3 Quick Tips For a Better Business Portrait

There is no magic bullet when it comes to marketing your business. A culmination of many efforts is what turns a prospect into a client. A business portrait should be one of the many parts of your business's marketing and is one of the easiest and fastest way you can connect with your client base before ever speaking to them. Here's how you prepare:

1) Know your brand. Your business portrait should have the same overall feel and mood as the brand of your business. For example, many lawyers often prefer to convey a confident and solemn expression that conveys strength, dignity and knowledge. This helps them convey the right image for their prospects to let them know that they are right for the job. A pediatric dentist, on the other hand, might prefer an overall happy and approachable expression to attract parents that will trust them with their children. Tell your photographer what your business conveys and how you want your portrait to match.

2) It can be more than just a headshot. A quality headshot might be all you require but ask your photographer if other options are available. Your photographer might be skilled in environmental portraiture that will showcase you within your business setting, for example. Remember, a quality image is a great thing to have of yourself but a quality image that is unique can benefit your business even more. Just by doing something a little out of the norm will help you standout from your competition. Look up realtors websites in your area and just browse at the portraits of each agent. Many will be on a plain blue background but you might come across one that is taken outdoors in front of a home or in an office. Do what you can to be memorable. Your portrait is a good start at doing just that!

3) It's not going to hurt. Not everyone enjoys having their portrait created. Find a photographer you are comfortable speaking to as well as a photographer you enjoy the work of. You'll feel better about the entire experience if you are at ease and the end result will certainly show a more natural expression. Your photographer will have experience with speaking to many different people and will take great effort in getting to know you and learning about your business to best suit your needs. If your photographer makes no effort to do this, you might be better off looking somewhere else.

T. Nathan Grant has been a professional photographer for over 9 years and owns TNG Photography in Las Vegas, NV. He specializes in creating portraits of families, children, engagements, eagle scouts, business portraits, newborns, special events. You can see his gallery of portrait work at http://www.tngphoto.com/ and his high school senior work at http://www.tngseniors.com/

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Starting a Business in Wedding Photography

Becoming a Professional Wedding Photographer

Creating a successful wedding photography business is a lot of hard work but doesn't come without its rewards. Just because you can take a good picture doesn't mean that you are ready to start your own wedding photography business. There are many stages involved in building a successful wedding photography business. Believing in yourself and your abilities as a photographer is essential in starting your new business in wedding photography.

Some things to consider when starting out. What makes your images unique, for example, are your images more of a photojournalistic style capturing candid moments, and working in all natural light? or do you enjoy working with off camera flash in a studio like setting. Always be true to yourself, find your own creative style. If you perfect your skills in a certain style of photography you're passionate about this is the best way to building confidence in yourself. Practice on friends and family, but don't take their word for how good your work is as naturally they are going to be bias. The average customer you will get as a wedding photographer is going to be more critical about your work.

You might be wondering how to get exposure out in the field? You currently have no portfolio to show potential clients, and no experience dealing with new clients. From my experience, one of the best ways to start out in the Wedding Photography business and start building your portfolio is to find work as an assistant or second shooter for an already established photographer or studio. This is the best way gain confidence, and get first hand experience not just for producing some great images, but also customer service and learn how to direct a shoot. Even at this early stage you should always carry a backup camera.

I wouldn't recommend taking on a friends wedding as the main photographer, this is way too much of a responsibility, even if you think you are well prepared. Its their special day and shouldn't be time for you to practice wedding photography.

You need to also be critical of your photography. Know that you're good, but also know where there is room for improvement. Rather than trying to compete with a million other wedding photographers out there, set yourself a personal high standard. If your not at the level you need to be at, find a photographers work that you admire, research what makes them successful, understand the quality of work they have to offer and know whats involved in producing it. Forget about the rest, there are a lot of ordinary photographers out there too. Remember you need to aim high. Research what you need to get to that high level. You can never spend enough time researching new photographic methods and the latest equipment on the market. Always use your camera in manual mode, know your equipment like the back of your hand. This will give you the confidence and practical skill that you will need as a professional.

It is also of great importance to be proficient in post processing, spend plenty of time using Lightroom and photoshop, buy photography magazines, watch tutorials online, you can educate yourself, as everything you need for honing your photographic skills is online. I've always thought that if you do a course in photography, you are only ever going to be as good as the person that teaches you, their technique is not necessarily the best, teaching yourself builds more confidence, you are learning your own style not someone else's!

After gaining some experience as a second shooter, and you have your own portfolio, you might be thinking that your ready to begin your own business, remember not to don't rush into it. Try to save as much money as you can from your assisting work to go towards advertising your business. If you have enough work on as a paid second shooter you can think about advertising your business locally and online, and see what kind of response you get. If you have a good contact that you are assisting for that has plenty of work, I wouldn't recommend moving on to your own business until you are close to fully booked for a year.

When setting your prices an important factor is knowing your value. don't set your prices too low, people will second guess your quality, even if you do great work, they will perceive it differently. Of course don't charge too much either if you are just starting out, you don't want to lose clients because you're too expensive! I find smack bang in the middle is a good option. That way clients won't second guess your prices. If they like your work enough they normally have a set budget for their wedding photography, and they'll hire you. The average for photographic coverage with all images in high-resolution on a disk is $2500, this doesn't include an album, but with the disk they can print as many photos as they like for their own personal use, and perhaps create their own album.

Establish a relationship with a local print lab learn about the proper conversion of files from digital to print, get some test prints done and figure out what type of finish best displays your work. Make sure you have a logo, and business email, its these finishing touches that make a big difference in how you present your business.

Look into wedding album suppliers, and have some ideas for when a client requests an album, getting a sample album made up is a good option, you can take this or an iPad with you to show clients your portfolio.

When running your own wedding photography business, start locally. Pick an area and start advertising with local business linked to weddings. That includes:

Dress makers

Cake makers

limo drivers

wedding planners

wedding venues etc.

Get some quality business cards and brochures made up to give to them. A good idea is to offer a finders fee for any referrals. 10-20% is a good amount. This will mean that they will be actively promoting you by passing on your business cards, and brochures and recommending your work to new customers looking for photographers.

After registering your business, you should be promoting your own website online. A great way is doing some SEO - search engine optimisation, again, this takes a lot of time and research, but you will reap the rewards if you put the hard work in. There are great tools online that will scan your website for keywords, meta titles and tags, this is how people find your website. If you don't promote it online, you will not have a presence. People will never see your work. Pick only your best images to display online. Photomerchant.net offers some great web templates specific to a professional photographers needs with pages in HTML format which you need for optimising your site. Make sure you monitor your site online using google analytics and web master tools. If its not performing as well as you'd hoped, you can do tweak as necessary by doing more SEO.

There are plenty of wedding photography business listings online that are worthwhile to sign upto, a lot are free, and some can charge $100 or more per month, most of the time their reasoning behind charging that much money is because they get so many views per month. Check compete.com, this shows how popular their site is and then maybe you can possibly trial them for a month and see if you get any leads.

A very important aspect of being a wedding photographer is your customer service skill, always be on the ball and be very clear with your clients, don't wait to long to reply to their emails, and keep them unto date with whats happening by confirming their payments, and delivering contracts to them.

Its very fulfilling when you start your business from scratch. Your images should speak for themselves when it comes to marketing yourself, but with wedding photography producing great images is 50% and the other 50% is great customer service. If they loved working with you they are going to pass on the good word to their friends and family. Do your job well, and you will find most of your work is in referrals.

Melissa Fiene is a wedding photographer based in Sydney Australia. She produces high quality images, providing contemporary, and natural style wedding photography. To view her work please visit http://www.melissafiene.com/

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How To Avoid The Top 6 Mistakes In The Professional Photography Business

As something of an interesting experiment, I asked my Twitter followers to answer the question: "What are the top business errors by 'rookie' photographers?" Within just a few minutes I had several great responses, and thought they would make a great article.

It's one thing to be a great photographer, but very much another to be the owner of a successful photography business. In fact, I've seen far too many technically talented photographers suffer through difficult times, while observing others who seem less qualified sail right on by.

The main difference in these two outcomes lies in the photographer's understanding of the importance of business knowledge.

You're A Photography Business Owner - Not A Photographer

As I've said on plenty of previous occasions, it's not the most talented photographer who wins, but the best marketer and business-minded photographer.

What, then, are the 6 most common mistakes, at least according to my Twitter followers?

Here they are, in no particular order:

#1: Undercharging For Their Time And Talent

This is a huge mistake that many newbies make, usually because they join the industry as a serious amateur who's found the potential for earning money practicing what they already like to do. Not that there is anything wrong with amateurs turning professional - far from it.

The trouble is, most of them fail to realize that the moment they charge for their work, they've moved from amateur to professional. That shift also requires a change in thinking, especially when it comes to how they view the value of their photography.

If photographers would just stop at this point to examine the situation, and fully understand the implications of being a professional, I think the industry would have a lot less problems.

All it needs is a simple change in perspective - from amateur photographer to serious studio owner.

As a business owner, one of the 1st responsibilities is to fully realize the cost of keeping the business open, and what it costs just to pick up the camera for a job.

With these factors in mind, together with a realistic valuation of the photographer's time, added to the actual cost of sales of products sold, the photographer can calculate healthy prices that correctly value their work and time.

#2: Mistakes With Paid Advertising

I made the very same mistake when I started in business, much to my disappointment (and an empty bank account)! The advertising in question was the "Yellow Pages", and I believe I watched almost $3,600 disappear into thin air as a result. At the time, I didn't know any better, and thought I needed to be in the Yellow Pages just because that's what was expected. Besides, there were lots of other photographers in there, so it must be the proper thing to do, right?

Nope.

Other mistakes I made with paid advertising included certain internet directories and paid listings, none of which provided any leads, let alone clients.

If you're a recently new photographer, and you're considering paid advertising, then it pays to really take into account the target market of the advertising, how effective the reach is, the experiences of other photographers who have taken part in it etc. If you're in any doubt, don't do it!

#3: Setting Prices Without Knowing Their COGS

This was alluded to in #1, but it's worth mentioning again here. Knowing your COGS (cost of goods sold) is absolutely critical to producing a price list that will sustain a healthy business. COGS includes all the direct costs necessary for making a sale, but not fixed costs such as internet, telephone, rent etc.

The one thing a lot of photographers omit from their COGS is their time, which is a huge mistake. Your time is your second most valuable asset (your attitude being number one), and you need to charge for it, even if it's only a small hourly rate.

Having determined the COGS for any given service, it's good practice to mark that up at least 3 times to produce a final retail price.

This is the point at which so many photographers get scared, and descend into the vicious cycle of constantly tinkering with their price list - especially if they're having a hard time with sales.

#4: Not Following A Business Plan

To begin with rookie photographers don't often spend much time to create a business plan and then work the plan.

Do YOU have a business plan? An actual written plan providing a frame of reference for your studio, defines your goals, and acts as a roadmap for success?

I'm willing to wager that the vast majority of photographers don't possess such a document. Often, this is because they don't like the job, don't know how to write one, are too busy, or lack clearly defined ideas about their goals.

Whatever the reason, if your business was an airplane, it would not have much chance of reaching its destination without a flight plan, would it?

A business plan need not be complicated! It's only for you, to keep you on track, so it doesn't have to be produced as though you're a major corporation.

Simplicity means clarity - and the greater the chance you'll adhere to it!

#5: Working For Free

This is an interesting one, and encompasses a subject I see quite often in the many online photography groups: The idea of photographing for free (or almost free) in the hopes of gaining exposure.

You can't be in the photography business for very long without someone asking you to photograph something (often an event of some kind) for a very low rate on the promise it will give you great exposure or the prospect of more, higher-paid, work down the line.

This is an insult to the photographer, and does a lot of damage to the photography industry. The promised "exposure" more often than not turns out to be non-existent, and further work usually entails poor compensation at best.

Consider the concepts presented in items #1 and #3 when making your decision about these types of jobs, and you can't go too far wrong.

My advice to new photographers is to not fall into the trap of imagining that just because you're not experienced in the business that you can't ask for what you and your photography are worth.

#6: Imagining That It's Easy

I expect that most photographers working today will probably admit that they thought it would be easier than it turned out to be! Myself included!

The truth is, running a professional photography studio is not easy. Running any business is difficult, I don't care what it is. There certainly are no "get rich fast" business plans for photographers!

Perhaps the "easy" idea comes more from the photography side of things. After all, that part is a lot of fun, and we can be technically very good at it - it's what we are here to do, right?

Unfortunately, the clicking of the shutter only takes up 20% of our business efforts, and that's being generous! The other 80% is taken up by marketing, selling, social media, accounting, planning, studying, marketing (so exciting it's worth mentioning twice!)... etc.

Those business-related jobs are probably those we became photographers in order to avoid, but get out of them we can't! They are all essential and vital to our success, so we may as well get used to them.

What Would Be Your #7 Top Mistake?

Thank you to the Twitter followers who contributed to this research, and I do plan to try this experiment again sometime.

This is only 6 of the errors that many of us fall into, and I'm quite sure there are many more!

What other blunders would you add to the list? What would be your #7 mistake to warn rookie professional photographers about?

About The Author

Nigel Merrick is a professional photographer, blogger and business coach for other working photographers. Nigel's blog ( http://www.zenologue.com/ ) helps professional photographers find peace in their business, love from their clients, and happiness in their personal lives by clarifying their focus on business and marketing.

Original article