Successful photographers are about so much more than the photos they make. But without great images, they have no reason to exist.

Most photographers I meet are passionate and want to do the right thing. They are very concerned about doing the right thing as well. But what is lacking is business acumen and the tools to run their business effectively.

It is pretty standard that photographers are quite busy and think they are doing exceptionally well. Still, they are missing revenue opportunities, barely breaking even, and even losing money.

To meet the demands of their clients, some are delivering just OK photos to turn them around so they can get on to the next project. However, in have in a timely fashion, some of the picture’s colors are slightly off, or the exposure is just a little off, and even some of the photos they deliver are not sharp.

Myopic

Lack of discernment or long-range perspective in thinking or planning is the definition of myopic. But, unfortunately, you can get so busy that you cannot see your faults.

Imagine walking into a photo studio with no photos on the wall. Instead, the photographer comes out to talk with you, and you ask about their photography. The photographer talks a great deal about their business vision, and you want to see some photos.

The reality is this is how so many photographers run their businesses, but instead of lacking photos, they lack business acumen.

Are you providing services that are right for and meet the needs of your customers?

This question will catch most photographers off guard because they cannot answer it.

In the days of film, you didn’t even know you had captured anything with your camera until you developed the film.

One of the primary reasons professional photographers were hired is that many people would take pictures with their cameras. When they got the results, they were disappointed for various reasons. Nothing came out of poor exposure, out of focus, or something else.

Today there is no waiting to see if you have an image. Instead, people use smartphones with built-in cameras to take most of their photos. So they can see immediately and have an idea they can publish instantly to the world.

One of the primary reasons professional photographers were needed is now gone. Most people can take their photos and get something without having to know anything at all about photography.

Creating Desire

Steve Jobs was the master at creating a product that people never had before and didn’t know what they wanted. Yet, by the end of launching a new product like the Apple iPad, he had not just made us want one but convinced us that we needed one.

While in seminary, I took a course called Systematic Theology. Systematic theology draws on the foundational sacred texts of Christianity while simultaneously investigating the development of Christian doctrine throughout history, mainly through philosophy, science, and ethics.

One of the most profound thoughts I had to get my head around was who God is and my relationship with God.

The concept of God not needing us but wanting us can spin my head, but this concept helped me understand the raw power of intimacy. Great relationships are built on a mutual desire for connection.

The more a photographer desires a relationship with a client, they will begin to understand, like Steve Jobs, that they must think like their client. For example, Steve Jobs helped solve my problems in my life by helping me to connect with others using technology to increase my ability to do so.

Maintenance Program

Why do Toyota cars have such a good record for lasting a long time for their clients? One thing that changed for me was in 1993; I bought a Toyota Tercel. One different thing is that the dealership invited me to a party in their service department.

They had pizza for us, but most importantly, they wanted us to get the most out of our vehicles. So they took the time to educate us about the maintenance program. Every 5,000 miles, you need to bring your car in for routine service. They added that if you follow the maintenance schedule, your vehicle will most likely last for 200,000 miles without a problem.

Toyota cars last so long because they did a better job educating their customers about the importance of preventive maintenance.

As photographers, what is involved in a preventive maintenance program for you?

1. Digital Workflow: you need a sound system that helps you consistently make and deliver quality images to your clients
2. Marketing to new and present clients: you need to consistently have something in place that helps you to connect with new clients and a plan that also helps you stay connected to your present clients
3. Accounting: you need to have a system in place to create estimates, invoices, pay your bills and track all this so you can be sure you don’t have outstanding invoices, statements, or taxes.
4. Relationships, not transactions: you need to have a focused plan to make all of your clients about a relationship designed to make them your friends. Without this being intentional, these clients are just transactions and will soon be replaced by other photographers desiring a relationship with them.

Do you have a plan in place for you to follow? If not, stop what you are doing and create one and then work on the project, and you will see success in your future.

What I am learning from Chick-fil-A

Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, built his business on sampling and giving away food. So at the Chick-fil-A Kickoff, the company gave out its newest dessert, the chocolate chip cookie. Let me say from first-hand experience that those are pretty addicting.

Chick-fil-A gave away free cookies at Centennial Park on game day for the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic.

Truett Cathy knew that once you tried his food, the odds were pretty good that he could turn you into a customer.

Just to let you know how it is currently going for the Chick-fil-A chain, system-wide sales in 2012 reached $4.6 billion. These figures reflect a 14 percent increase over the chain’s 2011 performance and a same-store sales increase of 8 percent.

They have been debt free since 2012 and, in the future, plan to remain that way. What a position of strength they are in for growing the business today.

They built the success of giving away food is done all the time with simple Be Our Guest cards that Truett Cathy started. He realized he couldn’t have sandwiches with him all the time to give away, so he created a card with no strings attached that gave the holder a free product like their signature Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich.

Too many companies put up barriers with their promotions where they will give you something if you spend money first.

If anyone did a promotion where you didn’t control them, you would go bankrupt pretty quickly. These giveaways are strategic.

One of the best books on this concept of giving things away to build a business is by Chris Anderson. The book is Free: How today’s most innovative companies profit by giving something for nothing. Many, as the guy who “identified the next big thing,” praise Anderson.

Free is something ancient and not new.

Mr. Cathy founded Chick-fil-A, Inc. in the early 1960s and pioneered the establishment of restaurants in shopping malls by opening the first Chick-fil-A Restaurant at a mall in suburban Atlanta in 1967. Since then, Chick-fil-A has grown to become the second-largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States, with over 1,700 locations in 39 states and Washington, D.C.

Some of the comments about Chris Anderson’s book summarize what I think is happening today with today’s marketplace, and I feel it first hand happening to photography.

“Chris Anderson’s Free unpacks a paradox of the online marketplace—people making money charging nothing. What was once just a marketing gimmick has morphed into the basis of a trillion-dollar economy.”

—Newsweek

“Anderson’s timing couldn’t be better. Free arrives as whole swaths of the economy are having to contend with consumers finding ways—some illegal, many not—to go Free.”
—Boston Sunday Globe

The best one that I agree the most with is:

“I’d put Anderson and his work on par with Malcolm Gladwell and Clayton M. Christensen as one of the more important pieces of business philosophy published in the emerging global, digital era.”
—Alan T. Saracevic, San Francisco Chronicle

Tips for the Photographer

First, you must give a taste of what your clients will get when they hire you. Too many photographers make mistakes and forget that the client looks for examples of what they need. Most clients will not look at a photographer’s portfolio, which may be studio portraits, and assume they can also shoot environmental images.

I suggest having an online portfolio and breaking the portfolio up into different categories and examples. Due to how search engines like Google work, you must have other pages for those categories. When someone types in “photographer environmental portraits,” this will direct them to a list of photographers whose page will give them what they are looking for. They will not see your general portfolio. They are looking for a specific topic and type of image. Again, they are looking for a photographer to fulfill their need.

The key is not just to have a page with your specialty; to give this to the client just like Truett Cathy gives out free sandwiches. Of course, they need to see your photos to get a taste of what you can do. But it would help if you got them in front of them, not wait for them to find you.

Second, you need a marketing plan. You have images to show that a client need gives you the samples to now market. Just like Truett Cathy, you need to be strategic. Consider shooting examples that help clients know you can shoot for their needs. Who are you going to approach? What is your market?

Most of us do not have a bankroll to blanket our communities in advertising through a newspaper, television ad spots, direct mail, and more. Therefore, we have to target those who are most likely to need our services and have enough need that we can support our lifestyle.

Third, you need to market continuously. Too many make a mistake and market until the business starts getting work, and then one day, the market changes, and they wonder where the company went.

A good book on this topic is Spencer JoJohnson’sook Who Moved My Cheese? My friend Gary S. Chapman and his wife Vivian exposed me to his book a few years ago.

Fourth you need to change with the market. The key here is understanding your marketplace. If you want to shoot things your way and the way you want to do something, then keep this as a hobby. Professionals must satisfy a client to pay their bills.

I can see how I have moved into different markets throughout my career. For example, I started shooting for my college. Even as an independent photographer, I am changing jobs just like staff people might have to do when their company goes through layoffs. The market changed, and that client is no longer in business or no longer needs your services.

Last should be first, which is to know your vocation. Those who are the most successful are those who recognize a calling. Calling is what vocation means. You may have to move to continue to follow that calling.

There are two people in history that I think about that had primary callings and changed the world.

In the bible, Saul was the guy who tortured and killed the early Christians. You can find SaSaul’soment when he understood his vocation for the rest of his life in Acts 9. Here is a link if you have never heard this story here.

Saul changed his name to Paul and became the leader of the missionary movement for Christians. I want to point out that from the time of his calling until the time he went out as a missionary was three years. Please think of this as his college time to hone his craft.

The other person I want to point to is Jesus Christ. From his birth until his ministry began was 30 years.

Too many photographers buy a camera and announce they are photographers. But, unfortunately, it takes time to hone your craft to do this professionally.

Your goal is to create Raving Fans. Read Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles’s book Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service to learn more about a Raving Fan.

Once people taste your work and like it, they will hire you to fulfill their needs for images.

After you get those clients, could you do everything you can to keep them? It is far more accessible work to keep a client than the amount of work needed to find a client.

Using the 60 Minutes definition of a Robot as a machine that can perform the job of a human, I now see this is what happened and happening to photography.

Why should you read this?

I want to outline the way to avoid obsolescence of today’s photographer, but I need you to understand why this is happening.

Many people understand how many people lost their jobs to outsourcing, but this is also happening due to a machine that performs a job of a human.

I think many newspaper photographer for example are now “Technologically Unemployed” due to things like smarter cameras and smarter phones.

Early 35mm film cameras didn’t even have a light meter in them and today there is a computer in the camera doing much of the computations that a professional photographer would do in the past. 

Today’s camera is a robot that took over the job of the human: getting a good exposure and even focusing. This applies to all the clients that were hiring photographers for jobs that they knew what they wanted, but just didn’t know how to technologically make it happen.  That is no longer a problem for those clients.

How to avoid obsolescence

Evaluate everything you are doing for clients. If any part of what you do can be automated assume this doesn’t give clients reason to hire you.

This doesn’t mean get rid of this service, but know that this is more of a commodity.  

Evaluate all the resources your clients have and see what they have already designated to a machine. 

Selfies

Selfies are a good example where the machine has replace the photographer. In Wikipedia it says:

A selfie is a type of self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. The appeal of selfies comes from how easy they are to create and share, and the control they give self-photographers over how they present themselves. Many selfies are intended to present a flattering image of the person, especially to friends whom the photographer expects to be supportive. However, a 2013 study of Facebook users found that posting photos of oneself correlates with lower levels of social support from and intimacy with Facebook friends (except for those marked as Close Friends).

While self portraits go back to the brownie camera and using a mirror to take ones on photo, it was the advent of the camera phone and social media that these began to go viral.

I am sure this has hurt the portrait market.  What I thought was interesting that these Selfies are viewed as narcissistic if people are not close friends. This means that Selfies on Linkedin are probably not a good idea.

Be remarkable

Look to personalize your business model. Look for things you can do that are not easily automated. These personal touches are what clients will come back to you for over and over.

Too many photographers are looking to technology to separate them from the crowd, this is what makes them so easy to copy. Concentrate on your ideas, personality and creativity to separate yourself from the pack.

Look for the new technology and be an early adapter, because if you are the first in your community to offer something you can ride that for a while till the others start to copy you. Sometimes you can build your brand on always being the first to offer things in your market. You can charge a premium if this is your approach. If you are the late adopter to a fad you are entering a commodity market.

Here is a good exercise to help you think of ways to distinguish yourself. Think of those people you know that everyone enjoys. Now describe them on paper. After you do this with a few people you will see that their brand isn’t a machine, so why do so many photographers try and identify themselves by the camera they shoot? 

Be innovative. Be creative. Be yourself.

According to Rollo May, the first step in the creative process is the encounter. An excellent example would be something similar to this eight-point deer in our backyard.

Seeing the buck out our back window was engaging to say the least, for me.

For me, these are not all that creative in photography, but the encounter is what ignited my creative process of me. So I got my camera and was out the door shortly for a close meeting of my own.

To be creative, one must be intense. Just as the intensity of the encounter of the deer with me gave it a “flight-fight” response, so too must I be where my heart is pumping, and I feel the intensity of the encounter.

The more absorbed you become in the subject, the more you can think of ways to portray the subject. So instead of you feeling anxiety and fear, like the deer, and having a “flight-fight” response, Rollo May says the creative finds the “joy.” Robert Maslow would say we are self-actualized.

For me, this creativity comes when I have genuinely emersed myself into a subject to where all this information is firing the synapsis in my brain, making correlations that were not given to me but by my thoughts on the subject.

Before performing the genuinely creative act, one must have engaged all their being to the point that now the unconscious is as much at work as the conscious, allowing for those eureka moments.

However, when you start thinking like this, you must be courageous enough to start acting on these thoughts. They are new thoughts, and you are prone to failure by just working on them. You may try something only to discover that your thoughts are incomplete.

One of the main reasons for tenure for professors is for them to be creative. Therefore, they must be allowed to try crazy thoughts and occasionally fail at the possibility of scientific breakthroughs.

You may get help along the way to help you engage more on a subject. For example, my daughter spent most of the day with world-renowned viola player Pam Goldsmith and picked up a few pointers to improve her viola skills.

Stages of the Creativity

1. Encounter
2. Emersion into the subject
3. Incubation
4. Eureka moments
5. Execution
6. Verification

Some people never move through the stages. They may get excited about taking photos, for example. They are in love with the process more than the results. These people have difficulty understanding why no one hires them for jobs. They lack creativity.

Creativity can be in the form of ideas or new ways of thinking, but they are not bringing anything new to the table. 

Malcolm Gladwell says from his research that it is about 10,000 hours before the artist has mastered the craft enough to be creative. While this may be all for a bell curve,e I believe it comes much late for many folks. 

Time commitment is the best way to know if you are getting close. Do you have the courage and fortitude to commit yourself to what is needed? How much do you know about the subject you want to photograph? 

Become an expert on the topics you want to photograph, and I can guarantee that you are very close to seeing new possibilities and ideas for photographing this subject in a way others cannot. 

Some people are amazed at how some photographers are just always getting incredible photos. However, I notice that these people can anticipate where they need to be to get the best possible moment with the best possible light and composition.

Bucket List

Do you have a bucket list? A bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you die.

The Bucket List is a 2007 movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. The two guys they portray in the film are terminally ill, and you follow them on their road trip with a wish list of things to do before they “kick the bucket.”

Maybe you have a list of things to do. I have a small list myself of things I would like to do.

Hobby and bucket list

Many people take up photography as part of their bucket list. They then may have another bucket list for things they want to photograph.

To a certain point, this is perfectly normal for many people. However, for some of these people, once they know how to take a picture sometimes means time to move on.

A bucket list can lead to boredom.

If your purpose is to figure out how to make a certain kind of picture and accomplish this, you may quickly become bored with photography.

How to overcome the boredom

You may need to acknowledge that you had not thought about why you picked up photography except that you thought it would be fun. You may even be a professional who feels burned out. Your goal was to be a staff photographer for some publications, and now you have arrived.

First, you must acknowledge you have hit a plateau in your career. You have realized your goal and need to look to the future and find a new plan.

Second, you need to decide what you want to accomplish next.

Third I would work to make mastering photography gear not the end goal, but instead using photography to do something else.

My goal

I want to use my storytelling skills to help organizations reach their goals more effectively due to my photography.

A good example is my work with Just Coffee. I helped them tell their story a few years ago. I believe it did help organizations and people to understand what they are doing and get involved by buying their coffee.

Here is the package I created. The purpose was for groups to show this at their meetings and introduce the concept to their members.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9wmMSv3SoY]
Another group I helped was Chick-fil-A. This franchise owner had date nights with his daughter as their particular time together. He realized this was missing for many families, so he created a Daddy-Daughter Date Night at his restaurant. All the dads and daughters had to do was sign up. They made the entire event for them.

Questions on the table to help start conversations with the dads and daughters, and photographers taking pictures to help to remember the evening. My goal was to capture the event in a way that helped other franchise owners want to duplicate the event. But when you talk about it, you miss the emotional component that photos can bring. So, I photographed it, and they shared it on their intranet at Chick-fil-A, which went viral.

Here is that package.

What keeps me going is helping others tell their stories, and there is no shortage of opportunity here. Had I made all my goals about mastering a technique, I would be bored and would have given up photography and moved on to something else until I became bored again.

Make your goals about serving others; you will always have a reason to celebrate.

A young boy in the village of Konadouga, Burkina Faso, whose native language is Senara and the formal language taught in French. This is just a mile from the Ivory Coast border where rebels had been fighting.

Photographers, for the most part, are some of the most compassionate people you will ever meet.  They want to help organizations they encounter but often find most of their photos never seeing the light of day.

I am often getting emails from photographers returning from overseas and having a collection of photos they want to share. They want to get the stories in front of people.

A typical email will look something like this:

“I would like to ask for your advice. I want to send the photos to different magazines and newspapers with the hope that the photos will help generate interest and donations for the organizations I cover. How should I approach these media outlets?”

Here is my advice for anyone wanting to do humanitarian photography and want to help those organizations by getting their work published.

Remember throughout that your purpose is to connect the audience to the subjects. If you forget one of these, you will be unsuccessful at any time. Why should your audience care? Why do the issues need their story told?

Before your go

For many reasons, the time to connect with media outlets is before you go and not after. The primary reason is that had the media outlet known you would be doing the coverage; they could have given you the valuable direction that would increase the chances of being published.

If you can write or do videos as well, then be sure and offer these skills as part of the package. I know many humanitarian photographers who provide some of these skills to their clients:

• Twitter feeds while on the field
• Blog posts when they return for the client 
• Multimedia package
• Audio recordings for the web

An editor often directs you to cover a certain angle that would appeal to their audience. If you are interested in the organization, you do what you can to get the organization in front of the audience.

The story will change before you even go if you take the time to reach out to as many media outlets as possible. They may also have an account for you to cover while you are there.

While you are there

It is rare that I have ever been on an overseas trip that the story we thought we would do doesn’t change after arriving. In some form, they will tell you that you just missed it or it didn’t happen while you were here.  This doesn’t matter if you did all your research to perfection. Often people heard something different than what you said, or they didn’t want to risk telling you the truth and you not coming to help them.

Be sure you get the names of people in the photos, the places you were when you took the images, and a good description of what is going on that isn’t always understood when looking at the picture.

Types of photos

Everyone smiling and looking at the camera are snapshots and memory joggers. For the most part, this is not what the media is looking for at all.

I have written about the three types of photos: 1) “Literal” Snapshots, 2) “Artistic” Snapshots, and 3) “Expressive” images that are taken for others and not yourself. For more about those three styles, you can read this earlier blog post:

Visual Storytelling: Three Stages of Composition

Feb 27, 2011

We all start with the literal snapshot and often revisit this stage of photography. These literal snapshots are primarily taken for the photographer. These photos are “memory joggers.” They help you remember the moment.

Here are some significant mistakes photographers make while doing “humanitarian photography.”

I wrote about them before, but I think this warrants repeating here again.

Some clues that you have crossed the line into narcissism:

• When asked why you are doing the photography, you are motivated to have a good experience.
• When your conversation is all about the gear, you are using. This is an indication of self-indulgence.
• When evaluating a trip, you have that country stamped on your passport.
• When you cannot tell the stories of the people, you just met on the trip.
• When you cannot explain how your photos are helping further the work of the people in the pictures.
• When you are taking people’s pictures and rarely have ever asked permission or care to request permission.
• When you ask people to look at your pictures.
• When you evaluate the photos based on how artistic they are for your taste.
• When you are pushing all the time to go with teams on trips.
• Have a mentor and ask how well you are doing.

You need to pause and be sure the reasons you are doing the coverage are for the people that need the help. The more you serve them, the more rewarding it is than serving yourself.

How to keep a healthy ego

• You know your purpose for photographing on a trip.
• You know the subject well.
• You have taken the time to get to know the people you photograph.
• You are asking permission to photograph people.
• You always have in mind your audience when taking photos.
• You have people calling you to be involved in their projects.
• You are concerned that the images you made are making a difference.
• You are worried about exploiting people and their situation for your gain.
• Have a mentor and ask what you can do to improve.
• You know when someone else would do a better job, and you step aside for now.
• You know you need to improve and feel the burden to improve for your client’s sake.

When you get back

Contact those who were interested in running your work. Maybe a quick photo as a teaser and then a short message you just returned. You will be getting your job to them by a specific time.

Some editors will have given you a deadline before you go. Always try to meet the deadline and exceed it and get the material to them before they ask for it.

Be sure to explain if the coverage had to change and why. If they have traveled at all, they will understand. They may not know if it is not at all along the lines of what you talked to them about, and in this case, it might not run in their media.

You can always go back to all those editors who turned you down, which I highly recommend, and let them see what you have. They may change their mind.

I just read this article this morning, “What You Can Learn From The World’s Best Violinist (And His $32 Pay Day),” and it made me think about how often photographers believe it is all about their images.

I have to photograph a lot of meetings, and even in a room, I find many people checked out. Of course, they are a captive audience, but those running the conference still have to do even more to get their attention.

As photographers, we often think our images alone will get jobs for us, and as long as we continue to produce great photos, they will hire us over and over. I hate to break it to you, but that isn’t the case.

This is an interview I updated recently with Greg Thompson on what corporations look for when hiring photographers. Listen and see how many things he mentions, other than important photos, and why they are essential.

https://youtu.be/gD9xiQvdZNo

The total package is more important than any of the individual parts.

So how do you turn people’s heads and keep their attention?

Parts of the Total Package for the photographer

1. Distilled message: You need to understand who you are and what you want from others.
   1. Elevator Speech
   2. Know who your audience is — Not everyone is your audience.
2. Eye-catching
   1. Your images need to be strong enough to engage the viewer
   2. Your image needs to be good. Being well-groomed and in fashion can help.
   3. Presentation – Your materials from business cards, estimates, invoices, and emails all need to be visually solid.
3. Ideas  —  You need to know what you can do for your audience. The more specific this is to your client, the better. 
4. Voice and Tone  —  No question that many people rise to the top due to the quality of their voices. Having James Earl Jones (Darth VaVadar’soice) is quite commanding. You need to speak clearly and develop a tone that engages depending on the message.
5. Relationship-focused  —  people detect if you are using them. It would be best if you were interested in the audience to engage them genuinely.
6. A collaborator  — is someone looking to help your clients reach their goals which intern enables you to get yours.
7. Pricing — Your pricing needs to be clear and understandable from the client’s perspective, meet their needs, and maybe even create desire.
8. When and Where? — You need to target your audience to find them when they have the time to give to you.

You may think of more things to add to the list. But the point is simple; you cannot make it as a professional photographer or as a career with great images alone.