Cheap "Professional" Wedding Photographer??

I spotted this video over on fstoppers.com the other day, and while it makes me laugh there are some serious pointers in there for anyone seeking to make a living from their camera…

First and foremost, you don’t need a 1-series Canon to be a “professional” photographer, you can get by with far less. You do, however, need to know what both you and your equipment are capable of. If you oversell your ability you will eventually get stung.

If you rely on strobes for lighting and it’s commonplace for it to be banned where you shoot then be prepared for that! ‘Insufficient light’ is simply not an excuse. 

For all I know Walmart may well have good printing facilities, but it’s not somewhere a professional photographer ought to be frequenting for their prints. The best results simply aren’t cheap, you need to consider color calibration and the appropriate ICC profiles for the media you’re printing on. If you don’t want to spend the time or effort producing great prints yourself (it is time consuming and requires effort) then outsource the job to a good local printer near you. 

Client satisfaction is paramount if you’re growing a business. This pair of “professional” idiots got their arses handed to them in front of a huge audience. I reckon it could have been avoided, even if the images weren’t up-to-scratch. 

Food for thought. More coming soon…

A Quick Dusting & Spit Shine

I’ve made a few changes around here over the past couple of days. There are two reasons for this; The first is to provide you with a less cluttered view of what is hopefully useful content, and the second is to align the look of the site with my marketing and business documents (invoices etc). There are a couple of changes under the hood too, which should speed things up marginally. Examining the site analytics isn’t something I do all that often, but when I did I noticed that a very large percentage of the visitors here are viewing on old browsers - so I want to ensure that the experience for them is a pleasant one. 

If you’re one of those people using an old browser, then you really ought to download Mozilla Firefox here. It’s free, safe and fast. 

Other than the changes above I’ve disabled the old gallery page. It was largely hand coded, clunky and a-pain-in-the-arse to keep up-to-date. While I build a ‘proper’ portfolio viewer I’ve placed some temporary galleries up. I’ve also slowly become addicted to 500px, a fantastic community and source of inspiration, and started uploading images there. 

I hope the changes are an improvement. If you notice any bugs or have any feedback (good or bad!) please let me know. 

More coming soon… 

Customer Service

As my previous post shows, I’ve upped sticks and moved country. For the most part the transition has been smooth… I don’t have very many possessions and my entire wardrobe fits into a large duffle bag (along with a tripod, 2 external hard drives, a couple of empty camera bags and toiletries). 

I had two unexpected interruptions to the plan:

1. Some promotional cards I designed and ordered along with business cards from moo.com didn’t turn out as expected (colour prints on the promo cards were washed-out and skin tones were off)
2. My ‘must-have’ items (Computer, Printer, Backup hard drives, film camera and accessories) which I shipped with DHL didn’t show up. 

The first issue I reported to Moo as soon as I saw the cards (it was on a Saturday). On Monday morning I received an email apologising for the flaw and requiring a sample of the issue so that they could fully diagnose the root cause. I sent images as requested, and very shortly after received a response detailing the cause, outlining how to avoid the same problem in future and apologising again for the inconvenience. On top of that, the customer service agent (Zachory) corrected the issue on his end and resubmitted the cards for print with a priority tag, so they get done almost immediately. Fantastic customer service… prompt, knowledgeable & professional. As a result I have no hesitation in recommending Moo.com, and will defiantly be using them again in the future.

The experience with DHL was a complete contrast. I’m not going to get into a rant, but in summary the saga entailed over 16 hours on the phone, a trip to the DHL office/warehouse, two promised ‘callbacks’ which never occurred and an ‘express’ delivery which arrived a week later than other (less urgent) stuff I had sent by regular post at a fraction of the cost. In the end, it took a threat to call my bank to cancel the payment to DHL in order to get my items delivered. I will never give DHL my custom again. 

The purpose of this post is not to bash or praise either company, it’s simply to highlight the difference good customer service makes - because this can be applied to a career in photography too. Unless you’re blessed with luck, there are going to be days where shit just goes wrong and a client isn’t going to be happy about something. How you handle yourself in these situations can make the difference between gaining repeat business from your client (and potentially some word-of-mouth referrals) and losing a client forever… not to mention the negative press from the incident. 

Good customer service is really easy to achieve and if you’re in a position where you make a living directly from your clients, then it’s as important as technical competence with a camera. Really. 

More coming soon…