Imaging USA – Phoenix – Day 2 of our adventure
The day started much like the day before only we were a little more tired but got out the door a few minutes earlier. Olga was able to get a starbucks coffee for the road and I grabbed a red bull.
We had our new Photo Buddies, Autumn and Allen, with us again this morning and we are so happy we met them. They are certainly a nice couple, easy to chat with, and we have a lot in common, not just the photography, but I’ll get to that later.
Olga and I went to see the first speaker together, his name was Todd Van Fleet and he was there discussing Senior photography. Our photography friends, Autumn and Allen, with http://www.thomsenphotography.net/ were also there to pick up on Senior photography. Now you wouldn’t know it by the way he spoke to us, but it was his first time speaking. He had a lot of great ideas about designing your own backgrounds and making or redesigning your own templates, mainly because you want to be unique and different from every other photographer. I like that he had a video of himself on a photo shoot with a senior, and that he’s out on location riding a skateboard and having fun. He had in his studio a dressing room for the clients that they could change into different out fits, and while they are changing he has an IPod hook up right there in the dressing room that is hooked up into his sound system. He talks with every senior to get to know them before hand and finds out what they are into, and if they are into say dirt biking, the kid might or might not ask to bring his dirt bike in, but if Todd finds out about it, he’ll want the senior to bring it in with all his riding gear. Todd made a point that cracked me up but is so true, that its cool to be fun with the seniors but you always want to watch yourself, he said “ you don’t want to become “that creepy photographer guy”” – always have a parent, assistant, or someone with you, and as that maybe common sense to some of us, don’t become that guy. – A great speaker, Fun and well spoken.
On the next class we split up, Olga and I. I Took “10 steps to building a successful studio” and loved it. The speaker Kay Eskridge was really nice and she had her parents in the audience, and she said she was more nervous with them in the audience the with the place full. I took a lot away from this class some of her key points that hit home were:
BRANDING – got to develop a brand just like Starbucks and Tiffany’s – and the speaker Todd in the first class mentioned that too, so if you don’t have one, it’s a great idea to get one or have a designer design one.
Customer Care – she talked about having everyone make an appointment. If you are picking up, coming in for a session, or just wanting to discuss products, to have appointments so that you can make each and every customer feel they are the most important. Now this is like the 3rd speaker I’ve heard that from over the last 6 months, so its super important.
EVERYTHING Matters – she talked about that she did everything to make the client happy. Making sure the floors were clean all the way up to having complimentary snacks, like chips, sodas, mints, and in her bath rooms, the guy’s room have everything complimentary they might need, comb, gel, shaving cream, razor, etc. and in the woman’s bathroom, Brushes, make up, diapers for the babies and in multiple sizes, hair pins, etc. She made sure the whole studio was neat, smelled great, sounded great. You only get one chance to make a first impression.
Now every speaker today seemed to dive into the same thing and that’s marketing. Yes we all know that, but there was a pattern that emerged and that was they all had: a email newsletter, Website of course, Blogs, they all mentioned having a Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, they all did sales of some sort and did it with gift cards, some did direct mailing and got great responses.
Moving on Olga and I caught up together and saw the next speakers on Portraiture in Today’s world, which wasn’t so good. They had David Huntsman and Jessica Vogal speaking and they weren’t bad speakers but, I don’t know, I didn’t like the way Jessica would be speaking and David would jump to the next slide and then she had to finish up that topic. And by this time, this was class three of the day, close to lunch and they were saying pretty much the same thing. BRANDING (3rd time today), your business name, if ever you’d like to sell it, its easier to sell a General name like “Rehoboth Photography” then to sell “Will Vickers photography”. They too talked about facebook, twitter, and blogs, and websites. But along the same lines as branding your should make your logo, color scheme, and designs pretty much the same across the board, on your letterhead, website, blog, business cards, everything.
We scooted out of there early and check out the expo right at 12 noon. Now during the expo part they had little mini theaters with speakers going on, in one hour sessions. These speakers were usually speaking on behalf of a company, such as Microsoft, and Grafti studio. Olga suggested we see this one Australian photographer speak, by the name of “Yervant”. Didn’t know the name or what its about. But when I saw this shorter, older guy, I was like “He looks so familiar”. He started to introduce himself and said he was going to talk about his wedding photography and then I was like Oh my god, I’ve seen this guy before. It turns out I watched these videos on 5 of the worlds top wedding photographers and he was on the video. I had watched these same 5 photographer videos over and over again and really liked his style and here I was seeing him in real life. I hung on his every word, and he had a lot of great advice. And if you can imagine by the end, I was so “Wowed” by this guy, it was like seeing Mickey mouse and then going to Disneyland and seeing them up close. I wanted to get my picture taken with him, but he left in a hurry and I didn’t get it. I was bummed, but I was happy to atleast see him. Oh and I did ask him a question. Because he is Yervant, that’s his name and brand, but he has two other photographers working for him, I asked “do brides only ask for you or will they be happy with one of your other photographers?” and he said that if he’s not available that the brides are happy with one of the others because they know they will still get the same Yervant experience.
Now I’m up to about some 1200 words and that was just half my day. Its 12:15 and I have to be up again at 5am. So I’m going to skip ahead and get to the best part, Anne Geddes. She was so awesome to see and hear, I can’t go into what it was like. Sure we were in the nose bleed seats, we didn’t care, when she walked out and spoke, she filled up that room. Some of the key points she talked about that I felt I’ll take with me where ever I go, is that as a photographer, we are capturing life and emotion with every click of our shutter. She spoke strongly about as a group of professional photographers we need to stop giving away the control of our “negatives” that we are creating art. She spoke out about child abuse and how wrong it is, that each and every baby and child is precious. It was nice to hear that she is a dreamer and to never stop dreaming, we need to keep dreaming in order to succeed. That she started out with nothing just like we all did, she had her dream and with everyone telling her, it will never work, she did it anyway and kept going strong. Remarkable woman! The room was totally packed with people and when she entered the room, Standing and applauding for what seemed like forever. And when Anne was done speaking, everyone was standing up, cheering, clapping, nobody wanted to leave. To me it was like seeing a rock star, or whatever business or passion you have, one person shines brighter than the rest and you can’t help but be drawn to that person’s energy. I think she impacted everyone there.
Well I hope this was an enjoyable read. Email me and let me know what you think.
The day started much like the day before only we were a little more tired but got out the door a few minutes earlier. Olga was able to get a starbucks coffee for the road and I grabbed a red bull.
We had our new Photo Buddies, Autumn and Allen, with us again this morning and we are so happy we met them. They are certainly a nice couple, easy to chat with, and we have a lot in common, not just the photography, but I’ll get to that later.
Olga and I went to see the first speaker together, his name was Todd Van Fleet and he was there discussing Senior photography. Our photography friends, Autumn and Allen, with http://www.thomsenphotography.net/ were also there to pick up on Senior photography. Now you wouldn’t know it by the way he spoke to us, but it was his first time speaking. He had a lot of great ideas about designing your own backgrounds and making or redesigning your own templates, mainly because you want to be unique and different from every other photographer. I like that he had a video of himself on a photo shoot with a senior, and that he’s out on location riding a skateboard and having fun. He had in his studio a dressing room for the clients that they could change into different out fits, and while they are changing he has an IPod hook up right there in the dressing room that is hooked up into his sound system. He talks with every senior to get to know them before hand and finds out what they are into, and if they are into say dirt biking, the kid might or might not ask to bring his dirt bike in, but if Todd finds out about it, he’ll want the senior to bring it in with all his riding gear. Todd made a point that cracked me up but is so true, that its cool to be fun with the seniors but you always want to watch yourself, he said “ you don’t want to become “that creepy photographer guy”” – always have a parent, assistant, or someone with you, and as that maybe common sense to some of us, don’t become that guy. – A great speaker, Fun and well spoken.
On the next class we split up, Olga and I. I Took “10 steps to building a successful studio” and loved it. The speaker Kay Eskridge was really nice and she had her parents in the audience, and she said she was more nervous with them in the audience the with the place full. I took a lot away from this class some of her key points that hit home were:
BRANDING – got to develop a brand just like Starbucks and Tiffany’s – and the speaker Todd in the first class mentioned that too, so if you don’t have one, it’s a great idea to get one or have a designer design one.
Customer Care – she talked about having everyone make an appointment. If you are picking up, coming in for a session, or just wanting to discuss products, to have appointments so that you can make each and every customer feel they are the most important. Now this is like the 3rd speaker I’ve heard that from over the last 6 months, so its super important.
EVERYTHING Matters – she talked about that she did everything to make the client happy. Making sure the floors were clean all the way up to having complimentary snacks, like chips, sodas, mints, and in her bath rooms, the guy’s room have everything complimentary they might need, comb, gel, shaving cream, razor, etc. and in the woman’s bathroom, Brushes, make up, diapers for the babies and in multiple sizes, hair pins, etc. She made sure the whole studio was neat, smelled great, sounded great. You only get one chance to make a first impression.
Now every speaker today seemed to dive into the same thing and that’s marketing. Yes we all know that, but there was a pattern that emerged and that was they all had: a email newsletter, Website of course, Blogs, they all mentioned having a Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, they all did sales of some sort and did it with gift cards, some did direct mailing and got great responses.
Moving on Olga and I caught up together and saw the next speakers on Portraiture in Today’s world, which wasn’t so good. They had David Huntsman and Jessica Vogal speaking and they weren’t bad speakers but, I don’t know, I didn’t like the way Jessica would be speaking and David would jump to the next slide and then she had to finish up that topic. And by this time, this was class three of the day, close to lunch and they were saying pretty much the same thing. BRANDING (3rd time today), your business name, if ever you’d like to sell it, its easier to sell a General name like “Rehoboth Photography” then to sell “Will Vickers photography”. They too talked about facebook, twitter, and blogs, and websites. But along the same lines as branding your should make your logo, color scheme, and designs pretty much the same across the board, on your letterhead, website, blog, business cards, everything.
We scooted out of there early and check out the expo right at 12 noon. Now during the expo part they had little mini theaters with speakers going on, in one hour sessions. These speakers were usually speaking on behalf of a company, such as Microsoft, and Grafti studio. Olga suggested we see this one Australian photographer speak, by the name of “Yervant”. Didn’t know the name or what its about. But when I saw this shorter, older guy, I was like “He looks so familiar”. He started to introduce himself and said he was going to talk about his wedding photography and then I was like Oh my god, I’ve seen this guy before. It turns out I watched these videos on 5 of the worlds top wedding photographers and he was on the video. I had watched these same 5 photographer videos over and over again and really liked his style and here I was seeing him in real life. I hung on his every word, and he had a lot of great advice. And if you can imagine by the end, I was so “Wowed” by this guy, it was like seeing Mickey mouse and then going to Disneyland and seeing them up close. I wanted to get my picture taken with him, but he left in a hurry and I didn’t get it. I was bummed, but I was happy to atleast see him. Oh and I did ask him a question. Because he is Yervant, that’s his name and brand, but he has two other photographers working for him, I asked “do brides only ask for you or will they be happy with one of your other photographers?” and he said that if he’s not available that the brides are happy with one of the others because they know they will still get the same Yervant experience.
Now I’m up to about some 1200 words and that was just half my day. Its 12:15 and I have to be up again at 5am. So I’m going to skip ahead and get to the best part, Anne Geddes. She was so awesome to see and hear, I can’t go into what it was like. Sure we were in the nose bleed seats, we didn’t care, when she walked out and spoke, she filled up that room. Some of the key points she talked about that I felt I’ll take with me where ever I go, is that as a photographer, we are capturing life and emotion with every click of our shutter. She spoke strongly about as a group of professional photographers we need to stop giving away the control of our “negatives” that we are creating art. She spoke out about child abuse and how wrong it is, that each and every baby and child is precious. It was nice to hear that she is a dreamer and to never stop dreaming, we need to keep dreaming in order to succeed. That she started out with nothing just like we all did, she had her dream and with everyone telling her, it will never work, she did it anyway and kept going strong. Remarkable woman! The room was totally packed with people and when she entered the room, Standing and applauding for what seemed like forever. And when Anne was done speaking, everyone was standing up, cheering, clapping, nobody wanted to leave. To me it was like seeing a rock star, or whatever business or passion you have, one person shines brighter than the rest and you can’t help but be drawn to that person’s energy. I think she impacted everyone there.
Well I hope this was an enjoyable read. Email me and let me know what you think.
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