Anyway, I’ve just been asked my opinions about automation and social media. It’s something I feel strongly about, and my advice is to “approach with caution”. Here’s why.

1. We’re in the ‘intimacy business’, and automation is usually the the enemy of intimacy. If I skype my wife, “Hi darling – love you!”, we both feel good about it. It was impulsive and heartfelt. Automate it and I turn it into marketing. I lose trust instead of gaining it.

2. Social media is about “making connections”. That could mean making friendships or simply “getting noticed” (what Seth Godin calls “interrupting people”). Automating tweets to re-syndicate old posts is just advertising. It may have some value, but let’s call it what it is. You don’t see Seth recycling his old content, and he posts every day. We don’t recycle either.

3. I don’t want to see the same tweet from you multiple times a day just to “make sure I see it”. As soon as I pay you the compliment of adding you to my insider list (instead of reading your posts in my timeline) I’ll see the game you’re playing. A big turnoff. You’re no longer authentic and I will probably “unfollow”. Especially if you’re pumping out a constant stream of stuff.

4. Who am I following? Three times in the last week people have asked me, “Who d’you think is behind Jasmine Star?” (on Facebook). Their point was, it feels automated because there’s no dialogue with readers. Don’t get me wrong: I admire her, and what’s she’s done, and I’m jealous of her following. But you don’t want people wondering if you’re for real, and automation makes this much more likely. Compare Jasmine with @garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk). Not saying his is the only way to do things, but there is no doubt he’s real. Check out “The Thank You Economy.”

5. There is a slap (cost) to automation. Facebook especially makes your content lower priority if you automate it. We used to do this with blog posts but not any more. Now that we handcraft the posts, they get much more traffic and interaction. There is plenty of content on the web about this – this, for example.

As I said we’re in the intimacy business. Most photographers need about 30-50 weddings a year. That’s 50 odd relationships to be treasured, talked about and shared. The real key to success is not for you to jump up and down more, but for your fans to spread the word. It’s not the size of the audience but the degree of engagement that counts.

Having said all that, we do use automation, Tweetdeck in my case. It makes life so much easier. Give it a try, but please please please don’t turn your tweets into spam.

Love to all, and have fun.

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That’s not what I asked myself.

I asked the same question as the people who come and see me: “How much is this gonna cost?”

The answer really opened my eyes…

When I analyzed it, I’m paying the photographer and their assistant for their time that day, and they are giving me the files.

After the wedding, I personally will edit, color correct, create 4×6 proofs, order a proof box, design an album, do the post production work, order the album, and parents’ albums ( at least one, maybe two more – which also includes album design and some more post-production work) … maybe order a wall portrait or two from the lab.

These are my two children, so there’s no charge for my time.

Even so I will be paying close to $6000.00 for photography. I am IN THE BUSINESS, so I’m paying “wholesale”. No extra breaks from the lab, the album company or the photographers I hired.

So what are these couples getting from those “professionals” that are “only” charging $3500.00 or so for “professional photography” – in other words their time on the day, plus the image files?

Short answer: not enough! My long answer is coming up, but it would be great to hear your take on this.

Jerry

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The Bumble Bee Effect. Different to the Butterfly Effect because they haven’t made a movie of the same name with at least two sequels.

The Bumble Bee effect is all about buzz and pollen.

It’s about being talked about. We successfully did so by putting on an earthquake (a really big one).

There are other ways to create a buzz that are much more positive.

Obvious buzz topics are awards, photographing the wedding of Kate and Prince William, standing tall in the face of adversity, scandal, heroism, and achievement. (Actually ‘scandal’ might not be considered as a positive buzz.)

Pollen is the haploid male gametophyte generation of the plant and is produced in both angiosperms and gymnosperms through the process of meiosis. Pollen is produced in the male cones of gymnosperms and in the anthers of angiosperms. This is important stuff (thank you Wikipedia).

Plants produce microscopic round or oval pollen grains to reproduce. In some species, the plant uses the pollen from its own flowers to fertilize itself. Other types must be cross-pollinated; that is, in order for fertilization to take place and seeds to form, pollen must be transferred from the flower of one plant to that of another plant of the same species. Insects do this job for certain flowering plants, while other plants rely on wind transport; agents that effect pollination are also known as vectors.

The Pollen is really a metaphor for the fertilisation, and spreading of, ideas.

Ideas are the buzz.

When you think about it, The Bumble Bee Effect is straight out advertising, but in this age it includes being in places where people talk, like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc (the vectors). The Bumble Bee Effect is about the information and the way it gets around.

A side effect of the pollination process is the gathering of honey (rhymes with ????), a sweet reward for the passing on of the message (pollen).

This is the way of it all really. We are the often-inadvertent carriers of other people’s buzz, but, if the world were a hive, we wouldn’t mind because a smart bumble bee knows that it is all for a greater good.

So here’s the guts of it. Become talked about. Allow others to carry the message and be happy to carry the message of others.

Cheers, Johannes

PS On average a Bumble Bee flaps its wings 150 times a second.

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In my day ‘We’ were the difference … we were the new generation biting at the heals of ‘the old guard’.

There was always going to be a new generation coming in to replace what we did.

Several things happened in the wedding industry when I was starting up. People started looking for images that were less formal and more photojournalistic, and people started asking for their negatives.

Enter Generation 2.0, invigorated and empowered by the digital revolution. Camera makers have made it easier for our audience to be better aligned with our photographic skills, by vastly improved focusing, exposure, and image quality at affordable prices.

Generation 2.0 is the new guard, thirsty for knowledge and keen to experiment. Herein lies the secret.

If I sit on my experience and my wisdom I will quickly become redundant. The safety of my place in the wedding industry will be threatened by my own adherence to being safe, and my new clients will fade away. It is essential that I continue to experiment, take risks, and grow new ideas.

Somebody once said there are no more new ideas left, just the old ones reborn and repackaged.

This may be true but if you look at Gen 2.0 photographers there is a definite inclination towards fashion, architecture, design and emotional intent. I blame computers for this heightened awareness!

But hang on! Isn’t this what we as a new generation of photographers (in our day) brought to wedding photography to become visual leaders?

So there’s the rub! Its not that photographic intent has changed in any way. The new generation is photographing with a more aware eye to current trends in design and fashion.

Generation 2.0 has a creative fearlessness unencumbered by the wisdom of experience. Flared out images with heads chopped out are hot, photographs of people in lines staring at a camera are not.

There is a huge risk that if a Gen 1.1 photographer takes on the guise of Gen 2.0 without understanding the differences, they could easily end up looking like the guy with a really bad toupee. People stare, some point (especially children), and he never seems to get a date.

Generation 2.0 embraces technology but also appreciates the retro opportunities of film. Generation 2.0 has an understanding of technology and creative fearlessness that will only be surpassed by Generation 3.0.

As I recall, the two problems that other photographers had with us entering the market were:

• We had a new product that was attractive to a new generation of brides and grooms,  and
• We were under-priced.

Not much has changed. Actually that is not true, photographers are educating themselves more, and better.

All generations of photographers need to keep growing, learning, and creating.

Cheers, Johannes

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Just ignoring it really annoys people, so don’t do that.

But sometimes just fixing it isn’t much better – especially if someone else caused the problem in the first place. That’s because (with many problems) if all you do is “fix them” the same thing will happen again.

And that soon gets really annoying.

Annoying for the person fixing the problem (of course) but just as annoying for the person who may actually be causing the problem. If things keep going wrong they’re left wondering why you, or your processes, are so … dumb.

That’s why the most important thing to do with problems is understand them. Because when you understand them you can prevent them happening again.

Maybe the problem is something to do with your own processes, and the solution is to change them.

Maybe the problem is something the other person is doing, and the solution is to modify how they operate.

Either way, suddenly you’re acting smart, not stupid, and chances are the problem will go away.

Cheers, Ian
PS Yes Virginia, I’m talking about us. If we call we’re just trying to understand what’s happening, so we can make things go better in future.

And yes, sometimes s@#$ does just happen, and all you can do then is fix it and try harder.

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Loves the photos, the sharing, the little messages – likes wishing his mother a happy birthday … and seeing the message spread around his network, so the best wishes get multiplied many times.

But sharing isn’t the same thing as remembering, and Facebook is really about the former, not the latter, and it’s interesting to ask why.

For a start, what’s the likelihood of Facebook being around when our children and grandchildren want to know about us? If history is any guide, not much. (I’ve been using computers since pre-Microsoft and I have several generations of computer-stored memories, images, business records, documents I can no longer access).

Second, Facebook doesn’t edit or rank our memories, or express the significance of what we’re looking at.

If your grandkids could one day check out your lifetime of Facebook interactions, would they? It would be a huge, thankless task, and that trivial post about your bad hair day would get equal time with the heartfelt story you wrote about your best friend’s funeral, or whatever. Same of course for the images.

My parents’ photo albums, the handwritten captions, the carefully typed stories, edit their experience into something I can handle, something I know I should treasure forever. They’ve edited their life story for significance, and left out the trivial. To an extent they’ve also sanitized it of course.

Sharing is not the same thing as remembering, and we can’t remember everything. Or pass on everything.

Cheers, Ian

Notice I didn’t mention professional photography, but it does provide a clue as to what a professional has to do if she wants to stay in business: not just shoot photos but tell stories – generally not everyday stories either, but stories in fancy dress, fairy stories (told true), a record of how people want to be remembered.
Sorry for stealing your idea Stephen

That photo of my grandparents’ farm house does the whole Proustian memory thing on me. Long gone now … the people and the house. The smells (kitchen, tool shed, wool bales, hay) and the photos remain.

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However the experience brought something to mind that I think is important, so here goes.

Having an accountant (and keeping regular management accounts) is like having one leg. A damn sight better than none. But two is much better.

The first leg is the data, keeping score. The second leg is analysis: strategising, playing what-if with the numbers, thinking through your options and how they might impact your bottom line.

Unfortunately your accountant probably knows very little about your business, so you’ll have to grow that second leg yourself.

That doesn’t mean you can’t get ideas from people, or that there aren’t tools out there to help you. In fact that’s what the two webinars we did recently are about (you can read about them here and here).

Years ago my accountant told me that if I wanted to improve my bottom line I should try eating beans instead of steak for a year – I’d save a lot. It’s good advice as far as it goes, which is not far enough.

Beyond that, however, it’s not just that your accountant may not know enough about your business or our industry to offer you strategic advice, they seem very reluctant as a profession to do so.

Cheers, Ian

PS The reason I never participated in the panel discussion was that the morning seminar program ran late, suddenly it was lunchtime – so “Hey, we’d better end it there”. Hmm.

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There are many types of photographers out there … some have a procedure and others fly by the seat of their pants. Neither of them admits to it.

Who you gonna call?

For a prospective bride the outlook isn’t good. Does she choose “Same old…” or “There are good days and there are bad days…”?

Whoa! the bride wants results and wants them to be unique!

This is where the trust comes into it … Trust means so many things but in the end it is about getting results.

Cheers, Johannes

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Among the responses was this one:

I’m so sick of working harder and not smarter with the middle to lower end. I want to start all over again and aim at the high end of the market with the best products and service. I have never done an album before. I made the decision to specialise in babies, children and family portraiture. I can visualise beautiful portrait albums sitting on my coffee table in the studio, but I don’t know where to start.

Albums are not the place to start.
The place to start is with some deep thinking about where you are now, where you want to be and most important, the little steps that get you closer every day.

Changing your business model is never easy, but I believe that anything you’re doing now that’s taking you in the wrong direction (eg “working harder and not smarter with the middle to lower end”) is a real problem.

If you could afford it, having too little work could be better than have too much of the wrong work.

At least that way you’d have time and energy to work on change. Too much of the wrong work wears you out, takes up your time and stops you making change.

And prospects coming to see you (especially those who know of you from previous customers) come wanting the old you, not the new you.

Of course the wrong work is probably what’s paying the bills! But you have to work out what to do about that.

Most small businesses face this challenge. Many don’t solve it. One solution might be to find a new revenue stream … a day job. Heather and I started like that.

Getting back to albums…

As my email suggests, provided you and we are a good fit, Queensberry will be one of those differentiating “steps along the way”.

But first you need to work out what your business will look like when it’s done, and how to get there.

Cheers, Ian

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Last week I was a judge for the Australian Professional Photography Awards at PMA in Melbourne.

This was an honour I shared with the lovely Jo Grams, Jerry Ghionis, Jackie Chan, Yervant and other luminaries.

Several things became apparent:

1) Some authors treated the album as a set of individual prints, mixing black and whites with colours, verticals with horizontals, with blatant disregard for the influence of those images on each other.

2) Some authors were hypnotised by the ability to apply a filter to create a look … This did not, however, work so well on the judges, who were looking for quality imagery, design, and storytelling.

3) Ever read a book where things got overly complicated and you just lost interest? This was another problem we encountered.

4) Sometimes the classic story was simply too long. The judging criteria allowed for up to 50 pages … 50 is great for the bride and groom, but for the judges it was easy to lose interest when points 1, 2, and 3 were in play.

If I was to advise anybody on entering albums for awards, my advice would be:

Impress the judges with your keen eye before your photoshop skills.

Create a treasure not a billboard.

Had you done all of these things you would have had my vote.

Cheers

Johannes

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