The camera that takes great pictures

How often do you feel insulted when some say your camera takes excellent pictures?

The reason so many people think this is because they treat photography like a commodity. They believe it is mainly the gear that takes photos.

When you give those people a Nikon D5, they will get better photos than the camera on their phone.

Your knowledge of how to use your photography gear makes you a professional photographer.

I believe you could take on the challenge of using every piece of your gear to capture a subject in as many different photography styles as possible. You would be changing the depth-of-field, controlling motion with your shutter speed, and pulling out your lighting gear to create so many different looks.

You could then show this client how you can take the same subject and give them many different looks. It might be a great way to talk about how knowing more about the purpose of hiring you will help you create the look and feel they need from your photos.

So much of our business revolves around tools. We often think of our gear as our only tools, but I was hoping you could think about other parts of your business as you do your camera gear.

Your business cards, websites, blogs, newsletters, phone calls, and postcards are all tools that have a great deal in common with your camera gear.

Too often, photographers treat their marketing tools like people think our cameras take great photos.

We create a website and then wonder why we are not getting calls. We print business cards and hand them out, and still no calls.

We even treat our photos the same way as clients. We hand them the images.

I have heard we are no longer living in the Industrial Age but rather the Information Age. The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, or New Media Age) is a period in human history characterized by the shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization to an economy based on information computerization.

What was the difference between being a farmer during the Agricultural Age and moving from the Industrial Age to the Information Age?

The farmer used animals to plow the fields and also fertilize those fields during the Agricultural Age. During the Industrial Age, it was about using tractors and artificial fertilizer [nitrogen] to increase productivity.

In the Information Age, farmers learned how to analyze the data from their farms and improve all farming areas. They used computer models that used satellite imaging data to put different amounts of fertilizer and water on their fields to get the best yield from all the land.

As a photographer, you must know how to use your marketing tools. You need to understand how they all work individually and how they work together. There is the best time to use each of those tools, and there are also times that using an agency can do damage if not implemented correctly.

The Client

I am discovering that many clients do not know how to use their marketing tools anymore. They don’t learn how to take a well-crafted story that is a video and integrate it into their communications plan. They think maybe they show it just at a meeting or put it online or some other tactic and do not know what the video’s strength is compared to their business card or a brochure.

Be sure you help to educate your client on how to use your content to best leverage their audience.

Living in the Information Age is about personalizing your services to address your client’s needs. This is the knowledge economy we now live in.

This evolution of technology in daily life and social organization has led to the modernization of information and communication processes, becoming the driving force of social change.

We have moved into an era where photography is used all the time. The professional photographer’s actual commodity is their knowledge of how to use and control it for clients.

The best way to help your clients understand how to use photography in their marketing and communications is to do a personal project in which you demonstrate how this can be done. Then you have an example to show to your clients.