Testin, 10/19/2011 221pm

Stories of some very successful teams and many teams that failed, or never got started were brutally discussed. The successes and failures were analyzed, so that major improvements can be made. Changes are in the works.

Chairman Don Dormeyer said “This is a start. I’m so impressed with this committee, which is enthusiastic and dedicated to improving the APA Success team program for all APA Chapters and making it a major benefit of membership in APA. This will be a very active committee.”

He promised to keep us informed in future newsletters.

<p>Flowers for me have always been something of beauty, the suggestion of spring, the bringer of fruit. In fact I have also always thought of them as something, well, sexual. In fact they are exactly that, sexual. I’ve made photographs of flowers and even sold photographs of flowers. I’m not talking about, “and there were flowers in the photo of the table”. I’m talking about flowers, just flowers.</p>

<p>So, it is with some degree of hypocrisy that I tell you today, that I tell my students, not to photograph flowers. It’s not that I’m discouraging them from looking at flowers as a subject. I’m trying to discourage them from taking the easy route of just photographing something beautiful and calling it art.</p>

<p>I know, I know; if you want to photograph beautiful women, start with beautiful women. I think we all know there is more to it than that. If you want to photograph beautiful women hire the best makeup person you can afford. If you want to photograph beautiful women hire the best hair person around. Some really good assistants can only help this scenario. Also, your lighting equipment, background, fans, diffusion, and everything else that makes a photograph of a beautiful woman, beautiful, had better be up to snuff.</p>

<p>And that’s the whole point about flowers. What are you as an artist bringing to the photograph of the flower. I find it objectionable for my students to go into the garden in the middle of the day and get close in on a flower and then turn it in for an assignment. Why? Because, I already did that. I try to help my students not make the same mistakes I have made.</p>

<p>Irving Penn did some wonderful images of just flowers. So did Robert Mapplethorpe. If flowers are your passion I say go for it. But be prepared to take the criticism if they are not unusual, your unique perspective, or provocative in some way. Hire the best florist you can afford. Maybe bring in a food stylist, they have lots of knowledge about how to enhance organic matter. Kill the flower. Freeze the flower. Boil the flower. Do something to the flower to make it your own. Otherwise you just have a pretty picture of a flower. And pretty don’t cut it.</p>

<p>The photograph above was made by Deborah Sherman Photography ( http://www.deborahsherman.com) It’s a perfectly wonderful photograph of flowers. It is successful because of what Deborah brought to the image. Selective focus, a vanishing point, and the horizon line near the top of the frame. These are the things, we photographers can do just by using our tool, the camera. What’s amazing is how many people don’t understand exactly that. I call them viewers or even sometimes, clients.</p>

<p>I say, well done, Deborah.</p>

<p>I’m Eliot Crowley and this is my opinion.</p>

<p>http://eliotcrowley.com
Candidate for Masters of Fine Arts Degree, Academy of Art University, San Francisco
Faculty: Brooks Institute, Santa Barbara, CA
APA General Member since mid 80’s</p>

So, it is with some degree of hypocrisy that I tell you today, that I tell my students, not to photograph flowers. It’s not that I’m discouraging them from looking at flowers as a subject. I’m trying to discourage them from taking the easy route of just photographing something beautiful and calling it art.

I know, I know; if you want to photograph beautiful women, start with beautiful women. I think we all know there is more to it than that. If you want to photograph beautiful women hire the best makeup person you can afford. If you want to photograph beautiful women hire the best hair person around. Some really good assistants can only help this scenario. Also, your lighting equipment, background, fans, diffusion, and everything else that makes a photograph of a beautiful woman, beautiful, had better be up to snuff.

And that’s the whole point about flowers. What are you as an artist bringing to the photograph of the flower. I find it objectionable for my students to go into the garden in the middle of the day and get close in on a flower and then turn it in for an assignment. Why? Because, I already did that. I try to help my students not make the same mistakes I have made.

Irving Penn did some wonderful images of just flowers. So did Robert Mapplethorpe. If flowers are your passion I say go for it. But be prepared to take the criticism if they are not unusual, your unique perspective, or provocative in some way. Hire the best florist you can afford. Maybe bring in a food stylist, they have lots of knowledge about how to enhance organic matter. Kill the flower. Freeze the flower. Boil the flower. Do something to the flower to make it your own. Otherwise you just have a pretty picture of a flower. And pretty don’t cut it.

The photograph above was made by Deborah Sherman Photography ( http://www.deborahsherman.com) It’s a perfectly wonderful photograph of flowers. It is successful because of what Deborah brought to the image. Selective focus, a vanishing point, and the horizon line near the top of the frame. These are the things, we photographers can do just by using our tool, the camera. What’s amazing is how many people don’t understand exactly that. I call them viewers or even sometimes, clients.

I say, well done, Deborah.

I’m Eliot Crowley and this is my opinion.

http://eliotcrowley.com

Candidate for Masters of Fine Arts Degree, Academy of Art University, San Francisco
Faculty: Brooks Institute, Santa Barbara, CA
APA General Member since mid 80’s

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Like any company that provides a service or sells a product, a photographer must have a brand to be successful. But what exactly is a brand? A brand is an image of a product, which is a collection of beliefs in the mind of the audience of what a given entity is about. Brand equity is the value a company associates with a brand in memory and association.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as,

name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

Ultimately, a business must pay close attention to how the brand is perceived in the collective minds of the target audience and how this will affect the bottom line. But understanding a brand can be a bit tricky, especially when the brand represents your own business.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Let’s look at a case study of an organization that has re-branded an existing product, in fact, a product that has been around for hundreds of years. In February of 2008, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) introduced a new condom—Proper Attire. Proper Attire is a strategically placed brand within an existing market, tied to a very niche audience. According to PPFA president Cecille Richards, “Social taboos make some women embarrassed to buy and carry condoms. That’s why PROPER ATTIRE™ was created. With its fashionable wrapping, women will now have the option to choose the right ‘attire’ for that special occasion. Responsible decisions about sex are everybody’s personal fashion statement.”

According to brand director Rachel Malloy, “When we decided to create a new condom line, we knew that we wanted to make it cool for women to carry condoms. Every element of the brand has been inspired by the world of fashion, from the PROPER ATTIRE™ brand name, and the chic packaging created by designers, to the fig leaf logo showcasing clothing in its most primitive form.”

Ms. Malloy provided other information about the new brand: “Since launching the fashionably chic Proper Attire condoms at New York Fashion Week in February, 2008 we have sold over 6 million condoms in the U.S. In addition to selling the retail 3x packs to the fashion elite at exclusive boutiques such as W Hotels, many have also been distributed through Planned Parenthood health centers, universities and other not for profit service organizations to ensure everyone has access regardless of income. Proper Attire condoms are currently on display in the windows at Bungalow 8 in New York City and said to be a modern day Studio 54 – a favorite destination of the celebrity element.

The primary reason this is so unique, is that PPFA conducted extensive research in creating a brand directly targeting an untapped market. Most condom advertising, packaging and other communications are targeted to guys. How many of you are old enough to remember carrying a condom in your wallet? I do, it disintegrated in there in its un-used existence!

With its snappy tagline—“Proper Attire: required for entry” and slightly tongue-in-cheek marketing copy, PPFA has made a bold brand statement. “Old stereotypes about who should buy condoms are so last season! PROPER ATTIRETM condoms are the “must-have” accessory this season and were designed with sexually active, stylish women in mind,” according to their website. www.properattirecondoms.com

By examining the needs of a market segment, and crafting a strategic response in an integrated marketing campaign to that market, a business owner can capitalize upon existing brand perceptions, while nurturing and growing the brand to new levels.

If you use the Planned Parenthood model as an example, you can analogize this to your own business by finding an underserved niche and developing a strategy to provide services to that market. Building new brands into a market takes hard work, but expertise, passion and commitment along with a well-crafted campaign can lead you to success.

Other retail brands can also be looked at for market capitalization inspiration. In 1994, The Gap launched Old Navy, as a hip, slightly retro alternative for the family to shop. Of course, my old standby example for branding, Starbucks is another example. You have seen them in the news a great deal as they reposition the brand back to being about coffee, losing the heated lunches and other non-core items, while weathering competition from McDonalds.

Analyze your photography business. Look at your brand and what you do. Focus on the work and clients you WANT to do more of and target that audience for your brand. Any competitive company will do a brand analysis at least every three years. Refresh all the marketing components of your brand. Your bottom line will thank you.

Ira Gostin, MBA, is a marketing executive and creative director in Reno, Nevada, and recent winner of the ACE award for top Comprehensive Marketing Plan by the Reno-Tahoe chapter of the AMA. A photojournalist turned commercial photographer (and APA member), Ira went through an extensive career change with graduate school, management training at Starbucks and an internship at 46 at an advertising agency. He is available for consulting at ira@gostin.com, or topics for further columns. Ira’s LinkedIn is: www.linkedin.com/in/iragostin

One of the most unpredictable elements of shooting on location is the weather. With the many online resources available to monitor the constantly changing patterns, my clients often approach me with a worried expression asking something like “Is it going to be OK?”. Of course, I’m supposed to have the answer, but it’s not always what they want to hear.Recently, I was shooting in Central and Northern California creating a massive re-branding effort for Frito-Lay snacks. I had a team of 15 or so people traveling with me, and we were facing an aggressive schedule.

I looked online early one morning, and saw a weather system coming our way rapidly. I did what I always do. I called my “Secret Weapon”: my weather service. These guys are scattered around the country and are geared to the aviation industry. I subscribe to this service and each time I call them it costs me $35. It’s always worth the dough. They don’t just give you the same stuff you can find online, but much more specific information about exactly where you are and when the stuff is going to be there.

The news was grim, and I had no choice but to draft a radical plan. I doubled up the shots for the next two days and condensed them into one. Then I had to inform my crew and clients that we needed to get up in the middle of the night the next morning (2:30AM for some) and drive 5 hours to beat the storm to the following location.

The story ends well of course. We got all our photos and as we were wrapping the shot that occurred on the day of the 5-hour drive, the clouds began to appear. By the time we arrived at the hotel, and went to dinner, it was raining.

Sometimes it pays to pay!

The title of this article is a famous quote from Voltaire’s Candide. It can be translated as One must tend one’s (own) garden. And though Voltaire certainly was not concerning himself with issues in marketing, his words can serve us today. Marketing (and business) is very much like a garden.

Imagine your business as an overgrown, unlandscaped back yard. You go out there and mow it occasionally, and there is some stuff growing, but it’s not as beautiful as you want it to be. It’s just kind of there. One day, you decide to do something about it.

Now, you could try to get some (almost) instant gratification by calling in a landscaping service and they could bring in all sorts of plants and rip things up and plant stuff where they tell you they should go. You will have at most, a beginning, but probably more like an almost artificial looking space with perfectly spaced plants, but no soul. Certainly not your garden. And if you don’t take care of it, that space will quickly become an even bigger mess than what you started with.

Instead, I suggest you make your own garden, and, of course, tend it. You can hire someone to help, but it must be your vision first. Start by defining what you want it to be, what are your goals for your garden (business)? What is your vision? Once you have that, then you can plan out how and where to plant (that is, what tools to use in your marketing).

Then you plant, knowing that the tulip bulbs are planted in the fall but won’t bloom until the spring, and the rose bushes planted in the spring won’t bloom for months, and the bougainvilla won’t climb the arbor for years, and the trees won’t fill in for many years.

And so you wait. While you wait, you hoe, and weed, and fertilize, and water, and hoe again, and weed again, etc., over and over.

In your business, you work your plan: tweaking as needed, doing the research to find the best targets, building your lists, making the calls, sending the mailers and emails, updating your site, constantly making new work to “fertilize” it all with the best stuff you can (and please don’t equate fertilizer with crap–you want good stuff!). You send PR, schmooze clients, provide great service, go to meetings…you do all the weeding and watering your garden needs to thrive.

Over time you’ll see the flowers bloom. You’ll get new clients. Over longer time, you’ll get even better clients and better projects. Your vision for your business will slowly take root and grow.

But to do this, you must keep working the plan for the long term. Don’t expect to plant the seeds today and get the roses tomorrow. It takes time. Marketing isn’t fast, it is a slow building of recognition and desire. But if you are consistent with your marketing, if you weed and water regularly and make great “fertilizer”, you will get beautiful results–a successful business.

www.burnsautoparts.com

But will the client have any faith in this print?

Not necessarily. Nice inkjet prints may look great, but they can also be misleading because they look so much better than what will come off the press. One production manager from a major agency once told me he fears getting inkjet prints from photographers because he’s the guy that has to tell the client they won’t be able to match that in the final.

What to do?

Easy, there are 2 kinds of prints you can produce on your inkjet printer, a “Nice Print” and a “Guide Print”. The Nice Print is the one you put in your portfolio. The Guide Print is what you give your client. The difference is that the Guide Print is one that is designed to at least be close to what the press can produce. And this is the part that makes all the difference to your client’s production department and to the printer that has to try to match it.

You can easily make a Guide Print from Photoshop a couple of ways, one is to first convert a copy of the image to CMYK and then make the final print from this copy. Or you can use a technique called “Cross Rendering” to make the print from your RGB file do the same thing. Either way the idea is to make a print that looks like the image will look like on the final press. This way the client and the client’s client can feel confident that what they see is what they’ll get.

There isn’t room here to give you a step by step guide on producing Guide Prints, but if you send me an email from my web site, http://www.dunbardigital.com I’ll be happy to send you one. Until then, happy printing!

In the early summer of 1988 I was on a fire on the North Rim of the canyon at a remote placed call the Muav Saddle. We were at the bottom of the saddle with a trail on one side that lead up to the North Rim and on the other side the trail lead up to the Powell Plateau. On the down hill sides, there wasn’t a trail, just steep scrub covered slopes that went nowhere but down. We were trying to protect a small shack that rumor had that Teddy Roosevelt once used on a trip to the Grand Canyon. The fire had started earlier in the day by a lightning strike and had really begun to take off by late afternoon.

We had spent several hours cutting a line around the cabin through the under brush so when the fire came up the saddle at us, the line would break the fires progress and essentially put the fire out since it would have nothing more to burn. The winds had pushed the fire at us faster than we had expected and faster than our line would hold, so we had to try a back burn to remove the scrub brush in front of us. Large fires pushed by winds sound like a freight train coming at you and this one was very load and I thought I could feel the ground rumble as it got closer. We were standing there looking at the fire coming at us and our crew boss asked if we were reading to deploy our fire shelters if it became necessary. Having to deploy your shelter means that somewhere along the line something has gone horribly wrong. In our case the strong wind had pushed the fire at us and our escape route was looking like it might be cut off. I was there on the fire as a firefighter but I was always told to take my camera wherever I went to record what I saw. There I was, trying to decide if making images or fire fighting was the more important thing to do.

We started by cutting a line diagonally up one of the hillsides and my camera that was strapped over my shoulder kept banging into my hand tool so I put it over my back but that put it closer to the fire that was just a few feet away. The line we had cut earlier held in most places but the fire crept through in a few isolated places so we cut another line. That one held until the wind pushed it across the new line. Our final line which we cut just feet from the “cabin” held.

In the pre-dawn light I thought I could see something moving in an open area of burned over pine needles and pine cones but couldn’t quit see what it was until the sky brightened a bit more, it turned out to be hundreds of field mice jumping to avoid the hot ground. It was a site to see, hundreds of mice jumping in the air trying to keep from getting the hot foot. In the middle of it all was one of my crew mates who had chosen to curl up in his fire shelter and fall asleep on the ground in an attempt to stay warm in the chilly night air at 8,000 feet.

We heard later that day over the radio that if we couldn’t hold the line that it was OK with management to let the shack burn. That information would have been more useful a few hours earlier. We were rewarded with a helicopter that brought in a sling load of supplies and a cooler full of juice box’s, ice cream bars and apple pie, our tax dollars at work.

Greg Probst

Greg Probst Photography
206-297-7247

Here’s why. People don’t want to say no. It’s uncomfortable. It’s much easier to say something like “I want to think it over” or “Call me in 6 months” or “Keep me on my mailing list”. Years can go by with you and your prospect playing the same game and nothing getting done. If you have ever received a call from me for The Black Book you know that I am very clear and honest with you that it is totally fine with me that you tell me “No”. In fact, you have probably heard me say that “No is my second favorite answer”.

Until you let people know that you are comfortable with them “telling you no” then you are both very likely to head down a road of mutual mystification where you are afraid to hear No and they are unlikely to tell you No. You’ll just keep wasting time sending direct mail or mass emails or continually calling people back who have no intention of hiring you.

I suggest that you take a good look at your database. There are probably several hundred names that you have been calling on for years that will never lead to any business. Let them off of the hook! Better yet, fire them immediately and go look for some new prospects. If you have been calling on someone for more than 6 months and you haven’t made any real progress towards actually landing a job then it’s time to fire that prospect and move on. Several years ago I went through my agency database and fired over 1000 names from a list of around 1300. What a great feeling. I then went out and started calling on all new prospects and my business increased significantly.

Use the 80/20 rule as a guide. 80 percent of your business truly does come 20% of your prospects. Be brutally honest with yourself and be honest with your prospects. People really appreciate it when they know it’s ok to be honest with you. The net result is both you and your prospect will benefit from not wasting time and you’ll quickly move on to someone who really wants to hire you.

Happy prospecting!

Robert

Robert Randall has been a professional photographer for over 18 years. He is the founder and President of R3 Sales (A sales training and development company) and is the National Sales Director for The Black Book. You can contact him at info@r3sales.com or visit www.robertrandall.com

In photography, a recession is the period of time when art buyers have their budgets slashed, and clients reduce spending, curl up in a ball in the corner and wait for someone to declare it is once again OK to come out and spend. It’s not coming, it is here. Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke testified to congress recently “a recession is possible,” which is how economists say it “now.”

The first thing to do is realize you are not alone. The price of olive oil is up 200%; flour up 30-40%; corn is up 90% (didn’t the government used to pay farmers NOT to grow corn?). Spending is down, people are eating at home, looking for bargains and holding onto cash. Be thankful you don’t own a restaurant. The price of gas is up, homes aren’t selling and the sky is falling (according to Al Gore).

Many businesses fear the worst, prepare for the worst, and make some pretty silly decisions such as cutting marketing budgets, laying off key employees and raising prices. These are knee-jerk reactions, which play into the fears of consumers. The companies that will thrive through a recession and emerge stronger are those that develop targeted strategies with forward vision and aggressive tactics.

Survival is safe. Growth is risky-but much more fun!

The first thing a business owner needs to look at is the overall health of the business. There are three key indicators that should be researched, and monitored:
1. SWOT Analysis
2. Clear picture of monthly overhead
3. Debt to income ratio

The SWOT analysis is simply a bullet list of items under Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threats. The first two are Internal items, the latter two external. Basically you just list the items for each category. http://tinyurl.com/2f7cae

While for many of you, having a clear idea of your monthly overhead is a no-brainer; there are many, many photographers who have no clue how much it costs for them to be in business. This is a must do. You have to understand your business and this is the starting point. The punishment for failure is bankruptcy. If you are not yet comfortable with this part, try the NPPA cost of doing business calculator http://tinyurl.com/pd8cd

The debt to income ratio is simply identifying what your debt is (Accounts Payable-what you owe) and what your pending income is (Accounts Receivable-what you are owed) and hopefully the payable is less than the receivable.

There are several tactics that can help the photography business owner develop recession growth strategies.

1. Information. Having up to date financial information on your business is a must. If you use Quickbooks, learn how to use your report functions. You want to carefully monitor accounts payable, receivables, and cash on hand. When possible, increase your cash on hand over a period of several months, as a back up for your monthly overhead expenses. Hold off on capital expenses unless absolutely necessary. Investigate lease options in lieu of purchases. And ask for help. Talk to your accountant about ways to increase your cash position.
2. Receivables. Are companies starting to drag “net 30” out to “whenever 30?” See if your clients have corporate credit or purchase cards. Look into accepting credit cards as a form of payment. The 3% you pay off the top, is usually much cheaper than financing the amount over 90 or 120 days.
3. Efficiency. Look at your business and identify every single operation that has an expenditure of time or cash associated withy it. Can you make decisions that will save money? Are you able to shave expenses without affecting the level of quality or service?
4. Communicate. Let your team know what is going on. Don’t try and “protect” them from the realities, or worse, fail to acknowledge that there are going to be some cutbacks. Have a team lunch and pick their brains. Ask them where they might save money in their individual job.
5. Market, market, market. With websites and digital galleries and of course email, marketing on the cheap has never been easier. Increase your marketing efforts, go out and get those new clients. Work the phones and spend the money on lunches and individual connections when needed. Ensure that you evaluate your efforts to identify which marketing tactics are effective.
6. Customer service. Don’t neglect your present clients. Make sure that you are taking care of those companies that have been loyal to you in the past.
7. Stay creative. If things slow down considerably, look at a pro bono project that you might be able to execute. Work on personal work or projects but stay creative and tuned in to your market.
8. Have fun. Hey, it’s just a recession. You STILL are a photographer and business owner and you have to stay positive, so have fun!

Ira Gostin, MBA, is a marketing executive and creative director in Reno, Nevada. A photojournalist turned commercial photographer (and APA member), Ira went through an extensive career change with graduate school, management training at Starbucks and an internship at 46 at an advertising agency. He is available for consulting at ira@gostin.com, or topics for further columns. Ira’s LinkedIn is: www.linkedin.com/in/iragostin