Pricing and respect

[Note: I'm not trying to insult the majority of photographers out there with a different pricing structure than mine.  We all figure out the best way to serve our clients.  This is a personal opinion and you can take it or leave it.] I was reading a book by Seth Godin (something I do frequently and highly encourage others to do as well) and came across this passage about not disrespecting your clients with your marketing.  It really struck a cord with me, as I thought this is why I set up my pricing like I do.  Seth was talking much more generally about marketing, and probably about big companies, but his article was nonetheless insightful to a small business owner:
I believe that it's all about to come crashing down on slash-and-burn marketers. Consumers (especially the business-to-business buyers) are getting ever smarter, cagier, and more sophisticated. They won't sit quietly as marketers steal their time and attention and money. Ask yourself a simple question: If all of our customers were well-informed, would we do better -- or worse? For many companies, the answer is grim. McDonald's was stung when it was caught slipping beef flavoring into its supposedly all-vegetable french fries. And Kmart went bankrupt for committing contempt of consumer -- telling its shoppers, "Hey, it's cheap. What do you expect?"
As I was reading this, I realized that not only is my pricing "structure" easy on my clients, but it also trusts them to be able to make their own judgements and makes the process of buying (yes, buying, not "investing in") my services as transparent as possible. I have a price.  One price for coverage.  For all-day coverage, with two photographers, because I honestly believe there should be two photographers at most weddings - both to capture everything and also as an important backup in case I trip and break my leg or crash my car at the wedding.  This includes full-resolution digital files.  All day because I don't want you to have to pick and choose what to have captured from your wedding.  At the same time, if I'm going to ditch my husband on a Saturday, it doesn't make much difference if I'm gone for 6 or 8 or 10 hours.  Sure, I'll be more or less tired, but it really works out to about the same. That is, I don't have packages.  When I was first getting all my pricing together, I started to put together packages.  6 hours and digital files here, 8 hours and a small album here, 10 hours and a big album with parents' albums here!  None of this makes any sense to me.  What if you have a 6-hour wedding and want an album?  What if you don't care about an album but want 10 hours of coverage.  I honestly don't know where the wedding photography industry gets all this stuff from.  Everyone else has packages, so you figure you should also.  Everyone else calls it an "investment" so you should too.  Everyone else likes to put their lowest package on the site and say that's where things "start", so write me to find out what you'll actually pay. So I threw all of that out.  And here now reading this article, I realize this is about respect. My clients are grown adults.  They can make their own decisions about what products they want from their wedding day.  I respect that they know what their budget is and will choose whatever tangible items they want from my extremely short list of things to buy.  Offering one price, with whatever add-ons they like, makes me feel like I am not talking down to my clients, like I am not trying to talk them into anything they don't want. In the meantime, I haven't created any "anchoring effects."  That is, if I give you a package at $2,000 and one at $3,000 and one at $4,500, most people will be drawn to the $3,000 package as a comparative "savings" from the big package.  This is silly and (take it easy, photogs) seems sort of deceptive or underhanded.  I in no way want to trick my clients into buying something they don't want.  My clients really seem to appreciate this approach and I'm always pleased when someone tells me it was easy to understand my pricing, referencing other photographers they researched with confusing package "options."  It makes me feel good to make it easy on them.  Maybe I'm leaving money on the table but that wouldn't bother me as much as feeling I was tripping up my clients. And I'll wrap up by saying that it isn't necessarily disrespectful to present packages.  I'm sure many photographers would say they are helping their clients choose items they want, or are offering discounts with the bundled products.  Others have time limits on their day or charge hourly rates - great!  We all have to figure out what works for us and our clientele.  I know one photographer who never works more than 8 hours at a wedding.  He is respecting his family.  Others don't offer coverage without an album purchase, because they truly believe an album is necessary to enjoy the photographs from the wedding day.  But for me and mine, 100% in-the-open, no-comparisons-to-make pricing is how I show my clients I respect their values, priorities and budgets.

What makes a great photographer

I was recently contacted by a lovely young woman I met at the APW book signing event.  She wrote me asking for advice about photography, about being a business-owner, about the DC photography scene.  While I feel hugely unqualified to give such advice, she said she didn't know any other professionals, so I was happy to share whatever I've learned on this crazy journey. And other things on the internet happened recently, too.  One alarming thought that popped up was that all of this was somehow easy - that it's easy to become a great photographer, that it's easy to make people look good, that it's easy to take pictures that clients will love - heck, that it's easy to find clients and work with them and run a business.  I'm not another one of those people devoting entire posts to bashing anyone, but I thought it was worthwhile musing a bit on what I think makes a great photographer.  There's nothing you can buy that is going to make you a great photographer. 1. Practice. Yeah, good, old-fashioned doing it again and again and again and again.  I've told my Mexico story about a million times in about a million client meetings (I should blog about that, right?) but here's the super-abbreviated version: Something sparked in me in Mexico - one minute I was just a regular girl, the next I was a photographer.  And it's sorta been like that since.  But just because my fingers started tingling for a camera doesn't mean I was a good photographer.  That came much, much later. The most dramatic change in my photography happened in the year I did my 365 photo project.  I heard about this crazy idea on the internet of taking a photo each and every day for a whole year.  You can see my set here but I have to warn you that these photos are terrible.  But they improved.  Jan. 1 I was rubbish.  Dec. 31 I was slightly less than rubbish.  I started to understand the medium. 2. Study. (All of these things are boring, right?  And tedious, right?  And time-consuming?  Well, that's because it takes a great deal of hard work to become competent in any trade or skillset.)  At first, I studied everything.  I bought books from the thrift store on basic camera operations.  I took introductory photo classes.  I read countless internet articles on the "exposure triangle" and composition and gear and lighting etc. etc. etc. To take the skill from "something I do" to "something I know" (and we get right back to "do" later), you have to study.  Maybe you could get there on your own with enough time, but educating yourself about the medium will speed your progress. What works for me is focusing on one thing at a time.  The very first thing you should learn is how to put your camera on manual and fully understanding the relationship between ISO, aperture and shutter speed.  Everything builds on this foundation.  Only when you can work your camera in manual can you really put it in aperture mode with purpose.  Even a rudimentary understanding of f-stops will allow you to make good guesses to get close to your desired exposure (which is not necessarily what the camera thinks the exposure is).  Be smarter than your camera.  Modern technology has made cameras really good at guessing how a scene should look.  But they're not always right and they're very rarely intentional or artistic.  A camera is a tool, use it as such. So I learned that.  And then I learned something else.  And then I learned something else.  And then maybe I went back to the first thing because I realized I didn't actually know it back-and-forth.  My mind can only concentrate on one lesson at a time.  So at this stage in the game, I focus on posing, or light-painting, or using geometry or symmetry.  I can only have one main goal in mind.  Once I get it, though, it becomes part of my knowledge bank.  I can draw on posing or light-painting or geometry while I focus on off-camera lighting, for example. Study like a madman.  Study like you never did in school because you didn't care.  If you don't care enough to study it, you won't care enough to do it.  (Okay, here's another anecdote.  I thought I wanted to write poetry when I was younger.  I wrote a lot, but I never read.  A professor said "If you want to be good at writing poetry, you have to love reading poetry."  I didn't love reading poetry - I hated it.  Clearly, I was in the wrong field.) 3. Repeat. Really, there are no short-cuts here.  Practice goes before study because you have to know what you're working with.  How can you learn to make pottery if you've never felt clay between your hands?  Try something out, hate it, think you suck, read up on what the hell you did wrong.  Try again, hate it, try again and again and again and again until you think it's sorta okay.  This is the same thing I am still doing.  Study and practice, then practice and study. Some other general advice. Look at other photographers' work.  People are concerned about being unduly "influenced" by looking at other photography.  Bullocks.  Steal like an artist and absorb as much as you can.  Blatant copying is always a no-no - draw inspiration, recreate, reenvision.  How can you do that in a different setting, with one person instead of two, with flash instead of the sun?  Look at what other photographers are doing and break it down.  Why is that light so dreamy?  Where is it coming from?  Is that window light or is it a strobe?  What time of day are they shooting?  Is it overcast?  Ask yourself these questions as you browse the internets.  Do it when you read a magazine - where are the catchlights in the model's eyes?  Where are the secondary lights? Look for photographs everywhere.  Once the bug is in you, you won't be able to help it.  Do yourself a favor and start early.  I play a game with myself when I'm walking somewhere.  I'll pick random spots and determine where I would put a bride if I had to shoot her right there.  Where is the good light?  Where could I put her to create an interesting composition? Pay attention to posing.  People want creative, interesting, artistic photography, sure.  But they also want to look good.  Don't go too far down the rabbit hole before you figure out how to take flattering photographs of your clients.  A slightly boring photo where the couple looks good is always going to trump an artistic photo where the bride thinks she looks fat. Be humble.  Experiment.  Don't be afraid - take the safe shot and then do something crazy.  Try film, Polaroids, old cameras, camera phones, pinholes.  Ask questions.  Go to photo meet-ups.  Shoot with someone else - analyze how they did things differently than you, what worked and what didn't.  Train your eye. Now don't get all huffy.  I'm not saying I'm a great photographer.  I'm good at what I do.  I think if I really thought I was "great", I wouldn't be learning and reaching and continuing at the same pace.  I imagine I'd reach some kind of plateau where I think I'm great and that's that.  But I do know the way there - the way to being great - and it's practice, study and repeat.

What I love about wedding photography

I was asked this recently by two couples who I met with a few days apart.  I didn't have great answers for either of them.  I think I probably said "the photos," because it was the first thing that came to mind!  "Getting the shot" is a great feeling - something easy to get addicted to.  But it's far too vague. I didn't ponder this much more; unless I really have no idea what to say to someone or don't know an answer, I don't like to think through what I'm going to say to clients.  I never want to have a script to work through - that would be too salesman-y.  Instead the answer came to me while I was at a photography workshop this week.  Sometimes if you think too much about something, you can't see the reality.  So when I was asked again, what's my favorite thing about wedding photography?  an answer immediately popped in my mind.  When I said it in front of everyone, I knew it was 100% true. When I first got into photography, really got into it, street is what I loved.  I loved finding a weird scene or capturing people in a moment of their lives.  I love photography's ability to freeze action, to give context or take it away, to frame things so that you have to look at what I want you to look at.  Shooting people on the street lets you tell a story.  It's messy and fast-paced.  And it's also scary. washington dc rally street photography washington dc metro street photography washington dc street photography It's always been love-hate with me for street.  I love the photos.  I love telling the stories.  I love the idea of being a "street photographer."  But when it comes to actually getting up in peoples' faces and taking candids, I balk.  So so so many times, I've seen a great photo and been too chickenshit to bring the camera up to my face.  The wonderful images I've made in my mind's eye! So what I love about wedding photography, what I said in front of all those workshop attendees, is that

My clients pay me to be a street photographer at their wedding.