The BUSINESS of photography sucks

The Day I decided that being a photographer was what I wanted to do to make a living, I didn't give much thought to the business side of my new career. I knew I loved taking pictures and making images and I felt pretty confident I could make a living doing it. I knew there were certain things I had to do to get jobs, promote myself, Advertise, show my book to some people. I could do all that, after all, I have a degree in Advertising, how hard can this be? DAMN was I off in my thinking!

Being a photographer is sooo much more than just showing your book and taking some pictures. To make any money and even be a little successful, you better know how to market yourself. Like I said before, I have a degree in advertising, I never went to school for photography or had any classes in how to run a photography business. I've been shooting since I was 11 years old and getting paid by people to take pictures since I was 16. My father owned his own business, so I had some idea of what it would take, but he sold his services and merchandise to the public, not Art Directors, Creative Directors and Photo directors etc.. Marketing to the public, I think, is a little easier. Put an ad in a magazine, newspaper, hand out flyers, use billboards, etc... Those things aren't going to work with the people I'm marketing to. And you definitely can't run a 20% off sale, because if you do, and by some miracle it works, you will never get prices back up to normal, not with that client anyway.

So what do you have to do? Make lots of phone calls (which I always feel like I'm annoying whoever I call, so I'm not very good at this), you send email promos (you and every other photographer), you send promos through the mail ( you and half of all the other photographers out there) and you try to get meetings (which are getting harder and harder to get).

All of these things combined are what you absolutely have to be doing if you want to get any work. And these days you should also incorporate some type of social media into your marketing plan. Twitter and/or facebook are your two standard ones to use, and even this, a blog. Anything you can do to get your name and your work out there, you need to be doing.

Computers and the internet have made it easier to market yourself to the people who hire photographers, but it has also made it easy for everyone, which makes it harder to stand out in the crowd. See my previous post on It's not what you know... to see what I think it takes to get to get the jobs. It also makes the actual act of taking pictures and creating images a small part of running a photography Business.

I got into this business to do what I love, take pictures, and ended up spending well over half my time marketing myself and doing things I'm not nearly as good at, or like half as much as taking pictures. But, if that's part of the deal, if that's what I have to do, to be able to continue doing what I love to do, I'll take it! (until I can find someone to do it for me!)

Flashes of Hope

The end of last year I had the opportunity and privilege to shoot for Flashes Of Hope, a "National non-profit organization that changes the way children with cancer see themselves through the gift of photography and raises money for pediatric cancer research." It was my first time working with the organization but it was a very memorable day and an experience that I hope I am able to repeat sometime this year. I spent the day in the pediatric cancer wing of the Levine Children's hospital taking pictures of some amazing and inspiring children. Each one with cancer but each one an inspiration. None of the children had a bad attitude, in fact, each one was happy and smiling. I'm sure they aren't always that way, but in the short time I had with them, they were full of life, happiness and personality. These children have unbelievable courage and I was grateful to be in their presence. If you're a photographer and Flashes of Hope is in your city, I encourage you volunteer your time and takes some pictures of these amazing kids. They seemed to enjoy having their makeup and hair done and having their picture taken. The parents loved the fact that they would be getting current, professional portraits of their child. It was really a great day where I felt like photography, can and does make a difference in the lives of people.

So photographers, if you get a chance, shoot with Flashes of Hope and if your not a photographer but want to help children with pediatric cancer, you can go their website and donate.

Here are a few images from that day:

Before and After

After posting my last blog, I started thinking that some of you out there, may want to see the before images, so you could compare the RAW images to the final images and see how much post work was done on them.

Each of these images was shot with:

Nikon D3

Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8

ISO 400

f2.8 (except for Robbie with the scarf, that was at f3.5)

All files were shot RAW and then processed with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop CS5

Let me know what you think, what would you have done differently, can you spot all the changes? (especially with the image of the horse)

Click on the images to enlarge them.

36 Degrees and a Horse

I decided to do a shoot for myself the other week and once I had the idea in my head I had to shoot it as soon as possible. I hate having an idea just waiting to be shot spinning around. It consumes me and it becomes all I think about, so the sooner I can get it out of my head and into my camera, the better. That is why the title of this post is 36 degrees and a horse. The day I set to shoot this was one of the coldest days of the year so far (36 degrees), but I couldn't postpone it, not just because of the cold temperatures. Thankfully, the models, stylist and hair and makeup artist all were wonderful and willing to work with me.

Here are the results of our efforts. I think it was well worth suffering through the cold!

VA. Bride Magazine shoot

Earlier this year I did a shoot in Lynchburg, VA. for Virginia Bride Magazine The magazine just came out, so now I can post those images for you to see. The images were all shot with the Nikon D3 with a Nikkor 70-200mm / 2.8 lens. As usual for me, there was very little post work done on these. I burned in the edges of the images and I upped the saturation.

Here are a few images from that shoot.

More Behind the Scenes

Here is another look behind the scenes of one of my recent catalog shoots.

We shot this over 3 days. 2 days on location in the NC mountains and 1 day in studio.

So check out the video to see the fun we have on shoots, and if you haven't seen my website lately, check it out as well. www.MarkHansonPhoto.com

It's not who you know, it's who knows you!

The other day I was on a shoot and talking with someone about our business and how we've been getting work. At the end of our conversation, my friend said "it's all about who you know". After he said that, I started to think about how many times I've heard that saying and how most people believe that it is all about "who you know". But in reality, it has nothing to do with who you know, it has everything to do with who knows you and more importantly, who likes you.

Think about all of the people you know, creative directors, art directors, buyers, designers, company owners and other potential clients. Now, think about how many of them really know who you are, and now think about how many of those really like you. I'm willing to bet your numbers started out big and slowly shrank.

After doing this for 15 years, I know a lot of people, and I have come to the conclusion that, unless they know me and like me, they most likely aren't going to hire me. That's not to say I have never been hired by a client that I hadn't already established a rapport with, that has definitely happened. I've had clients hire me just from seeing my website and the first time we talked with each other was when they contacted me to see if I was available to shoot a job, but that is a rare occurance these days. With so many photographers out there, most clients want to know who they are working with. Clients want to feel as if they know you, not just your work. Nowadays, by the time a client contacts me to discuss a job or a CD, AD or AB agrees to a meeting with me, they have already looked at my website, possibly checked out one or more of my behind the scenes videos, read my blog and may even be following me on twitter. They want to have a feel of who they are working with and feel confident, not only in your work, but that they can put up with your artistic ass for multiple days if need be.

So the next time you hear someone say, "It's all about who you know", you'll know that's not nearly as true as "It's all about who knows you"! So start establishing relationships, write your blog, get meetings, keep your twitter and Facebook accounts up to date. Let potential clients get a feel for your personality. You'll not only get more work, but you'll get more work from clients that you really enjoy working with.