Shoot Holes In our Plan

[Banbert]

Weve only done one wedding so far, a freebie for a friend but it was a fantastic experience and so weve been making plans to do some more.

Websites getting there, need to add some info to a few sections and some more images for the portfolio but the bones and workings are there. Still dont have a suitable replacement for the left hand side image so I think some editting of that one or maybe getting the sis in law to dress up again for us will be required to get the look we want. Our sites the top listing when you google for "boundless photos" now so least when we get our name out there people should be able to find us without knowing the exact url, need to work on our ranking for other key searches for our area now though.

www.boundlessphotos.co.uk (http://www.boundlessphotos.co.uk)

Weve done a 2 page flier (going to br printed double sided) that we are going to stick through letterboxes in our local area and hopefully we should see some bookings from that, were also looking at some other possibilities for advertising.

www.boundlessphotos.co.uk/flier.pdf (http://www.boundlessphotos.co.uk/flier.pdf) (Adobe PDF reader required)

Weve purchased some more kit since the last wedding and our wedding kit now conists of

1 x 20D
1 x 30D
1 x 350D
2 x 430EX
1 x EF-S 17-55 F2.8 IS
1 x EF-S 17-85 F4-5.6 IS
1 x EF-70-200 F4 L
Mac and PC + CS2, Canon CP710, Omnibounces, Spare batteries + other handy bits and bobs

Which will be added to with a 10-22mm and 50mm F1.4 before our next wedding, also thinking about upgrading the 430EX's to 580's

Weve been using the new camera, lenses and flashes every day and tested the little battery printer out in the field a few times and been really pleased with it.

This week we have been shooting raw stuff and getting to grips with that as a part of our workflow, once youve taken a few badly underexposed shots its easy to see why people like raw so much !

Using and learning new stuff in CS2 every day and bought a few nice actions to make image effects easier and also downloaded and tested quite a few freebies, found a few good ones in the free ones but on teh whole the bought ones have been head and shoulders above the free ones.

Bought and read several books that have been reccomended here and a couple of others that I have looked at in shops and liked.

Read the forums here every day :) love to see photos other people have taken and the exif info (where its left in) I have a wall in my study at home with printed out samples of photos that have been posted here that I have liked/find inspirational.

All in all I think were moving in the right direction and given our price I hope the next dozen bookings walk away feeling they have gotten a bargain.

C&C anyone ?

[RobKirkwood]

Nice look to your website, creates an expensive feel, but I wonder if your low prices devalue that? With weddings the price you set pretty much determines the type of customer you're going to get ...in time much of your work should come from referrals - meaning it's not going to be easy to move your prices up.

Only other thing I noticed is under your DVD page you're offering to put customers choice of music to the images - have you covered the music copyright issues involved in doing this? There are masses of incorrect advice and opinions given out about this (especially on internet forums). The actual position is quite simple:- to be legal, you WILL need permission from all the music copyright holders, and you WILL need to pay royalties ...for commercially available tracks this could be very expensive, or even impossible if they refuse permission.

Options are...
- Ignore it and do it anyway - your choice of course, loads of people do, but there's always a chance that a competitor may grass you up.
- Join a UK video producer organisation where you can buy a licence that covers this sort of thing (still not cheap, but better than the alternative).
- Find and use suitable royalty-free music. There are a number of UK royalty-free music suppliers that produce great music which is better suited to UK audiences - you'd need to buy the CDs or individual track downloads, but again there are then no worries about not being legal ...a google on 'royalty-free' 'copyright-free' or 'buy-out' should bring you loads of matches.

Rob

[Monkeymicra]

y sister got married last november, and we hired a photographer for the day, it was a husband and wife combo, they charged £600 for the photoshoot, including a full DVD of all photos they took in hi-res.

they got loads of enquiries after the wedding and their price jumped to nearly £1600 in the space of a month, all enquiries were lost, that i know of due to the £1000 hike in the space of a month

we were prepaired ot spend up to £1000 for a Very good photographer for the day i cant remember how we found these 2 but we did and they had only just started out i think we were their 2nd or 3rd wedding, so at £600 it was a bargain, but we did ask to see their work first.

[ssim]

I take it this is a continuation of this thread (http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=206610)

You have made some of the changes that were suggested to you in the first thread.

I don't necessarily subscribe to the thought process that because someone is new that they can't charge market rates. If this is market rate in your area then fine. I don't know what the size of the area that you live in is but if it is small to medium then trying to move your prices up becomes difficult.

I still don't like the idea of giving away a CD with high resolution images. You just leave money on the table that way.

The one thing that I do like is that you seem to have worked out a plan for yourself with some thought to it. I've seen too many posts where people go out with a website and then when they do get business they don't know how to handle it.

I have never advocated having open access to clients work. Do you have plans for a secure client login so that they can view their images in privacy. I have always made sure that the bride and groom were the first to see the images. I send them the password and they are responsible for dispersing this to the people they want to see them.

I like the look and feel of the website. It looks professional.

[Banbert]

Cheers for the feedback guys, Ive learnt so much from this forum since joining, its worth the price of several books and more tbh but only because guys like yourselves take the time to read and comment so thanks again for that.

Regarding the low prices - its deffo below market rates in our area but then I feel its closer to what would be a fair price to charge considering how inexpereinced we are, the prices are deffo for a limited period only though (until we get more experience) and weve tried to make that clear on the website and even more so in the leaflets were sending out as we do intend to increase them after we gain more experience. Worst that can happen is that we end up taking a lot of bookings at the cost we are initially advertising at but we dont see that as a problem either as were happy to give our time at those rates whilst were still learning the ropes and our costs are very low so we will still pockets some cash even at those rates. I hear what people are saying about struggling when we up our prices but hopefully when we get to that point we will have a portfolio capable of supporting that especially when added to the other ways in which we are trying to differentiate ourselves from the competition, and certainly we plan to do it more gradually than £1000 ina month !

Regarding the "B&G's own choice of music on the DVD" - I arent gonna lose much sleep about that one as were only gonna be running one copy off for them not mass producing disks and we will buy a copy of whatever they want on the DVD for that purpose and although thats obviously not watertight I am quite happy to argue the complete mess that are the copyright laws in this country. I can buy a copy of a song from iTunes and burn it to disk legitimately if that happens to be a DVD witha movie on is it really that different ? ... sooner or later the copyright laws will catch up.

Regarding giving away high resolution images - Thats one of the main things we want to use to differentiate ourselves from everyone else as I just find it a shame that so many images never see the light of day due to the additional costs that most photographers charge for these, hence the name BoundlessPhotos (check your theasaurus to see how many other names we tried :)) because we dont limit how many photos you can have. Ive read lots of reasons on why photographers like to retain control and I can understand some of those but i think the benefits to the customer of letting them have all the images out weigh the downside.

Regarding the open access to clients work - Ive heard that concern mentioned a few times now but ive also researched a few high end photography sites in this country (England) and find the same open access to pictures on many of them so I think so long as our clients know this is what were doing its not too much of a problem and if any of our clients dont want their pictures with open access then we now have a mechanism for protecting those wishes.

This is the site of one of the UK photographers that I really like (they did my sis in laws wedding earlier this year) and as you can see they also have open access so I guess its generally ok if the clients are made aware. http://www.yourbigday.net/

Once again thanks for the input

[RobKirkwood]

Regarding the "B&G's own choice of music on the DVD" - I arent gonna lose much sleep about that one as were only gonna be running one copy off for them not mass producing disks and we will buy a copy of whatever they want on the DVD for that purpose and although thats obviously not watertight I am quite happy to argue the complete mess that are the copyright laws in this country. I can buy a copy of a song from iTunes and burn it to disk legitimately if that happens to be a DVD witha movie on is it really that different ? ... sooner or later the copyright laws will catch up.One copy or 1000 makes no difference to the copyright holders with this ...and buying a CD only gives you the right to play it in private, in the UK you cannot even legally make a copy for the car (and yes I do, same as most people ;)) ...however what you're doing is not just copying, it's called 'synchronising' and this is a whole other basket of rights - which HAVE to be cleared and paid for in addition to buying the CD. Whether the rights situation is out of touch is irrelevant - if you are prosecuted for infringement it will be on the basis of the laws we have now ...and if you annoy local competitors (which the tone of your website could do) can you be sure they would not report you?

Moving on from the music issue, you might like to consider that it could be more to your benefit to actually get on with your competitors :eek: - my experience with local wedding photographers is that while we compete for the same customers, we do also actually talk to each other (we meet at wedding fairs or bump into each other at suppliers), and we refer people on to each other if we happen to be already booked for a particular date.

Rob

[Banbert]

One copy or 1000 makes no difference to the copyright holders with this ...and buying a CD only gives you the right to play it in private, in the UK you cannot even legally make a copy for the car (and yes I do, same as most people ;)) ...however what you're doing is not just copying, it's called 'synchronising' and this is a whole other basket of rights - which HAVE to be cleared and paid for in addition to buying the CD. Whether the rights situation is out of touch is irrelevant - if you are prosecuted for infringement it will be on the basis of the laws we have now ...and if you annoy local competitors (which the tone of your website could do) can you be sure they would not report you?

Moving on from the music issue, you might like to consider that it could be more to your benefit to actually get on with your competitors :eek: - my experience with local wedding photographers is that while we compete for the same customers, we do also actually talk to each other (we meet at wedding fairs or bump into each other at suppliers), and we refer people on to each other if we happen to be already booked for a particular date.

Rob

I think the tone of our website is a lot better than it was previously, mainly due to feedback initally recieved from here, and I dont see that much for competitors to get too upset about now apart from our prices and our different approach to the image rights and a few other things but thats what we want to use to differentiate us from everyone else, but if youve seen something otherwise specific that competitors could get upset about please point it out .... I think ive gone blind to some of the website content because ive stared at it so long ! :) Ive dealt with copyright issues in IT for a long time now as thats what my current Job is and although I appreciate this is different I still arent that worried, if it becomes an issue we will give em the music and dvd on different disks.. and then its their issue if they choose to combine them ;) Alternatively we can look at some of the other things youve suggested.

I have a lot of respect for many photographers I have met over the last few years they have been very skilled at what they do and some of the results I have seen have been fantastic, unfortunately ive also met quite a few bad ones (bad for differnet reasons) and thats one of the reasons that we have felt like we can make an impact in this business in our area, there would be little point in setting up if we didnt think we could offer something different or better than the competition would there ?

I hope I am not coming across as arrogant as thats certainly not the intention, just trying to explain our motivation for setting up in whats already a competitive field.

[tim]

Think more about targeting your advertising. A 580EX will be good to let you do off-camera lighting. Don't upgrade, buy additional.

[RobKirkwood]

I think the tone of our website is a lot better than it was previously, mainly due to feedback initally recieved from here, and I dont see that much for competitors to get too upset about now apart from our prices and our different approach to the image rights and a few other things but thats what we want to use to differentiate us from everyone else, but if youve seen something otherwise specific that competitors could get upset about please point it out No, I don't see anything now (other than price, and what the bundle includes) ...cannot recall whether you've changed something since I last looked - my old memory's failing me :lol:. Maybe my recollection is clouded by what you've said within the forum rather than what you've actually published on your website?

... there would be little point in setting up if we didnt think we could offer something different or better than the competition would there ?True - but, given what you're proposing to deliver, I don't feel that your pricing is sustainable in the longer term as a business (which I presume is what you would like it to be?) ...and wedding photography is as much about dealing with people as it is about taking the photographs - in fact I would venture to suggest that most people could easily learn the photography side, it's the people skills that are more difficult to learn.

Rob

[Banbert]

Think more about targeting your advertising. A 580EX will be good to let you do off-camera lighting. Don't upgrade, buy additional.

Weve discussed visiting churches, wedding dress shops, reception venues and even wedding fairs etc (getting your info to the places that people book first would seem a good idea) ... but I guess I feel that at the moment we dont have a big enough portfolio to show these people that are prpbably used to seeing other photographers work so we have decided to hold off on those for at least a little bit whilst we try and get a few more bookings and improve our portfolio.

Fair point about the 580, I will cost that out, cheers for that.

[Banbert]

No, I don't see anything now (other than price, and what the bundle includes) ...cannot recall whether you've changed something since I last looked - my old memory's failing me :lol:. Maybe my recollection is clouded by what you've said within the forum rather than what you've actually published on your website?

True - but, given what you're proposing to deliver, I don't feel that your pricing is sustainable in the longer term as a business (which I presume is what you would like it to be?) ...and wedding photography is as much about dealing with people as it is about taking the photographs - in fact I would venture to suggest that most people could easily learn the photography side, it's the people skills that are more difficult to learn.

Rob

I think possibly by what was on the site previously if anything, it was way too agressive and down right negative and was changed as soon as people here commented on it as they were pretty much spot on with what they said ... think i must have written whilst depressed ! :)

I agree with what you say about the pricing but then £599 is for a limited period and weve tried to make that very clear (but possibly still need to do more on that, maybe we should show some non discounted prices ?) I just wouldnt feel comfortable charging anyone full whack at the moment given our relative lack of experience so weve tried to reflect that in our startup prices.

[tim]

Weve discussed visiting churches, wedding dress shops, reception venues and even wedding fairs etc (getting your info to the places that people book first would seem a good idea) ... but I guess I feel that at the moment we dont have a big enough portfolio to show these people that are prpbably used to seeing other photographers work so we have decided to hold off on those for at least a little bit whilst we try and get a few more bookings and improve our portfolio.

Fair point about the 580, I will cost that out, cheers for that.

Those places find vendors. Try finding customers directly.