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Author Topic: Use or Abuse?  (Read 14715 times)

JoeKitchen

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #20 on: December 17, 2010, 06:34:59 am »

Yes, long term is the way to go and people need to recognize that it takes time to build a client base and get a contact to hire you.  There are designers that I have been talking to every 6/8 weeks for over two years now and I still have not got an assignment from them.  They want to use me, just no budget right now, but soon I feel.  I had coffee with an interior designer yesterday for 2 hours.  She is just out of school and could not find work, so she went out on her own and is at least 1 to 1.5 years away from getting any pro photography done.  

So we did not talk about photography, instead marketing.  I talked about my experiences with gaining a name base and getting jobs during this recession being paid $1000+ per assignment and how my techniques could be applied to the interior design industry.  She was also surprised to hear that I talk with other AP's in my area and bounce ideas back and forth even though we are competitors; she has not talked to any other interior designers thinking that since they are competitors it would not be a good idea.  To follow up, I just sent her a nice e-mail with links and books that have great tips and ideas for marketing, using social media, putting together good cost proposals.  

Remember, it's turning strangers into contacts, contacts into friends, and friends into clients.  There are not shortcuts unless you want to be a flash in the pan.  
« Last Edit: December 17, 2010, 06:36:45 am by JoeKitchen »
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Rob C

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #21 on: December 17, 2010, 04:31:58 pm »

Yes, long-term is the best way to make clients that are good for you. Trouble is, many competitors are also playing that very same game; it, of itself, is no guarantee.

I do believe that more important is a single, great, break that provides you with the publicity and kudos that will interest other possible clients. It’s how it worked for me. I trudged along for years doing bits of this and bits of the other; then, following the example you quote of long-term contact building, one ad agency began to give me regular work. That kept me afloat, more or less, and then by a stroke of fortune, I was introduced to the manager of a retail chain, who instantly gave me regular half-page ads in an evening newspaper (fashion stuff) based on nothing more than my portfolio of what was, basically, model test shots, as I had yet to break into fashion itself.

That exposure created more fashion work, and when that began to die in the Scottish cold (financial) the model work led to calendars, and that was it.

Yet, even that was simple but complicated. My very best calendar client came to me from an early connection. The industrial in-plant photo unit I worked in allowed me the opportunity to meet the company’s PR chap, and when we had both gone freelance, he came to my studio to get me to do some industrial shots for one of his clients. I met the client head honcho that way; we clicked, and a year later I popped him a mock-up of a calendar I designed for his own firm. It was totally on spec – I hadn’t been asked to do it, but I did notice he sported a Pirelli in his office. I’d already produced two or three humble ones for fashion manufacturers, and that certainly added confidence (to us both) but I shall never forget the day he eventually accepted an asked-for quotation and gave me the go ahead. I left his office in a dream, got into the car, and as soon as I was out of sight, I let out one hell of a rebel yell. It can be good.

As for a new, quality loving world coming back any time soon… who can guess? I have my doubts, though, because I fear that the next thing in the evolution of this state of affairs is going to resemble mob rule more than stable governance. You just have to watch the university ‘student’ riots (students so illiterate they can’t address the press? Really? Students?) in Britain, France, Greece, Italy and the way that the police are instantly blamed by the tv reporters for the violence, despite the evidence of the same tv images – and you have to conclude that the press is actively conspiring to encourage, if not create mayhem because it fills the screens and the minds of the couch potatoes out there. Does a real student take a Molotov cockail to a demonstration march? Turn a policeman, a guy just doing his best to keep control of things, into a ball of living fire?

Take the ‘Leaks guy and the way he’s been turned into a celebrity – the mind just boggles. It’s like that biblical thing, about the release of Barabbas; the same with immigration restrictions they are trying to introduce in Britain – the friggin’ legal system comes out on the side of the future mobs seeking to live off the system, the system that’s supposed to protect the incumbent populace, believe it or not!

Good times ahead? I wish!

Rob C
« Last Edit: December 17, 2010, 04:37:43 pm by Rob C »
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eronald

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #22 on: December 20, 2010, 02:14:29 pm »

Photography is not a job any more, just as musician is not a job anymore, those who are not stars get zero respect and very little money.

Edmund
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feppe

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #23 on: December 20, 2010, 02:23:12 pm »

Photography is not a job any more, just as musician is not a job anymore, those who are not stars get zero respect and very little money.

Musicians have never earned handsomely, and millionaire musicians are a very recent phenomena, even if we take inflation into account.

eronald

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #24 on: December 20, 2010, 02:50:39 pm »

Musicians have never earned handsomely, and millionaire musicians are a very recent phenomena, even if we take inflation into account.

What I mean is that it used to be that the pianist in the local watering hole earned a living. Now the guy whose records they are playing earns millions. City dance clubs used to have live music, marriages had bands, major churches had organists; it was at the very least an additional income for those guys. Remember, all the jazz greats played in clubs.

Edmund
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feppe

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #25 on: December 20, 2010, 03:11:36 pm »

What I mean is that it used to be that the pianist in the local watering hole earned a living. Now the guy whose records they are playing earns millions. City dance clubs used to have live music, marriages had bands, major churches had organists; it was at the very least an additional income for those guys. Remember, all the jazz greats played in clubs.

Not sure what you're getting at. If customers weren't willing to pay for the pianist at the local watering hole, his services are not needed anymore. Even then there is plenty of live music in Amsterdam and in any European big city, and all the weddings I've been to had a live band. From what I understand even famous bands need to go on tours because most of the proceeds from record sales go towards covering marketing, studio rental, big time producer, etc.

Rob C

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #26 on: December 20, 2010, 04:54:18 pm »

Photography is not a job any more, just as musician is not a job anymore, those who are not stars get zero respect and very little money.

Edmund


I think you are right. In fact, even the star shooters may end up wondering where the good times went. Hmmm.... I even remember a time when you could go to the local cinema and there's be a bloke there playing an organ than would come up out of the floor in front of the screen and then, before the movie was to start, sink back down... whilst he was playing was the time when the cigarette girl - usherette - would walk round selling smokes and ices. Good old days... that'll get some hatred stirred up!

;-)

Rob C

Joe Behar

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #27 on: December 20, 2010, 05:14:09 pm »


I think you are right. In fact, even the star shooters may end up wondering where the good times went. Hmmm.... I even remember a time when you could go to the local cinema and there's be a bloke there playing an organ than would come up out of the floor in front of the screen and then, before the movie was to start, sink back down... whilst he was playing was the time when the cigarette girl - usherette - would walk round selling smokes and ices. Good old days... that'll get some hatred stirred up!

;-)

Rob C



Rob,

What could there possibly be there to hate about an attractive girl in a skirt that's probably way too short coming around and asking you'd like a smoke?

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Dick Roadnight

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #28 on: December 21, 2010, 12:08:16 am »

Rob,

What could there possibly be there to hate about an attractive girl in a skirt that's probably way too short coming around and asking you'd like a smoke?


My wife was with me when I visited my mother's care home the other day... the receptionist said:
"How are you" ...I replied
"I my wife was not with me, I would have said 'all the better for seeing you'"
One is allowed, to an extent, to appreciate bar-maids, usherettes and pole dancers ...but you could hate the temptation to ...have a cigarette, or you could hate the pangs of conscience.

...but I think Rob thought the the hatred would have been caused but the "good old day" remark.
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bcooter

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #29 on: December 21, 2010, 06:00:08 am »

Photography is not a job any more, just as musician is not a job anymore,.......snip

whoa.

Talk about negative vibes.

Look, photography/image creation is a profession and a pretty good one.  Yes our industry has taken a big hit, but so have EVERY industry.

Any profession that centers around the arts is difficult. Always has been, always will be.  Nothing new in that.

Still, 99.99999999999% of the issues are not with technology, or changing media, it's with the economy. 

I've had to work harder than any point in my life to keep it going forward, but hey that's ok cause I like working.

For two years I've heard the doom and gloom, even said some myself, but heck, I heard that 10 years ago and my business moved towards the positive.

There are two ways to look at the changes we all face.  Step up and find new was of working, billing, selling, creating, or step back.

Everything changes, but in the end, it's not always for the worse.

Today I read an article about target marketing on televison and web.  At first I thought "great", more committee, focus groups dictating concepts, but then I thought GREAT, maybe if we really are allowed to target a client's market, we don't have to water it down from the lowest to the highest.

Instead of trying to produce imagery and content that covers everyone, we can be specific have less dont's, more does.

The secret to success is be positive, don't give up, don't give in.

It's gonna be all right.

IMO

BC


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Rob C

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Re: Use or Abuse?
« Reply #30 on: December 21, 2010, 06:01:30 am »

My wife was with me when I visited my mother's care home the other day... the receptionist said:
"How are you" ...I replied
"I my wife was not with me, I would have said 'all the better for seeing you'"
One is allowed, to an extent, to appreciate bar-maids, usherettes and pole dancers ...but you could hate the temptation to ...have a cigarette, or you could hate the pangs of conscience.

...but I think Rob thought the the hatred would have been caused but the "good old day" remark.
[/b]


Indeed, but as I spent yesterday noon with a dentist (as victim) and this morning on a freezing terrace holding the foot of a ladder whilst a tv technician clambered about on the roof, possible third party hatred for the G.O.Days registers very low priority on the pain monitors at the moment!

;-)

Rob C
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