I entered the field of photography and profession in 1978, worked as an assistant to a photographer for two years. While working as a photographic assistant at a very busy portrait commercial studio, there was an opportunity to learn some insuits and outs of a professional studio – things like scheduling sessions, making sure that the work was distributed on time, to ensure that payment was received on time.
My background in photography was very direct, and I have always been very target. I will go to Art School, get my degree, make great pictures, and rich – will become very rich. To support my golden ambition, I read Richard Sharbura’s book, “Shooting up to one million in my own way.” Young and naivete are amazing and dangerous things. At that time, we did not even have a web around the world to confuse us with nonsense. So if it was published with a clever cover in a real book, the 300+ page filled with ink and promises, and a clever marketing plan, was the idea, “It should be true! They would not publish it if it was not true if it was not true.” It is a matter of regret that it was a lot of nonsense.
So why is it that you will literally find hundreds of books with advice to make great pictures – all about toys you will need, or special techniques are considered? There are other people about how to use the elements of the composition, and still others are with thousands of pages, about the technical aspects of the film we were using (that can now be said about digital imaging, except that they now come as a tutorial on YouTube, which they are right more often).
I rarely saw, and still didn’t see much, how to run your photography business so that it is beneficial enough to earn a respectable income.
get Smart!
So, what will I do differently? Keep in mind that this is not just a separate world than in 1978 when I opened my first storefront studio – it is a separate universe – but some things remain stable.
1. I wish I had a strong background in business and finance. We have a child ourselves, and I did, when we think we can meet together, and be successful, just making beautiful imagination. Truth, compared to today when I entered the field, is that really beautiful pictures that are in remarkable works of self-expression have a small group of people who will appreciate them at the same level you do.
2. If you are going to invest in education, then manage that investment in marketing and your studio business.
3. The location is very important. I created a portrait work with a style that was distinctively mine at that time. The photographs I have made have won many professional awards at the national and international level – not only for my portrait styling, but also for my wedding photography and advertising work. And I sold it a lot, more than double the revenue of most of my size other studios in cities, but it seemed that at the end of the month there was always a lot of laboratory bill. This condition is now much better for photographers with digital. At that time, we had only films and paper, so we had to use a commercial laboratory for everything, and the laboratory bills were usually 20–25% of gross studio revenue. Now, the lab bill, when I have, is about 5-7% of my gross studio sales, so the picture per photo per photo is much better. However, now it seems that a photographic business on every corner is literally.
My mistake was to open my studio a small, and thus more limited, in the market. What I was doing today to do it, I would make sure that there was a large adequate population base to support it.
4. Never rent or lease studio space. Real Estate is the king! Never pay at a studio or commercial place where you are paying someone else’s mortgage. I did this for many years, paid for those buildings and showed nothing for the money spent now.
5. Be intelligent in the purchase of new equipment. It seems that the leading camera manufacturers come out with new camera body and lens several times a year, and are newly expensive. But we should ask ourselves a question: will it allow me to make a better picture, or will help me become more efficient in serving my customer? How many megapixels require a camera to make 24×30 prints which is fast and noise free? And, by the way, there are many times when an image is very fast. My observation is that “upgrade” in the latest and greatest canon, nicon, or Sony camera body will not have any visual effect on your prepared image, and I never had a customer what camera I was using.
6. Sell any device that has not been used in six months. Be rude here. If it has not been used in six months, and it is sitting in the cell somewhere, you will probably not use it and selling it will be more valuable to sell it.
Get your business lean, but should never be mean
7. Do not suffer what you are using to reduce advertising campaigns about how much better it is about new camera body and lens. Case in case: I have already used my canon cameras, which was a canon TLB, later TX. Therefore, when I took steps for digital, it was natural for me to live with what I knew and understood: Canon. Now I use a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon 6D as a backup. The old model canon 5 series DSLRS and EF series lenses can be purchased at reasonable prices by Canon recently jumped and from DSLR system to Mirrorless. So I have to ask myself: Will a new mirrorless camera body and lens allow me to serve my customers better? Will the new system enable me to be more profitable, and how long will I take to fix the expenditure? My camera has 24 MP resolution, and I can make 30×40-inch images that are clear crystals with very low noise. Will spending several thousand dollars more on the camera body will actually improve my image quality?
8. Set at least 10% separate of your profit to invest. The time will come, or at least it should be, when you are not able to do physically once. Cavit is going: You must stay for a long time to enjoy the fruit of your labor.
9. There are jobs that will be told to you that are not fun and not creative. However, those jobs are basic tasks, they often pay well, and they pay quickly. Examples will be high school prom and Little League teams. A manufacturer once I needed pictures of my natural gas engines for the instruction manual. I photographed him in the morning and there was a high school prom that night. It was a very beneficial day for me. Almost no “creativity” is included, but such jobs are like a license to print money!
10. Never let your work be stale for you. Even when the work is less than creative, there is an opportunity for yourself to do creative work, just because you want. I clearly remember, when I was active in PPA, a man who had been doing photography for many years, saying that he was going to retire and was never hoping to take the camera again again. I am equally excited today, whatever I can take in front of my camera, as I was, when I started my trek on the photon trail in 1978. Never lose happiness and enthusiasm.
