They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Whether you’re just starting out as a professional photographer or aspiring to be one, there’s very little that happens in this industry by itself. You’ve got to be proactive and you’ve got to watch out and protect your own interests, especially in terms of changing, which in this case means growing as an artist and a business person.

Here’s a prime example. So often I’ve heard photographers comment about images published in magazines. The usual comment is, “My images are better than that!” or my favorite, “I could have done that!”  Well, the point is they didn’t. Another photographer made the effort to get their images positioned so somebody at a magazine saw them and they got published.

And, one more example. We all read newspapers and magazines. There are always stories about local business people. There might be a picture in the paper of a local photographer interacting with the members of the community. Those pictures and stories don’t happen by accident either. Editors aren’t just driving by and jumping out of their cars looking for content. The story happened because the featured person made an effort with a publicity release, getting to know the staff at the local paper or being involved in the community.

So much of being a great artist and photographer is within your reach, but you have to take control of your own destiny. Kevin Kubota, Tony Corbell, Jerry Ghionis, Michelle Celentano, Doug Gordon, Lori Nordstrom, Catherine Hall, Michael Corsentino, Matthew Jordan Smith, just to name a few, haven’t become great photographers because they paid their dues and then waited for things to happen.  They chose a path and made the changes they needed to accomplish each goal along the way. They don’t compromise on quality at any level, in their images, with their gear or with their relationships.

Well, we’ve gone full circle, right back to Andy Warhol’s quote. Time will never change things as much as you can yourself!

This post might be almost two years old, but great ideas never age! The challenge is how to make yourself stand out, but don’t forget the basics first. If you don’t know what you’re doing with a camera in your hands, then all the marketing in the world can’t fix bad images! Concentrate on the quality of your work, making sure you’re never compromising and then focus on the marketing and the presentation.

Any photographer, good or bad, can get that first client. The challenge is to get the second and the referrals/additional clients along with repeat business later on. You want to be so good and do such a great job of exceeding expectations, your clients return to you for help over and over again.  This is a word of mouth business – don’t let your potential growth be stunted by your lack of practice and understanding of the basics!

Here are several different scenarios from Chris Fawkes, Lori Nordstrom, Bambi Cantrell and Kathleen Chuparkoff-Hawkins.  You may have seen a couple of these on Facebook already, but that doesn’t change the importance of what they’re saying.  All four photographers have some great experiences and backgrounds in marketing.  They know how to make noise when it counts the most!

You don’t have to lose the momentum, but it does take time and energy to stay focused. Here are some more ideas to add to your list of energy boosters!

• Get involved in your local guild, PPA chapter, etc. Whatever there is in your community that involves professional photographers getting together on a regular basis, be a part of it! You need the combined energy of other photographers dealing with some of the same challenges you’re facing.
• Start following a few different blogs from other photographers and educators in the industry. Obviously a few personal favorites are Photofocus and GoingPro, but check out David Ziser, Matthew Jordan Smith, Doug Gordon, Vincent Laforet, Bambi Cantrell and Kevin Kubota for a start.
• YouTube is an incredible resource and everyone seems to forget about it as an educational tool. Hit the search box on YouTube and type in the name of any industry icon. You’ll be surprised at what you might find!
• Check out local workshops in your area, focusing on programs to help you stay charged. Here are a few going on right now in different parts of the country.

Mackinaw 2011 Workshop:Put together by Greg Schrader, his workshops in the past have given participants a chance to learn, shoot and interact with each other. He’s got a great schedule lined up for this fall in October. One of the things I like best though is the opportunity to bring your spouse or an associate along for just $100 more.   From  HS Seniors, to an engagement couple to bridal, Greg and his wife Brandi, also heavily involved in the business, will cover it all.

Find Your Focus   Here’s a program put together by Texas photographer Chris Duncan and it includes the company of some incredible industry icons…It’s a chance to be inspired by Yosemite while in the company of Tony Corbell, Roger Daines, Jeffrey Woods, Joe Glyda, Chris Duncan and Trey Homan. Yosemite is incredible, but for me, I’d go just to hear Joe Glyda’s jokes!    

Turn the Key with JB and DeEtte Sallee together with Lori Nordstrom still has nine cities left and is definitely worth your time. They’re covering a little of everything hitting hardest on marketing, business, technique, even a little on some quick and easy pointers on album design. I spoke at their Columbus, Ohio program last Sunday and they had a good crowd of enthusiastic photographers plus sponsor tables staffed by OnOne, Album Epoca, WHCC and PreeVu.  

WPPI’s Road Trip - They hit the road starting yesterday in Long Beach, CA. Cities for this year’s tour include San Jose, Columbus, Chicago, Philly, Boston, Austin and New Orleans. Each stop on the tour will give you a chance to learn something new in marketing, business and technique, while at the same time help you build and expand your network! 

These are just the tip of the iceberg in great programming going on around the country. You don’t have to lose the momentum of that last great workshop you attended and, if you’re afraid of missing something, track events going on nationally through the Rangefinder Magazine calendar.     

Already in his late seventies, I once sat next to Don Blair in a seminar by Nick Vedros. Don never slowed down on taking notes as he kept repeating, “This guy is incredible!” And when asked what was the best photograph he’d ever taken his answer was simply, “I don’t know, I haven’t taken it yet!”

Photography is both a skill set and an artform. You never stop learning and there are new tools and techniques being created every day that only increase your ability to be a greater artist, but you have to take the steps to maintain the momentum!

Over the years I’ve watched him grow. At the same time I’ve watched DeEtte’s style and skills grow, then their family grew and along with more responsibilities came more creativity and the expansion of his network. He’s had the honor of being Dallas Wedding Photographer of the Year four times!

Well, it was time to talk him into doing a guest post, but here’s the irony. You can’t buff a turd! is one of my favorite expressions and goes back to a photographer on the lecture circuit I heard at least twenty years ago. She used the expression in reference to bad images and that was years before Photoshop! I still believe it’s true and by the end of this post, so does JB!

Sure, you can be a whiz kid in Photoshop, but if you get it right in the camera to start, you can put your time into being more creative, develop stronger marketing efforts and pay attention to building your business instead of cleaning up your mistakes. As JB points out, he can always train somebody to work on his images, but he can’t train somebody to see the world the way he sees it!

In the 8 years I have been in this wonderful industry, I have heard many speakers and industry leaders insist that the key to good photography is that it starts with a great image out of the camera hence the phrase “you can’t polish a turd!”  While I do agree to some extent I also remember the days when I was a very young photographer in high school. I could consistently take an under or over exposed negative and create something magical in the dark room!  In fact, I could do this so well that I was the first student to go All State in Football and Photography at the same time, in the history of my high school! 

While this many not impress you as a reader (nor did it impress the girls in my high school!) It did teach me a valuable lesson I have stood by all of these years, which is simply: I did not need to be good at everything to be successful in life, but I would need to be great at one thing and practice and build on the rest. 

I realized I was not the most technically proficient shooter at the time and I was not the most gifted at composing images in the camera or seeing the light.  However, I did have one gift bestowed on me and that was the gift of understanding post production!  I could do anything and everything in the darkroom and I soaked up all of the knowledge I could from books and photography school! 

When it came time to make the transition to digital and install Photoshop 5.5, I found I was even more creative and faster in turning out images!  I started to create actions and automated overlays and album templates that would make the back end of our business faster. Spending less time on the back end, I could practice and grow stronger as a photographer.  The more technically proficient a photographer I became, the simpler the photo finishing or “polishing” part of the job became as well! 

It took me some time to balance out my strengths and weaknesses as a professional photographer, but in just a few short years I had become a craftsman and could complete any assignment start to finish, no matter what the circumstances!  When DeEtte and I finally found that balance as photographers, the other things just lined up and our business started to grow and we became more successful. 

DeEtte, JB and Brinkley

People ask us all of the time how we have time to speak and host our own tours while running a growing business.  The answer is simple; we don’t waste time polishing turds anymore.  We get it right in the camera and focus our time on growing our business, but this does not happen overnight!    

Everyone starts somewhere, but we don’t all need to stay there for our entire careers!  Grow, learn from your mistakes and move on to bigger and better things!  I can hire anyone and train them how to do what I do in Photoshop, but I have never been able to train anyone to see the world the way I do!  JB Sallee

JB, DeEtte and Lori Nordstrom will be hitting the road together this July with their Turn the Key Tour. Use the discount code “Skip”  and the cost of the workshop drops from $119 to $59!  See you in Columbus, Ohio on August 7!

If you’ve taken one of Lori’s programs you know the only thing more impressive than her images is her enthusiasm and passion for photography.   Oops, there’s one more impressive quality – she’s a marketing machine, but all done with incredible common sense, utilizing one of the largest staffs in the photographic industry – her clients!   Check out the ideas she’s sharing in today’s blog on “No Cost Marketing”.

We are all marketing all of the time or at least we should be!  YOU are your business and why people choose to use your business over another.  Remember this when out and about.  Learn to recognize your target client and strike up a conversation.  This is powerful marketing!  There are many other things we can do to market our businesses that we may not be taking advantage of.

We all know that it takes more to gain a new client than it does to keep an existing client.  What are you doing to stay in touch and in front of your clients?  What things are you building into your workflow to keep your studio name “out there” and in front of the right people – people who already love you and your work?

Newsletter

Keep your newsletter to one or two great ideas.  If you are emailing it out, remember that people are very busy and don’t want to look through a bunch of fluff.  Keep the newsletter simple, with links to your blog or areas on your website if they want to read more.  

Blog

Blogs are a great way to get a bit more personal and let your clients know what’s going on in your world.  When you add a new client to your blog, be sure to send them a link and encourage their friends and family to take a peek.  This gets your client marketing for you!  We email our client a “blog card” with an image and link to the blog.  We encourage our clients to forward this to their friends, and many tell us they have sent it to their entire email database! 

Website

Take the blog card idea a step further and send your clients an email anytime you change your website and it includes one of their images.  Send them something designed, with your info on it and a link to your website telling them to check out their image.  Don’t forget to encourage them to forward to their friends!

Hand-Written Notes

A hand-written note is a lost art!  I know how I feel when someone writes a sweet note to me and it comes in the mail!  I especially always loved when my kids would get mail and watching them get so excited!  This led me to putting note writing right into my workflow.  Our clients get notes after the first phone call, after the session, after the design appointment (sale), and 3 weeks after they’ve had their completed order. 

Word of Mouth

George Silverman, who wrote The Secrets of Word-of Mouth Marketing said, “Word of mouth is the most powerful force in the marketplace, more powerful than salespeople, advertising, and all other marketing elements put together!”

What are you doing to encourage your clients to share their experience with you?  Plan a referral program and thank your clients for talking about you.  In our studio, clients get $50 in portrait credits towards their next session with us.  We mail them a thank you and gift card, and enter the information in Successware (our studio management software). The info is there the next time they call and we can thank them again.  Our clients also appreciate not having to keep track of their referrals.

During slow months, why not offer a double referral?  Send out a newsletter to your favorite clients, and let them know that anyone they refer between January 1 and March 30 (or whatever time is slow for you) will get twice the portrait credit!  

Press Print Products

I want press print products in my clients hands at every opportunity!  These items, whether they are announcements, thank you cards, play date cards, book marks – you name it – they are all powerful marketing tools in the hands of our clients!  For years I’ve considered Christmas my favorite marketing season, and the beauty is, my clients are doing the marketing for me!  

When a “mommy” comes in with her little people, we will get play date cards in her hands to hand out at her Mommy Club, church, pre-school, etc.  Our high school seniors all get cards designed with their images plus our studio info.  I use the “rep cards” from WHCC and the cost is just $12 for a set of 50.  For $12 I have the potential to reach 50 new clients! 

Many of these products I add on as a little surprise at no charge for our favorite clients.  Here are just a few ideas of print press items you can get in your clients hands and get them excited about marketing for you:

announcements                greeting cards

thank you cards                 gift tags

senior minis                       appointment cards

rep cards                            411 cards

play date cards                 update cards

moms calling cards          kids “business” card

save-the-dates                  book marks

Looking for more great ideas?  Check out Lori’s PhotoTalk Forum for more help and support.