A year in the making, I was excited to ship my official introduction to nearly 300 of the top creative folks in the photo industry last month. After a successful 2008 and beginning of 2009, I realized my commercial work came mostly through word of mouth and that I had made no marketing efforts. I knew in order to take my business to the next level, I needed to start marketing myself on a national level and more importantly, I had only one chance to make an awesome first impression.
“As an art buyer, I get a lot of little promotional pieces. I am spoiled. BUT, yours was so well put together and well done that I stopped everything I was doing and went to your website. NOT to my surprise your work is just as thoughtful, innovative and touching as your promotional piece. I officially have a work crush on you. Please come and see us so we can put you to work ASAP.:)”
This promo would be the first time the agencies and art buyers would hear about me so I wanted to fill it with items that told something about who I was. The challenge was how to fill a box with multiple items and not make it feel like a junk box. I worked closely with Suzanne Sease and Rob Jefferson to find items that were relevant to the audience of art buyers and creative directors and compiled my mailing list with Suzanne using Agency Access. I needed every piece of this promo to have a wow-factor so I worked exclusively with the most talented Robb Major to design everything from the screen printing of the shipping box to the design on the matchboxes. To tie it all together, I included my “to-do list” which is below.
“Cool promotional box! So much so in fact that I feel compelled to use you for our next photo shoot. I have a client in ————. Are you available and interested? Wow, this just goes to prove the power of good advertising.”
“This is the most amazing promo I’ve ever received in my 12 years of art buying! I truly hope to work with you soon and I hope this gets you a ton of work! Its genius!”
“I just received your magic lunchbox and I gotta say it’s quite the spread. The San Cristobal just made my drive to NY tomorrow night that much better. If you’re ever in ——– for a job let me know and I’ll set you up with a portfolio review with my art producer colleagues so they can get to know you. Thank you and stay in touch.”
It took two snowy days and a dozen awesome friends to put all of these boxes together and shipped in early February. The response has been outstanding and I have received an amazing amount of free T-shirt cards back full of comments request for portfolios as well as phone calls. The big task now is follow through….. and thinking about a 2011 promo!
Want a retro (empty, sorry) lunch tin of your own? Leave a convincing comment below and I may just feel compelled to mail you one.
A common headache for photographers getting started with digital photography is keeping their images organized; if left untouched, images can get lost in the shuffle very quickly. The key to keeping images organized is to come up with your own naming structure for your images and folders. In this post, I am going to explain my process of keeping images organized.
The goal is to have all of your images named in a way that if they are all put into a single folder together, they would all be in order by the date they were taken. Same for all of the folders we keep the photos in. Often, your camera will come with a photo editing software you can use in taking your photos off of your memory card and onto your computer. You can also use Apple’s iPhoto, Windows Live Photo Gallery, or for more advance photographers, Apple’s Aperture or Adobe’s Lightroom.
If you use a program such as Camera Bit’s Photo Mechanic to download your images, you can use this in your naming window:
{iptcyear2}{iptcmonth0}{iptcday0}_YourEventName_{seqn} = 100302_YourEventName_001
or
{iptcyear4}{iptcmonth0}{iptcday0}_YourEventName_{seqn} = 20100302_YourEventName_001
It is also important to keep your images similarly organized in the program you may use to organize your images such as Apple’s Aperture, Adobe’s Lightroom or any other program that may be provided in your camera’s software. Below is how I keep my Aperture library organized.
I’ve received several request to give simple camera/post-production/shooting tips so here is my first of many weekly photo tips. Please feel free to leave comments with questions as well as suggestions for other photo tips. Enjoy!
Cloudy White Balance, My Go-To
Starting photographers often complain about dull or blue tinted photos that make their subjects seem lifeless. My cure for this is to start using cloudy white balance. This setting can be found on most digital point-and-shoot as well as DSLR cameras and uses a cloud symbol. I use cloudy white balance when shooting in direct sunlight, when using a flash, indoors with natural light coming in from windows as well as any other situation where my images seem too cool. This works great for natural skin tones.
Below is an example of a piece of finished wood that is inside near a window, the difference is stunning.
I am excited to present my brand-spanking-new lifestyle book. With the help of Suzanne Sease I was able to condense and organize my library of lifestyle images into one portfolio book. This was made possible by using Apple’s Aperture to easily comb through 100,000+ images and organize and pair them with other images in the book layout program. Printed by Pushdot Studio and presented in a Lost-Luggage binding and cover, I wanted to keep the printed book consistent with my brand; clean, image-focused and organic. I chose a hardboard and extra thick matte paper to soak in the colors of the images.
Additional portfolios are available so please contact me if your agency would like to have one shipped to their office or if you would like to request a meeting.
I am a Richmond, Virginia-based commercial photographer specializing in providing a clean natural approach not only to the clients’ required images but also for a body of work. Because of this, I excel at developing image libraries for various national and international clients, particularly companies in the process of rebranding.
