Professional Photo Lab and Photo Printing Blog

Summer is the time to move your school business forward by reinforcing existing contacts and by making new contacts.  Because this is the time of year when employees step into new positions, your point of contact may change.   So be sure to determine who your contact is and reinforce that relationship via mail, email or a personal visit.  Bringing small gifts of cookies or a small personalized product like a mug, etc. can go a long way!

Offer a variety of products that are new and compelling.  People are looking for things that are different than the ordinary school package.  Key chains, mouse pads, dry erase boards, mugs, etc. create add-on sales opportunities.  Be sure to include images of the products in your promotional materials, as well as providing samples to your key contacts to show off before picture day.

Offering a variety of techniques and poses allows you to differentiate yourself and build your average check:

• Sepia, black and white, color and tinting can be set up as actions, which only take seconds to process, and can add dollars to your bottom line.
• Photograph two frames per child and then crop to create a total of 4 images to select from.
• Photograph with different poses than the classic direct front head and shoulders image.

Yes, this is a little more work, but you cannot get complacent in this competitive industry or your business will die a slow death.

Be sure to offer retouching for an additional price.   Different levels are a good way to approach this: Basic (light blemishes,) moderate (light blemishes, scars, tone,) and extensive (braces removal, teeth whitening and more.)

Make money while you are out on another job – offer “after sale” opportunities via hhimagehost.com!  Here you can offer additional products as well as a-la-carte prints.  Use email or skinny minis to direct people to your branded storefront.

If you aren’t shooting schools, think about it.  Schools offer a serious income stream and it isn’t as complicated as one might imagine.  Contact the experts at H&H to learn how you can go about getting into the school segment of the photographic industry!

Jeff Edwards, of Jeff Edwards Studio in Milwaukee, WI, was here at H&H last week, helping teach our School Boot Camp classes.  He is a 33 year veteran in the school picture business. Jeff started his career working for a large senior contract studio. In 1987, he opened his own studio with two locations and a color lab which he later sold in 1997.  After moving to the Kansas City area, he began working for Interstate Studio & Publishing, becoming their National Sales Manager.  He has also consulted for Jostens and Herff Jones.  He currently lives in the Milwaukee area and owns Jeff Edwards Studio, a full service photography studio.

Since we had him in the University, we asked him to do a video blog post for us.  We asked him to break down some of the important skills needed by school photographers.  Thanks Jeff!

We had several entries in our Dog Days of Summer photography contest, and the expert panel of judges (H&H employees) have finished judging.  Believe it or not, we had a TIE!  First, the runners up:

photo by Kim Sparks

photo by Liz Chivvis

photo by Fritz Geil

photo by Kim Sparks

And the two winning images, both submitted by the same photographer:

photo by Fritz Geil

photo by Fritz Geil

Thank you for playing along.  Fritz, enjoy your two free dog tags!

I was recently asked in the context of photography what was the one thing that I could not live without.

As I thought about it, I realized that it would be very difficult to narrow this down to just one item. In actuality there were several different areas that in each, there was a piece of hardware, software, or tool that I would not want to be a photographer and not have.

The more I thought about this, the more I thought it would be a good challenge to analyze in the following areas, what things I could not live without. The areas that I considered are the following:

• camera gear (things other than lens and camera body)
• computer hardware
• computer software

So, for this blog post, I thought I would talk about just one of my favorite, can’t live without, photographic things.

Adobe Bridge CS5

I use Adobe Bridge for so many different things.

First – probably the use most people think of:  I use it to browse through and look at my images.

There are so many ways that I can look at my images; in the content tab looking at thumbnails, and I can also see a larger version in the Preview tab if I wish.

I can view them in a Full Screen Preview mode by pressing on the space bar. Then I use my arrow keys to navigate through the folder.

I can use the Review Mode to quickly edit down images (Command/Ctrl B) by pressing the down arrow, I am unselecting the image.

I can also do a very quick slide show by pressing Command/Ctrl L, and adjust the slide show settings by pressing shift Command/Ctrl L.

In any of these viewing environments, I can add rating meta-data to help sort these images later, either by adding a 1-5 star rating, or a color code.

I also can use Adobe Bridge to select a range of images either Raw or Jpg’s and using Adobe Camera Raw, do batch corrections to the images. I can do color/density corrections, cropping, remove camera sensor dirt, sharpen, remove noise, apply lens profile corrections. The big advantage of doing these types of corrections in Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw, is that the corrections are non-destructive. I can always undo the correction without damaging my original image.

I can also batch rename images in Adobe Bridge. I can drag the images into the sequence that I want them to appear, and use bridge to append a sequential number to the beginning of the file name to keep the images in that sequence. A new feature in the Batch Rename dialog in CS5 is the ability to do a “String Substitution”. For example if I have a series of images named BSkeie###.jpg and I want to remove the BSkeie part of the file names and replace it with Bentley, I use the String Substitution and tell it to find BSkeie and replace with Bentley.  Very fast and easy!

A new feature that I am really excited about is the Export Tab. On this tab I can set up different export critera. Information like the destination where the exported files are to be saved and setting up different Image Size exports. I can save several of these different exports in the Export tab, then drag the images I want to apply the specific criteria to, and then press the export arrow and have the selection I selected applied, and then saved out to the specified destination.

I have set these up for several different exports for web previews, proof prints, or medium resolution files.

There is also the ability to have exports that will save your images directly to your Flicker or Facebook pages.

There are many many more things that can be done using Adobe Bridge, but as the song goes, “these are a few of my favorite things”

Today’s blog post comes from guest blogger Bruce Hudson of Hudson’s Portrait Design & Senior’s by Hudson’s in Renton, WA.  Bruce has been in business for 28 years and specializes in large family wall decor, lifestyle centered family portraiture, high school seniors, babies and children, pets, weddings and commercial photography.  He is also co-founder of  My Studio Mentor and Bruce Tunz!  You can find him on Facebook and Twitter, too.  He is a Master Photographer, Craftsman, and a member of Camera Craftsmen of America.

Is your photography studio part of a 38 billion dollar a year industry?

Can you guess which industry has doubled in size over the last 10 years and did not slowdown one bit even during this nasty recession? It’s the pet industry! Last year over 38 billion dollars was spent on pets. Everything from high-end pet beds, bags, clothes, even fresh prepared gourmet food! This industry shows no sign of slowing down, which begs the question, are you part of this 38 billion dollar a year industry? Could your studio use another revenue stream with a huge profit potential?

During the first quarter of 2010, we decided to jump into the realm of high-end pet photography. One of the reasons was because my wife Terri had an opportunity to buy a high-end doggy boutique. Since she got out of real estate, she’s been looking for something like this to invest in. Well, she took the plunge and started her own business! It’s a cute little shop on the main street of Enumclaw, WA. Anyway, it seemed like a no brainer, we would get into creating pet portraits to help her cross market her new business, and vice versa.

As we researched we found that the pet market is wide open, at least in the Seattle area. Step one was getting some pets into the studio for some promotional shots that we could use in our marketing. We decided to have a “Pet” Folio Model Search! Basically, each client would get a free session and an 8×10 of their choice for coming in. This is a promotion that we tend to stay away from; we’re not big fans of discounting our work. But for this fun and new event, it seemed like a logical first step. We were shooting for about 8-10 sessions, but the result far exceeded our expectations! Here’s step by step what we did to market this and the results:

• We photographed our own pets for initial promo shots and dedicated a Facebook album and a post to the pet model search. Result: 10 minutes after the post went up we booked 4 sessions, and 2 were new clients! The post had gone viral!
• Next, we made the “Pet” Folio Model Search the feature story in our Feb. 2010 email newsletter to our clients. We also linked the Facebook post to it. Result: 48 hours after the email had gone out, the combination of Facebook and Email Marketing yielded us 24 sessions on the books.

Of those first 24 sessions we decided to make a highlight video for our Youtube channel, Facebook page, blog, and eventually our dedicated pet portraits website. Below is the video we produced:

After this video was posted we saw another surge in pet model sessions yet again! We really hit a nerve!

So, did we make any money from this? You bet! We are treating these pet portraits just like we would for families and requiring a pre-portrait consultation, even for the free model sessions. You have to understand that people need to be educated about price and your procedures in order to maximize your artist and business potential. At the consultation we went over different styles, looks, backdrops, you name, just like at a family or high senior consult. We also informed them that could invest in more than just the free 8×10 and that we developed special packages for our pet model search participants. The packages ranged from $675 to $1600, and we really tried to promote our square wrap canvas product, which complements our pet images nicely. There are a few things to keep in mind when photographing pets, here’s what I’ve learned so far:

1. 1. Use a lower camera angle
2. 2. Shorter depth of field
3. 3. Longer lens

This was not only successful, it was fun! After all these years in business, it’s fun growing and marketing a whole new segment of business. We’ll have a dedicated niche website this summer and an entire line of pet products! Now days it’s all about diversification, I think we found a good way to fill some of the voids in the business right now!

Have a great June everyone!