The Best People Forum

RyanS

I'd like to heap praises on all of you for a moment. I went searching through the interwebz for new people forums to broaden my view. What I found was one uber-complaint-fest after another. Photographers complaining about losing business to "moms with wal-mart cameras." Lots of "venting" about customers who didn't understand what the photographer was trying to sell, and therefore must be rude. One person, who claimed to be a true professional, even called his customer a jerk when asked for prints without the studio logo on it. He was truly something, but not professional. I had to ask myself... do these "people" photographers even like people?

I don't plan on making money from photography. As a former small business owner I've already learned the tough lesson that if you can't meet and frequently exceed your customers needs you're going to be one miserable soul. Here, in this forum, I feel that there is a community that welcomes photographers at all levels. No one cares if I'm trying to make money or not. No one is telling me that I won't succeed in business because I am not doing _x_ to promote myself. In fact, there is no assumption made that I must be doing this to make money at all. I'm accepted at face value (sorry, I love puns).

Keep on grinnin' dgrin'ers. You are what makes this place great. If you feel the same way about dgrin as I do, add some cheese to this thread in celebration.

Gretchen

RyanS I agree with you. I am not a professional photographer, just trying to learn. When ever I have posted on this forum the responses were always helpful and the comments were never derogatory. So I always come here now to learn! This shot isn't "cheesey" more big red wax lippy! Happy Valentines day!

reyvee61

This is one of my favorite places to come on the internet and I find it amusing that you ask that question ("do people photographers even like people?") because I have a friend who makes their living off of wedding photography and portraits in general any they absolutely detest people...I find that to be a bit of an oxymoron....

Cowboydoug

Ryan... I hate you for NOT making $'s......lol

a semi Quote from Ryan's post.... (Customers didn't understand what the photographer was trying to sell)

***I am in the process of rebuilding my site today. My goal?... to make it an information superhighway... My take on SmugMugs price thingy is... it's not very user friendly... Let me Splain... I don't know about the rest of you but I love a good catalog or the weekly Sunday ads. You know, the ones with all the pretty pictures showing how good it will look in your home and it tells you all the features and benefits ... You know... like the weekly Walmart ad, or Best Buy or whatever you have in your neighborhood. ALL of them show the pretty products with PRICING right next to it... Oh man... I gotta have it... That is one thing we are lacking from Bay & Smug... BUT We can create our own ad space and our own weekly ads... and heck...it's almost free to do it... Did you know that Bay has all sorts of great info about different ways to create, arrange and hang photographs on our clients walls? They have a few pages just waiting to be linked into our sites... and it will look just like our own site. oh yeah!
We have to inform our clients... They have no idea of all our offerings and they certainly don't know all the lingo... Metal prints, thin wraps, Giclee's etc etc... I am putting together a page that is informative... I hope it looks like I see it in my tiny brain... i'll share it with you shortly...

For a number of years I taught people how to grow their businesses ... I have taken little studios that made 150K annually and helped them to triple or quadrupled that in about a year or year & half or so. I did it with a simple plan... " We Sell What We Show" I used to go into studios and pull all of their scrawny 5x7's, 8x10's and their whopping 16x20's off the walls... When I was done there was nothing smaller than a 24x24 on the walls and plenty of 30x40's & 40x60s.... and guess what happened? ...yup... They started selling lots of the biggies... smaller prints became GIFT PRINTS for friends and families... Same went for wedding stuff... bigger albums,,, nicer albums... etc...

TODAY... we are some lucky sons-O-guns I tell ya... we have so many cool products to SHARE with our clients... Ryan wrote... "The customers didn't understand what the photographer was trying to sell"...
I was looking at my own site and chatting it up with my wife about this very topic not 20 minutes before reading Ryan's post... "What are we selling... our clients need info... we need to direct them... Inform them... offer them cool things... point out advantages/features of some of our items... for instance... Some prints don't require framing... wow... what a huge savings this is to our clients... they can take the money they would have spent on framing and buy more stuff from us.... (see what I mean?) but even My current site is simply... here is my gallery... LOOK at all the pretty pictures... I even think it is weird to navigate... and Not once do I ask for the sell. What the hell is wrong with that? ...EVERYTHING...

On my new sight we will "ask for the sale"... I know a lot of people are afraid to do that. Funny, but my wife thinks it's wrong to ask for the sale... Yikes... if that were true I would be broke. We need to remember... People want to be sold... but... I think of it more as guiding them to make a decision that they will simply love to make... With that in mind I would like to challenge you all to a little dealio... Become an information superhighway... Get excited about your offerings... find more... in fact...let's start sharing... I don't care if you are a full time pro or a weekend warrior... I challenge you all to sell a photographic product this week that you have never sold before... it doesn't matter what it is or the cost... just do it!

With sharing in mind i will start us off with a product I am sure most of you have seen before... Full size laser cut-outs... and as a bonus...a new type of wall clingy thingies... (you're getting two cool items from me tonight all at no extra charge...lol) take a look here.... let me know what you think... BTW: I am in NO WAY associated with this group ... they don't even know I exist... but I think they have some cool stuff...
http://www.partystandups.com/

Anyway... are you getting excited?

RyanS

Cowboydoug, You're in St. George? I used to live on 700 S, by the high school. My father was a Las Vegas firefighter for 32 years. Graduated from Dixie High (the older one). Wait... thinking about high school makes me ill. I need to stop that. :puke

Running my non-photography related business, communication was the key to happy customers. I needed to frequently say "I want to make sure I understand you. Did you mean this...." You know what, some times I got it wrong. On occasion I got it really wrong. Either I would have charged my customers far too much or far too little. That extra feedback loop really helps close the gap.

Cowboydoug

RyanS wrote: »

Cowboydoug, You're in St. George? I used to live on 700 S, by the high school. My father was a Las Vegas firefighter for 32 years. Graduated from Dixie High (the older one). Wait... thinking about high school makes me ill. I need to stop that. :puke

Running my non-photography related business, communication was the key to happy customers. I needed to frequently say "I want to make sure I understand you. Did you mean this...." You know what, some times I got it wrong. On occasion I got it really wrong. Either I would have charged my customers far too much or far too little. That extra feedback loop really helps close the gap.

Wow... Small world. Do you know any Howard's ? Uncle Dayne was a Ff in Vegas for years... Lived in Ivins until he died 10 yrs ago... His son's... My cousins, are david, Dan & Doug ...

I'm a Vegas boy been here since 02... Traveled a lot because of my photography work... Been taking care of my mom who had cancer for last 3 yrs & really had little time to take pix until the last couple months. Now I'm just having fun taing crappy pictures...lol

Where are you living now.

Cowboydoug

RyanS wrote: »

Cowboydoug, You're in St. George? I used to live on 700 S, by the high school. My father was a Las Vegas firefighter for 32 years. Graduated from Dixie High (the older one). Wait... thinking about high school makes me ill. I need to stop that. :puke

Running my non-photography related business, communication was the key to happy customers. I needed to frequently say "I want to make sure I understand you. Did you mean this...." You know what, some times I got it wrong. On occasion I got it really wrong. Either I would have charged my customers far too much or far too little. That extra feedback loop really helps close the gap.

Gretchen wrote: »

RyanS I agree with you. I am not a professional photographer, just trying to learn. When ever I have posted on this forum the responses were always helpful and the comments were never derogatory. So I always come here now to learn! This shot isn't "cheesey" more big red wax lippy! Happy Valentines day!

Love your image G... Very fun & creative... My my... What big lips you have...lol

Gretchen

Cowboydoug wrote: »

Love your image G... Very fun & creative... My my... What big lips you have...lol

Thanks Cowboy Doug. Last year I hung a sheet on the curtain rod and turned on the living room lights, used my flash and let the girls go wild.

We went out this afternoon and got our props for this years Valentine shoot. It involves a black frame painted with pink glitter. We also found some wax mustaches! Hopefully they turn out well and I can post them.