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Photography Today

we've been talking about goals way. Spend a good amount of time talking about your choice. What do you want to be in that? It seems heavy. But it makes the rest of this really fun because this is that heavy, What you need to know about the business part. If you know where your heart is, it's going to be easy to map the rest of this out. So now we're gonna start making commitments. We're gonna commit to our plan. You need to make sure that you're working Are that everything you're working on is something that moves you forward in the goal or the direction that you want to go. Now, if you think about your life right now and what is weighing you down, what you're working on, I would bet that there's a percentage of it that is going towards your future and your goal. And a lot of it is the day to day tasks that sort of run us down. It's the Internet's down. Or that you know, my kids need this or somebody sick or whatever. And those are the things those air, the life things that happen. So ...

having purpose is having it in writing. Having those written goals is really your benchmark. That's what When a day gets away from you, you can go back to those who say, Oh yeah, this is where I was going So we really do need to set a course now. In order to do that, we have to go back to the history of photography now. A lot of you are so new in this market that a lot of this doesn't apply doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter what was going on in this industry 27 years ago, except from the perspective of understanding that certain things historically will be repeated no matter what with digital, not digital, whatever. There's certain things you can almost guarantee, like recessions and things like that. They happen. You have to have a plan to get through them. The photographic market has drastically changed. As a result, many challenges and opportunities have arisen. I started my company 27 years ago. It was a predominantly Mel organization or industry is very difficult to find education. Finding book at the library was the best we could do. There was no Internet, which is impossible to even imagine now, but that was it. I fed off of books at the library, and if you wanted to buy anything, it was very expensive. You had to pay for your books, etcetera. Today the industry is predominantly female now. Education is easily and readily available. Creativelive, I think, is one of the, if not the best example of perfect education giving you the opportunity to learn for free and giving you the opportunity. Invest in the quality. Education is pretty important, and I've always appreciated that the costs have decreased substantially toe where anybody can afford it. Which is that good and bad, of course, are changes in our client base is As you know, our clients are now photographers. My clients now walk in with five D mark three saying I have this camera. Do you know how to use it? Like I can't tell you that you can't have that camera, but it used to be. When I started, I started with an R Z 67 a big medium format camera. I shot that for 13 years. I was like the coolest kid in the world because I had the tribe odd and the big old camera. And if I was out of the park, everybody knew I was a professional because my box was big enough to say so. Nowadays, this is big enough to say So everybody has this. Everybody's a photographer. It makes it really, really hard. Your cat. Your clients are using the same capture devices as you. There is no mystery and photography. There's no secret dark room where we do our magic. Everybody has a phone, everybody has actions. And that's just the way it is. Even right down to the high school senior market, some countries that are watching don't have high school seniors. But here in the United States, photographing students that are graduating their final year in high school is a really big market. Even across the United States, though it varies from in our state, we have the ability the students can pick any photographer they want some areas or contract photographers. You have to go to this certain photographer. Some are even worse, their contract photographers, and they have to wear the dreaded V. You know that that drape the dreaded drape. You remember that the little thing, your mom or come on New Jersey really? You got to stop doing that. Honestly, it's time. Let the V go, But it just depends on where you're at. But in places like Colorado, anybody can take pictures and tournament. So students are now taking their friends out to the park there, taking their phones and taking 390 pictures till they get a good one. And I guarantee you they're getting a good one, and they're turning it into the school for their yearbook, which is totally acceptable. So yearbooks went from a very classy, quality controlled color controlled to Now you have purple kids and green kids and yellow kids and kids with, you know, atrocious actions, and that's what they're allowing. I firmly believe that that's going to swing back around. It's a fad, and one day somebody's gonna look at the yearbook and go thes look terrible. We really need to control this. We're gonna have to let professionals do the job. So we see these trends in industry. Some of them make us nervous, like seniors. Probably eight years ago, I was shooting probably 400 seniors that year. We photographed less than this year, so you would have to look at it and say, OK, are things bad for you? Is it bad? My senior sales averaged back then? For me? Personally, I have associate photographers. Their sales averages are lower. So whenever I'm speaking, I'm gonna say, If it's an associate or master Siri's, my sales averages back that on a senior, probably 3 to $500 now ourselves averages. My work starts just over $2000 but the average senior is doing in my story, which is video included, and those sales averaged on the My stories are just over $5000. So we're making a lot more shooting, a lot less. The industry has changed to where not everybody wants a professional photographer, but the ones that do really want to pay and invest for a real professional photographer. So So it's not. I mean, you could look at it. Either way, you could look at it is bad news or good news. It's it's it's qualifying our clients. It's getting it down to the people that want to pay, will walk into the process, knowing what they're gonna pay, and they're gonna be happy to do it. And that's really what we're in the industry for. Cameras have also changed as well. Digital media has definitely taken the magic out of photography. Used to be that it was cool to be a photographer. Now it's very discredited. People like, Oh, your photographer. Sometimes I want to stand on a building, say no way. I've been doing this for 27 years. I really am. But who's to say I'm really a photographer? And besides that, who's to say who has the right to be a photographer? One of my biggest pet peeves in the world are photographers who've been in the industry more than 15 years, who make comments about all these new photographers who are coming in. They're ruining the industry. They're giving it away. You know this that the other I get that there's a problem. But I always want to turn to them and say, You know what? I'm just curious. Were you born because if you were born, then more than likely you weren't a photographer at birth and if you weren't then at some point you hit that intersection. When you became a photographer, when you fell enough for me, it was 17 years old I fell in love with photography. I took that love and I turned it into my dream, and I lived my dream. How do we have the right to take that dream away from anybody else? If you just started out in photography and your one year into it and you're loving in your passionate, how does a veteran and photography have the right to tell you? You know what? It was good for me, but you can't do it. You're not worthy of living your dream. It's just not right. So So The truth is, our industry has changed to where we've created a defense mechanism to be upset about all these new photographers. In reality, we should embrace them. It's not how many photographers that's not the problem. It's industry. It's how they price and how they deliver the work. And those are the things that are hurting this industry. Those photographers who are doing it for $99 providing all the images on the disk will be out of business, but they potentially can take us with them. If we don't educate our clients. The only way we can educate our clients is educating those photographers. So again, creativelive is a perfect example of taking the masses thousands of new photographers and saying Look, guys, you're awesome. We're so happy you wanna live your dream. But if you want to live your dream, you've got to follow some guidelines you need to price appropriately. You need to charge what you're worth. You need to deliver and package it to where it has value. So the client sees the value. Because if we all did that together, we would all unify this industry to give United. My prices are least expensive. Eight by 10 starts at $150. Now my least expensive eight by 10 has been 100 $50 for over 10 years. Now I've now I can't increase the price. We'll talk about that later in the show because I've kind of capped an eight by 10 or $150 is the max my community my market will allow. But wouldn't it be awesome if every photographer in this room and every photographer virtually watching all of us charged $150 an eight by 10? If across the country, the world, that's what it was, wouldn't that be awesome? Because then our clients, everybody that went to a photographer would know you're at least gonna pay $150 an eight by 10. So so unifying this industry is education, educating people, letting them know that you're worth your eight by tens or absolute worth $150. If it's your first year, maybe you can't get that the first year. But if you charge $20 for an eight by 10 the first year, you're not only gonna put yourself out of the business, you might be taking us with you. Because if you teach our clients that $20 is enough, then I have a harder time explaining why $150 is more fair. So we're gonna do this together, we're gonna We're gonna unify this industry by educating, and then by believing in ourselves, understanding that we are worth that and we're going to get there today, Hopefully. All right, So with the changes in the economy, of course, we've had all kinds of problems in this industry. I have watched far too many photographers go out of business. They've also become very, very bitter people. Some of I don't like hate mail. I certainly get a lot of positive male, but every once in a while I will get a photographer. That's very upset with me, because I teach the newbies and I give away all the secrets. There are no secrets. I get told. I haven't quite figured out there's there's a particular group that constantly is at my heels on Guy haven't figured out they talk a lot about teaching photography to the newbies and that you know, whether they call you rock stars or whatever you are, who gives you the right After 27 years, I feel like I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about. I don't know everything by no means, but I feel pretty comfortable that I can at least tell you what I did wrong and help you get get to do it right. The saddest part of this industry is not so much the quantity of photographers coming in. It's the bitter photographers that are going out there hurting as the most because they're the ones that are making it miserable to be a photographer. Honestly, there was a time they were passionate. They were very happy and they need to go back to that or they need to step aside. And I know that sounds very harsh, but the truth is this industry is not going anywhere. We will be photographer. I will be a photographer till my dying day. I guarantee you the medium will change. What we deliver to our clients will change. 10 years ago, I stood on a stage and talked about the fact that someday there wouldn't be any paper. We wouldn't be selling paper. This was before Digital was even very popular. I said it because somebody said it before me, and when they said it, I went. Holy cow. Imagine if that were the case. Imagine not selling paper cause that's always sold at the time. I've watched this digital transition, and it's very true. Now there is a client's virtually don't want paper anymore. But now imagine, and not the very far future. When we won't sell paper at all because everything will be digital. It'll be TV monitors like this mounted in people's homes. It's already happening where you or your family portrait becomes fluid. It becomes more of a ah life story than a single piece of art. The question is, how much is a digital capture on a 70 inch portrait screen? Are a portrait TV monitor? How much is that worth? Is that file worth the same if I sold this size print here that you're looking at this TV screen? If I sold that for $5000? Is a single file worth $5000 to? Absolutely, Absolutely. It's worth because because that's not it's not the paper of the TV or whatever it's on my entire life. 27 years went into that image, and that's what people are investing in. And once you realize that it's not about the paper, paper has no value. It's about what you put in the paper, and that's what people will invest in. And that's where we're going to start to really see these changes now, of course, there's been all kinds of economical setbacks. We are Technically I mean, does anybody really know if we're in a recession now? Are not like, honestly, I think it's just one of those things we don't really talk about anymore. When it started, it was coming and then we were in it, and now nobody wants to say it's over and it's good times again, but nobody is saying it's not either. So there's a lot of frustration and concern. Four years ago, 4009 people were losing their jobs. It was like a wave across the country and the world where where you knew it was happening because you knew somebody that lost their job. You knew somebody had been out of work for 6 to 12 months. It was getting pretty scary. Doesn't feel like that anymore. And yet I've been through enough of these that, you know, 7 My, you know, those were the years that I think when he grew on trees, those trees those years because it just felt like everything we did was golden and we were making all kinds of money, and it was it was good time. So I don't feel like we're in a hard core recession right now, But I also don't see that shift back that I'm used to seeing in the third recession. I'm used to saying Okay, now people are spending thousands and thousands. This is the slowest economic change I've ever seen. in my very young 40 something years, and I don't know that it's ever going to be an overnight like all the sudden it's gravy money again. So we have to prepare for that, not just in our industry, but in our spouses or significant others. Everybody's life. We need to. We need to determine if it's not gonna be overnight success than what's our long term goal. Now there are the negative factors of recovering from the recession. Obviously, your cost of doing business is your costs are going to go up. Regardless of the economy. Managing your time becomes the biggest priority. And obviously that whole clients could do it for less. They can do it themselves is very stressful on the brain. It it causes anxiety. But there are a lot of positive things that you can take out of this. Nobody can be you. That is my That will be my benchmark. I think on my gravestone is that I may not have done it right, But I did it. You know anything? I did it my way. I did it the best that I could. All of you have an independent soul. You have the ability to be what you want to be. Your clients will fall in love with you, literally fall in love with you. And like I said, I can't wait till day three because I have had the biggest awakening in my life with how valuable what we do really is and having 27 years to build that it's pretty exciting for those of you who just starting out to know that 10 years from now you'll be photographing these babies that you're photographing. 20 years from now, you'll be photographing their babies. When you do that, it's just it's so incredible. It's such a such an incredible life cycle. You're gonna have all kinds of options for working in home based studio and a location or our commercial based studio. We want to make sure you're very clear on what that really means, because I think a lot of people equate success toe having a studio, and I will tell you right now it's been proven there been to benchmark surveys done through the Professional Photographers of America, where they pulled photographers across the United States and the world. Um, it's a proven fact that home studios, by far are more profitable than commercial studios. So everybody that's running to get a commercial space because you feel like it validates your professionalism. The truth is, is it about validation? Or is it about time and money? Because if I could, if I turned right now and said, if you have a home base studio, you'll make more money, therefore giving you more time. Would you run in to get a commercial studio you'd have to take me. I mean, you have to believe me when I said that I have a commercial studio, so it's easy for me to say, Don't do it because I got what I wanted. There's a process that you go through if you ask me. Did your clients think you're more professional when you're in a commercial space? Yeah, I think they I think that it gave me some validation. They walked into a studio. Whoa, This is really pretty. You don't anywhere in my house. It's not like tuna fish and had fingerprints all over, you know? So maybe it was they didn't care, but I cared. I was always uncomfortable thinking that they were judging me. I work in high volume scenarios I like to surround myself with people. I can't have 28 people in my home. So for me, a commercial space was best. But for a lot of you, you're looking at other people's success, thinking that must be success. You may be wrong. They may be struggling. They may be going out of business because they over over judged what their goals really were. So my point is not to say that commercial space isn't a good idea, it's to say, really, you need to do the math. You need to understand what you're really looking at before you make that decision because that changes everything. It changes everything about the way you do business. So you have options. We're gonna go into that in more depth. In fact, today we're gonna meet a very good friend of mine, Burbank. He's going to Skype in He has the best of both worlds. So I'm excited for you to meet with him. We're going to do, we're gonna That's the only thing. That's a little off here. We're gonna do him right after lunch, will bring him on after right after lunch. And he has got through this incredible process of his family has been in the industry for years, and then he switched over to commercial space because he thought that was the way to go. And he eventually created his dream studio, which was a home studio location with a separate entrance separate studio. So I think that's what we're all ultimately looking for. And I love hearing him talk about it every time I get a chance to talk to him. He just reminds me how important it is to design your life based on what's good for you and not what what you think other people want you to dio. So you guys air creative, your fun. You're the energy that's going to fuel the fire that makes you successful. No matter how bad it is in this economy, no matter how bad financially you feel like your clients or potential clients, maybe you have to remember that memories air still valuable people will always invest in a quality portrait. Not everybody's been hit by the bad economy. Believe me, we have clients who spend very, very well they're out there. But marketing is the key, and tomorrow a good a good percentage of tomorrow is all marketing because we're gonna talk about the foundations of what I built my company on and then sort of modify them to work for you. To me, it's all about turning lemons and eliminate taking the bad and making it good. There's there's good and everything every tragedy in this world, something good comes out of, and that's what we really have to look at. But you have to be willing to make a change. That's the biggest thing. I once had a seminar I taught, and there was this young lady who what was that student? You know, there's always what there isn't one here today. By the way, there's not always words, no anything. You put 500 or 302 people there, there's gonna be somebody that is very needy. And I was talking about making decisions and marketing, and she kept raising her hand and saying, Well, that won't work. That doesn't work for me and it's kind of awkward when somebody's telling you that you're wrong a few times. So finally I had no choice but to kind of confront her, and she told me that she couldn't everything that I had ever said, doesn't work for where she was, and I finally got to the root of the problem. Where do you live? She lived in a small town of 900 people. The nearest town outside of that was over 45 minutes away. So so when you're talking 900 people, there were three or four photographers in the town, and she explained in depth why she was struggling. It really boiled down to location. She was in the wrong place for the type of business that she was. I mean, she was in an area that had been very hit very hard by economy. The industry that was popular in that area had gone out, so there was everybody was out of work. So when we finally get to the root of it, I finally told her. I said, If you really want to be a successful photographer, your only choice is to move. You have to leave your location. And she explained that she couldn't her family had been raised there. That's where her parents lived. The property was her grand parents. He was never going anywhere, so it finally really boiled down to a choice and sacrifice, right? She wasn't willing. She wanted what she wanted, but she wasn't willing to sacrifice, wasn't willing to make the choice to change. And so I truly could not help her. She's one of those people that I said. Then you know what you need to embrace being a mom. You need to embrace being, you know, living on a lower income. But having happiness and your success is going to be just being with your family and having that time. And at the end of the day, she walked out of there with a greater understanding. She finally had to admit to herself that it wasn't the world's fault, that she wasn't successful. It was her own fault. Not fault has changed that it was their own choice that she wasn't successful when she embraced that she found success. And I will tell you two years later she called me and she moved. So I guess that historical value of home and property and relatives it changed because her mind, she finally allowed herself to change. So where are you? What are you stuck? What's holding you back? Is it something? Are you attached to something that has no value or does it truly have value to you? Um, I grew up on a farm. I was raised in the farming community. Very tiny town horses, chickens, pigs. You name it Cherry trees. That's one of the things that I find fascinating is I look at my lifestyle. My Children will never climb a tree they'll never like we had in the summers. We had to get up at 5 a.m. Get up cherry trees. We had that pick our Cherries and have them and the out of those trees by noon because it got so hot. So my life, my entire youth from the time was right. Eight or nine, we were up trees in the summer, picking apples or Cherries or whatever waas and the highlight of my life was we would take. Our Cherries are lugs of Cherries and we would catch them in and you get cents a pound. So if you make a couple bucks, you were totally rich. We take a couple bucks and we would hike all the way to Taco Bell. And to this day I could tell you I could get two tacos, Pinto's and cheese and a soda for whatever a couple bucks we made and that was the big deal. And then after that, we would jump in a ditch and you could actually float from Taco Bell all the way back to my home. And it my kids have never floated in a ditch before. They've never climbed a tree. They've never had to pick anything there of the generation of games and computers, and they're in a totally different life. Stone do I have? I cheated them out of something amazing part of the field will always feel like, Yes, because it was such a great life. The other part of me realizes that their lives are their lives. It's a totally different lifestyle, and I feel like I've also afforded them incredible opportunities to travel. I had never seen China or Japan or Europe in my lifetime, and they've seen almost the entire world. So so it's choice and sacrifice. Did I do the right thing? Will never know, will we? So get away to the other side for that. So it's all about choice, and I'm sorry. Keep coming back to that, but it really does. You're gonna walk out of here going. Okay, look, it's all up to me, Not anybody else. Her book, her lifestyle has nothing to do with where I'm going to go. So digital cameras are commonplace. We've pretty much covered that we have to set ourselves apart by providing true portrait. It's on and we're gonna go deep into that later. Because guess what, guys? Everybody's an artist these days. I love this. I go to my kids events. There's like 52 ipads in here. It's the most annoying visual thing when you're trying to watch kids Performer concert. And there's IPads being held up across the board, videotaping and capturing these moments. I mean, you look at the devices. I don't think we could get much bigger than an IPad to take pictures. So I'm hoping that they don't get 60 inch screens that people are walking around going. But it's gone to the point where we we have to separate ourselves in a totally unique fashion