ChiefGeekLog

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This is really cool. The modern equivalent of pulling the weights in a grandfather clock.

It was with minimal fanfare that Stephen Green Photography launched their new website a week or so ago. Check it out, there are some great images.

An intriguing article by Kevin Kelly about the internet as a giant copy machine.

“When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can’t be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can’t be copied. Consider “trust.” Trust cannot be copied. You can’t purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you’ll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.”

This piece begins to touch on a bit of what we are experiencing in the photography business today. It used to be expensive to make pictures (especially good ones). It required a decent camera, film, and processing and printing by a skilled technician. Pictures are, in a sense, copies. With the advent of low-cost, high-quality digital imaging a few years ago, the marginal cost to make pictures has dropped to virtually nothing. Granted, you need to have some storage space, but even the cost of that has fallen through the floor. As it has become cheap for anybody to make pictures, it becomes more difficult to derive value (make a living) from them; at least compared to the “old days”.

Which of his eight “generatives” are you using to differentiate your studio?

I also find the first comment (a long one) written by a (somewhat bitter) investigative reporter to be thought-provoking as well.

[via 37signals]

An excellent article by David Pogue in the New York Times about design. The examples he uses are digital photo frames. (See Amy: I told you it matters whether I use Myriad Pro versus Arial and set the leading correctly. Somebody is watching.)

[via Daring Fireball]

When Amy & I first moved to Chicago in 1997, we needed a place to live. We were in Pittsburgh at the time and we found Annie Properties via the internet of all things (try to think back 11 years and remember the internet then). Annie Properties was owned and run by Annie & Lewis Kostiner. They restored old factory buildings in Chicago’s West Loop and made them into stunning rental loft units. We rented our apartment from them, then both of the first two DeltaQuest Imaging locations (22 North Morgan and 1132 West Fulton Market).

These days, Lewis and Annie are good friends and customers. They are out of the real estate business, enjoying life and contributing to many causes in the Chicago area and beyond. Prior to getting into real estate, Lewis was a photography professor at Columbia College in Chicago. Lewis has returned to his roots as a photographer. He has always been a “Leica Guy” and purchased the M8 about fifteen months ago. The images, taken with thirty year old lenses, are astonishing in their clarity.

Over the holidays I put together a website for him to showcase his work. It is, like most things “web,” a work in progress; but I think it is far enough along to share with you. Enjoy.

Here’s a lens that will require you to use a walkie-talkie to pose your subject. Holy smokes, Batman! [via DaringFireball]

In late 2007, along with my wife, Amy, I launched a “lifestyle” photography business on the side. With our good friend Karen West leading the charge on the sales and marketing front, we decided it was time to dip our toe in the water, as it were. And so (with the blessings of our local customers), Inspired Impressions was born.

We have a couple of objectives with this business and some of them even involve you, our valued DeltaQuest Imaging customer.

• Experiment with a different selling model than the traditional sitting / selling studio model
• Gather knowledge about the business that can be applied to the lab in order to help you grow your business and be more profitable
• Generate some additional revenue (without adding overhead)

Experiment

Over the course of the past two years, I’ve talked with a couple studios about the idea of dramatically increasing the price of the typical session and delivering a fixed number of retouched, print-ready images on disc. Call it the “commercial model.” While we aren’t going quite that far, we have designed our offering a bit differently than the “sitting / selling” model employed by most studios.

Gather Knowledge

We thought this would be a good way to accumulate firsthand knowledge of the actual business of photography. It is our intention to share this information with you and use it to improve the operation at DeltaQuest.

Additional Revenue

I already schlep my camera around to the park, parties and t-ball games and take many pictures. I post some of them to our e-commerce site for sale. I’ve sold some prints that way, but not many. Typically once somebody has “extracted the memory” from the web image they are done. Over the course of the last three years, my revenue from such undertakings has been less than $1,500. (Granted, I haven’t actively marketed it. Short of shooting out a couple emails, the images are pretty much just sitting there.)

Since all of the sessions are on location and we don’t have a studio, we’ve embarked on a direct mail campaign and we are doing an open house at a huge indoor children’s playground in two weeks.

What We’ve Learned So Far

It Ain’t Easy

Since we “launched” in early Fall 2007, we’ve done two sessions. So, worry not, the lab isn’t closing any time soon (unless of course my inlaws finally win the lottery). “If you build it, they will come” only works for Kevin Costner.

Stick to Your Style

I love kids. I love photographing them “in action”. Their lack of vanity, their carefree attitude, their “just simply being kids” makes it a lot of fun. I also enjoy parents’ reaction at seeing images of their children “at work” at the park or in the family room.
If I had my druthers, I’d rather photograph kids between the ages of one and ten. Mostly because it is easier. Infants, while beautiful, don’t do a heck of a lot and twelve and thirteen year olds often get self-conscious once they notice a camera. Kids aged one to ten generally get lost in the moment more easily.

We turned down a couple of sessions because the objectives of the prospective customer didn’t really fit with our style. Rather than force it and end up with potentially dissatisfied customers, we referred them to other studios. Now, clearly, this is easier to do when you aren’t relying on the photography business to put food on the table, but I think it is important nonetheless. I don’t have any interest in taking posed portraits of families. Its not my thing. I think portraiture is wonderful and I have a lot of admiration for my customers who are out there doing it well day after day. But I’m not very good at it.

I’m the Artist and It’s My Vision.

We tried to structure the product to minimize the work (on everybody’s part) and maximize the satisfaction. Our premise is: a prospective customer either likes my style or they don’t. When they commit, they are committing a decent amount of money (packages start at $1,250). We’re not saying, “Hey, come on in, put down a deposit (in the form of a sitting fee) and we’ll see what we can come up with for you.” We’re saying, “Here’s what we do. Here’s how much it costs to do this and (most importantly) here is how you will benefit from it. Yes or no?”

Resources

“Why do I care?” you are asking yourself (and me). Well, in the spirit of the Open Source model we embrace, I’m putting a little package together for you. It will contain all of our printed marketing materials. I’ll shoot out another email when it is ready. Keep an eye out for more posts that outline our selling strategy and pricing.

Do your non-photographer friends ever ask you which DSLR camera body and lenses they should buy? Save yourself some time and link them to this excellent article. It pretty much summarizes everything they need to know before making the purchase.

The timing is ironic. I just spent an hour or so on the phone and emailing a college friend about the very same issue. I think Mike must be spying on me as I pretty much said the same stuff!

A tip - if you want the borders created by the “Stroke” function to have square corners, set the Stroke (whether you are doing it as a Layer Effect or Edit > Stroke) to “Inside” instead of “Outside”.

Otherwise they are rounded.