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"They’re proud of their family or their new baby. Proud of their farm, cars, horses, dogs. Proud of the party they put on for the wedding..."

Pride — personal and professional

We’re in the “love” business, yes, but we’re in the pride business too.

Professional pride in your case, but with your clients it’s personal…

They’re proud of their family or their new baby.

Proud of their farm, cars, horses, dogs.

Proud of the party they put on for the wedding — the location, the spread, the flowers, the entertainment. Proud of how they looked — dressed up, slimmed down, tanned and gorgeous. Proud of the people they invited, and how far they came.

And why shouldn’t they be?

It’s your job to capture and portray that pride in photos — just as it is to express the love they feel.

I labour this point a lot — give them what they want! Photos are the means, not the end.

Love and pride are both powerful motivators.

The commercial attitude

I spent three years in the Solomon Islands working on a foreign aid project, building fishing boats. My boss was an Englishman who used to manage codfish processing plants in the UK. On our island was a small skipjack tuna canning factory. Theirs was the best canned tuna we’ve ever tasted, and my boss thought he knew why. It was an old, rickety plant with poor quality control systems — so to make sure that everything they made was up to standard, they had to aim much higher than a more “commercial” operation would need to.

The “commercial attitude”, Trevor said, is to make your product as good as it needs to be, but no better. Making it better than it needs to be just cuts into your profits.

I’ve always found that attitude a bit troubling. After all we have our pride.

But I do accept we need to draw the line somewhere. No point going proudly broke.

Which does point to another way round the “commercial attitude” challenge. Charge more! People who value something as good as you do can’t have it at House Brand prices.

Commercial or professional?

Making a product “as good as it needs to be” can mean anything from:

— doesn’t often break until after the guarantee expires, to

— so good that people are happy to pay the sky-high prices you charge.

In other words the “commercial” attitude is very flexible!

But photographers pride themselves on being “professional”, and to me that always implies high standards.

We don’t go to any professional — dentist, doctor, lawyer or accountant — because they’re OK. We want the best, or at least the best we can afford.

So what does it take be a proud professional with a commercial attitude?

I think it largely comes down to valuing your time and talents, and not wasting them on that which doesn’t turn a profit. To put it bluntly.

Good enough

Sometimes the “good enough” attitude bites Queensberry. People will say, “Ah, Brand X is good enough. My customers can’t tell the difference.”

I think what they really mean is that Brand X is cheaper.

I have to bite my lip, but I do hope their clients don’t have the same attitude.

We like it when our customers push us to do even better. Remember our “Is it good enough for Rod?” test?

Commercial and proud of it

If having a commercial attitude comes down to valuing your time, and not wasting it on things that don’t turn a profit, what might that mean exactly? Some suggestions:

• Shoot pictures and sell them — that’s where the money is.

• Don’t follow the crowd — followers earn less.

• Don’t spend too much time on photos that haven’t sold yet — people do though.

• Get it right in camera — so editing is minimised.

• Shoot less — reviewing and culling take time too.

• Delegate routine post-production to trusted partners — editing, album design etc.

• Work on your workflow — make it efficient, hassle-free and liberating, from post-production to delivering the final product.

You know better than me how you spend your time, and what stands in your way.

The Blame Game

Rob was a Queensberry account manager, and has operated photo labs for many years, including for us.

Rob is strong on quality.

His attitude is that photographers who supply only the digital files — and leave it to customers to organise their own printing — have no idea what their customers will end up with. It’s a lottery.

I remember us printing a set of photos for a sample box, and Rob deciding to put his theory to the test. He had the same files printed at three other outfits. Local, but otherwise chosen at random.

You’d expect me to say this, but our prints looked great. One of the other sets looked quite good too. The other two were pretty sad.

Maybe all four sets were “good enough” for many customers. Most people aren’t as discriminating as you are, as a professional, and maybe they have nothing to use as a benchmark.

But if the customer is unhappy, who’s likely to get the blame? The outfit that printed them? Or you, the photographer?

Let me make a joke out of that — my guess is that they blame you, and you blame the printer.

No control

If you leave it to your customers to order their own prints, frames, books and albums, the only thing you can be sure of is that you’ll be judged by the results. Over which you’ll have no control.

At best they’ll get a decent consumer-grade product. Just as likely they’ll end up with something you wouldn’t be proud of. If you saw it.

Equally important, this is what the people who do see it — your potential new clients — will judge you by.

You really want your photos in with all this trash?

I think this will be the touchiest topic I touch, so before you start reading, please understand that I’m not suggesting that wedding photographers shouldn’t offer their clients the digital files. Many use Workspace to do so! What I am suggesting is that they strategise how they do it!

With that in mind…

My Apple iPhoto collection is full of trash.

Dozens of photos of my Border Terrier, Molly.

Dozens of the gulls and godwits circling over Awahoa Bay.

Not one but two weddings, even though I don’t know who the people are. (I downloaded the files to test Workspace eight years ago and I’ve never deleted them.)

There are photos to remind me where I parked, movie tickets, screen grabs, internet memes and cartoons.

Photos, slow-mos, videos and panos.

A photo I took in Times Square of a bare-chested gent getting nipped by a tiny alligator. (I had to stand in line for that one — “Tourists, eh?” as Kiwis and Canadians say.)

Lots of precious stuff too, of course, but even so, far too many duplicates and duds that just need to be deleted.

“I’ve gotta go through this stuff,” I tell myself, but I never have.

Meantime I keep adding to the pile.

My question is — is this where you want your photography to end up?

Gone and forgotten, just like my photos will be if I’m not careful?

Why do they just want the files?

More on that touchiest of topics…

Why do they just want the files? Maybe because they’re not volunteers.

I’m thinking wedding photography here, because we don’t often hear portrait photographers say that their clients “just want the files”.

But brides (and grooms) have a checklist, and on that list it says “photography”.

Sure, many brides value photography, but for others it’s just another “to-do” on the list. They’d rather spend their money on the flowers, the dress and the reception.

And all over the internet people are telling them that the way to save money on their photography is to ask for “just the files”.

But there’s another reason. Photographers have heard the same story, so that’s all they offer — the files! Oh, and an album of course. If they’re interested. Something good enough.

More to come (eye-roll).

Learning from your grandparents

More on that touchy topic!

My parents and in-laws left us carefully curated photograph albums, the prints mounted on black card and captioned with white ink. They took what was important to them and passed it on to us.

Why am I talking about mid-20th Century stuff like this? Because it’s the business we’re in — helping people “remember forever”.

Right there is the reason that, over the generations, photography has come so close to people’s hearts.

I worry that my generation and yours will leave a digital black hole. If we can’t be bothered selecting, annotating and printing our most important memories, will the next generation be bothered hunting through our photo stream for them?

Or trying to find out how to access a “thumb drive”?

Pride in print is good for business, but I do believe it’s also as near as it gets to a professional responsibility.

You'll find more about digital files in the Customers, Differentiation, Good Better Best and How to sell albums posts.

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