For almost a year now, I’ve been soaking up teaching from Jerry Ghionis on the original Ice Society. Jerry is truly a master at both photography as well as teaching. Who knows how many hours I’ve spent watching Ice Society content, and I still pick up new stuff every time I watch. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, Jerry rolled out The Ice Society 2.0.

Improved navigation
The old navigation system was functional. Find the chapter you’re interested in, expand the chapter, and click on the section title to open content. After so long, I had gotten used to it. With the new layout, it’s easier to browse because each chapter has a thumbnail. Plus there is a page per chapter so you’re not having to sort through so many links just to get to the next section within a chapter. Not only are the chapters easier to navigate, it’s easy to pull up all the videos in a category. For example, I love the posing and lighting videos, so I can see thumbnails for each of those from different chapters. Easy!

Who needs Google?
The new Ice Society has an added search box to allow you to easily find the video (or article) you’re looking for. I did a search for video light, and a whole list of videos with Jerry using video light popped up. I did a few more searches to see how robust the search feature was, and it wasn’t finding every word in certain articles. I think it may be searching the article tags. The good news is that each article has been thoroughly tagged to make searching for a keyword likely to result in the results you were looking for. You can also tag your favorite sections so you can easily review the most relevant content for you. Depending on how you use this, you could also tag your current spot so you don’t forget what chapter you’re on. Bookmarking your spot may not be as much of an issue now with the thumbnails, but I had to keep updating a document in the previous version so I would remember where to pick up.

Jerry in your pocket
On more than one occasion, I’ve thought to myself after watching Jerry speak that I wish I could put him in my pocket and carry him around with me wherever I go. If you’ve got a compatible mobile device, it’s almost just as good. The Ice Society has changed video formats so quite a few phones and other tech gear can now play the videos. I tested on my blackberry, and I didn’t have any luck (no surprise there though beacuse my blackberry isn’t very media friendly). I also tested on my Android tablet and found that the videos play nicely on the tablet. According to the website, iPads and iPods should be good to go too. Another major change that makes it almost as good as having Jerry follow you around is the new audio commentary feature. For new Ice Pick Videos, Jerry breaks down each part of the video talking about challenges he was facing and what he was thinking. The only problem I had was with the audio element. For some reason, Internet Explorer didn’t like the embedded audio tag. Switching over to Firefox ended up doing the trick though. I think if there were 2 separate videos, one with and one without commentary, that would have solved the problem completely.

2 is better than 1
I have definitely been appreciating the new Ice Society. The audio commentary has got me the most excited, but some of the other changes are ranking pretty close for me too. Well done Ice Society team! It’s quite appreciated from your Icicles (that’s the endearing term Jerry uses, right?). The original Ice Society was good, but this is definitely better.

For more information on The Ice Society, visit the website at icesociety.com

The Ice Society 2.0 Review is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

Teri Quance of Quance Design and Photography brought a little Texas up to Illinois a couple days ago, and I was lucky enough to catch her workshop. In fact, her class was held in room A at Studio M, our photography rental studio in Belleville. Bonus! Plus she presented some great ideas.

Where we’re meant to be
Right away Teri took off in a soul-searching morning filled with new ideas, group discussion, and worksheets. The bad news is now a room full of photographers know that I wanted to be a firefighter ninja when I was a kid. The good news is that I did also think back to times in my childhood where I experimented as a writer, musician, and videographer. At the end of the morning, each of us used our childhood dream jobs and a handful of worksheets to come up with a concrete mission statement. Not bad!

The bigger picture
One of the things that impressed me most about Teri was how much she cared about other people. I think she is one of the truly rare people who choose to think of others first. From what I can tell, Teri sees someone in need, and jumps in both feet first to help. We hear so often about how we can get other people to help us, it was refreshing to hear Teri asking who we’re here to help.

Marketing from the heart
There doesn’t have to be a disconnect between your marketing and “you”. Listening to Teri talk about marketing, you get the idea that it’s more for her than just bringing new clients in the door. She markets looking for a win for everyone involved. How can she help other people while still building her photography business? Pretty cool concept.

Demystifying the money
From my experience, it’s common for photographers to speak in vague generalities when talking about pricing. Or maybe they even bring up only their big numbers to impress everybody. Teri definitely wasn’t talking in general terms. She laid out each of her senior packages including exactly what was included down to the manufacturer and the exact price for the package. I think everyone appreciated the specifics. She even shared the reasoning behind the layout of each package. Knowing why she chose certain products in each package allows us to use similar reasoning with our own prices lists.

Tell me what you really think
To me, the biggest takeaway from the presentation was that Teri started us all down the path for how to win at life. I think most of us (myself definitely included) so often just float through and lack focus. Teri reminded us that we’ve got to approach the stuff of life with purpose – both in our personal lives and in our businesses. Talk about a challenge! That’s just how they bring it from Texas =)

For more information on Teri’s studio, visit her website at http://www.quancedesign.com

Teri Quance Photography Workshop Review is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

Scott from The Hospitality Concierge was kind enough to sit down with me today and discuss a new marketing system for wedding vendors. HC is doing so many different things for vendors that I had a hard time wrapping my mind around exactly what it was they were offering. Then I realized it’s basically like HC is doing PR for the wedding vendor. They have 100 different ways of spreading good news about wedding businesses.

The Concept
Brides want free stuff, and HC has stuff to give them. In order to win over a bride, The Hospitality Concierge offers a free pampering gift and a free meeting with a wedding planner. Brides can also plan their day and tell their story through the HC website. Plus they can participate in contests for more free stuff. Match up the brides with HC wedding vendors, and you’ve got happy brides and businesses.

Booking Process
Once the bride meets with the wedding planner, it’s time for the wedding planner to promote local HC wedding vendors. Of course, the bride isn’t locked into booking with these vendors, but that’s what the wedding planner recommends. Aside from the initial vendor list being only HC vendors, the wedding planner’s process is the same as it would have been for a non-HC wedding. The bride then books her vendors like normal.

HC Vendor Marketing
The Hospitality Concierge doesn’t just promote wedding vendors through wedding planners. It’s an all out marketing campaign designed to direct business to all the HC vendors. There’s Facebook marketing, video creation, HC Magazine, website creation, plus there were probably 4 or 5 other social media and word of mouth techniques HC has been using. According to The Hospitality Concierge, they want their vendors to succeed. That’s their top priority. I was pretty impressed with how serious Scott was about bringing in new business for vendors.

No Better Time Than Now
Since The Hospitality Concierge is a newer business, they have some amazing rates right now. I’ll let Scott give you exact numbers, but just to give you an idea, the yearly investment is what you’d probably expect for a monthly rate for this kind of service. On top of the price being unrealistically low, you can even reduce the cost further by referring other vendors – in fact, if you sign up mention my name =). As long as their marketing efforts work, this will be a steal-of-a-deal for wedding vendors in the St Louis area. If you’re not in St Louis, contact HC to see when they’re planning to come to their area. Talking to Scott, they’re planning to expand into other markets soon.

For more information on HC weddings, visit www.thehcweddings.com

I’d love to hear how HC is working for you. What part of their marketing has resulted in the most brides knocking down your door?

HC Weddings – PR For St Louis Wedding Vendors is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

TJ:
For readers who haven’t heard of BrideRush, could you give me a short and sweet idea of what BrideRush is about?

James:
BrideRush is for busy brides with little time for planning and for brides with short engagements. We offer exclusive, date-specific deals, helping wedding vendors fill unfilled dates and helping brides save a bundle. As more and more couples choose to plan their weddings in six months or less and select their venue and vendors closer to their wedding date, BrideRush also is the home for information on how to get it all done easily and quickly. It is a new perspective on wedding planning.

TJ:
As a business, my first concern is to make sure I’m still making money. How much power does the business have over the deal that gets offered on BrideRush?

James:
Our pricing model is vendor-centric. We will never force venues or vendors to conform to a position that doesn’t work for their business. We are here to help, not hurt, wedding vendors. That said, our team of expertly-trained BargainZillas knows what makes a deal competitive and we will help guide deal discounts when necessary. If a deal isn’t a real “deal,” it doesn’t benefit the bride or the vendor, and we won’t run it on the site.

TJ:
Have you found a “sweet spot” where certain types of deals are good for both vendors and customers?

James:
Surprisingly, both package deals and a-la-carte-type offerings work. There is no one type that takes the cake; each bride is unique and has her own set of constraints and wishes. The same goes for vendors. Some prefer clear-cut package deals, while others want the option of upselling to the bride, so they keep their deal offering more lean.

TJ:
We do both photography and videography, but I don’t think I saw videographer in the category list yet. Which types of wedding vendors can use BrideRush?

James:
Date-specific businesses work best for our model. If you are a wedding vendor or venue that has only a limited number of openings per day, then BrideRush is your perfect match. For vendors with non date-specific products or services, we’ll have that functionality up and running soon.

TJ:
What kind of response have you seen from brides and vendors in the cities where you’ve rolled out BrideRush?

James:
Overwhelming enthusiasm is the best way to describe the response. Vendors often tell us they have always wished there was a site like this, and brides are happy someone is out there to help them plan quickly and affordably. So far, brides have been flocking to the site to sign up, giving us their wedding information and telling us their needs. This helps us target vendors in various locations and for specific dates.

TJ:
What types of brides are you targeting?

James:
A BrideRush-worthy bride is any bride who’s getting hitched in six months or less. This qualifies them as last-minute planners in our book, and opens them up to all the savings we have to offer.

TJ:
Could you describe your ideal BrideRush wedding vendor?

James:
We pre-screen our vendors. Although we don’t want to decide for the bride, we do want to give her only the best options available. Our vendors have won awards in their town or region, have a strong web presence and understand how this model is helpful to filling their last-minute openings.

TJ:
How does the payment process work?

James:
After the deal is purchased on our site, the bride receives her date-specific deal voucher. The bride pays the deposit(s) and remaining balances to the vendor directly.

TJ:
What is your plan for expanding to other cities? What can vendors do to encourage BrideRush to get to their city faster?

James:
Our target mass for each city varies. If someone wants to be on the site, and they’re in a city we don’t currently list, we’ll work with them to get connected with other quality vendors they may know in the area. We’re expanding fast, and new cities will be added regularly.

TJ:
If a vendor ends up booking a date on their own, can they have the deal taken down off your website?

James:
For the length of time the deal runs on our site (an average of ten days), vendors are prohibited from booking that date or offering the same deal outside of BrideRush.
How do brides know to visit your website?
In addition to a planned national marketing campaign, we rely heavily on social media, word of mouth, and interaction with brides at events and expos around the country.

TJ:
How do vendors get deals listed on BrideRush?

James:
They can apply at blooming.briderush.com

TJ:
How much does it cost to list deals on BrideRush?

James:
Brace yourselves: Our service is absolutely free. There is no out-of-pocket cost to vendors. We simply charge the Bride a fee to secure the deal. The customer then receives a deal voucher with instructions on how to pay the remainder of the deal amount to the vendor. She has 10 days to get in touch with the vendor to finalize the booking, pay the remainder of the deposit and work out the finer details.

TJ:
Could you tell me a little about the Request A Deal option?

James:
As a bride, you may find an outstanding deal that you just have to have but it’s not on your date. The “Request A Deal” option lets the bride see if the vendor is willing to extend the same or similar offer on her specific date. The form can also be used to request a deal from a vendor not yet on our site.

TJ:
I could see vendors being concerned that brides would just wait it out until they can get a deal on their wedding date. Should vendors be concerned about BrideRush taking away from their regular business?

James:
No, not at all. There is a market for last-minute planners that is currently untapped, but not all brides are having a short engagement or are comfortable with waiting until the last minute to secure important vendors. Additionally, if a bride is having a short engagement, there is usually a motive other than bargain-browsing for setting the date so soon.

TJ:
Thanks again for talking with me today, James! I know I’m anxiously waiting for BrideRush to expand to St Louis so I can give it a try.

Visit BrideRush’s main website at www.briderush.com or to list a deal, visit blooming.briderush.com

BrideRush Interview is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

When Larissa and I first started our photography business, she asked me to geek it out and program an online ordering system to let our customers see their pictures from their session and place their order online. The online ordering system I made has worked out well for us, but it still takes work to place the orders through our lab after the customers have entered their order online. It would be a gross understatement to say that I really don’t enjoy manually ordering prints, so when I heard about Smugmug’s online order fulfillment option, I jumped at the chance to try it out. Let someone else do the work and I just collect a paycheck? Sign me up.

Opportunity Comes Knocking
Shortly after I learned about Smugmug’s order fulfillment services, Larissa started working on organizing a Christmas portrait special. Great, tons of small orders I have to put in. Wait a second, light bulb! Why don’t I just make Smugmug do the work? Basically what I needed was for customers to be able to order prints using prices that I set. Plus I needed them to be able to download all the digital files so they could print out from a local lab themselves if they wanted to.

Getting Ready To Sell
I probably spent longer than I needed to getting everything set up to sell through Smugmug, but even with the extra time I put into looking at different options, I probably only spent 2-4 hours total getting everything set up. That includes setting up price lists too. Here’s a screenshot showing one of my price lists.

At the same time that I set up prices, I was also able to choose which print sizes and products I wanted to offer. The one hangup I had with getting set up was that I had only 2 choices for photo labs. Unfortunately my favorite lab, H&H Color Lab, wasn’t in the list. It seems like Smugmug may be adding support for additional labs in the future though, so I’m crossing my fingers that H&H makes the list. Overall, the setup was pretty easy. There were also plenty of extra options that I haven’t taken the time to look through yet. If you’re looking for a good place to start with your setup, visit these pages first:
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93382 – general Pro FAQ
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93342 – getting started with online Smugmug sales

Mostly Passive Income
When you create a new gallery of images in Smugmug, you can choose what kind of pricing you want for the gallery. That’s convenient because some of our prints are half off – depending on the type of session. For print orders, Smugmug rocked it out! I didn’t have to do anything except set the prices, and Smugmug took care of the rest. Sweet! We also needed our customers to be able to pay for digital files, which Smugmug also supports. There was a catch to that one though. There’s no way to include a copyright release along with the digital downloads. Smugmug’s recommended approach was to have the customers print out the personal use license and print their receipt. I had a number of customers who either forgot to do that or were having trouble locating the personal use license. The customers kept asking why the copyright release wasn’t included in the zip file with their download. All in all though, I saved myself probably 10 to 20 hours of dealing with orders and burning flash drives (do you burn files to a flash drive? whatever) by using Smugmug instead of doing it myself. Plus, for the couple of issues that customers had, the Smugmug Heroes (support team) responded quickly and with good information.

Money In The Bank
Not only did I save time using Smugmug’s order fulfillment, I ended up making quite a bit of money. In fact, I may have even made MORE money than if I had done it myself when you take into consideration that I wasn’t having to use any of our packaging, flash drives, or pay for shipping. From the 30 orders placed for the special, I made over $1000.

Getting paid was pretty straightforward. I entered some basic tax and bank info into Smugmug’s system, and I opted to be paid monthly. Then Smugmug automatically deposited my earnings into my bank account.

When I’d Use Smugmug
Smugmug’s system worked perfectly for print order fulfillment, so a couple weeks after our special when we shot a holiday party, we sent out a link to the Smugmug gallery for anyone who wanted to purchase extra prints. That worked perfectly! Not only did I not have to put the orders in or deliver them to the customers, the orders most likely got processed quicker than what I normally would process them. For cases where we also wanted the customer to be able to purchase the digital files, I think I’d still use Smugmug, but I might let the clients know that I’d email them the copyright release myself. There are probably quite a few other options for how to handle the copyright release scenario – just a matter of being a little creative.

Your Thoughts
If you’ve used Smugmug for order fulfillment, I’d like to hear from you. Have you had a good experience. I especially want to hear from someone who uses Smugmug exclusively for their orders. I’m curious how that works out for you.

For more information on using Smugmug’s order fulfillment service, visit http://www.smugmug.com/photos/professional-photo-hosting-sell-photos/

Smugmug Order Fulfillment Review is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

A couple months ago, I was putting my 2 year old daughter down for a nap, and she asked for her Strawberry Shortcake blanket. The blanket was in another room so I didn’t want to go get it (ok, I think it was on the other side of the room, but who cares?). I had another blanket right at the end of the bed, so I started to cover her with that one. She took her binky out – “NO THE STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE BLANKEY”. Again, Strawberry was hanging out at the other side of the room, and I had stuff to get done. I told her the blanket I had was softer, warmer, and bigger. None of that mattered to her. It wasn’t about comfort. It was about a cartoon image on the top of the blanket.

Not Features or Benefits
There’s salesperson wisdom that says that you shouldn’t sell features because features just describe a product as being great from the perspective of the business. Benefits are the selling points for the customer. It’s how the product solves a problem they have. In my daughter’s case though, she didn’t care about features, but she also didn’t really care about the benefits of the blanket that I was trying to give her. In her mind, the branded blanket meant more to her than a long list of benefits. This is what the pushy salesman at the car dealership isn’t getting – being pushy is selling benefits and I tune it out. If the car salesman would try to be likeable first, I’d be much more likely to pay attention.

What’s Logic Got To Do With It?
Our buying decisions may be less about what’s logical than what we lead ourselves to believe. To throw out a quick example, Larissa goes out Black Friday shopping every year because she wants to get the most amazing deals. Multiple times before, I’ve pointed out that for the stuff she’s getting, it would be just as good of a deal to purchase it all online. In fact, it may even be cheaper than the store price. So she breaks it down for me – “TJ, seriously, how much fun would that be?” To me, sitting at home at 10 am in my pajamas sounds a lot better than freezing my butt off in a line hundreds long at 3 am. Of course, then Larissa brings up all my irrational buying behaviors, and her Black Friday logic seems pretty solid. Larissa is shopping at 3 am because it gives her a great story to tell her friends.

The Story
I don’t know nearly as much about branding as Sarah Petty or some of the other photography marketing guru’s out there. The one thing I’m starting to get though is how to tell a story. Basically, that’s what a brand is. It’s the story that your customers believe about your business. If you’re wanting some good insight on how that whole process works, I’d check out Seth Godin’s book All Marketers Are Liars. The book title drives me nuts, but if you can get beyond the title, it’s got some food for thought.

You’re The Expert
I can’t tell you what to do to build a solid brand. Believe it or not, you’re the expert there. You’re the only one who knows how you want your customers to see you. If you don’t know what your business is all about (your story), it doesn’t matter what features or benefits you can brag about. It doesn’t matter that your web guy has “branded” your website and marketing materials. Your brand has to be bigger than just colors and logos. It’s the core values and purpose for your entire business. It’s what drives everything else.

Brand Over Benefits is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

I’m WAY behind the times. Or at least I was. PPA has been offering their online learning pass for 2 years now, and I just found out. I’m sure I missed the frequent announcements from PPA about the online learning pass. Larissa says I can tune out pretty much anything – babies crying in the middle of the night, requests to pick up milk from the store, and apparently important announcements from Professional Photographers of America. Scratch that last one off the list because I finally got the message: “PPA Online Learning Pass rocks the house”.

Pass To What?
PPA’s Online Learning Pass is like having a membership to the PPA webinar library. That means that any new webinar that PPA puts out, you can join in live. That gives you access to the slide presentation, the audio, plus the ability to ask the presenter questions using live chat. What’s even more important to me though is that you also get access to the PPA Online Learning Pass Webinar Archive. Gold mine! As of right now, there are 127 different webinars in the archive. With each webinar lasting around an hour, that’s a lot of content! Not only that, but all the webinars are available whenever you want them – over your lunch break, after you get done editing at 1 am, when you need a break processing orders at 1 pm =)

The Price Is Right
A single webinar is $39 for PPA members. If you were to buy each of the webinars in the archive, that would be right around $5,000. With the Online Learning Pass, it’s $99 for six months. That’s pretty amazing in my book. To be honest, I hadn’t tried any of PPA’s webinars before I heard about the learning pass. I was either too busy or concerned that I would get a boring webinar and have wasted $39. With the learning pass, I don’t really care if I find a webinar I don’t like. I’ve got 100 other choices that I could switch over to at any point without feeling guilty.

Big Names, Straight Talk
PPA has webinars from Lori Nordstrom, Kay Eskridge, Beth Forester, Julia Woods, Bry Cox, Kevin Kubota, and my boys Jeff Medford & Ross Hockrow from The Get In Motion Tour just to name a few. There are plenty other names that I didn’t previously know too. Topics range from Lightroom to posing to marketing and everything in-between. So far, I haven’t been able to put a dent in the 127 webinar library. With what I’ve listened to so far though, my favorite class was Laura Novak’s Fast-Paced Wedding Growth. I think it struck a chord with me because my slow season project is to research growing our wedding revenue. Laura gave tips for getting more weddings, and tips for stepping up to better weddings. She talked about working with vendors and how to not waste money on advertising. If you’re wanting a good webinar to start on, I’d say that would be a great choice.

In A Perfect World
I wrote an entire paragraph on how I wish the webinars were categorized and had the speaker info on the front page only to find another page on the PPA site that had exactly what I was looking for. Instead of going through the learning pass link in the My PPA section, I recommend you browse the titles using this page: http://www.ppa.com/education-events/webinars.php. That leaves me with only one suggestion, and it’s probably not an easy fix. It would be AMAZING to have a reminder about which presentations have already been watched. With 127 options, I know there are going to be times where I waste 10 minutes trying to remember if I’ve heard this presentation before. I guess if I really weren’t being lazy though, I could keep track of what I watched on my own. Probably not going to happen =)

Pass It On
You probably skipped half the article just looking for a link to sign up, so here it is: http://www.ppa.com/education/learning_pass.php . After you sign up, don’t be greedy. Tell your friends. As you watch different webinars, it would be great if you could post your fav’s here so I can check those out first. Have fun!

PPA Online Learning Pass Review is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

One of the questions we get asked most frequently by newer photographers is which photo lab we use. It’s pretty interesting to me that even early on these photographers have figured out that professional photographers typically stick to one lab – it’s usually an unspoken exclusive relationship. With that being the case, you want to make sure that you’re compatible with your lab. Since there’s no e-harmony for photo labs, you’ve probably found yourself asking around to learn more about a lab before you commit. I’ll break the suspense right now, and let you know that we almost always use H&H for our prints and professional products. We like so much about H&H, but if I had to narrow it down, here are some of the things that we most like about them.

Quick order turn-around
One of our big selling factors to our clients is our speed. Our wedding images get posted online in 2 to 3 days. Wedding albums are in the clients’ hands in as little as a month after the wedding. In order for the whole process to work, we can’t be waiting around on a photo lab to get prints or albums back. With H&H, it depends on the product that we’re ordering, but for proofs and most prints, we have everything back from the lab within 2 business days. That’s pretty impressive in my book.

High quality standards
Our other major selling point to our clients is that we’re going to give them a professional product. Of course, this whole process starts with us capturing images like a pro, but it’s not all about us in the end. After we send the image off to the lab, the high quality has to be maintained or the whole process breaks down. We’ve seen consistently excellent results from H&H’s final product that they deliver to our door. If you’re not sure whether H&H takes the quality of their results seriously, take the lab tour to see the kind of genius and dedication going into every order that comes in.

Selection of products
Every time I visit H&H or my sales rep comes over for a visit, I’m always impressed with the new offerings that H&H comes out with. It’s great to get new ideas for products from your photo lab. Even better than that though is when a customer is looking for something specific, you can be pretty sure H&H has the product. There have been a handful of items that H&H didn’t have when we wanted them, but for those rare times, it’s usually just another couple months, and they’ve got that in their product lineup too.

Easy software
We’ve tried ordering with software other than ezSuite – drives us nuts! When Larissa first put me in charge of orders, the software did just what I expected. The ordering software should be the kind of thing that you say “of course, how else would it work”? For other labs, I know that’s not always the case. That’s because there’s more to love at H&H – if you want to think I’m cheesy for loving my lab, you can. Whatev.

Customer-centered
Like any photography studio, every lab has a personality. I’d say that one of the easiest ways to describe H&H’s lab personality is to say that they’re interested in what the customer thinks. Labs that scream “look at me” don’t even register on my radar, but a lab that asks how they can help ME as a photographer makes me take notice.

In good company
At this point, you know that we use H&H, but there are some other really talented artists who have found H&H to be a good partner to their amazingness. Here are a few we really like. Scott and Adina Hayne of Hayne Photographers. Blair Phillips of Blair Phillips Photography. Kirk Voclain of Kirk Voclain Photography. Just to be clear, I’m not advocating that you should copy the choices these businesses made – simply stating that H&H is a stellar enough lab to handle the needs of big-time photographers.

For more information on H&H, visit their website at www.hhcolorlab.com , or if you’d like to chat with H&H, I’d be happy to make the introduction.

What lab do you love? Have you tried H&H out?

What’s Your Photo Lab Doing For You? is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

Last night I attended the Get In Motion Tour on the St Louis stop. In case the name threw you off, the tour is not a row of exercise bikes that wives force their husbands to go ride for 5 hours. Seriously, why would you think that? The tour is about transforming boring photographers into superhuman videographers. How much more exciting is that? My heart rate is already in the cardio zone just thinking about all the idea candy they were tossing around last night.

Jeff And Ross
I’ve found that it’s tough to learn from someone you don’t like. Good news for me – I liked both of the tour presenters. Jeff seemed like the kind of guy you could call up any time to just go out for a coffee. Of course, I don’t drink coffee, so it would be just him drinking the coffee. No biggie. He brought his daughter along to help hand out tickets for winning prizes. She reminded me of my daughter Estelle, but without all the wall-bouncing tendencies. Jeff’s daughter even made a couple guest appearances during the performance =) Loved it! Ross was an easy-going guy and quick to joke around. To me, it felt like he was the kind of guy that knew way more than he was currently sharing. Probably good that he didn’t unload the video genius truck on us – most of the photographers in the room were frantically taking notes hoping to catch all the important stuff Ross was saying. Looking back over my notes, both guys passed along a boatload of useful tips.

Film-making 101
Because the audience was made up of mostly photographers, Jeff and Ross went back to the basics of film-making. If I had attended the tour a year ago, I could have dramatically reduced the learning curve for how to make amazing videos. Even though I’d say I’ve left rookie status, I still hadn’t arrived at the same outlook on making videos that these guys brought to the table. I had kind-of figured out some of the stuff they were saying before, but after coming home and reviewing a recent wedding video I just put together, apparently I haven’t been applying the principles all the time. I also found that there were quite a few “gaps” in my film-making thinking that got filled in. I talked to the guys who hadn’t done video before, and they took a lot away too – just different stuff than I was taking away. Either way, we both benefited.

Marketing and business ideas
Sometimes hearing a business idea will spark a related idea for ways to implement something similar in your own business. Jeff’s business model isn’t really all the similar to ours, but it got the wheels spinning for me. Right now I’m still thinking of ways that we could market video at our studio. One of the other things I love is hearing about ideas leading to major success for a business. Jeff’s stories are the kind of inspiration a business owner needs as a reminder to keep pushing yourself to the next level. To me, it was an affirmation that we’re headed in the right direction.

Introducing new tools
You guys know I’m a gearhead. Seriously, one of my life goals is to bring a sleeping bag and camp out in a camera store for a week. Who needs trees and campfires when you have lenses and tripods? So of course I loved the equipment demo’s from Get In Motion. We saw audio equipment, tripods, unipods, shoulder mounts, etc. I appreciated the fact that they kept their recommendations for starter gear practical. I’m sure my bank account will appreciate their approach too. Even better than just seeing the gear, I appreciated the equipment used in context discussions. When would you use this fancy tool? Genius.

Photographer’s perspective
Let me start by saying that if you’re expecting fusion, you aren’t going to get it. Take that! I can’t remember seeing any stills in any of the videos. Does that disappoint me? No. Over the past year of doing fusion, we’ve found that the more video clips we introduce into our wedding videos, the better they are. At this point, I try to include about 10 of our best story telling images in our fusion videos. Try it out yourself – more video, more fantastic. As far as the presentation of the content, they did an awesome job making sure photographers understood exactly what they were talking about. They brought up specific differences between photography and film-making, and they encouraged us to use what we already knew about photos to make our videos better. Well done.

Final score
All star performance. The photographer sitting in front of me traveled over 4 hours from Arkansas to see the show, and it was worth it for him. If you’re wanting the key to unlock the door to the video world, the Get In Motion Tour is the place to start. If you’re feeling like you’re wanting to do something different in your photography business, THIS IS IT!

Get In Motion is touring until 11/30/11 where they’ll end up in Hawaii (maybe I should have caught up with them there). For more information on the tour, go to www.getinmotiontour.com . Check out their promo video, I think you’ll like it. PLUS, tickets are only $49 when you use the promo code LARISSA . What? Just because it’s her name doesn’t mean I’m less important! Go get your tickets now, and tell me what you think after you hit the tour in your city.

Get In Motion Tour Review is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers

At our last Southern Illinois Art League meeting, we had the pleasure of having Rebekah Albaugh spend a day with us teaching us her tricks for running a successful photography business. I don’t know about the other photographers, but Larissa and I enjoyed quite a few laughs and had a great time learning from Rebekah! We’re planning to catch up with her again soon because she seems like such a great photographer to know.

Instant connection
Larissa and I both felt a quick connection to Rebekah. Maybe it was her style of presentation or just that she seemed to enjoy living life. Whatever it was, she did a fantastic job building a relationship bridge in the workshop. I’m sure that’s how it is at her weddings and photo shoots too. Luckily, she let us in on some of her quick-connection tricks. She talked about how she gets through to both the guys and the girls. Great stuff – I wrote lots of notes.

Shooting techniques
When Larissa and I went to the Power of Passion Tour, we ended up on stage. I got called out again to be a model at Rebekah’s workshop. Why do I get called on so frequently? I wore my favorite shirt, but more than the shirt it’s probably because I always have something to say. Anyway, I think both the real model and myself both were comfortable being posed by Rebekah. One of my favorite parts of the shooting was seeing Rebekah interact with her lenses, which she has named and shows frequent affection to. I’m right there with her, but I guess I keep my feelings more supressed =) Cracked me up!

Marketing tips
I always enjoy some statistics to establish a photographer as an expert. Rebekah gave us some of her hard numbers, then she went on to explain how she got to that level. Perfect! She talked about both how to get new clients and how to keep the ones you have. She also discussed the menu technique for getting people to purchase additional products. You’ll have to ask her about that one because that’s how I buy ALL THE TIME.

The last stuff I’ll say
Rebekah was quirky and likable. Professional and winsome. I think she’s got the personality to take her photography instructing on tour or as a speaker at WPPI or Imaging. So photography vendors, if you’re looking for a new name that could go big, Rebekah’s your gal. I’m glad Larissa and I got the chance to hear her speak, and we’d love to catch her next workshop too.

Have you guys attended one of Rebekah’s workshops? I bet there will be people stumbling on this blog post as she makes her rise up to the top as a photography speaker.

To learn more about Rebekah, visit her website at www.studiorebekah.com

Rebekah Albaugh Photography Workshop Review is a post from: Larissa Photography - Photography Education for Photographers