Giving away the store

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If you were at a pizza store and you bought one slice, would you expect to get the entire pizza? If you were at a bar and you paid for one glass of wine, would you then ask for the entire bottle? If you purchased one ticket to the cineplex, do you demand to stay and watch every movie that’s playing?

Strangely enough, when some customers hire a photographer, they expect (or demand) to get every picture that was shot.

Why might a customer ask for every picture?

• Sometime in the past, another photographer once gave the customer every picture and now the customer (incorrectly) thinks that this is the normal practice.

• The customer thinks the photographer didn’t choose the best images and they’re worried that they’re missing out on something (i.e. FOMO).

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Photojournalism Conference, Vancouver, May 2015

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For those with an interest in photojournalism, documentary photography or newspaper photography, the News Photographers Association of Canada (NPAC) is presenting its annual Photojournalism Conference on May 8 to 9, 2015, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

This year’s keynote speaker is photographer Eli Reed from Magnum Photos. Other speakers are Andrew Burton, John Moore and Darcy Padilla.

The two-day event also features a trade show, portfolio reviews, camera clinics by Canon, Nikon and Sony, and the annual National Pictures of the Year Awards gala.

The conference is a wonderful opportunity to meet and talk shop with others in the business. For photojournalism students, this should be a must-attend event not only for the guest speakers but also for the portfolio reviews and career advice.

This is the only conference of its kind in Canada. NPAC is non-profit and volunteer-run.

 

Photo Psychology

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A McGill University psychiatry graduate student, Jay Olson, and his fellow researchers last month published a study titled Influencing Choice Without Awareness which examined the psychology of magic. Olson is also a professional magician. The research showed how various psychological factors are used to influence someone’s decision making especially when it comes to magic.

The use of persuasion extends far beyond magic. In fact, some photographers already know this and they use psychology to influence their customers.

1) Some wedding and portrait photographers know how to properly list their photo packages. Never start or end with the lowest priced package unless you’re trying to sell that low-priced package.
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A few quick thoughts

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While I was shooting an event last week, the client, who was looking over my shoulder, said, “That should be a good picture. Can you upload it to our Twitter account right now?”

I replied that it wasn’t possible with my camera but I could transfer the photo to my nearby laptop and then e-mail it to him. He said not to bother. He held out his cell phone, snapped a picture and uploaded it to his Twitter account. He seemed quite pleased with himself.

I was shooting at ISO 6400 with a 500mm f4 lens. He was using an iPhone 5. You can probably guess how his picture looked.
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Door-to-door energy scams

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(This post has nothing to do with photography).

If you received an e-mail saying you just won a million dollars, would you believe it? If an e-mail said your bank account or credit card was compromised and you needed to “click here” to verify your information, would you do it?

Someone came to my front door today saying he was with the “Ontario Energy Safety Board”. He was here to do a furnace safety inspection. Of course, he was lying. There’s no such thing as the Ontario Energy Safety Board. The company name he used was meant to be confused with real Ontario Energy Board.

Now that warmer weather has begun, many homeowners will be receiving similar knocks on their front door. This will go on for many months. Sadly, all levels of Canadian government have refused to fix the problem of door-to-door scams. We have Do Not Call and CASL but we don’t have “Do not knock” like Australia.
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Print it or lose it

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As you might know, the most archival storage medium is paper. It’s also the most common and the cheapest. (Yes, rock is more archival but paper is easier to carry around.)

Yet we still digitize almost everything in the belief that this will preserve that information. But as file formats, storage formats, software and hardware become obsolete, this information may be lost.

Vinton “Vint” Cerf, recognized as a founder of the Internet and currently vice-president of Google, this week stated:

In our zeal to get excited about digitizing, we digitize photographs thinking it’s going to make them last longer, and we might turn out to be wrong.
(…)
We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole without realizing it. We digitize things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artifacts that we digitized. If there are photos you really care about, print them out.

In 2013, the Photo Marketing Association launched its Print it or Lose it campaign to encourage consumers to print their valuable photos rather than risk accidental loss of those digital images.

 

Is your business ready for its close up?

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When a business spends tens of thousands of dollars on a full-page newspaper ad, why would it spend $0 on the photography for that ad? With the company image at stake, why would a national company get an amateur to do a quick snapshot with a cell phone?

The Globe and Mail today published an ad supplement about franchising. The online version isn’t quite the same as the print version but it does have many of the same photos. The back cover of the print version has a full-page ad for a large pet care company. The amateur point-and-shoot photo missed the purpose of the business and it also missed everything needed in good photography.

What readers don’t know is that some “normal” sections of a newspaper are also advertorials produced by the ad department and/or outsourced to freelancers. This includes sections for new cars, new homes, gardening, education, investing, travel and any other “special section.” I spent almost two decades at a Toronto daily newspaper and was involved with many advertising supplements.
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