Scott Kelby's WorldWide PhotoWalk

This week I want to invite everyone to participate in the Scott Kelby WorldWide Photo Walk.

Scott Kelby puts on this photowalk every year for the last few years and it’s basically a chance to get together with other photographers, walk around a downtown area and just shoot. It has a secondary purpose of raising money for The Springs of Hope Orphanage in Kenya.

The walk generally starts at 10am and lasts just 2 hours and then the photographers usually have lunch at a local restaurant or pub. I personally feel it’s a great opportunity to shoot and socialize with other photographers in my area and many of my photo club’s members are participating this year.

After the shoot, you can upload your best photo to the Photo Walk site and have it judged for possibly winning a prize and you can share all your images on the Walk’s Flickr page as well.

The walk in my area is lead by a local pro photographer in the Covington, GA area and is the only one really close to me as they only allow 50 photographers per group and the ATL one always fills up fast. Since the Covington group is getting to be fairly large as well I am contemplating signing up as a Walk Leader for next year.

It just a great way to socialize and raise money for a good cause as well. He only asks for a $1 donation and hopes to raise $50,000 this year to help the children in Kenya and I am sure you can probably use some of the shots for your class assignments.

You can find out more at Scott Kelby WorldWide Photowalk

Comments/Questions

Costing a Photography session for your Clients?

Good morning everyone.

Well what a month we have just had. I had a few weddings to shoot this past month and I have to say that the amount of time I spend on shooting for a wedding and the amount of time that I spend editing and delivering images to my client can be quite exhausting, and needless to say very time consuming.

This made me think about the expense that actually goes into costing a particular shoot for a client. Yes, I know we have Blinkbid and a few other tools, I use Quickbooks online to get all my invoicing and banking sorted out. But no matter which application you use it always boils down to how much are you willing to charge your customer so that you can get the job, yet at the same time make enough money to pay for your bills, feed the family, have enough for insurance, buy new equipment, fix old equipment, transport, mortgage, rent, etc... and the list goes on and on.

Now you look at the market place and the guy down the street is charging $59.95 to do a family portrait shoot. What are you going to do? How can you compete with people that are charging such a small amount to get clients? How do you compete in this type of market.

Well, I am talking from experience here when I say this; I am sure you are also gong to be going through similar torments and agony about how to charge your customers. "I cannot survive charging only $59.95 for a portrait session!"

Now take a deep breath and now breath out. You cannot survive in this industry if you try and compete with every single person that is trying to under-cut everyone else in the market. Before you know it you have more expenses than income and you are out of business. This is what I did in the beginning thinking that I could get quite a few clients quickly and make lots of money. It worked for a time but the sad thing was that now I was thought of in the market place as the cheap person and I found myself losing money at every turn.

I had to change my way of thinking. I had to work smarter and charge more to make my business work for me.  I am not saying it will work for everyone, but I make a small profit on every client and I can pay for all my expenses that are generated from a photograph session and I have a little profit over to invest back into my business and save for a rainy day. This is what I did.

Firstly, know what it costs to run your business! I used NPPA calculator to give me a rough idea about what my costs are per year and the amount of shoots that I actually do or would like to do make a living. Here you punch in your expenses for all the tools that you actually use in your business and the amount of days that you have available to shoot or get clients and it gives you

1. Your total annual expenses
2. Your weekly cost of doing business
3. Your overhead cost for each assignment

Number 3 is what I use the most. Just to shoot a 1 hour portrait session tells you the minimum amount you need to charge just to get out of bed. 

As an example, I punched in all my data and as a portrait and wedding photographer I wanted to be booked for 10 months of the year. 2 Months for holidays and vacation off with the family etc.. and then I used 5 days a week for weddings and booking portrait sessions. I think that is fair, but you can change your requirements based on how busy or how little you want to work. At 4 weeks per month and 5 days a week that gives me about 200 days of work. 

Now I used generic figures in the calculator so these are just examples. Remember to put your actual figures to get a more realistic number. So as you can see I have an overhead cost for each day of approximately $448.50 just to break even. 

Now if you take that figure and make your bookings based on these figures you can see that you might need to do 10 1/2 sessions @ $44.50 or you need one big paying client @ $448.50 to cover all your cost of sales. The point here is to actually see the amount of money that is required just to cover your waking up in the morning money.

So for me that would be 2 weddings a month and then quite a few portrait shoots, headshots and any other photography sessions tat I can book.

Well now that you know what your expenses are you can make a more informed decision about how much you need to charge your clients for their sessions.

Here is a quick example. Know what your daily expenses are, would you say that you may be able to realistically do only (5) 1 hour sessions a day? That leaves you with a cost overhead for each session of $89. Therefore the guy down the road running the $59.95 dollar deal has to make sure that he gets at least 10 clients a day just to make a living and make $15.45 profit. 

Now, he has not done any editing yet and I can vouch that he has not costed this into his schedule. So he is working at least 10hrs a day making only $154.50 profit. Do you think this is sustainable. What about editing time, time spent with family, sleeping etc.. I can say that sooner rather than later he is going to be going out of business. I tried this people and it is not sustainable. It sounds good on paper, but when life throws kids, shopping runs, cooking, school and just relaxing time in your path you soon realize that there is not enough time in the day to do everything. So you are going to have to work smarter rather than harder.

How about trying this. Charge $159.95, offer your clients more rather than less. What am I trying to say here. For $59.95 I am sure the client still has to buy their own prints and then they have to pay for shipping and packaging. I realized this early in the game. When clients get more value for money they tend to spend more.

So instead of discounting how about charging more, $159.95, you still have your $44.50 cost but now you add in some prints. I give them 5x7's, two 8x10's a wallet and maybe a (4) 4x6's. This additional cost is approximately $24. Out of this the customer pays for shipping and boutique packaging. (Now I look really professional when I deliver my photographs) so the cost to me is $12. 

Let's break it down:

• $159.95 1-hour session
• -$44.50 (cost of doing business)
• -$12  - additional incentives for charging more

You now land up with a profit of $103.45 for each session. You now have to do just 4.338 sessions per day and you still get your cost covered. This is what I call working smarter. You are offering the client better value for the money that they are spending. You are delivering a better quality product and most importantly you are making an impression building great customer relations.

Yes, it all sounds so easy, but it is not. It took me two years to get to a point where people knew me in my neighborhood. I did my marketing at my kids school, advertising on my car,  a sign outside my house and most importantly, word-of-mouth. I use all the free social media methods and I am constantly talking about my business. Remember the examples above are just that, examples. You have to build a business model that works for you based on your numbers. The business months cover the lean months, like this month and the weddings did for me. I have two months of vacation in December and January when the snow is thick up here in the North East so that has to be taken into consideration.

So in closing I would just like to say. Get a plan in action and don't worry to much about the guy down the street trying to under-cut everyone. Work your plan and your numbers. Stay profitable for every shoot and you will be able to survive in this business.

As always, if you have any questions or want additional information about what I did then please leave a comment below and I will definitely get back to you. 

As we go into the holiday season I wish you all the success and profitability that you deserve.

Denzil

Fall Season and Christmas Marketing

Hello Everyone.A happy Wednesday to you.

Now as we all start winding down from the Summer vacations and our month of giving back. It is really not a time to relax, but rather a good time to start ramping up your marketing for the coming season.

Most photographers normally make most of their incomes from the next 3 months. So it is not a time to recoup but take some extra NRG  and then push ahead.

Normally your marketing plans should have been drawn up a year in advance so that you have the entire year mapped out. This is usually decided upon by taking percentage of your annual income and using that money for your marketing campaign. Mine is roughly 5- 10% of total income.

I have a separate account for marketing expenses and then when planning my calendar I have this money available to spend.

Now if you do not have the funds or you are marketing as the money comes in, then it could be that you are not seeing the results that you would like. Why do I say this? Well from experience I have found that if you are not consistent then you have the tendency to lose momentum. Not everyone is looking for the same message at the same time. So by being consistent you can minimize your losses by spreading your marketing over a longer period of time focusing on a smaller amount of campaigns.

The free social media platforms work well. Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Instagram are daily methods of operation.This is where you have to post on a daily or weekly basis depending on your available time. However, you have to do it on a regular basis to actually see results.

You always have the option to pay for advertising. It is a personal choice, but I have found that you can use your personal circle of influence to generate quite a substantial income if you consistently mine the new opportunities that you encounter.

I use a lot of the free marketing videos and tutorials that I find from websites that I am subscribed to. One of them is from Sarah Petty of Joy of Marketing. There are great tutorials on her Youtube channel that can show you how to earn thousands of dollars.

Creativelive.com is also presenting their Photo Week conference starting Sep 18 - Sep 25th. It is all free and you will learn from the industry professionals how they find new customers and retain them.

So whatever your marketing plan is. Make sure that you are consistent and you are doing it on a regular basis. Don't spend any money if you have to until you have exhausted all your free options. Word of mouth is a great untapped secret that needs to be exploited and last but not least make sure that you get all your customer details so that you can start a marketing campaign using emails.

Try Mailchimp if you do not have any email marketing campaign and then you can always expand from there depending on your own business requirements.

I wish you all the best for the coming season and happy sales.

Denzil

Building Your Photography Site

 One of the big challenges you will face in your decision to become a professional photographer is building your business website. In order to better market yourself, you need to have one to showcase your work and have portfolios available for potential clients to view.

In this day and age, Social Media is king, it’s true, but without a proper website to go hand in hand with your Social Media efforts, you can be left out in the cold. When choosing your platform for hosting you photography site, you need to consider a few things.

1. Do they offer unlimited storage?
2. Do they offer unlimited bandwidth?
3. Do they have eCommerce capabilities?
4. Do they offer lab integration?
5. How much do they charge?
6. How do they stack up to the industry?

These 6 items are the main ones you should be concerned with when choosing your photography website platform for your new business. I am going to cover a few of them in this week’s post and the Pros and Cons.

SmugMug - SmugMug is without a doubt one of the big boys out there in the photography web hosting business. They have powerful servers and great uptime. They allow you unlimited storage and bandwidth, but only for the full one business accounts. They offer lab integration for selling prints without hassle and all the big labs are available. They offer price lists and you can make coupon codes for your clients. They also have the ability to create password protected or hidden galleries for your clients to view your work and they offer a wide selection of templates that you can customize. On the down side, SmugMug is not cheap at close to $400 per         year. The other big down side I saw as someone who used to use them is they also take a percentage of the money you make when you sell either prints or digital downloads.

Zenfolio - Zenfolio is similar to SmugMug, but to me their site looks a bit cheesy and needs a serious overhaul. They too offer pretty much all of the same features as SmugMug and like SmugMug, they cost close to $400 per year and take a percentage of the money you make when selling your work. Zenfolio offers an assortment of templates as well, but from what I have heard, they are harder to tweak and customize for non-web developers.

SquareSpace - SquareSpace is another of the heavy-weights when it comes to photography hosting, and they are extremely popular. They offer lots of customization that is easy to do and to my knowledge, unlimited bandwidth and storage as well. The downside I see to SquareSpace is they offer eCommerce, but it’s limited. I believe you can sell digital downloads easily, but they still do not offer lab integration and probably never will, and they cost as much as SmugMug and Zenfolio, both of which offer both digital and lab sales.

500px.com - 500px.com is a nice one as well, they offer unlimited uploads, storage and bandwidth if you are a paid member. Their plans are $25 and $75 per year, but they do take a good chunk of the profits to offset their cost. If you sell a Royalty-Free download, which is $250, set by them, you get $175 and they keep the other $75. The nice thing is, someone of their clients are major magazines and publishers, the downside of that is when you images sell, they will not tell you who bought them so you can see the final product.

WIX - WIX is a newer contender in this arena and they are free, but I am not sure if there is a catch as far as storage and bandwidth. I have a few friends that use them and like them, but they don’t offer any eCommerce at all, neither lab integration nor digital download sales. This one is a good option if you are short on funds and just need something to show clients to get started. Their templates are highly customizable and friends that I know that use them say they are easy to work with. Now WIX offers paid plans as well, and on the free ones, you have to put up with them running ads on your site.

This is just a small collection of photography site hosting providers, there is also FineArt America, and many others, but these 5 are some of the best known ones. When it comes to choosing your hosting provider you really need to do your research and compare them before pulling the trigger. I was using SmugMug for quite a while but didn’t like that they charge me monthly and take a portion of all of my sales, so I dropped them this week, as for me, I found a better option.

I personally already have a regular web hosting account with GoDaddy for my other personal sites and some non-profits I help out and I have moved my photography hosting to GoDaddy and built my new site using WordPress. WordPress is well known and been around for quite some time. I coupled that with a company that makes an awesome WordPress theme called Photocratic, that has eCommerce built in. Now, it’s not full blown yet, currently you can sell downloads or prints, but have to do the work yourself, but you don’t lose any of the money to them. Their theme is $59, one time purchase, on sale right now, down from $89. The theme is easy to install and customize and they offer awesome support as well. The plus side is they are rolling out the fully automated digital download eCommerce update next month and then following that up with FULL lab integration a couple months after that, so once both of those happen, I will be GOLDEN!

Now, I don’t recommend this option for everyone as WordPress and the theme system does require some coding abilities, but if you know someone well versed in WordPress, it might be the way to go. For me personally, I have been a developer for 35 years and am fluent in around 20 computer languages including HTML and PHP so the WordPress option was a no brainer for me.

Sorry this week’s post is so long, but this is both a large and important topic to cover. If you have any questions, please comment and I will do my best to answer them for you!

Comments/Questions

Need help? How do you find the right person???

First of all let me take a moment to thank everyone for checking on me when I elected to get really sick over the last few months! I'm almost afraid to say that I am finally out of the water but I think it is finally safe to say that!

As I had to put off many of the shoots that I had going on in the month of August including most of my charity shoots I'm holding off for a moment on talking about my charity shoot.  What I finally had to do was a bit different so I'd like to talk about it later in the month after a few people have posted their charity shoots. I also have something that has come from my shoot that I may want to talk about if something has 100% worked itself out by the time I write that post.

I did a fun Senior shoot in the end of July and it was the first that I used my Make up/Hair Stylist/ Stylist, Issy.. Several other photographers asked me how do you  find the right person to help you in this role that you can trust.

So that is what this Friday's Blog comes from.  It is all about choosing the right Assistant when you need to have one.  It was really a bit of a challenge that I had to take on until I found Issy.

                  Issy and I do some modeling test shots for lighting before my client arrived.

I am not going to start right away introducing you to Issy because she and I go way back and that is part of this story!  Let's just talk first in general about choosing help!

Step 1. - Know what you want in an assistant

This may seem a bit silly but do you know what you want an assistant for?  Is it for make up? If it is for make up do you want them to do do hair?  Do you just want someone to hold your reflector? Will they be shooting as a back up?

If you don't know what you need help with you can't pick the right person for the job!  So first sit down and write a list of what things you may need help with on a given shoot.

Step 2. - How much are you willing to pay and how will you pay them?

In the case with Issy, I require $100 fee for her upfront at the start of the shoot.  If I either state I have to have her for a shoot or someone elects to want add her on to the shoot she is paid up front by the client.

Will this be true of every shoot we do together.  No.  3/4 of the time if we are only doing Senior shoots, or modeling portfolio shoots yes.  As the shoots get more complicated her fee goes up and I add it into the cost of what I am shooting vs. the client seeing a particular number unless they want a fee break down.  

So it is important to know what you are willing to pay and how it will be paid before you start your shot.

Step 3. - Test your Assistants before you work with them.

You do not want to look bad with a client and your help can make you look that way.  You need to either screen your help well or test them before you are in a real shooting situation.  Asking other photographers for references is also a good option but you risk having to schedule your shoots around theirs if they use the same person as you.

Before using Issy I had tested out 3 or 4 different make up artists.

Important factors for me were as follows:

1. Timeliness

2. Friendliness / how well clients liked and trusted their decisions.

3. Attentive listening to my instructions as well as the client.

4. Products they used

5. Overall job quality.

Some of the other people I tested before Issy lacked some or all of these traits leaving a potential for disaster for me.  They are however, a good group who I can use as a back up if I know that Issy is already busy.  I just need to be aware of each of their flaws.

For me it only took 3 steps to know how I wanted to screen my MUA.  It could be less steps for you depending on the position you need help with it could be more depending on the job you have that you need help with.

In the case with the lovely Issy I have been working with Issy since she was 15 as a model. So I already knew many of these traits about her.  

After being frustrated with several people I tried I started paying attention to the fact Issy was always professional.  She was great at styling herself while we were shooting.  Her make up was always point on and she likes to change up her own look.

This first shoot was a test for Issy and she did brilliantly. 

                                2nd location after Issy touched up her make up.

 My client completely loved her. She did a great job on her hair and make up.  

                  Mobile Make Up Studio for on location shoot in this case was my car.  

She made her feel very comfortable.  She helped her pick out outfits that flattered her and even helped her with posing.  

Issy helps CJ learn how to stand in a flattering pose.

                             Issy makes last minute adjustments after straightening CJ's hair

I'm blessed to have found a great Make up Artist who will fill many roles for me while she is "just" doing make up. We are a good match.

Issy cheerfully making the last hair adjustments for this shoot.

Don't wait until the last second to go looking for the right person.  Start looking now for when you do need someone!

I look forward as always to here your thoughts and successes! 

Preparing Photographs for submission

Good morning everyone.

I know quite a few of you have been hard at work photographing your Giving Back to the Community projects. Well now as we start wrapping up all our shooting projects we have to think about getting those photographs into the market place.

Well, nobody is going to see them on your hard-drive so we have to get them developed and processed so that your peers can choose their favorites and we hopefully can choose some great photographs for our final project submissions.

This short blog post is all about where you can find additional resources to get your photographs developed.

The best place to find some great resources on how to use some of the applications that we use everyday would be from the Tutoring center in our Campus Common area.

Here you can find great tutorials on how to learn the applications that will become the foundation of your business in the future.

I also found a few paying websites that you can use to learn how some of the professionals in the business do it.

FREE

Hop on over to Creativelive for some really great videos. They offer free training for all their live courses and they cover a wide range of genre's and creative processes. 

Our own Lynda.com access can be found under our online library section of the campus common area. Just go to your online library and choose Photography icon. You will find it under the Industry Information section.

Another great site is Petapixel. They some of the best resources in the business and you are always getting some really good professional information. 

Paid

Then of course you can invest some additional money into your education and get some paid training. I use Kelbyone Training

There are so many different options to choose from so make sure you choose something that you are comfortable with.

We will be creating a special visual celebration of all the photographs that are chosen.It will be a selection of some of the best photographs from our Month of Giving Back and something that I know you will be proud to be a part of.

All final submission deadlines will be posted in the coming weeks so please make sure that you have all your photographs edited and ready for submission.

If you have any questions or thoughts then please leave a comment for me here and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Have a great week of shooting and editing and I will speak to you soon.

Denzil

#AIOvolunteer

Neutral-Density Filters

One of the most important filters you can buy for your camera is called a Neutral-Density filter or ND for short. The purpose of an ND filter is it allows you to shoot long exposures during daytime.

Why would you want to shoot a long exposure during the day? Well, long exposure during the day is how you make an image of say a waterfall look really cool, because you can make the water look as smooth as silk. You can also make clouds look “stretchy” in the sky, which can really make for beautiful images.

Long exposure of a waterfall, look at that silky water

How does an ND filter work? Well, can ND filter contains darkened glass, which reduces the amount of light getting into your camera. I personally have a Tiffen variable ND filter that can reduce the light into my camera by 2-10 stops. This is a significant amount of light blocking capability, and as a result, I can shoot long exposures in brighter light.

ND filters come in dandy when you want to shoot sunrise and sunset shots as well because sometimes during those parts of the day, the light in the sky can be too bright. Now I am sure you are thinking, “Why wouldn’t I just use my lenses narrowest aperture setting like F/20 or F/32, etc?” Well, you can somewhat accomplish this using aperture, but what if the light is too bright and you want a shallow depth of field, then an ND filter becomes very handy to have.

Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Savannah, GA taken with ND Filter

In addition to making a waterfall look silky, you can also use an ND filter to shoot say a lake, because with a body of water like this, you can make water that is rippling look smooth as glass by shooting with an ND filter and long exposure.

When buying an ND filter, don’t go on the super cheap side as those ND filters are usually of cheap construction an they can also cause color casting, etc. On the other hand, you don’t need to buy a $300 ND filter either. I personally bought my Tiffen on Amazon and it was around $90, and I have been very happy with it. If you want to experiment with a new style of photography, get an ND filter and then get out there and have some fun!

Comments/Questions