The business of photography and retouching
Great customers want a photographer who does great work.
Good customers want a photographer who does good work.
Cheap customers want a photographer who does good enough work.
What kind of work do you do?
Customers who pay your rates take your work seriously.
Customers who expect cheap want to take your work.
What kind of customer do you want to work with?
Everyone who goes to a grocery store will buy something. Food is a necessity and everyone needs food today.
Everyone who goes to a photographer’s web site will *not* hire that photographer. Photography isn’t a necessity and everyone doesn’t need photography today.
Everyone is not your photography customer.
Everyone doesn’t want you. Everyone won’t pay your rates. Your photography isn’t good enough for everyone.
But someone is your photography customer.
Someone understands what you do. Someone will gladly pay your rates. Your photography is perfect for someone.
Who is your someone?
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, I occasionally crossed paths with a certain other newspaper photographer when I photographed dress rehearsals for ballet and opera. After shooting a suitable number of pictures of a rehearsal, I would leave the theatre. But this other photographer always stayed behind. He put his cameras on the floor and watched the remaining rehearsal. I thought he was being lazy, just sitting there and not taking pictures.
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Job priorities for running your photo business:
1. You’re a photographer.
No that’s wrong.
When Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, everyone in the industry was expecting a windfall. But that expectation soon faded.
More than three years after the federal government legalized cannabis, there are more than 870 licensed cultivators, processors and sellers in Canada. But despite piqued interest following legalization, high supply and low demand have led to billions of dollars in writedowns and millions of grams of unsold marijuana.
(. . .)
Ontario has seen, in particular, a very large increase in the number of retail stores over the last 24 months, and because of that, the overall (market share) each store on average is able to get continues to decline . . .There are 425 cannabis stores and 421 Tim Hortons across Toronto.
This is another view-from-my-office photo.
Most photography web sites are about equipment. I’m referring to photography web sites not photographer web sites. Such photography sites write about gear because it’s quick and easy.
There are some web sites that offer photography advice and instruction. But these “nuts and bolts” sites are superficial and intended for beginners. Quick bites of junk food. Tastes good for the few minutes you’re consuming it.
This is another view-from-my-office photo.
Would you pay $1,000 for a business headshot?
The Wall Street Journal published an article about the value of professionally done business headshots for people seeking a career boost. (This alternative link doesn’t have the photos included in the original article but that’s actually a good thing. The glaring irony of the original article about the value of headshots is that the headshot examples are rather plain or poorly done.)
