know are doing well. I looked at sites of photographers who are hurting.

These results aren’t universal. There are exceptions to every rule. If you’ve contacted me for help and you think I’m writing this just about you, I’m not. If it hurts do something about it. If it doesn’t this either isn’t a problem for you or you will also fail. That’s ok. 72% of the photographers who start this year will be out of business within two years.

Here’s what I found... earth shattering I know...

Successful photographers take great pictures.

It’s funny, right? And it should be obvious. It’s not though. Sadly. So much time and energy is spent on so many other things. But the most powerful determiner of success is the quality of the images you shoot. Period. Full stop.

Think about it. Do you worry that other photographers might be better? Do you worry about Uncle Bob or Cousin Kerry? Do you know that every time you go out to shoot, no matter what you are going to face, that you’re going to get great images for your clients? If you worry about any of these things then stop worrying about branding, marketing, etc. and go out and learn how to make great images. It is the most important thing you can do as a photographer.

I thought this was awfully simplistic. But when I went back and went through the sites again there was a common theme in what I saw, (at least in what I could see online). Very few of the images really “popped.” They were all good. I just can’t say that I think they were great. I get that this is pretty subjective, but I think it’s important to understand that the client is being subjective too. The client’s measure of great is a wholly subjective measure. Do I feel like I look great?

What defines a great image? Great emotion. Great light. Great settings. An understanding of the power of depth of field. A fearlessness about light and dark. An understanding of the power of natural light. An understanding of the purposes and proper use of augmented light. An understanding of the proper use of the various lens focal lengths and their impact on a subject. It is important to understand that an automatic camera doesn’t actually know any of these things. It is programmed for safe and average. It is not programmed for spectacular.

A modern automatic camera can take solid pictures without much knowledge. That scares a lot of photographers and, quite frankly, it shouldn’t. Clients don’t hire professionals for solid. They hire professionals for excellent. They know their foibles. They’ve seen decent pictures of themselves. What they want from you is nothing short of greatness. That’s why they’re hiring you. Can you deliver? If you do they will hire you again (in a heartbeat) and they will tell all of their friends about you. (probably “steal” a few pictures and put them on FaceBook too!). Conversely, if they feel the job you do is just good enough they’ll likely more or less bury the images away and move on. You’ll never hear from them again.

Great photographers know how to work within a setting to capture what is happening in a way that will translate powerfully to a captured image. If they are shooting a live event like a wedding, bar mitzvah or even a kids T-ball game they understand light and angle and they know the capabilities (and drawbacks) of their equipment. In a portrait situation a great photographer can make a mundane setting extraordinary. They have taught themselves to see light differently. When their clients see their images they will say, “I never would have seen this this way” and they will mean it.

Great photographers also understand that post production is like the seasoning at the end of the cooking process. It’s that last touch of salt, sweetness or acidity that gets the balance just right before the dish is served. It is not the core ingredient. While it is true that the modern professional cameras, capturing images in RAW format provide extremely forgiving latitude, nothing can make up for a bad shooting angle, missed focus or the wrong equipment. As a rule, if you spend more time editing than you do shooting then you may want to brush up your camera skills. (because all of that editing time costs you a lot of money -whether in out of pocket cash or in time).

The business of professional photography is first and foremost the business of taking great pictures. Everything else is secondary. Lots of other things may have an impact on how successful you become, but nothing has anything like the impact of a great image. If that’s not in your repertoire, it’s time to get to work.

Here’s the thing. Being a great photographer is not the only measure of success. Once you’ve nailed great image capture down marketing, connecting with your clients, staying ahead of product trends, etc., are all important. I’ll talk through a few of those in the coming weeks. It’s just that it all starts here and when you think about it that makes sense.

Why Does it Cost So Much. A public service for professional photographers.

These days there is a lot of confusion with regard to consumer preferences for digital file vs printed product distribution. The good news, and the reason I’m not going to address that here, is that both markets are actually growing quite dramatically. (with specialty printed photo products growing at a rate of over 40% per year).

So this isn’t a discussion of whether people want digital or print, it’s just a public service for professional photographers whose clients clearly want prints, but who want them cheap.

I’ve written this specifically so that you can use it whether you are a Pictage client or not. If not, simply replace Pictage with the name of your lab or your site if you’re using another proofing and purchasing environment. (and ask yourself why they don’t do this kind of thing for you!)... You can also replace Canvas Prints with Photographic Prints, etc. I’ll write a separate version for Photographic Albums.

Go ahead - use this. Just copy and paste it. It will make your life easier. Ultimately, that’s what I’m here for.

What to do when your client says, “I just want to print it myself.”

Hey, I got your note. I'd love to send you the digital file but I think there is a misunderstanding with regard to pricing that I'd like to clear up. If I send you the file the cost is likely to be pretty close to the difference between a discount canvas printer and the pricing you see on Pictage (my site). Here's why. The price on Pictage includes a series of prep and editing fees that go into preparing the image to be printed on a format as large as a canvas. I do some of these and Pictage actually does a bunch too. If the file is to be printed by another vendor I still have to do my steps, but I can't guarantee that the image is going to look the way it does when you see it on your computer.

Most people have a hard time understanding this so I'll explain. A printer is not a printer. Printers are calibrated to monitors, etc. Consumer grade canvas manufacturers gear their printers to consumer grade images. Consumers make a lot of photographic mistakes (no offense!) so the printers are designed to even things out. They reduce contrast and saturation, etc. in effect, making the images dull.

I've actually worked with Pictage to calibrate my monitor at home to their printing process and this extends to their canvases. I use them because I know that what I see is what I'm going to see when the orders come back. They do a bunch of other stuff too, like ensure the canvases are properly treated to be resistant to light damage, beefed up frame construction, including all of the hanging hardware, making sure the canvas ships ready to hang, etc.

I hope that helps ... Like I said, if you still want me to provide the digital file for your use in printing one canvas I can, I just wanted to make sure you understood that you probably won't end up actually saving any money. (and if you do you might be sorry!)

Your helpful photographer.

Now, there is some discussion around why you would even want to do this. There are two answers. And again, this is for all photographers whether you use Pictage or not. The first is that for any professional photographer the sale of products related to their photography is an extremely important revenue stream. In fact, most estimates suggest that as much as 1/3 of a studio’s revenue must come from the sale of products in order for the studio to be successful. (there are always outliers, but this is based on the industry average fee structure). So learning to sell these products is important.

Second. The fact is that your client is likely to go ahead and print some of the images you provide to them digitally. They do this because one of the biggest challenges consumers face today is the understanding that it is far too easy to lose track of all the content they have on their computers, etc. They certainly don’t want every image printed (as a rule), but they want the best ones. That’s why the specialty photo products market is growing so fast. When they print through their local cheap printer, the same image compression occurs and it is not uncommon at all for the images to look dull. If that’s the way you want them to see your work, no worries. If not, then this is helpful.

It is here that a professional photographer must make a choice and a lot of it is client dependent. Do you want to provide the service of creating those products or do you want to leave your clients to do it for themselves. If you choose the first path you must learn to sell these products. If you choose the second path you need to make sure you have enough shooting opportunities to fill in for the lost revenue.

The choice is obviously ultimately yours. I just know that professionals are frequently asked why professionally fulfilled products cost a lot in comparison to consumer products and that having the answer above in your hip pocket will be helpful when the time comes.

Tomorrow I’ll create a different version of the response specifically for photographic albums. That one will be generic too ... Cut and paste away.

The lesson of Moneyball

The Lesson of Moneyball...

I read the book when it came out. I didn’t read it because anyone said it was good. I didn’t read it because I thought it would be particularly interesting. I read it because I was flying home from Florida and I didn’t have a book and it was the only one I saw on the non-fiction rack at the airport bookstore that looked remotely interesting. I read the whole thing that night on the plane. It changed the way I think. I saw the movie this weekend and it did the same thing all over. Here’s why.

For those who haven’t read the book or seen the movie the story of Moneyball is pretty simple. Billy Beane is the coach of the small market Oakland A’s. He’s tasked with fielding a team that is competitive in spite of a payroll that is a fraction of his competition’s. His scouts and advisors try to do it the old fashioned way and he knows it won’t work. In a chance meeting with Peter Brand, he discovers a new way.

The story isn’t really about baseball. It is about taking chances. It is about knocking over the apple cart to see if there isn’t a better way to stack the fruit. It is about trying to understand the real cause and effect relationships that make the difference between success and failure and then when you discover they’re different than you or anyone else thought they were, it is about having the courage of your convictions.

The hardest part of this for any business, large or small, is deciding to try to look at the business and its key drivers in a new way. There is a great line in the movie when Beane asks Peter Brand (his out of the box thinking advisor and assistant GM) what he is doing that is so different. Brand says, ‘you guys spend all your time trying to draft players, I think you should be drafting wins.’ It turns out he’s right and when they adopt this method and make the hard decisions about fielding the team accordingly they start to win.

Spoiler alert, if you want to see the picture and you haven’t seen it yet stop reading here...

The team wins 20 in a row. They become the first major league team to do so. Then they lose in the playoffs to the Twins. There are two ways to measure success. There is the ultimate success, a world series win, wealth beyond your wildest dreams, etc. Then there is practical success. In the world of major league baseball the simple fact is that the team with the most talent in all areas is likely to win. They have to put it all together and there are a lot of variables but at some point the math just works that way. So are Beane and Brand failures because the A’s are eliminated in the ALCS playoffs? No. The fact is they should never have gotten to the playoffs at all. To get there they had to beat teams with payrolls many times their size. For the A’s success is a competitive season, not a World Series ring.

You have to measure success the same way in your market and if you are unhappy with what you can potentially achieve, then you have to change your market altogether. That’s a story for another day. From this story the big question is, are you asking the right questions? Are you sure?

Onward ...

Your Logo Doesn't Matter

Your Logo Doesn’t Matter

Joe Buissink and I are doing a series of seminars (they’re free by the way which is, I think, the right price to hear me but a bargain to hear Joe!) around the country. Joe spends the first hour and 45 minutes (It’s supposed to be an hour and 15 but I never really care. I never get tired of looking at his incredible stuff!) talking about art. I spend the last 15-20 minutes talking about business. People who’ve come seem to be enjoying it and we get a lot of questions afterwards. Many of the questions I get have to do with a slide in my deck entitled, “Your Logo Doesn’t Matter.”

It doesn’t. Or it doesn’t as much as you might think it does. Here’s why that is true. You will never win a client because you have a great logo. Period. No one is going to sign up with you simply because they like the really cool custom typeface or your particular shade of celadon. I know. Shocker. What amazes me is how often I am asked what I think of a particular logo and the amount of time and energy someone may be putting into it.

I call that “Logo Myopia.” Typically you are a victim of Logo Myopia when during the scope of a rebranding exercise you find that you have become completely fixated on the logo. Typical symptoms include dreaming of logo variations, incessant logo doodling, hiring yet another designer because the last 9 didn’t quite come up with exactly what you were looking for, posting your logo to online photographer forums to hear what other photographers think about your logo (a good idea if you are targeting photographers!), etc. Go ahead and take a second and wipe the sweat off of your brow. We’ve all been there. I know about this syndrome because I’ve been it’s victim. It’s almost like you’ve got these blinders on and all you can see is the logo. Oh my God! I’ve got to have the best Logo! AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!

Take a minute and breathe. There’s hope. Here’s the thing. It’s true. A great logo, no matter how great it may be, will never get clients to come to you. To be sure. Your logo should fit your brand. It should essentially say something positive at a glance. But that’s about it.

Now. There is one final thing about logos that is important, especially to my many photographer readers. While a great logo will never win you a client, a bad logo will most certainly lose you some. So if your logo sucks you need to sweat it a little. Just don’t let myopia set in.

Onward!

Never lose a client to politics or religion. (unless you want to)...

Yesterday I posted this statement on Twitter: Politics and Religion are the two worst reasons to lose a client. I inadvertently touched off some controversy. (funny how a post that was designed to discourage controversy could do so!) People feel passionately about these things, so I guess I’m not all that surprised. Rather than try to have the discussion in 20 words or less, I’m posting some thoughts here with the knowledge that many may want to weigh in with their own.

First off. Let’s review the statement. Considerate a postulate. (the kernal for a debate). The statement was: Politics and Religion are the two worst reasons to lose a client. Let’s take that apart a little...

I did not say that politics and religion are the dumbest ways to lose a client. There are, without a doubt, many dumber ways. Bad customer service, failing to listen and react to what your clients are telling you (and not telling you). Bad business practices, etc. These are all dumb. However, most smart people avoid these methods for losing customers. It is when our passions engage that we sometimes do things we don’t mean. Like giving people with different passions the impression that we don’t want to serve them because they don’t look or act or think (or worship) like us.

There are people for whom this is not true. There are people who actually think they are right and frankly they may be. These people seem to want to convince the world of their rightness, either so they can convince the world to go their way or just because it feels good to be right. I’m neither that smart nor that solid in my personal convictions. I guess I’ve decided that it’s more important for me to just be the best me that I can be and let others do that too. It is not for me to wag my finger and say they’re wrong. There are lots of folks who seem perfectly ready to step into that role.

Understand also that this does not apply to legalities. When preference crosses a line of legality it is for any contributing member of a society to step up and say, hey, that’s wrong. But when that line is the grayer line of religion or the extremely murky and highly polarized world of politics, I simply prefer to leave the argument to others.

So for me, Politics and Religion are the worst reasons to lose a customer. I don’t feel that I am superior to someone who chooses to believe different things. Therefore I don’t feel that someone who chooses to believe different things is inferior. Why then would I want to put something out there that causes someone to be uncomfortable with doing business with me because their convictions and mine may not line up? Isn’t it better to serve them as a client, treating them with respect and dignity, then to attack something about which they may feel passion? In attacking the thing it is far too easy for the person themselves to feel attacked and it is then that it is likely that any chance for a client relationship is severed.

It is true that politics and religion are about principles. There are those who seem to stand very firmly on their own. I actually do too. It’s just that one of my principles is a deep respect for the sanctity of each person’s experience and the knowledge that finding one’s way is hard enough. I would much rather help those who need it by setting an example through who I am then try to do so through words and phrases born in byte sized chunks over the ether.

So that’s what I was trying to say... I know there are those who feel much differently. I respect that too. If you want to lose clients because of your passions about politics and religion (“if they don’t think the way I think I don’t want to serve them”) more power to you. In that case, then for you politics and religion definitely wouldn’t be the worst reasons to lose a client...

Marketing isn't hard. We Just Make it Hard.

“Hey Jim. I’m wondering if I can ask your opinion on something?” I get these emails all the time. The most common questions I’m asked? “What do you think of my pricing” and, “How do you feel about my (insert one here) logo, branding, new site, etc...

There are two things that I tell everyone. Number one... Never ask my opinion on something if you don’t want the truth. My friends tell me I should come with warning flags. It’s true. I should. If you ask me what I think and I think something is bad I’ll tell you that. That’s the first thing I say. Here’s the second.

What I think doesn’t really matter all that much. Why? Well unless your optimal client is a 40 something year old, bald, slightly overweight, harried executive who drives a Ford Pickup Truck, is married, has two boys, one in high school and one entering college, who rarely shops, is obsessed with camera equipment but not many other electronics and who spends about 50% of his life on planes and in hotel rooms, my preferences about your branding, pricing and logo aren’t going to do you much good. Frankly, neither will any of the other photo “gurus” who make at least part of a living giving advice to other photographers.

Here’s a better idea. It’s a piece of paper exercise. A sit down with a cup of coffee and an actual piece of paper and a little time exercise. A close your eyes and dream a little exercise.

I want you to think of your ideal client. Form a picture of that client in your mind. Think a little about who they are. This is the client you most want to serve... Now, on your piece of paper write down ten specific traits about this client. Ten things that define who they are.

Here’s an example: “Mom, between 25 & 35, married, works part time, loves her kids, drives carpool, shops at target, listens to hip hop (when no one is looking), is comfortable in her own skin, reads mystery books.” Now give her (or him) a name.

Here’s a little known fact. There is no person named Tommy Bahama. He’s a persona. He’s the outgrowth of a much more detailed exercise just like the one above. Every decision the successful retailer makes is vetted by Tommy. “What would Tommy think?”

Once you’ve picked out your ten traits, think of a few clients who match those traits and make them your own personal captive focus group. When you want to make changes, etc., email them and ask what they think. Their opinion is much more valuable than mine.

Take that piece of paper and pin it up wherever you work. Any time you are working on something related to marketing, take a moment and read those traits again and ask him or her in your mind what you should do. You’ll be surprised how much clarity this will bring in your business decisions!

In the next couple of days we’ll talk about Logo Myopia and a series of other challenges small businesses face. Marketing isn’t hard. We just make it hard.

In Business Strive for Clarity. You'll Sleep Better

If you strive for clarity in business everything else is easier.

I get a lot of calls and emails from photographers. I don’t mind that. I actually like the sort of constant window into this world that these communications provide. Through them I am aware of the challenges you face and also the victories. Most often though, when someone is emailing me it is about the challenges and a surprising number of these essentially boil down to a lack of clarity. Here’s what I mean...

“Hey Jim, I have this frustrating situation that came up with a client. They hired me for a package that had 4 hours of coverage. They ran behind all day. I ended up being there for six hours. I sent them my bill and they don’t want to pay for the extra two hours. What do I do?”

That one’s pretty basic, right? I asked him to send me a copy of his contract. The contract clearly states that the package includes 4 hours of coverage. It also clearly states that the photographer will try to get all of the important pictures to tell the story, including leaving the reception. It does not state that extra coverage will be billed at $XXX per hour. When I asked the photographer about that he said that was because clients kept multiplying his hourly rate by four and wondering why the basic package cost so much more. Ugh.

In this case I told him that he needed to wave the extra two hours, make sure the client was happy (for referrals), put the clause back in his contract and move on. Lesson learned.

The thing is that I see these things all the time. Second shooters feel slighted when they don’t get to use images on their sites or aren’t paid for setup, travel, etc. Principle photographers get angry at second shooters who do the same things in reverse. Clients get angry with photographers who “nickel and dime” them.

Here’s the thing. None of these issues would ever come up with the business relationships between the various parties were completely clear. There are so many things we choose not to talk about because talking about them makes us uncomfortable. (Especially where money is concerned). But these are the things that we MUST talk about in order to make sure the terms of any deal are crystal clear to both sides.

Here are my suggestions: Pricing. Write it down and send it to them. Have a printed price list that clearly shows everything. Send it via email and the first time you meet with them hand it to them in hard copy. Feel like overkill? Well, the first time you get into a discussion of, “we didn’t know you charged extra for that..” you can point them to the price lists that you both emailed (resend the original email since you are keeping all of the correspondence with this client in a separate folder and it will be easy). Make your, “Oh silly, of course you did” conversation as easy breezy as possible.

Working with vendors, contractors. Have a standard agreement and make sure you use it, every time. Even if it’s a ‘friend.’ (Especially if it’s a friend). Use the same email, hard copy method with working with these folks.

Every time there is a dispute about anything, make a mental note to modify your contract to handle that issue. Sometimes that’s just another point within an existing clause and sometimes it’s a couple of new paragraphs.

Using this simple approach will mean that over time you’re covered and the clarity in your business relationships will lead to mess disputes and a better night’s sleep.

And that’s worth a little work, isn’t it?