For Photographers

Three Little Rules

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A recent book, The Three Rules (link to PDF), written by Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed confirms that competing on price is not a successful business strategy.

The two business authors spent five years studying more than 25,000 companies, in hundreds of industries, covering a 45-year span. They narrowed down the list of companies to 344. These were companies whose long-term success was not due to luck but rather to specific business decisions.

They found that these companies did three things in common from which the authors formulated their three rules for how successful companies think:
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More than just cost

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It seems that the mantra of most businesses is “cut costs”. Many companies are not just concerned about controlling their costs but also about reducing costs to the absolute minimum. These companies want to spend less but still, somehow, earn more.

Most companies view a professional photographer as an expense. So they immediately think that photography is a cost like any other and it has to be minimized. This is the barrier that a commercial or corporate photographer has to get around. There are two ways to do this:

1) Be the cheapest photographer in town.

2) Stop being seen as an expense but rather as an investment.

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Consistent Business Portraits

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A potential corporate client called to say they were looking for a photographer who could match the look of their previous business portraits. The company needed some new employees photographed in the same way as its existing pictures.

Matching previous business portraits is a common request. It shows the company understands the importance of being consistent in its corporate communications. Consistency shows stability which enhances corporate credibility.

It’s usually easy to match the look of previous business portraits and most professional photographers can do it. But just to be sure, I asked the company to provide samples of its previous portraits.

Oiy!
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Prisoners or pictures?

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When did “photograph” become a bad word?

When writing online about their pictures, some folks will use statements like “I captured this on…”, “This was captured at…”, “My favorite capture of the week”, “sunset captures from my vacation”, “holiday captures”, “best wedding captures”, “creative pet captures” and “candid kid captures”.

On sites where viewers can leave comments to posted pictures, people often write things such as “Nice capture!”, “Cool capture!”, “How did you capture that?”, “Lovely detail in that capture” and “I love the feel of this capture”.

There are many sites that offer tips on how to “capture” a winning photo, how to “capture” the perfect picture and how to “capture” your children.
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Fear Photography

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As a photographer, which would you prefer: lots of low-paying customers or only a few high-paying customers? For example:

Photographer A shoots three business portraits every week at $100 each. His annual gross revenue is 3 X 52 X $100 = $15,600.

Photographer B does only one business portrait every other week at $600. Her annual gross is 26 X $600 = $15,600.

Which is better: low price with high volume or high price with low volume?
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Getting on base

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A recent article in a Canadian photo magazine gives advice on how to become a professional sports photographer. The article talks about the excitement of being at sports events and blasting away at ten frames per second. A quick check shows that the author’s web site is filled with fantastic photos … of weddings and portraits.

The author’s advice for wannabe sports photographers is to call sports events and ask for a free “photo pass”. If necessary, the photographer should offer free photos in exchange for said pass. Later, when the photographer has gained some experience, they can sell pictures to the event and enter the exciting world of sports photography.

This information is wrong.
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Back in the darkroom

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Over the past few years, almost all photography-related software has taken a turn for the worse. Such software has adopted a dark-coloured user interface along with either reverse type (white text on a dark background), dark text on a dark background, or even grey text on a grey background.

Some software companies don’t seem to understand how our eyes work. Since reading a computer monitor is known to be more difficult than reading a piece of paper, one would think that software companies would take this into consideration.
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