The Pro Photo Business Forum

Every professional photographer knows the importance of backup gear.  At least two cameras, two flashes, two lenses, etc.  And I submit that most professionals have way more gear than that.   However, the other night as we were preparing for a Wedding a thought came to me.

Let’s set a scenario right quick:  It’s Friday night, 5PM.  You’re getting your equipment together for tomorrow’s Wedding in which you need to arrive at 9AM.   You’ve cleaned your lenses, formatted your CF cards, verified time and location, and are working on charging batteries.   You take the batteries out of your cameras and insert one of them into its charger….. and nothing happens.  You chuckle to yourself as you remember you need to turn on the power-strip that the charger is connected to… except.. it’s already on.   Perplexed, you switch batteries on the charger with no avail. You come to the realization that your battery charger is no longer working.  You do have a back-up, right?

Now.. if you’ve purchased two similar cameras at retail, then you most likely have two identical chargers… regardless of the brand.   I chose not to sell my extra chargers because it made my task of charging all the batteries that much simpler.  But as I was looking at the charging table we have set up at the studio – I thought about how problematic it could be to not be able to charge batteries the night before a wedding or big event.

Fortunately, many cameras that accept battery grips have AA battery attachments that can be used to power the cameras.  But, that assumes that you know where that attachment is.  However, full body professional cameras rely on their brand specific batteries for power with no other (easy) alternatives.

I’ve attached an iPhone photo of my charging station that I’ve temporarily made for our studio.  Since we’re still settling in after a big move – this will be a little more permanent as soon as I find the appropriate place for it.  Until then – you can see the redundancy we have in battery charging, which allows us to recover from a problem should one ever occur.

One final note, we keep our chargers unplugged when not in use.  This saves on the minuscule bits of power they use when not actively charging – and also helps to prevent any stray power surges from wiping out our entire collection of chargers.

It may not seem important at first and I’m sure it doesn’t happen often – but small bits of preventative action can save you loads of stress down the road.

There is no such thing as time management. No one can manage time. There is only activity management.

Here is a great, but simple tip, on how to sort out all the things you have to do. It’s how I get so much done.

I have multiple to-do-lists, and each one has a ton of things on them. One list is for my studio, the other is for things I need to do for the community. I am on the board of the PPGH, so that most certainly gets a to-do-list. I have a to-do-list for my family needs (here’s my boy). And I even have a to-do-list for my intern. But there is one to-do-list that I like the most. This is my 24 hour to-do-list. This list only contains three items on it, and these items are taken from the other lists. Once an item goes on my 24 hour list it stays there until I have completed that item.

I start an item on that list, and I continue with that item until I have finished it, giving that item as much of my energy as I can. If I don’t finish it, it carries over until the next day. I don’t think about the things I have completed, and I don’t think about the other things I need to do. I focus on the activity at hand until it is done, and I give it my best energy.

To be great, just do single actions in a great way every day. Keep your 24 hour to-do-list small and manageable. Keep moving forward.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

There are three basic habits that you must do every day to maintain your cash flow.

1. Return all inquiries the day they come in.  Try to do this within two hours.
2. Return all phone messages.
3. Confirm all appointments for the next day.

Fail to do these simple things, and watch your cash flow have a hick-up. Complete these simple tasks daily, and watch magical opportunity fall at your feet.

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

Today’s tip is right out of my eBook “Actions You Can Take To Promote and Protect Your Studio“.

Format all of your compact flash cards before you leave your studio for a wedding.

Imagine you are photographing a wedding and it is late in the evening. You realize that the card you are shooting on is now full and needs to be switched out with another card. So you reach into your camera bag and pull out another Compact Flash card. You check to see if there are any images on the card, only to find the card is filled with images that you shot yesterday during a family portrait session. You know you have downloaded the family portraits already, and it is safe to erase them. You erase the card to make room for the images you are about to shoot.

It turns out, that you actually used that card for both the family portrait session AND earlier in the evening during the ceremony. Because you didn’t look through all the images on the card, you didn’t see the images you took earlier that evening. You just erased hundreds of images from your client’s wedding!

Make sure all of the memory cards you take to a wedding have been formatted before you leave for your wedding.

Add it to your checklist. Never erase a memory card at a wedding.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

Have you heard the news about ShootQ? They were bought out by Pictage.

I have never been a big Pictage fan. I have heard the same story from multiple people using Pictage.

The story I hear is that a photographer will post images of a wedding, and then the photographer will inform the client that the gallery has gone live. The client then passes the access information to their friends and family so they can view the images. To get into the gallery, the guests must give their contact information, ie email address.

I then understand that Pictage will contact the guests without the knowledge of the photographer to try and sell/promote photographic products. I don’t know about you, but I feel I should be the only one contacting my clients.

So, I am concerned with Pictage having access to my database of clients. Time will tell if this fear is valid.

If you are like me, I like to look back to the previous week and go over my completed to do lists. (I love crossing things off lists) Each Thursday, I will be listing things I have done the previous week that I feel were accomplishments. Let me encourage you to do the same. Create a new blog entry on your blog, listing 7 things you accomplished in the past week. Once you have completed your entry, come back here and link to it in comments. I’ll add your link within my post.

So, here we go.

1) Via email, I contacted The Mayor of Bellaire, Cindy Siegel, offering her a free executive portrait session and digital file.
2) I sent Cindy Siegel a portfolio of my executive portraiture via Fed Ex. It arrived the day after I sent her my intro email.
3) I began researching how to post my teleseminars on iTunes as free podcast for amateur photographers everywhere to enjoy.
4) One the same day I gave a teleseminar and I lectured to a class at Christine Tremoulet’s studio on the importance of competition prints.
5) I worked on my wedding price list to help stimulate sales. (That was an all day project)
6) I picked up a new book. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Franklin Covey. I even started a book club section in the forum. This month we are reading the afore mentioned title.
7) I sought help from my web designer, Leanne on marketing ideas for the forum. Sometimes, it is hard and frustrating when you are on the inside trying to look out. That’s when a fresh perspective from someone on the outside looking in is needed.

Make your own list of seven accomplishments on your own blog. Comment on this post with a link going back to your list.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed with ideas and thoughts about how to market, promote, organize, run, or otherwise manage your business?  Have you struggled to find a way to keep track of your thoughts or creative ideas because you forget about them?  If so, you may be a lot like me, and I’d like to share how I handle my overactive stream of consciousness thinking.

Several years ago, I was walking through an office store and I noticed that whiteboards were on sale.  At the time, I was a full-time student and saw the value of having my own whiteboard to work on while during homework and such.

So, fast forward a few years.  We move into our new studio last year and in December I decided to bring out the ‘ol whiteboard.  I cannot say enough about how much that little action of hanging a whiteboard has provided for us.

Here’s how I work it:
So, I’ll be sitting in my office working on something when I get an idea. Or, let’s say I’ve got something business related troubling me.  Or, I’m looking for a new idea for this years bridal shows.   I start by writing the subject of the exploration at the top of the whiteboard: whether it be a topic, or a question.  I then proceed to dump everything in my head onto that board.  I pace. I talk to myself. I write stuff on the board.  I have a 36″ x 48″ whiteboard to fill… so what do I do when it fills? Well, I take a picture of it.

One important note on the way my system works:  I never erase anything from the whiteboard until its been photographed. Including ideas that have been discounted.  I’ll indicate with an “x” or a strikethrough that its not a good idea. But, when I go back to review what we have discussed I want to be able to see the good ideas & the bad ones.  I have a visual memory of our discussion.

On my computer, I have a folder labeled “whiteboard” where I keep the pictures of our whiteboard sessions organized by date and subject. I have pulled them up and reviewed them several times, whenever a topic or discussion was rehashed.  Or, if I needed to simply reference something we had explored.

In the photograph I’ve included, the topic was: “What to we have & how are we using it?”  In other words, I wanted to explore how we were promoting our business,  where we could do better, and what was missing.  You can see that it is very stream of consciousness writing.  I scribble as I think.  Some of the things we use regularly, some we deemed to be ineffective.

All in all, the best thing about having a whiteboard is being able to explore concepts and new ideas from beginning to end and having a way to document them.  I call it “Whiteboard Marketing” because some of our greatest and most successful marketing ideas have been products of whiteboard thought sessions. It has saved us thousands in costly marketing errors and created thousands in the ability to see an idea all the way through.  I would encourage everyone to go forth and scribble!

Format all of your compact flash cards before you leave your studio for a wedding.  Imagine you are photographing a wedding and it is late in the evening. You realize that the card you are shooting on is now full and needs to be switched out with another card. So you reach into your camera bag and pull out another Compact Flash card. You check to see if there are any images on the card, only to find the card is filled with images that you shot yesterday during a family portrait session. You know you have downloaded the family portraits already, and it is safe to erase them. You erase the card to make room for the images you are about to shoot.

It turns out, that you actually used that card for both the family portrait session AND earlier in the evening during the ceremony. Because you didn’t look through all the images on the card, you didn’t see the images you took earlier that evening. You just erased hundreds of images from your client’s wedding!

Make sure all of the memory cards you take to a wedding have been formatted before you leave for your wedding.

Add it to your checklist. Never erase a memory card at a wedding.

By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers

I’ve been using ShootQ now for about two months, and I am absolutely hooked.

ShootQ is a tool made especially for photographers to manage their studio. It was created by photographers that know the difficulty of managing a studio while trying to concentrate on their core business of photography. It’s a web based system that works like a software program on a business computer. This system organizes work flow from the first client interest phone call all the way through until the customer receives the ordered photography and completes payment. It’s a great tool to have for any professional photographer and works very well for wedding events.

This studio management tool will be able to follow a client from their first phone call through their whole process of working with a particular photography studio. It allows the photographer to enter in information in one area instead of having interest books, appointment books, billing lists, and calendars to keep up with. ShootQ even sends reminders of when a customer needs to be billed which is an advantage from trying to remember or keep organized records on paper. A professional photographer can spend more of their time on what they do best, taking portraits of people.

The system gives reminders of what a photographer needs to do next, which is very helpful when trying to keep up with the wedding production and to keep the important client, the bride, content and feeling secure and informed.

With ShootQ, less time is spent on the administrative side.  Foe me, the studio management system acts as an extra employe. Furthermore, some photographers lose money by not billing on time or following up to receive earned payments. Cash flow is the name of the game, and ShootQ keeps me on track and allows me to see  a projected cash flow for the entire year.  My photography studio runs so smoothly using this tool that the photographer’s life will have more quality and their clients will feel as though they are working with a well managed business. Many photographers get work by way of word of mouth and having clients happy will prompt them to distribute a studio’s name.

Multiple members of The Pro Photo Business Forum are now using ShootQ, and we have begun a forum which will allow the sharing of custom workflows.  Come and join us!