New Projector For Portable Sales

Conforming Can Be A Painful Thing

Do you create your own path? Do challenges excite you, or leave you shaking with fear?

Human nature says conformity is what’s best for us. We don’t want to stand out in the crowd. If a bunch of people are doing something, that must be the right thing to do. Right? Watch this video for a look at what people will do to conform.

The same thing goes with today’s professional photographer. Instead of breaking away, and creating a studio experience that is nothing like the competition, I’m willing to bet 90 percent of all studios do what everyone else does. They give the digital files because everyone else does. They charge very little for their work because everyone else does.

It’s time to change that around. Here are 5 things you can do that will help you break away from “doing what everyone else does”.

1. Make your photography an experience. If you bring them in to your studio, and stand them in front of a standard blue backdrop, you’re doing what everone else does. If you transform an entire magical room in your studio to look like like a garden, and your children are given wings and wands, and encouraged to become a fairy, that’s an experience.

2. Handing your customer a few 8x10s and 5x7s in folders is similar to what they receive at their local discount store. Handing your customer mounted and framed images in odd sizes [why not 12x12s or 10x30s] makes them look twice.

3. Walking out the door with a few photos in hand is ok. But walking out with custom designed boxes and bags in vibrant colors – making the packaging almost as exciting as the images – is an experience. [Ever received a Tiffany's box? I can guarantee you women now Tiffany's blue instantly.]

4. Heading to the local park is ok. But what about meeting at a dude ranch, with a sleigh awaiting to take you to a magical part of the forest for an incredible winter portrait experience?

5. Proofs, well it’s really not acceptable to use proofs anymore. Isn’t it much more rewarding to use projection and be in control of the entire selling process? You can show the difference between an 8×10 and a 30×30 hanging over the fireplace. I guarantee you’ll sell more large prints using this method.

Filed Under: Blog, Business, Make Money With Photography Tagged With: Digital Photography, pricing your photography

Choosing An Album Company

by Virtual Photography 4 Comments

Professional means not doing what the amateur can do.

I visited a “professional” photographer’s website today. She specializes in babies and children.

She photographs and provides the digital files for up to 50 images. Yours to keep.

If you choose, you have the option of purchasing a memory book that she produces from iPhoto – for an additional fee.

I doubt she sells very many of these. Why would she?

The person has already received a digital file with every image on it. She can very easily head over to iPhoto and design her own album.

I love the iPhoto concept. It’s fun and easy to throw together a quick album for a single event. Many other companies offer a similar product – Shutterfly has something similar, and also sells the kits out of Borders book stores.

Consumers love it. And retailers love it – it’s a way of increasing their profits.

But as a professional, you need to be supplying your customers with things they can’t get anywhere else. Even if they find it online, the company will only work with professionals.

When they see something magical that they can’t get anywhere else, it adds a sense of desire to your product line. And it sets you apart from your competition.

Professional album companies are also in business to help you grow your business. And because of it, many of their websites are designed to help send future clients your way. Many have special sections educating the bride on a professional album, and provide a way to connect the bride with you.

One of my favorite album companies, Zookbinders, has a special section just for brides. They educate them on the quality of professional albums, why hiring a professional is so important, and how to find a professional photographer.

Many companies will also work to get you your sample line. For half off, you can order sample albums to show your client. Clients buy what they see. This is a great way to show them your level of professionalism.

If you want to profit like a professional, you must build your business like a professional.

Filed Under: Blog, Production Resources

Do The First Thing First

by Virtual Photography 3 Comments

So you want to be a full time photographer – what have you done in the past week?

Human nature has us doing the things we love, and avoiding the things we don’t.

If we hate sales, we’ll let the customer control the entire buying process.

If we hate networking, we’ll wait around for the phone to ring.

The trouble is, as a business owner, you can’t wait for things to happen, or you won’t be in business for very long. You have to control the situation, and make sure everything comes to you.

So my question to you is, “what have you done in the past week?”

To find out, take out a notebook and record everything you do this coming week. Don’t leave anything out. Even if it seems trivial, write it down. You may find things like:

answering email – 30 minutes
shopping for camera equipment – 60 minutes
surfing websites – 60 minutes
photoshopping sample photographs – 50 minutes
talking on phone – 45 minutes
buying office supplies – 50 minutes
and so on

Now that you have your list, what does it say about your business? Are you doing things to grow your business, or just plain busy work?

While you do have to spend time on the above mentioned items, if your entire week looks like that, you’re not accomplishing goals that will grow your business. You should have things like:

networking function – 90 minutes
mailing postcards – 45 minutes
cold calling – 30 minutes
trade show booth – 1 day

Most of your time should be devoted to revenue earning tasks – or your business will no longer exist in a mere few months.

Now that you’ve seen what you’ve been doing with your week, try and write goals for the following week. Change your tasks to revenue tasks – and stick with it. Your business will thank you.

Filed Under: Blog, Start A Photo Business

Seven Figures? I’m still struggling with Six Figures

by Virtual Photography Leave a Comment

You open up your email and several come in with the phrase “zero to seven figures in less than a year.”

That would be great. But what if you’ve been struggling to make six figures? Since the average photographer makes just above $50,000 per year, making the leap to seven figures may be a bit of a stretch for most photographers.

Everything in life is in logical sequence. You have to crawl before you walk. You have to walk before you run.

If you’re earning a salary from a job, you have to understand how to turn your “job” mentality into an entrepreneurial mentality. You have to know how to run a business and bring in the same income as your previous “job”.

Then when you achieve your old salary level, it’s time to move to a Six Figure level. Only when you achieve each of these steps is it even feasible to see the seven figure level in sight.

We started our photography studio while we both held full time jobs. Neither of us came from entrepreneurial families, so we learned from mentors around us. Andrew made the break first after being downsized three times in three years. My break was more difficult because I held a guaranteed paycheck with benefits.

We were definitely at the average income level when I quit my position. Yet we doubled and tripled our profits again and again because we were both working full time on our photography – and we learned from the best.

You can’t do it alone. You have to take cues from others. Guidance is the only way to build your business quickly, and to turn it into the business of your dreams.

Filed Under: Blog, Six Figure Photographer Tagged With: entrepreneur, Six Figure Photographer

Contract for Photography

by Virtual Photography Leave a Comment

When we first started our business, we kept everything simple. Not because we chose to do it that way – we simply didn’t know.

Over the years you learn. A client holds you to a clause in your contract, you learn and change it.

When we first started with weddings, we had nothing in our contract about multiple photographers. After one wedding where there were dozens of family members trying to take pictures, we made a change. Because we couldn’t get one family photograph without someone staring at another photographer, and what usually took 30 minutes ended up well over 60 minutes, we added a posing fee if we were continually interrupted during posed images. We explained it to our bride’s and groom’s, and never had an issue from that point on.

Another addition – an Internet option. Having a model release that also includes the option of placing a clients images online was a big necessity – especially because we would put up to 100 images from every wedding into our gallery. In all our years of wedding photography, we only had one couple opt out of putting their images online. We never had an issue because we covered it during the contract.

Other things to include:

Clients information, names, addresses, phone numbers, email
Description of service, inclusions, time
Place for signature and date – if it’s a multi page document, sign/initial all pages
Payment policies, including how long prices will remain the same. If you book a wedding a year in advance, you don’t want to have to hold your prices steady for several years. 90 days after the first viewing of the images is sufficient.
Copyrights and usage rights. What do you release to your client? What do they have rights to do with your images? Make it clear.

Filed Under: Blog, Production

Photoshop – Create an Action and Drop Shadow

by Virtual Photography Leave a Comment

Creating an action will save you huge amounts of time in your photography updates. We created a simple movie that shows how easy it is to create an action in Adobe Photoshop where we add a drop shadow to an image. The action can be used many times.

View the video

Filed Under: Blog, Photoshop Tagged With: Adobe Photoshop, Photoshop Actions, Tutorials

Don’t Waste Your Time

by Virtual Photography 1 Comment

The client comes in for a portrait. A mom, dad, two kids under the age of 4, and a dog.

After a lot of work, you end up taking 100 digital images between your studio and your outside location. The client will be back in a week to look at the images – time to get busy.

You load the 100 images onto your computer, and start processing. After going through all 100, you narrow it down to 65 great images that you will be showing your clients.

Some you enhance. Some you retouch. Some you turn into black and white. And by the time you’re through, you’ve spent over 6 hours with this clients files.

And they haven’t even seen them yet.

It’s time well spent if they purchase several thousand dollars worth of images. But what if they buy a $250 package? You’re down to a very low fee.

There are many ways to get around photoshoping your clients files before they see them.

1. Highly Recommend: Don’t let your clients leave and come back at a later time. Immediately after the shoot bring them into a sales room and sell immediately.

2. Have samples of what you can do, but don’t adjust every image before the client buys.

3. Have macros available in Photoshop that can do some of the manipulation at the touch of a button.

Where is your time best spent? On work that has actually made you money – or on the hopes of a little income?

I guess it depends on how big you want your business to be.

Filed Under: Blog, Business

Write For Virtual

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

Want to see your name and your photography on VirtualPhotographyStudio?

Our goal is to help the amateur photographer begin making money, and help the professional photographer grow into a Six Figure income level, all by becoming better at the business side of photography.

Do you have talents as a professional photographer that would interest our readers?
Can you help any level of photographer increase their skills and knowledge, and become better at making money with their photography?

If so, we would love to feature one or more of your ideas here on the pages of VirtualPhotographyStudio.

What We Are Looking For

How To tips and strategies on building a stronger, more profitable business. Can be at any level [amateur, intermediate or advanced]; just show us what you did and how it worked for you [would love photographs included to showcase your ideas.]
Do you use PhotoShop successfully in your studio? Create a post showing us the original image, the final image, and screen shots or video of what you did in PhotoShop to accomplish the final results.
How do you create perfect album pages for your clients? Give us a design tip of how to photograph specifically for page development.
Show us how you package your products for presentation to your clients – what makes them say WOW.
Have a marketing brochure or mailer that pulled in the clients? Let’s see it. How did it work for you?
Have a great studio set up? Whether at home, in a commercial location, or a great coffee chop setup, we would love to see the photos and know how you’ve made it work for you.

We’d love to include your tip on our site. Tip must be at least 300 words in length, and include images to support your tip (if appropriate). All work must be original, and you acknowledge that we may post it indefinitely on our site for others to enjoy.

If you are willing to share your talents, we’ll post your entry to our site, and give you a full credit byline with a link back to your site, blog, Flickr, etc, in return for the rights to use your information on our blog.

NOTE: Submitting your ideas to VirtualPhotographyStudio does not guarantee inclusion on our site. We receive many different posts each day, and simply do not have the resources to include them all. We also look for the suitability of the content submitted, and make sure the post meets our guidelines and has a common interest among our readers. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us first and we’ll let you know if we can use it.

Our goal is to help the photography industry grow in professionalism, and along the way help photographers make a healthy living doing what they love.

Filed Under: Blog, Business

New Projector For Portable Sales

by Virtual Photography Leave a Comment

If you are one of my Six Figure Photographers or are in my Photography Money Club, you’ve discovered the best way to increase your sales – Projection.

If you go on location, and sell to your clients in their homes, you may want to check out the newest addition to the projector world.

The Mint V10 Projector is small in size, 125x55x23mm, yet projects up to a 50 inch image size. Perfect for tucking into your laptop case, and bringing it with you into the field.

Filed Under: Blog, Studio Equipment Tagged With: mint v10 projector, photography money club, projection, Six Figure Photographer