Bev's Blog

As Bev is away from her desk due to the passing of Tim’s mother, the blog for this week is re-printed from one of our Coaching Community Workbook articles. Enjoy!

Tim and I were watching TV the other night and on the PBS channel, there was a special about the White House Photographers who worked with the last few presidents. They were recounting stories that were the highlights of their years photographing and documenting the president, his family and staff. One part stood out head and shoulders above the rest to us and it fortified our heartfelt belief that imagery needs to be printed and displayed for its full impact and enjoyment.

The documentary confirmed this when they described the changing of the photographs on the walls that occurred several times each year and said it was the HIGHLIGHT DAY out of all of the things that happened in the White House. All of the staff came from near and far to see the new images-it was like an unveiling of a famous art piece. These photographs were large, framed images that the photographer picked out to be displayed on the walls. People milled around, chatting, laughing and commenting on each image. You could see the joy and excitement on their faces. Isn’t that the reaction we want with our images?  Can you imagine if the White House photographer brought these images in on his iPhone or iPad for the unveiling? The contrast is quite stark!

So, this brings me to the same conclusion we have been living, breathing and teaching for many years and that is that images need to be printed, framed and hung on the wall for the ultimate personal enjoyment. Thinking about my own experience, I love walking through our den, seeing the images of our girls with our bulldog, Rock, who passed away several months ago. What memories! Then I walk to the kitchen and see the portrait of our girls that photographer Michael Taylor took while he was here. Megan was not married at the time and Michelle looks so young! In the dining room, we have their Senior portraits hanging in formal frames. My, how different they looked at the same age. In the living room, I remember how beautiful Megan looked in her bridal gown as I enjoy her “framed and printed” bridal portrait. Continuing up the stairs, I get to the top and see my mom and dad’s image and it gives me pleasure to see how well my dad looked as he is now in a nursing home. Memories…. in our bedroom, the images there celebrate our marriage of 34 years with images of the two of us at various times in our lives.

Each time I look at these images, the pleasure I receive is immeasurable-priceless. That is the intrinsic value of a printed piece versus a digital rendition. Do we have digital images anywhere in our home? Actually, we have a digital frame in the kitchen, rotating our snapshots of Ireland and Italy. For us, that is where digital imagery fits…it helps us display our snapshots, but it will never take the place of beautifully printed and framed portraits of our family.

We feel that the step from digital file to a physical print takes as much skill as the capture itself and is part of our artistic process as fine art photographers. We take great care in our printing process and it adds to the final image in ways looking at it on an iPad cannot even come close to doing. That is why we stress the fact that we call ourselves “print artists” again bringing the focus back to our printed pieces as the finished output at our studio.

We have taken it a step further in the studio by adding the initials “DRPA” on the bottom of any image that is digitally rendered for social media such as Facebook or our blog. When our clients ask what it means, we tell them it means “Digital Reproduction of Printed Art” thus reinforcing the message that we are a print studio, not a digital studio. We do not sell or give any of our images to a client on a DVD unless it is a business portrait and we have filled out the Copyright release form that gives them limited rights of use that we determine beforehand. We charge appropriately for them to use our imagery for business purposes only and they may not print from the disc for personal use.

Another aspect of this issue is the fact that technology is changing so rapidly that jpg or psd files that are saved to a DVD today may not open in any program in the future. Although we do the best we can to save our clients’ files in the most up to date formats, we cannot guarantee them they will open 5 or 10 years from now. However, nobody knows what the future holds in this arena. Anyone remember floppy disks and zip drives?

Note: Adobe recommends the DNG (digital negative) format as the best long-term storage option.

We had to draw the line in the sand, so to speak, on this issue several years ago. Our decision back then is still the same today. We do not offer our images in a digital format. We are a “printed art studio” and we make sure we have this message printed in our literature. It is important to layer the message via printed pieces, emails, blogs, Facebook and also, face to face. We don’t often get asked if we offer our images on a DVD, but when we do, we simply say we don’t and explain why. Our clients don’t get angry or leave. We have already established good relationships with them and they understand our position.

This is an issue we all need to resolve within ourselves and then draw boundries. What are yours? Think about how your decision will affect your business long-term!

Have a great week everyone (and hug your moms)-

Bev

Note: Tim and Bev Walden are the founders of the Walden Coaching Community, an online educational resource for photographers. As photographic educators, they realized the benefits of putting their immense knowledge and expertise online would be a way to share with photographers far and wide from their home base in Lexington, Kentucky.

You can check out their Coaching Community at www.timandbevwalden.com. While there, visit their Store for specialty products they have produced to benefit all photographers, whether beginners or seasoned veterans.

This week’s blog is inspired by a cupcake bakery in Ft. Collins, Colorado, called the Butter Cream Cupcakery. Why, you ask? First of all, I love cupcakes. However, more than that, my brother was telling me a very special thing about this bakery that I have been thinking about since he told me. He lives in Ft. Collins and mentioned a friend who owned this cupcake bakery and how good the cupcakes were. What was intriguing to me was the extra special prize inside of her bakery…Princess Story Time!

What, I asked? What in the world is Princess Story Time? And what does it have to do with a bakery? With that, he explained that the store has one of the staff dress up like Snow White (or other princess-type characters like the Little Mermaid) and right in the store, she reads stories to the children that attend. This event draws children and their parents into the store for a different reason than simply to buy cupcakes, but guess what? They buy cupcakes while they are there…who wouldn’t, right? And more than that, it builds good will in the community and creates BUZZ, that all-important aspect of marketing we all need in today’s overrun environment.

This past winter, we hosted an event called “Coffee, Camera and a Chat” in our studio where we invited some of our clients in to learn more about how to take better snapshots, taught by Tim. We also invited the manager of our local camera store to come and look at their cameras and answer any questions they might have about them. We structured the evening to be small and intimate (invitation only) and had some nice refreshments afterwards. It was met with great success. Each participant left with a goodie bag from us containing a gift certificate for a Session Fee along with a gold CD (we talked about how to preserve their images on gold CDs) and the camera store handed out goodies as well.

Fast forward to last week where we had our second Coffee, Camera and a Chat.

We had a full house with a waiting list and customers messaging us afterwards that they had already heard from those there that it was awesome and they wanted to sign up for the next one. As we handed out the gift packets with the Session Fee gift, I spoke to four women who mentioned they wanted to book a session and had been procrastinating, but would now book. It has built more good will than almost anything else we have done.

Do you see the correlation of the Princess Story Time and Coffee, Camera and a Chat? They are both like getting the prize inside of a box of Cracker Jacks. It is the little extra gift that keeps them coming back. All it takes is a little time and effort to create an event your clients will appreciate and then tell their friends.

What can you do in your business? Get a group together and brainstorm…maybe you could do an event with a partner in your town that would draw from both businesses. Your imagination is the only limitation!

Have a great week, everyone.

Bev

www.timandbevwalden.com

This can be a bit tricky, but I wanted to share what we have done in this area as we have had photographers inquire about this topic. We decided we needed to raise prices, but really hated to in a soft economy, so we came up with these solutions.

Instead of raising prices on some of the products, we decided to look at our PROFIT MARGINS instead to see where we could improve them. We took apart every product and process to see where we could lower the base cost, but we knew the product still had to stand the quality test our clients paid us for.

1. The first change we made was on one of our most popular products, the Image Showcases (6-8×8 images in 12×12 double mats.) We were paying quite a lot for vendors to cut a double mat for the front and then an additional solid mat to back each of the 6 matted images. Three mats per image times 6 images was 18 mats for one product! We don’t use cheap mats either, so that was adding to our cost and diminishing our profit margin. On top of that, we had to pay to have them assembled and also pay for the print that was inserted and they took awhile to finish and deliver to our clients because of all the many steps (and people) in the process.

Instead, we decided to create a designed 12×12 piece as a template where we could digitally add the image into it and voila! Done! Now all we do is upload these pieces to White House (WHCC) and they come back beautifully printed, mounted on styrene, laminated and ready to deliver. This cut our costs tremendously in materials and labor and dramatically shortened the time it took to deliver it. We designed one set for color and one for our black and white work. In the Associate division (formerly Studio B), we were already doing this.

With this new style, we are keeping the same price as we had and if someone wants the “old style” with physical mats, we charge $50.00 additional for the extra materials and labor they require. It makes sense to our clients when I explain it, we make much more profit and everyone is happy as they can order either and we are covered.

2. The second change we made was to delete the automatic mounting of our Table Top images (8×10 and smaller) and if a client wants it now, we charge an additional $15.00 per image. Again, we are taking the approach of raising our profit margins rather than our print prices. About 40% of our clients will pay for the mounting of their images and 60% opt out. This decision allows us to keep our Table Top prices the same (now for unmounted prints) and make additional bottom line profits when we mount them.

3. Finally, on this topic, we scoured our price lists to find those items that were costing us too much to produce and figured out ways to scale them back to make them more profitable. Since we were printing our own canvasses in the past, we created our products in odd sizes as it didn’t matter. Once we printed them and had our in-house framer stretch them, we realized we were paying way too much once we figured up the costs of materials and labor (and it took a long time to deliver these images). We decided to re-configure our products to fit WHCC’s sizes and once we did that, our costs went way down. So, our Senior Eclectic that was 13×21 is now 16×24, a normal WHCC size. We know now exactly how much it will cost and as a bonus, we have a much faster turn-around.

Take the time this week to go through your prices and products to see where any changes, big or small, can make a difference to your profit margins.

Have a great week everyone.

Bev

www.timandbevwalden.com

 www.timandbevwalden.com

Pancake Pantry…Gatlinburg…10am on a Saturday morning…hopelessly long line waiting for amazing pancakes! What makes this experience tolerable for our family again and again? The answer is simple; a steaming (free) cup of coffee and signs that tell how long the wait is from certain points in the line.

Simple, inexpensive and effective.

Cabo…registration desk…long line of tired travelers waiting in the heat! What makes this experience tolerable? How about an ice cold margarita handed to everyone in line, courtesy of the hotel?

Simple, inexpensive and effective…again.

Hospitality is usually that way; simple, inexpensive and effective. At Walden’s, we have come up with 5 ways to greet and treat our clients without breaking the bank.

Number 1: Chilled, bottled water for our clients with our labels

No matter what type of client, we always offer chilled, bottled water without them asking. The reason I mention this is to point out the special labeling we do on blank spring water bottles we get from our local supplier. We want to brand everything we do; this is an impressive, easy and inexpensive way to pamper your clients. Always mindful of workflow and the use of our printers, we decided to change them seasonally with new images put into the templates each season. The templates (fall, summer, spring and fall)  include a nice design, client images and a quote. You can buy the labels made specifically for water bottles at PlanetLabel.com.

Number 2: Personalized bottled water for our high school seniors plus other special goodies

Again, bottled and specially labeled water is the base, but with seniors, when we know their favorite drink, we up the “ante” and have it waiting in the dressing room for their photography session along with a handwritten card welcoming them to Walden’s Senior17. Where bottled water plays into the mix is at their selection appointment where we have four bottles of water labeled with their images and our Senior17 logo. This is branding at its best as they excitedly share their special bottles with their friends! Along with the water, we also have Tootsie Roll pops (we use the ones we get in WHCC boxes) and Smarties which are always a huge hit.

Number 3: Pampering our kids

We make our kids feel extra special with our Serendipity collection of goodies. Once you purchase the kit and a few inexpensive items, the kit does the rest. When the kids love you, the parents do too, so this idea is a win-win! Included in the kit is a sticker page that, when applied, creates a Serendipity water bottle, crayon box, lip balm, sticker page for the kids and a branded bag to hold the goodies. Additional items include a coloring/activity book and notecard to write each child a special note. Each kit is $6. from Marathon Press and the other items are purchased through Oriental Trading and are very cost effective.

 Number 4: Snacks at the selection appointment

Thanks to Molly Purvines, a photographer who came to Walden U last year, we implemented this idea as soon as we heard it. Many of our clients drive long distances or come during their lunch, so we now provide a light snack. If their appointment is in the morning, we provide a cream cheese Caramel Apple dip with graham cracker sticks. If their appointment is after noon, the snack is a cream cheese Tuscan Olive dip with crackers. Inexpensive and easy to make, cream cheese also has a very long expiration date, so it is easy to keep stocked in our frig. We freeze the crackers and graham cracker sticks in air tight containers to keep them fresh. Chocolates or UK mints are added in a small bowl for those with a sweet tooth.

Number 5: Hot chocolate with  yummy additions

Our newest addition of  ”pods” that use a Keurig machine, we have both milk and dark hot chocolate pods available for the upcoming colder season. What makes it special is the addition of small bags of miniature marshmallows and milk chocolate chips (which may also be used to make mocha coffee.) I searched and searched the internet for pre-packaged individual bags of marshmallows and could not find them, so I simply made my own with clear “treat bags” from Party City. For a couple of dollars (25 bags) and an inexpensive bag of marshmallows and chocolate chips, it adds so much to our Hot Chocolate “bar.”  Putting the bags into the apothecary style jar gave them a great place to reside.  Our clients are very excited to have the marshmallows to add to their hot chocolate…a really simple and yummy idea.

So, you see, you don’t have to spend a fortune to show your clients how much you love them! Take these ideas and have fun this year.

Have a great week, everyone.

Bev

 As part of the re-launching of this blog, I would like for those who have enjoyed it and believe that it has enhanced your knowledge to write a comment on our Facebook page in order to spread the word. When you are done, send me a message {via Facebook} and I will send you the link to our newest publication, A Glimpse Inside. 

With our publication, A Glimpse Inside, you will:

Learn how it all began for us way back in high school

Because it is available in a convenient .pdf format, you can access it right from your computer and read at your own pace.

Learn how we find inspiration every day.

Get our TOP TEN tips on how we photograph and connect with the children we photograph (this is worth the price of admission)

Find out the “Rules of Engagement” in shooting Relationship-style black and white fine art imagery-tips on marketing, styling, selling, posing and propping our iconic Walden style.

Learn how we style our color studio portraits and the items we consider indispensable when we shoot outdoors.

Visit the Walden’s studio and see how their brand is reflected within their four walls.

Learn the TWO Marketing Principles you must know to succeed in today’s marketplace.

The Coaching Community…

If you are not yet a member of our online subscription service, the Walden Coaching Community, check it out this week. We created a membership to suit all levels and budgets when we re-structured our site several weeks ago so we can now offer Mini Menberships.

To learn all about the Knowledge Vault “mini” membership, watch the Knowledge Vault Video  where Tim takes you on a personal tour of the site. 

To learn all about the Social/Personal “mini” Membership, watch the  Social/Personal Video here.

Of course, if you’re like me, you want it all! Your membership is now called a Full Membership. 

 NEWS…NEWS…NEWS…For all who join by the end of July, you will receive our publication, A Glimpse Inside, as seen above, absolutely free-our gift to you!

Don’t forget to check out our store for what we call VideoCaps, a virtual classroom experience. With topics covering all aspects of our industry {photography, marketing, sales and more}, they are wonderful downloadable “capsules” of information designed to watch in the comfort of your home. To get an idea of what they are like, watch a preview here of one of my favorites, “Bev’s 5 Secrets in the Salesroom.”

 All VideoCaps are $39.00, a real bargain for this level of education!

We published two Pose Guide books last year and they have been one of our most popular products. Have you ever felt dry and needed a little creative boost when a customer walked in ? Well then, these books are for you! Check it out below!                                                              

The Black and White Pose Book is all about showing different poses by category  {like babies, families, kids, couples, etc}. It includes a lighting diagram, equipment we use and sources for everything. The Color Pose Book highlights poses as well, but also includes our most popular camera room sets, how we light them, diagrams, equipment we use and sources for everything. At $59.00 each, these are  handy reference tools that you will return to over and over.

We’ll get back into some interesting topics next week, so stay tuned, same time and same place:-)

Bev