Archive for May, 2007
The June edition of Professional Photographer profiles Damien & Julie Lovegrove, and their answer to the question “who is your average client?” made me smile.
“There’s two types of clients you can have ‘warm & fuzzy’ or ‘cold and prickly’. The latter look at the album and say ‘how many pixels has your camera got?’ We run a mile from people like that. The warm and fuzzies will look at the album and get caught up in the emotion of the day’s story.”
I think we all want clients who appreciate & love what we create for them, but it is reassuring to know that everyone gets the odd person who’s more interested in the gear used. Do author’s get quizzed about the type of pen they use too, I wonder?
May 21st, 2007
Yesterday I went to a local photographic tradeshow, as there were a number of speakers that I was interested in listening to. And they didn’t disappoint.
Plus I could have a good look at some digital albums – something I want to introduce. I have one brand it mind, but I always like to have another supplier too. Lots of reasons for that, in this case I wanted an album that was of reasonable quality, price and wouldn’t take too long to produce.
Now I was getting a bit hung up on page thickness, until I spoke with a friend, who’d had her wedding album produced by one of the companies on my shortlist. Page thickness was not something she even considered – she just liked the look of the album. What she’d really loved about her album experience was the little guest books they’d also printed for her! Lesson learnt ..!
May 9th, 2007
In some respects there is not a huge difference between my landscape photography and my portrait photography – both are outdoors, both involve me shooting in all weathers, and both have me shooting a collection of images.
The trick I’d missed with my portrait clients is pointing out to them that I do shoot a collection of images. The expectation that they’ll just need one photograph probably has a lot to do with school photos. You just got one – you never saw the others taken - usually they only had time to shoot one anyway.
So my ‘Ah ha’ moment was understanding that what I do is very bespoke – I can be photographing my clients for up to three hours (with breaks!) and during that time I’m really trying to capture them. Not as I see them, but as they are. It becomes a story of our time together, and that is best told as a collection of images.
May 1st, 2007
