Day 3 of Imaging USA - Last day

Day 3 of the Imaging USA and it’s the final day. It was the final day yesterday, we got in pretty late yesterday night and I was too tired to write anything. There was an awards ceremony for some people that was between 7pm and 8pm and the dinner they offered presented by Kodak was at 8:30 so we waited around for an hour and a half to get the free food. It was actually pretty nice, the first dinner on the first day had a theme, it was “under the Phoenix skies” of which we had Mexican type food. It was ok, can’t say no to free. But last night’s dinner theme was “next stop, Nashville” which is where the next imaging USA will be. And they had some good food there, all county type food like pulled pork, mashed potatoes inside potato skins, corn bread, you get the idea. That was last night and so we got in late, but let me back up and tell you about the day.
We started day with only some 4 hours of sleep and we were both pretty exhausted. Olga and I could fall asleep the night before, we had just had a great day of classes then had dinner with Autumn and Allen, and we chatted at the Olive Garden till they almost kicked us out, we were the last customers in there. The first class we had was “the Joy of Pricing” with Sarah Petty as the speaker, and wouldn’t you know it, she started us off with a slideshow of her work. We felt that this class would be a good one, because if you ask any photographer in this business, you tend to struggle with this one a lot and its what makes a great photographer. If you charge too little you end up, working too hard for too little money to support you and the business, and clients become unhappy and it spirals out of control. You end up burnt out and looking for a new job somewhere. If you charge too much and you have no justification for that high price rate, you don’t attract any clients, you sit around wondering what’s wrong, soon the rent is due, electric gets turn off, and you don’t have money for gas to go anywhere and you just fall apart. And so to find that happy medium is what we want to strive for, something that both you and the customer and agree to. One of the points she made that I had come to understand well is to not do discounts, in this line of work, the money you charge, every dollar of that goes to something, so when you take any of that away you will wobble, and the best alternative is to add value instead. Offering additional hours, extra prints, maybe even an album, and so if you aren’t already contemplating that, think about it. She too also talked about having a strong brand, with a logo and constant look and feel to everything.
Following this class, the order of the day was different then the days before. First two days was 3 classes, Expo, class then a final event, this time it was one class, expo, and 3 more classes and then final event. We did the expo thing, walking around talking to vendor, they had awesome deals, like custom backdrops, for only $100 and Wacom tablets 6x8 normally $350 for $280. And with the last day many vendors were offering deals and what not, like four 4x6 albums for $20 and the like. What is great about this expo is you get to see what new products that are out there, like the Radio popper, these pretty awesome Wacom tablets with a built in screen, cool awesome software, and the great thing is you get to pick up and touch and feel everything. So if you saw a company’s website on backdrops for example not you get to really see how big they really are.
When it comes to software, they have live demonstrations on what it can do. Normally you’d see an ad for say Success ware or Studio plus, and maybe you can download a demo from their site, but chances are you don’t know how to work it and so you dismiss it. But here at the expo, at their booth they have a big screen TV hooked up to a computer and they are demonstrating it for you.
We grabbed a quick lunch in the main eating area there, and at the rate the line was moving I knew we were going to be late for our next class, “photoshop Automation Tricks”. And can you imagine who the speaker was going to be, the main man Kevin Kubota, no less. Now I’ve used his photoshop shop actions before, and knew the name “Kubota” but to put a name to the face of the guy who came up with this concept was awesome. It’s like being into science and meeting Ben Franklin or something. Well as luck would have it, I was walking into his class late, and he’s up on the stage, and throwing what looked like fresbies, but he was giving away some of this disks and mouse pads, as I was walking by was able to try and catch one and it bounced off my hand and into some guy’s lap, I kept walking. The second time, boom it hit my hand and landed at the feet of this woman, and I was like no, that one is mine. Well when I took my seat and got settled, I was kind of too far away to see what he was doing so I had to move forward, knocking down a few people as I went. Not on purpose! He took us through what it takes to make an action of which I knew but it was a good refresher, but later he got into making droplets and scripts that I thought was awesome. And as he’s telling us, he’s like “Hold on, I know what you’re thinking, it’s not that hard, I know you can do this”. He was also quite comical and had a great personality.
The next class was on “expanding your wedding business” and you can imagine I was all excited about, with some big photographers out of New York that have been doing this for 3 generations. We were only there for 20 minutes before we left, nothing new, kind of stale. We walked into “Subtle art of family portraiture” and as we walked in the do was singing. We were like oh no… are we going to have to walk out of here too? He was going on about “la, la, la, la, la, la” you know singing high and low notes, but we gave it a chance before leaving and glad we did. He talked about how posing a family is more like writing music, where you position the heads, much like what you would do on a music scale. And it makes for a more interesting picture. If you had a row of people and their heads where all even, you’d end up with a steady song, boring. But if you position them, staggered up and down, you have something better. The speaker’s name was Drake Busath, and the dude was interesting as he was funny. Drake got into working with children and his gets tip he gave was, don’t focus on the children. Get the kids to focus on you, when you become interesting and you are standing near or behind the camera, you take better pictures. And looking at his work that’s so true! And most of the time we kind of take two types of children photos, pictures of them smiling and then pictures of them crying, because they are done and bored. Well he gets all kinds of emotions out of them by telling them interesting stories, like if Drake was working with a little girl, he would say “oh I had a pretty dress like that when I was a little girl” and the little girl would look confused. Snap take a picture. Or he’d tell a story like “how do you like your teacher at school, do they lock you in a dungeon with snakes and scary things?” and you’d have fear, snap take a picture. He uses a puppet a lot and communicates with it as if it were alive and when he wants the kid to sit up straight, he’d get all mad at the puppet and not at the child, and the kid would see, “uh Oh, the puppet’s going to get a spanking, I’d better not do what he did” and so its so cute. Or he’d talk to the flowers or the grass the child would walk on, “ok little grass fairies, don’t you go biting the little kids toes this time ok” and the child would look down in wonder like, WOW… Snap take a picture. Great speaker and a crazy singer, but well worth.
Last one of the day was “photoshop Tricks and Tips that will blow your mind” another class with dual speakers, not what I enjoy but it worked out, we learned some cool things. It was cool to see them do things in photoshop that might take 5 minutes or something, and it would only take them seconds. I’m not going to get into all they did, but if you are into photoshop, I’d recommend checking out http://www.adventuresinphotoshop.com/.
All in all we had a good time. Three days of intense learning from some of the top masters in the field for such a small about of money, is without a doubt well worth it. We both could not take a fourth day, it’s just too much. I plan on writing another email or blog entry that would encompass all of what I think would be good, some tips, and some ideas. And one thing I could pass on now is, get that sleep when doing 12 hours a day of learning, it’s pretty important.

Day 2 of the Imaging USA Expo

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.

Day 1 in the Imaging USA Convention in Phoenix

It was the First day of the Imaging USA convention for us and the main reason we came out here. We woke up at 5am and when you aren’t used to waking up that early it can be a pain.
The night before we made our way to the hot tub of which we hoped it would be empty but it was not our luck, there was a couple already in there. The couple we met as it turns out was there for the Imaging convention as well, and they had flown in that day from Missouri. It was nice to chat photography business with them and because they didn’t have a car and would have to rely on a bus and rail system just to get to the convention, we offered to take them. What really sucked is that they would have had to miss out on the first section of classes because of the shuttle. Autumn and Allen own Thomsen photography and are a great couple to chat photography with. Olga and I were wondering if we’d meet anyone while we were out here and its cool we did.

The first class we took was all about shooting with wireless flashes on mono pods. These two photographers where a trip to listen to, they are http://www.tricoastphotography.com/ – it was Mike and Cody speaking with Mike doing most of the speaking but Cody was cracking us up. That dude is seriously funny. What I liked most is, now a days you have just single photographers, or you have husband and wife photographer teams, I had never seen two pro photographers come together and work together so good. One would take photos sometimes while the other holds the flash, or visa versa. They said they don’t care who gets the shot as long as the client is happy. And the humor they use keeps the clients, happy and makes for a great time. Super great lecture on the use of wireless flashes and the use of the new “RadioPoppers”, http://radiopopper.com/ they are supposed to be the biggest newest thing.

Second class was on Magic of Posing and Lighting with Hanson Fong speaking. He cracked me up so much I thought I was in a comedy club or something. Hanson had a challenge that anyone could pick out any couple in the room and he would make them look good and if he couldn’t he would give them his whole backdrop and stage lighting, but no one did. Hanson did however take some larger people and put them together and showed how to slim them down and make them look better. When he was building a family group with the various members it was much like what Paula had taught us in a PPASD class before, so it was some good learning. Towards the end, they had a wedding couple come out and they started up some cool music blasting. He would go around them and pose them up in so many different ways, that you could easily get at 100 plus really cool images for the couple to enjoy. Good learning there.

Olga stay in that class room to learn Bellies & Babies while I took on a combination class on “Employees- Can’t live without them” and “Ring a Ding, Don’t be a Ding a Ling on the Phone” . Out of those two speakers I like the second one better. The first speaker talked about what are some good questions to have for the interview, having benefits ensures you might keep them around longer, working with incentives rather than just an hourly wage. But the second speaker, Angela Carson, was really good and seeing how the best tool we have as photographers is the phone this was pretty beneficial. Like when someone calls you should stop what you are doing and smile, it puts you in the right mood to chat. You shouldn’t just ramble on about yourself; listen to what the customer wants. Asking leading questions and before asking a question you should say, “May I ask you a question”…. Don’t know why that is but it makes sense. All in all found it to be really educational.

I hit the imaging expo between 12 – 5pm and my head felt like it was about to come off. There was some much stuff there; every software that I’ve ever seen in a magazine was there, Graphic Authority, On 1, Kubota, and even some I hadn’t seen before. Nikon was there with all kinds of lens and cameras, and so was Canon but I stayed away not to be swayed to the dark side. I think every speaker I saw today was a Canon shooter. All manner of printers and album companies, the place was awesome. Anyway too much stuff not enough money, sad to say.
Last speaker of the day was Julia Woods on Profitable Portraits, very inspiring and a real eye opener. She talked about low volume, high priced sales and selling some really impressive wall mounts. If you can imagine a wall mount showcasing some 6 images hanging over your couch for about $4000 - $5000 just for the one piece. She talked about how you chat with clients, discussing with them what they want, and what you can do to make it happen. To plant the seed of an awesome wall mount hanging over their bed or couch, setting up to do the photo shoot. Discussing the price toward the end of the private session because she said herself, most clients get the urge to throw up when they see the price. But after they go home and think about it, giving them some two weeks to think about it, they tend come around and drop anywhere between $2000 - $8000 on her work.

Well its time for bed as we have to get up again at 5am. Tomorrow will be a challenge as there will be multiple classes I’d like to go to but can only choose one at a particular time frame. And we also get to see Anne Geddes tomorrow night, the line just to get tickets was wrapped all around the main lobby, as you can imagine Super long. I had to set out of the Hanson Fong class to use the bathroom and I was able to pick up our tickets with no line, thank goodness.