Are you folks familiar with Garry Winogrand? If so, then great – this will make perfect sense. If not, click on the link at the end to a short story written by a gentleman who took a workshop with Garry. So, how does vague and seemingly unconnected start have anything to do with Wedding Photography? Good question…
While I was sitting in a workshop with a mentor of mine, Don Giannatti from Phoenix, AZ, he was telling us a story about a photographer named Garry Winogrand. What set Garry apart (among other things once you read some biographies) was that he never looked at images right away. Most of the time, he waited a year, sometimes two, before processing the film. His thought was that he should have no recollection of taking the image because it would cloud his vision on whether or not it was a “good” photograph.
Of course, there were always exceptions. So, it was noted that if Garry felt particularly excited about a photograph – or just wanted to see it right away – he would develop it immediately. However, as I understand it, the norm was that the film sat in their canisters for quite some time before ever being developed.
So, as a Wedding Photographer – you certainly cannot allow your images to sit there for a year before you look at them. You wouldn’t have any clients. But, what you can do is go back after that year and look through the wedding to see if anything jumps out at you. I discovered this by accident.
We are working on creating a few new sample albums for our studio – and one in particular was from a Wedding in June 2009. We had, for some reason, never made a sample album from it. We had a few favorites from that wedding that we had used in marketing and such, but I realized that I was looking at the images in an entirely different way because it had been a year since I had seen them.
What I realized was that as my tastes changed, and I had another year of education, photography, and experience behind me – I was able to see things in the photos that I hadn’t seen before. So, I encourage you to go back through your weddings – with a more experienced eye than you had before. Find some new photos – you can potentially enhance your portfolio without having to do too much work.
Stay tuned to the Pro Photo Business Forum – next week I’ll be posting a workflow article on keeping track of your favorite images that way they’re easily at hand for promotional purposes.
Thanks everyone for reading – below are some links referenced in the article.
A story about Garry Winogrand
Lighting Essentials by Don Giannatti
Atlanta Wedding Photographer, Matthew Lovell
Welcome to the first of an ongoing series of articles about albums for the professional photographer. In this article we will examine the album as a professional value added product. Not just being a material object, the album is another way for your client to have an emotional re-connection to his or her event or moment. Sure, photos will be framed and hung on the wall and there may be a DVD; but unlike these, the album is a treasure to be viewed at one’s own pace. The experience will be an amazing and visceral time. The reason for this impact is that an album is an emotional, artistic and unique platform for photo presentation. It will become a family treasure, a keepsake allowing your client the ability to relive the moment in a stylish and personal way. Most importantly, your client has the ability to bring it anywhere he or she goes. This is what we call mobile marketing.
These are your images that your client will be showing off to everyone she or he knows. With your studio logo and contact info placed strategically into the design on the last page, your work will receive attention and be known as yours by your client’s family, friends and acquaintances. This is a key feature and benefit of adding an album to any package or making it a hot item that your client cannot ignore. An album also allows all kinds of different marketing purposes by getting it to your vendors and by displaying it in the studio so it will highlight and showcase your business and your best images. Beyond marketing purposes, an album is another avenue for studio branding. With an album, you get another chance to show off your style to your potential and current clients. So by adding an album to your current package you are increasing the importance to your package and increasing your earning potential. By offering an album, in a package or a la carte, you are offering another product that helps you, as a professional photographer, stand above all the amateurs and prosumers trying to undercut your business. This is especially true when you offer an album product from a professional album company like Forbeyon.
Through product differentiation, an album is an exciting and unique value added product that allows your client another way to view his or her pictures and reconnect with his or her event or moment. The album is also a professional product that increases your earning potential, differentiates you from the prosumer market, heightens your studio branding, lets you stand out from the other photographers and can be your strongest marketing tool. See your studio take off in this changing economy by adding this wonderful product into your product and service lineup. Next time we will be talking about image selection and how it relates back to the album as a professional value added product.
Jay Michael Stevens
Forbeyon's Customer Care Manager
Forbeyon is the photographer's sole album destination
Find us at:
website: www.forbeyon.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/Forbeyon
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Forbeyon-Inc/92723162750
For many wedding photographers, selling parent albums can be a difficult task. Most customers today are satisfied with an online gallery and a DVD of their wedding day images. This makes the sale of a wedding album a luxury product on top of another luxury product. The sale of a parent album is then a sale of a luxury product, on top of a luxury product, on top of a luxury product.
As a wedding photographer, one of your jobs in selling your services is to continually suggest the sale of your products until you hear the word no. More often than not, the offering of a parent album is where you will hit the “No” barrier.
Appeal to the couple. Suggest that the purchase of a parent album for both sets of parents would be a great way to say, “Thanks for everything.” Offer the sale of the second parent album at a slight discount from the first.
Wedding photographers that have a physical sales room have an advantage. When the wedding is over and you have processed the client’s images, offer to show the results as a slide show at your studio, making sure to have both sets of parents attend. Have sample parent albums in clear view next to the slide show and sitting in front of the parents as they sit to view the slide show.
Making sure to acquire the physical and email addresses for both sets of parents at the time your clients reserve your services is essential to selling parent albums. If your clients have purchased an online gallery of their wedding day images, make sure to include a time sensitive discount for the purchase of a parent album when emailing the password to access their private online gallery. More than likely you will fail to make the sale if you email this time sensitive discount to the couple and not to the parents directly. Do not give up. Deliver the time sensitive discount again when mailing the parent DVDs directly to the parents.
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