How to Grow your Photography Business

As a retired business manager and consultant for many known successful photographers, I am always asked how I can advise young talented photographers to start and grow their photography business to a full-time profession.  The photography industry has changed drastically over the past 20 years, and it has become one of the most competitive business environments of all professions.  There are
currently over 150,000 professional photographers in the U.S, with over 500,000 amateurs converting to part-time freelance photographers. The barriers to entry in the photography business are at the lowest it has ever been in history and the market share of  paid opportunities are shrinking everyday.  This growing trend has led many of the young talented photographers to stack away their career in this business, leaving the lost and precious talents to be drowned out and sidelined forever.  Many good, young talented photographers failed to succeed in the photography industry mainly for one reason; the lack of business skills.

In my years of consulting professional photographers, I find the most difficult challenge is convincing a full-time professional photographer to change their mindset from being a photographer to becoming a business person.  The days of having great talents of looking through a lens for the most majestic angles will not be enough to make you successful in this industry today.  It is just too competitive out there, it is certain that your work will be drowned out with the rest.  Like every photographer who carries a family of special lens in their arsenal for different types of shots, every professional photographer today absolutely needs to have the necessary business skills to survive and grow their business in this field.

Business Principal

The single most important business principal that every professional photographer needs to understand to survive in this industry is; “how to sell value”.  The “value” is the single greatest asset any professional photographer has and their main competitive advantage in this field.  Fortunately for most professional photographer, this “value” comes in different forms, but for most, it is easily found in their own unique style and artistic way of how a photograph is taken.  The challenge though for many professional photographers is how to extract this value to their market and eventually to their business.  Below are five fundamental basic business principals to build your own business skills and learn how to extract “the value” out of your talents and business.

1. Define your Market and Channel

Every business needs to define a target market and how you plan to reach this market.  In the photography business, this is the most important task and where 90% of your time and energy should be spent in the first two years of building your business.

When I ask many young photographers to define their target market, many respond back in very general terms such as, “I freelance.  I do wedding, portraits, children, landscape, and fashion”.  This is single most common mistake among young professional photographers starting their own business.  Every photographer first need to ask themselves, “What is my talent, or what is my value?”  Whether it’s capturing the emotions of a bride on her wedding day, or finding the most perfect angle of a mother’s maternity shoot, every photographer needs to understand what their talents are and how their work will separate them from the rest.  It is only when this is understood, that a photographer can make the decision on which markets to target and how they can position themselves among their competitors.  Remember the old saying, “A Jack of all trades, is a Master of none.”  Pick a target market and specialize your talents in this one specific area to brand your business.  If you do this correctly, you should be able to extract the most “value” out of your talents and put you in a position to succeed in this business.

Once a target market is defined, the next step is to understand how you will reach your market.  Most photographers lack the skill and understanding on how to reach their targeted market.  If you asked the most successful professional photographers in the industry what their best marketing channel is, almost every one of them would say that the single, greatest marketing channel in their photography business is referrals.  This is the road to the promise land.  Photographers need to be able to harvest and leverage as many of their past successful referrals as possible to build a chain of testimonials that act as marketing agents to exponentially grow their marketing channel and reach.  This is the key in any successful photography business.  Online websites such as FindPhotographers.net are great tools to be able to secure these referrals and testimonials to harvest them in one place and build out your own marketing channels for future clients.

The second best way to increase your marketing channel and reach is to learn to get local.  Photography is a local business, and every photographer needs to market with local partners.  Successful photographers get in front of their customers, and work with business partners in their community to leverage their marketing channel.  If your specialty and target market is high-end maternity photography, then by contacting and partnering up with other parallel small businesses like 3-D ultra-sound or paternal massages for would-be Moms, you can leverage both sides of your businesses together and increase your marketing channels many folds over.  Having the business skill sets to market yourself within your local community is absolutely necessary to build a successful photography business.

2. Set your Pricing Strategy

Once you are able to define and drive your target clientele to your business, the next critical business decision that needs to be made is your pricing strategy.  The most common mistake that photographers make is how they price their products and services.  Most photographers would lead you to believe that you should price high and above any amateur or else you will be undercutting your fellow professional photographers and leaving money on the table.  This could not be further from the truth and is absolutely wrong!

In order to set your pricing strategy, you need to understand your competitive landscape.  Who are your competitors and what is your “value”?   If all you have to offer is the quality of work of a part-time amateur shooting a wedding and you charge 2 times more, how many clients would you book based on this pricing strategy?  A professional photographer needs to first understand what “value” they are offering to their clientele and how this “value” is compared to other competitors in the industry.  The greater the “value”, the higher premium the photographer can charge on their products and services.  Understanding your value and your price competition is the best way to set a pricing strategy that works, and have confidence in the prices you provide to your clients.  This concept will determine if you are able to close the sale opportunity in the next principal.

3. Close your Sales Opportunity

I often asked professional photographers, what is the difference between marketing and sales?  Most photographers don’t know or believe it to be the same.  Simply put, marketing is the action to bring the customers to your business, while sales is the action of closing or booking the business.  These are two very separate principals, and it is very critical to understand and differentiate between the two.

I consulted with many photographers in which their business had failed because they lack any salesmanship skills.  These photographers have beautiful work and have a large clientele at their doorsteps looking to book with them, but lost the business due to their inability to close the sale.  With the competitive environment of this industry, photographers need to be aggressive and tenacious to close the sale.  The best way to close a booking is to focus on your “value” that you are offering to your potential client, as this is where you will excel and have the most competitive advantage over your competitor in the industry.  Carpe Diem, or seize the moment (day), is the mantra when it comes to closing a sale.  Be aggressive and strike it when it’s still hot.  Get out there and sell yourself!

Keep in mind that the pricing strategy and sales goes hand-to-hand, and if a client does not book, a determination needs to be made if the real issue is due to the pricing strategy or due to a lack of salesmanship skills.

4.  Operation and Execution

So you worked hard; defined your market, create your marketing channels, adjusted your pricing strategy, and brought customers to close and book.  The next step is your operation and execution of your business.  Operation and execution in the photography business comes down to solely resources.  All photography businesses start with either a one person operation or at most a two person operation.  Therefore, the use of your limited resources is critical to make your operation and execution in your business run smoothly.  As mentioned previously, in the first two years, most of the resources should be spent mainly on marketing and cultivating your clientele base through referrals and local channels.  Remember, you are a business person now and not a photographer, so most of your time will be spent in this area.  Between the second and third years, the resources of the business will start to drain quickly between marketing, sales and operation, and the decision of where to put resources will be critical in reaching the growth of a successful business.  At this stage, the business owner will need to hire or outsource the less critical daily tasks, and focus on where the “value” of the business is.  I can’t tell you how many photography businesses I seen failed at this stage due to the wrong allocation of resources.  Standard operation process or procedures (SOP) also needs to be put in place at this stage to maintain better efficiency and high quality of work needed to sustain the business over the long term.  Typically, a successfully photography business will take an average of 4-5 years to build up to the level of maturity of optimal performance and stability.

5. Create a Brand and Relationship with your Clientele

The last business principal is to create a brand out of your work and business.  This is the ultimate competitive advantage to separate your business in this marketplace.  By cultivating relationships with your clients, and branding your business name, you create an identity for your business that can’t be replicated by any of your competitors.  Your “value” that you push in the beginning will now be a part of your brand.

It is really only at this stage that you can you tell yourself that you are now a professional photographer, or even better, a successful business person.




Source: http://www.dpreview.com/articles/0193500664/how-to-grow-your-photography-business
Reposted: 24th March 2015

Art for the talentless: Photography as a growing trend

Regardless of the state of the economy, and regardless of how many times the word recession is thrown around, it seems that many of us are happy to go on living our lives oblivious to the economic situation we find ourselves in.

At least, that’s the impression we get when we look around and see so many students of all ages and backgrounds with brand new cameras in their hands. These days, pretty much everyone owns a camera, and those who do often like to think of themselves as photographers. In the olden days, cameras were big old clumsy things on tripods that almost required a BSc to use; they had a cloth you had to hide under, a 20 minute preparation time, and at least a few days would have to pass before you finally saw the result of your effort. That is, if you hadn’t accidentally blurred it or left half of the subject out. So yes, in those days if you had a camera then the odds were in favour of you being an actual photographer.

Even in more recent years, cameras still seemed to require a knowledge about depth of field, f-stops and shutter speeds, careful composition and the rule of thirds, more than an ability to simply point and shoot. You had to go out and buy film and then pay to have it developed , which incidentally, for those of you not young enough to remember, cost a fortune. You had 24 or 36 chances per roll, and you faced the trade-off between black and white or colour, slides or 35mm prints, and a serious pondering over ASA values. But these days a digital single-lens reflex camera, or DSLR, is a camera that is larger and in many cases heavier than the much cheaper and more widespread compact cameras with electronic viewfinders - able to take amazing shots with little more from the owner than the basic ability to press a button. And with the increase in popularity of both the DSLR camera and compact cameras, photography seems to have become a totally banal process.

In fact, some could go as far as to say that photography is - for the most part - art for the utterly talentless.  If you can’t sing, can’t paint and don’t have the patience/time/talent to learn an instrument, do some crafting or shape some clay, then you can always buy a camera. Because to many, that’s what it is: It’s art for the artistically challenged.

We could even take it a step further and call it “visual karaoke”; processes whereby one takes nature, or something someone else has put more time, effort, and skill into,  and tries to pass it off as being their own merit simply by putting uploading it to Flickr with the words “JP Photography” on it. Upcoming “photographers” beware: this is a very important step in any photographer’s career. A rudimentary knowledge of Photoshop is vital, not only for the important contrast adjustments, colour-popping, and other such effects, but most importantly for the addition of the author’s initials and the word “Photography”. Nothing else serves so well as instant validation to the photographer, as the branding of the image with the word Photography. Incidentally, Photoshop is an extraordinarily expensive programme which everyone seems to own, but no one seems to have paid for.

So thanks to sites such as Deviantart, RedBubble, and most popularly, Flickr, it is virtually impossible to be on the internet without running into thousands of shots of sunsets, graffiti, graves, and rings on books casting heart-shaped shadows, alongside macro shots (close-ups) of everything from Converse trainers and stationary, stripy socks and eyes, to daisies, kittens and ladybirds, each branded with the words “XYZ Photography”.

And all this without a single mention of the MySpace generation, the camera-hoards of boys and girls in with their camera phones, revealing bird’s-eye views, and thousands of grainy flash-in-the-mirror pouting selfportraits. They’re in their millions, they’re in our computers, and they’re taking up our web-space.

Source: http://megapi.blogspot.com/2013/01/art-for-talentless-photography-as.html
Reposted: 23rd March 2015

Its all about Ireland! - Part 2

Windgates — Greystones, Wicklow, Ireland

The Dark Hedges — Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Skellig Michael — Kerry, Ireland

Sandymount Strand — Dublin, Ireland

Sandycove — Dublin, Ireland

Ringsend, Dublin, Ireland

Its all about Ireland!

Northern Lights at Malin Head — Ardmalin, Donegal, Ireland

Neolithic Mounds at Knowth — Slane, Meath, Ireland

Navan Fort — Armagh, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Minnowburn, National Trust Site — Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Marble Arch Caves — Femanagh, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Lurgan Park — Craigavon, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

The Beauty of Ireland - Part 2!

Christ Church Cathedral — Phibsborough, Dublin, Ireland

Giant’s Ring — Drumbeg, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Ha’penny Bridge — Dublin, Ireland

Inishowen Lighthouse — Greencastle, Donegal, Ireland

Killarney Park — Killarney, Ireland

Kleiner Panda at Fota Wildlife Park — Passage West, Cork, Ireland

Liffey River, after heavy rainfall — Dublin, Ireland

Nikon VS Canon Which To Buy: The ULTIMATE Battle:

Nikon VS Canon the Ultimate battle to decide which one you should buy. This is always the question that fills my inbox, “Which camera is better, Nikon or Canon?”. I decided to put together a video that discusses all the FULL Frame models against their counterparts on both sides.

I want to point out that this time around it’s just Nikon and Canon and in the future there will be other brands added to the battle.

The goal with this video is to put the cameras head to head and give you the pros and cons of each. It is up to you to decide which one is for you or not for you. I know this is not an easy decision so I hope this video helps you decide.

When you take a look at the current lineups as of Dec 2nd 2014 when this video was recorded you will notice that Nikon’s is fresh and updated whereas Canon’s is a little long in the tooth. That is not saying that one is better it’s simply saying Nikon has updated their lineup more recently than Canon. Keep in mind this is a never ending cycle that one company will have newer cameras before the other.

Let’s start with the top of the line offerings. Nikon has the D4s which is already a second iteration of the D4 camera. Canon on the other side has the 1D X which is the first model of that series and is waiting to be updated. I have shot with both of these cameras and can honestly tell you I could own them both and get fantastic results with whichever I take out of the bag.

When I shot the 1D X I loved it’s speed and focus accuracy, I did not miss. Keep in mind that a lot of this comes down to the lenses you put in front of the body. Glass, glass, glass, glass, glass. Put crap in front of your camera and you may end up with crappy results.

I love my D4s, the feel of the body, the speed of the camera, the quality of the images I capture. It’s built so well and is my go to camera for almost all scenarios.

Which should you go with? The honest answer is either one, they are the most expensive DSLR’s offered and honestly they shouldn’t be your first camera.

One of the things that separates the Canon’s from the Nikon’s are their mounts. Canon abandoned their older mount in the later 80’s early 90’s which really pissed a lot of photographers off. What that means is that anyone with older lenses wouldn’t be able to use them on the newer cameras.

This was a very smart move because they knew they had to make a change in order to grow into the future. Nikon on the other hand has kept the same mount since the late 50s. That means all F mount lenses from that time period until today will mount on the camera. Sure this sounds like a good thing but at this point who cares if you can mount that crappy lenses from 1972 on your current DSLR. Lens tech has changed so much over the years that the majority of those old lenses get out shined even by kit lenses.

What many people are not aware of is that Nikon can not produce the F1.2 lenses like Canon can. Nikon’s mount simply wont allow for it to make auto focus lenses similar to Canon’s 85 F1.2 and 50 F1.2. You have to take this into consideration when you are searching out a camera. If you are a prime shooter looking for that type of lens the Canon system may be the best place for you to start.

Now that we have that out of the way let’s look at the next step down. On the Nikon side you have the D810 which again is a second iteration and on the Canon side you have the 5D Mark III. The 5D Mark III is one of the most well rounded cameras ever made. It is almost perfect for any type of photography from Weddings to Portraits to Sports, Concerts and more. It’s the standard for DSLR video and it’s probably going to be replaced in the first quarter of 2015.

The D810 on the flip side is a beast of a camera that spits out 36 megapixel 75 Meg each RAW files. It’s not as versatile as the 5D Mark III in certain situations but in others it really stands ahead. One of those places is for dynamic range and portraiture. But this is not a sports camera even though you could honestly use it for anything. Like I mentioned above Canon has those fantastic F1.2 options but Nikon has the 14-24 2.8.

There never is a clear cut way that says you should go Nikon or Canon, it still comes down to personal preference. I hope you are starting to see the theme here.

Standing alone as we go down the list of cameras is the Nikon D750. After reviewing this camera I have mentioned time and time again how if I was starting out today in Photography this would be the camera body I would choose. For the price and value that it brings it can not be touched on the Canon side just yet. That’s until Canon comes out with something that will compete with it of course.

As we close in on the entry level full frame offerings from both companies we have to add one cropped sensor to the equation, the Canon 7D Mark II. Nikon has the second iteration camera the D610 and Canon has a much older camera in the way of the 6D. Let me start of by saying the 6D is at a steal of a price right now, even lower than when this video was filmed.

Since the D610 is the second iteration camera in my option it stands head over heals above the 6D. The 6D on the other hand is still a great full frame camera on the Canon side. I enjoyed shooting it and got fantastic results in my review.

The reason I added the 7D Mark II to this list is it has so many full frame features yet it’s not a fill frame body. It’s also the only NEW Canon DSLR this year. It packs a huge punch in shooting and focusing speed as well as low light capability that is on par with some full frame cameras. It also clocks in at more expensive than the full frame Canon 6D.

This is the point where I tell you which you should buy correct? Wrong, I am not going to tell you which cameras you should buy and heres why. It all comes down to personal preference and what you will be shooting. You have to ask yourself all of those questions before deciding which way to go. But keep in mind that any photographer should be able to pick up any DSLR and capture fantastic results.

I hope you enjoyed that look at all the current FULL FRAME Dslr offerings +1 from Nikon and Canon.



Source: http://froknowsphoto.com/nikon-vs-canon/
Author: Jared Polin 
Reposted: 3rd March 2015

Canon vs Nikon: the DSLR comparison you’ve been waiting for!

Canon vs Nikon: which DSLR system is best? A question that has frustrated many of the world’s greatest philosophers and may even have troubled the UN… Our in-depth comparison examines each system’s cameras, lenses, key features and much more.

Who makes the best DSLRs, Canon or Nikon? It’s the impossible question. If it wasn’t, one of these giants of the camera industry would be out of business by now.

The fact is, Canon and Nikon offer some of the best cameras, lenses, flash systems and accessories – and they have done for years.

Whichever line you choose, you’re investing in an extensive, well-supported system that caters for everyone, from beginners to experts, from wedding photographers to wildlife pros.

Has that stopped forums descending into flame wars over whether Canon or Nikon is best? Has it nuts.

In fact, it’s quite common to find photographers swapping systems, moving from Canon to Nikon or from Nikon to Canon.

This is largely dependant on which manufacturer has just leapfrogged the other in technology, whether that’s a new lens the other lacks or a camera body that set the new benchmark in autofocus or high ISO performance.

Nikon user and Photoshop guru Scott Kelby’s switch to Canon has been widely publicised, but there have been plenty of others – British landscape pro, Adam Burton (Canon to Nikon) andwildlife photographer Andy Rouse (Canon to Nikon and back to Canon) to name but two.

Back in the real world, the majority of us can’t afford to dance between systems. We generally stay locked in for years. But that doesn’t mean we can’t look over the fence slightly enviously every now and then.

With that in mind, here’s our appraisal of how Canon and Nikon DSLR systems currently compare.

Canon vs Nikon: high-megapixel sensor
The Nikon D800 is a full-frame (FX format) DSLR that offers a market-leading 36.3 megapixel sensor. That’s a lot of resolution for the current street price of less than £2K. In the Canon system the same money – in fact, slightly more – buys you the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. But at ‘only’ 22.3 megapixels, the files it produces are considerably smaller.

There are plenty of rumours of a Canon high resolution DSLR to rival to the Nikon D800 being tested – often referred to as the Canon EOS 3D – but as yet nothing concrete.

Canon vs Nikon: vari-angle touchscreen LCD
Swivelling vari-angle LCD screens make it easier to compose shots at awkward angles and improves handling when shooting movies. Adding a touchscreen increases the convenience tenfold.

The Nikon D5000 benefited from a swivelling vari-angle monitor way back in 2009, followed by the D5100, D5200, D5300 and the D5500 in January 2015, which introduced touchscreen functionality to Nikon’s D5000-series.

Meanwhile, Canon introduced the first vari-angle screen to the EOS range in 2010’s EOS 60D, followed by the Canon EOS 600D in 2011.

However, the first DSLR to combine a vari-angle LCD and touchscreen technology was the Canon EOS 650D, released in 2012. The Canon EOS 650D’s successor, the 700D also features a vari-angle touch-sensitive screen, as does the 70D and the 100D.

Nikon has yet to embrace vari-angle touchscreens in its DSLR range. However, it has explored this option in its Nikon 1 compact system camera range, in the shape of the Nikon 1 V3.

Canon wins!

Canon vs Nikon: no anti-aliasing filter
The majority of digital cameras have an anti-aliasing or low-pass filter positioned in front of their imaging sensors. This filter is there to reduce the effect of moiré, the ‘shimmering’ lines or colour that are sometimes noticeable in surfaces with fine, repeating patterns – typically clothes and other material. The anti-aliasing filter reduces the effect by essentially softening the digital image.

The Nikon D800E – a special edition of the D800 released in 2012 – has a new type of filter that doesn’t have anti-aliasing properties. The Nikon D7100, D5300 and D3300 also have no low-pass filters.

This enables all four Nikon DSLRs to record sharper images. Any instances of moiré need to be addressed post-capture in imaging software.

The nearest Canon has come is with the release of the EOS 20Da and its successor, the EOS 60Da. These DSLRs are arguably the best for astrophotography as they include a modified low-pass filter that lets more infrared light through to the sensor, allowing the red colour of nebulae to be recorded.

Nikon wins!

Canon vs Nikon: hybrid autofocus
The majority of DSLRs use two types of autofocus: fast ‘phase detection’ AF for viewfinder shooting and a more accurate but very slow ‘contrast detection’ for Live View autofocus.

The two aren’t compatible as in order to activate Live View the mirror has to be locked up out of the way – and that means that no light can be diverted to the dedicated phase detection AF sensor.

Canon has addressed this problem with its hybrid autofocus system for Live View still and movie shooting. Found in all its entry-level DSLRs apart from the EOS 1200D, ‘Hybrid CMOS AF’ combines both systems – with phase detection AF embedded in the sensor to quickly put the focus in the zone before fine-tuning it with contrast detection.

The Canon 70D features a more advanced ‘Dual Pixel CMOS AF’ system. This enables 80% of the sensor area to be used for phase detection AF before reverting back to image recording when you take a picture. It’s with movie recording that this system excels, offering smooth, continuous autofocus.

Nikon’s hybrid AF system is currently restricted to its Nikon 1 series of compact system cameras.

Canon is the best choice, for now.

Canon vs Nikon: video
Although it wasn’t the first camera manufacturer to release a DSLR capable of shooting high definition video – Nikon scooped that honour when it announced the Nikon D90 in August 2008 – Canon was the first to market with a DSLR capable of recording 1080p Full HD video in the shape of the 5D Mark II.

The Canon 5D Mark II went on to dominate the indie filmmaking market, as well as being used to shoot footage for major Hollywood action movies such as Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger, Iron Man 2, and The Avengers.

Nikon is making inroads into the professional broadcast market, particularly following the launch of the D800. This Nikon ‘HD-SLR’ has found a home on the set of everything from Dexter to horror short Broken Night to new 24-hour TV station London Live.

In the right hands, both Canon and Nikon DSLRs are capable of capturing high-quality high-def footage. Both systems offer models with Full HD recording at a range of frame rates, manual exposure controls, jacks for stereo sound recording and headphone audio monitoring,

Canon is the first to come up with a convincing focus tracking system for video in the shape of Dual Pixel CMOS AF, and when combined with Canon’s compatible STM (Stepping Motor) lenses that have been designed specifically for videography, that autofocus is smooth and quiet.

So, overall you have to hand this one to Canon.

Canon vs Nikon: handling
It’s the subtle differences in handling between Canon and Nikon camera bodies that invariably have the biggest impact in helping you decide which system is right for you.

The most obvious difference comes in the mid-range ‘enthusiast’ DSLRs and the professional cameras.

Here, Canon opts for a large Quick Control Dial on the rear of the camera, combined with a command dial near the shutter release and, in the majority of cases, a multi-controller ‘nipple’ for quickly moving the active AF point.

Nikon’s DSLRs have two command dials – one on the front of the grip and one on the back, plus a multi-selector D-pad on the rear of the camera.

Nikon’s lens mounting, focusing, zooming and exposure compensation are all carried out in the opposite direction to Canon’s and it can take time to grow accustomed to this change in handling if you decide to jump ship to the ‘rival’ camera system.

Canon and Nikon are equal.

Source: http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2014/06/24/canon-vs-nikon-the-dslr-comparison-youve-been-waiting-for/

Author: Marcus Hawkins

Reposted: 2nd March 2015

The Beauty of Ireland!

Belfast Castle — Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Ballyduff, Waterford, Ireland

Baltimore, West Cork, Ireland

Bloody Bridge in the Mourne Mountains — Down, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Boat House on Rye River — Maynooth, Kildare, Ireland

Carlingford, Strandpromenade — Carlingford, Louth, Ireland

Carrick-a-Rede — Ballintoy, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom