Welcome to the second interview in our series featuring clients whose businesses are thriving despite the current economic climate. Click here to read the first interview with Christian Oth. In the same year they had their first child, Chris and Darcie Siiteri started their Austin (Texas) photography business, Innovative Photography. Fifteen years later they’re still at it and doing better than ever. I gave an initially nervous Darcie an early morning call to chat about how they approach their album sales, and what they do to ensure their clients have an amazing experience and to foster relationships To View More >>

Wedding and portrait photographers are lucky.  There is an automatic point of difference built into the core of our businesses - our photography.  Other businesses selling books, bricks or ice-creams are dealing with the same commodities and therefore need to make their businesses about something other than the product, such as service, fast delivery or lifestyle branding. We start out with a product that is already differentiated - and what do many of us do? We try our hardest to look like other photographers. Why? If we use the same actions, poses and website colours as our competitors, what To View More >>

Three quick tips to simplify album design. 1. Avoid unnecessary repetition (eg this is the bride looking slightly left, straight ahead, and slightly right) unless you make your profits from the number of images you sell. 2. Embrace open space (especially in sample albums - lead by example). 3. Offer a two album option that allows people to have lots of images without overcrowding. While I'm mentioning 'leading by example': If you don't make a sample album from each order, at least make each design into a slideshow you can show prospective clients. This library of slideshows allows you to show them To View More >>

I'm going to drop two shoes in this post. First shoe: Some time ago Johannes wrote a post he called Crikey ("that's a lot of money for an album"). It made me feel a little fidgety. I thought, we care too much about the quality of our products and services to compromise them, and maybe that's a problem. Clients often say they love what we do, but can we do it cheaper? Sometimes we try. We go about looking at how we could adapt a product, system or idea … but we don't do cheap well. We're as proud of our work as you are of yours, and compromising feels like we're shooting for the moon with an To View More >>

When Kayla and I were planning our wedding we decided... We'd rather pay someone to design and assemble our invites than do it ourselves. We'd rather pay our photographer a travel fee and have him sort out his own travel. We'd rather pay a wedding co-ordinator to run things on the day. That's us shifting the responsibility ... taking the easy route ... spending more than necessary. Whatever. But during that period, our time was worth more. Managing the process as opposed to doing it ourselves left us with plenty more time for the things we really wanted, or needed, to focus on. How valuable is To View More >>

Steve Sharp sent us this exceptional album to complete our series of posts with him. Steve shot Ben and Lauren's wedding in Taupo, New Zealand, a few weeks ago and designed them a 14x10 Queensberry Digital Album.  The couple initially committed to a 12-page album package, but Steve presented them with a 24-page album, pre-designed in Photojunction. Steve finds that most of his clients, when presented with a larger range of page designs and images, decide to include more pages in their album than they have initially pre-committed to.  Ben and Lauren have not yet finalised their album, but any To View More >>

Follow the links for "the story so far" in our series on the recession... Yes, times will be tough for a while but you shouldn't assume the sky is falling. It makes no sense to sacrifice your business and market reputation to survive the short term challenge. Instead you may need to pull your horns in and find ways to prosper while others decline. A good place to start is by analysing your budget and business model, and we have a spreadsheet to help with that. Most people react to the threat of declining sales by saying, "I've gotta cut my costs". Everyone needs to work out their own figures, but To View More >>

With a remake on the way the Ghostbusters are diligently waiting to make more profits. 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 To View More >>

Food for thought... Photographers do a huge amount more now than they used to in the old days - and it's questionable whether they get paid for it. They used to "send their work to the lab", now they ARE the lab. Colour management and colour correction used to be the lab's problem, now they're the photographer's. My thought for the day – you can't afford cheap printing for two reasons: - YOU do all the work - that's why it's cheap. - BECAUSE you do all the work you can't do other, more profitable stuff (or just go home earlier in the evenings). Truth to tell, many photographers would also get To View More >>

A couple of weeks ago I posted about aggravating business policies and touch points, and asked readers to tell us about the things we do that's frustrating! We received three comments. One I've mentioned already, and the other two also raise important issues. Katherine (not her real name) emailed her account manager to say she doesn't like Photojunction. More important, she doesn't like feeling pressured by Queensberry into using it. She feels that if QBY were truly customer focused she wouldn't feel this pressure and could continue in the way that's suited her perfectly for the last seven years. To View More >>