Great Customer Service After You Get Fired

So, like many people I'm sure, I fired my phone company.  The local cable company came in with faster internet and telephone service at about half the price of the telephone company.  When you phone the cable company you get a person, when you phone the telephone company you get a slightly deranged sounding computerized voice.  Our local telephone company, Telus, had my business for years, and I paid dearly for it.  Our internet connection, billed as high speed was reminiscent of 56k dial-up.

Anyway I fired them.  Signed up with a fancy high speed internet connection, and perfectly good telephone system and all for about half the monthly price.  Plus if I have a problem, I get to phone a person which is kinda nice.  But this post isn't really about why I switched, it is about what happened afterwards and how that relates to customer service for your photography business.

About a week or so after switching I received a bill from Telus saying I had a credit of about $55.  They sent another 'bill' a month later showing the same credit and I wondered how long it would take them to figure out that they needed to pay me, not the other way around.  Then today I received a bill for about $20 for a "termination liability charge" which basically wiped out my credit and left me with a balance owing.  Now we all know how these big uncaring companies work don't we?  You can phone and argue and you'll just get some disgruntled employee that could care less about your gripe over $20.  So I just decided to pay it and I phoned them and waded through a 10 minute conversation with a robot voice and gave my credit card number.  Before the transaction could be completed though a customer service rep came on and told me I had no balance owing and didn't have to pay.  I took his name and employee number because I'm sure that next month I will get a 'past due' notice on the $20 with a late penalty attached to it.

What does all this have to do with our photography businesses?  Well basically it is a lesson in how to react to being fired.  I'm not going back to Telus.  Their service was inferior and their prices were very high for that inferior product.  But assuming that there is a chance that I may have trouble with Shaw Cable at some point in my future and wish to 'fire' them as my communications provider I certainly won't put Telus on the list of considerations.  Why?  Because when I let them go they threw a mini-tantrum and tried to squeeze me for some more cash.

I've lost jobs as a photographer.  Been under-bid by another photographer, or had the customer convinced that their work was better than mine, more reliable or from a more experienced professional.  I've been frustrated by that, even a little angry.  I once stalked the website of a corporate customer that canned me for someone else and when the images from the other photographer finally appeared they were identical to the ones I had provided which hadn't been 'good enough.'  Thing is though that when I said good-bye to that client I thanked them for considering me, I sent them an email wishing them well with their business and I even mailed them a card.  They gave us a two bottles of liquor as a good-bye gift.  We also lost a bid on a large sports league in town to be their photographer.  They ended up going with the known sports photographer in town as they had been burned in the past by unprofessional photographers that just couldn't deliver.  I understood.  They liked us, they even asked us to bid on the contract, but in the end they paid more to avoid any speed bumps.  Did I try and send them a bill for a 'termination liability charge?'  Nope, I wished them well and told them to keep us in mind for future work.

Thing is that each year our company grows, gets better and gets more desirable to work with.  For customers that have not hired us, or have fired us, I hope to have them back one day.  Your grandma probably told you never to 'burn a bridge' in case you might need to cross back over it one day.  That stands true for business as well.  It can hurt to lose a job, but if you keep at it and try hard you will get other jobs.  And if you sincerely wish great things for others, even those that pass you by for a job, you just might get rewarded one day for it.

Just a little example from last month.  At the wedding show in February 2010 we met a couple that hired a friend instead of us for their wedding to save some money.  I wished them well on their wedding, thanked them for coming by and I was sincere about it.  Their wedding photos were a disaster and when they needed photos of their newborn in December guess who they called?  Certainly not the bitter photographer two booths down that shooed them away when they mentioned the words "free friend photographer."

The customer service you give, even to those that are no longer your customers, will one day help make your business a success.  Don't become the large impersonal Telus that hates their job.  You and your customers deserve better.

The photo below has nothing to do with this post.  It is just that I thought I typed a lot here, and since this is a photography blog there should be at least one picture every couple of hundred words.  The model came in with her giant tarantula spider (not seen below) and a guitar for some photos last weekend.  We had a blast despite the fact that I'm kinda scared of big hairy spiders.  I'll blog more about that shoot another time.

Taken with Canon 5D mk II and 50mm f1.4 lens.  Large gridded Octabank model left and small strip light on the right both directly beside the model.  I used a video light to brighten up the rather dark guitar just a little bit because without it it was a dark blob.

OK, before I go I wanted to share a post by Kirk Tuck where he is talking about LED lighting.  I'll let you read it there, but he says at one point "I've become weary of the constant use of flash.  Subjects are used to continuous light.  They don't react as much to that.  Flash always seems to draw more attention.  And subjects also seem to "play to" flash more than to other kinds of light."  

That really had me thinking about flash vs continuos light sources.  I love using flash and studio lighting for the power, the ability to stop motion and because I'm used to it.  But what Kirk says is really true.  Whether it be the sun, windows or indoor lights we are all used to continuous lights in our everyday life.  Using them would allow your subject to not 'brace for the flash' and might allow for a more candid feel for the image as the photographer doesn't create a light with the exposure, the light is always on.  Food for thought that I figured others might consider interesting.  I only own one LED light, but I do enjoy using it sometimes.  Maybe I should use it more.

If you haven't done it yet, please consider joining our Flickr group.  Each week I'm going to try and feature one photo from that group here on the blog as well as the photographer that took the image.  Also, feel free to help get us more readers by sharing the blog through the Facebook and social media sharing buttons at the bottom of each post.  

Thanks for dropping by!

So I'm Hiring a Wedding Photographer

My wife and I are having our 10th anniversary this year in August.  Turns out I still kinda love her and we've decided to have a big celebration and renew our vows.  This puts me in the market for a photographer.  I have lots of friends that are photographers, but I won't let any of them shoot it.  I want them to party with us, not work with us.  We see it all the time with Brides trying to save a bit of money.  They get a friend or relative to shoot their wedding.  Sometimes that friend or relative is actually a decent photographer, sometimes not.  Thing is though that that person is now working at your wedding, not relaxing and enjoying it like a loved one should.

It's weird sitting on the other side of the fence.  I had a couple come into the studio today to interview me for their May wedding.  I'm not sure if I did that well actually.  Guess I'll find out soon, but I am a little more empathetic to their decision right at this moment.  When I was originally married we had a friend do our photos.  She did a great job, but this time she is coming as a guest.  My memory of her at our wedding was running around sweating the details.  My memory this time will be her having some wine and food and laughing and dancing.

Anyway, I ended up emailing someone that I took a course with last summer.  She is just getting started and I like her images.  She has also been a second shooter with us a couple of times and I really like her.  That is one of the biggest things with a wedding or portrait photographer.  It is so much easier if you actually like them and identify with them.  It helps you relax.  I know this information, I know it professionally, logically and in my soul, but I admit sometimes I forget it during a consult with a couple.  Generally I book most people I meet, but not always and lets be honest, if they are meeting you they already like your images, it all comes down to personality and price at that point.  Hopefully the few I have lost out on have been about the price!

A Touch of White

I set my little Pentax point and shoot on time lapse mode to get some shots of us working and strung it together in a little video for you all above.  

About a week ago I did a shoot with someone that wanted to have a theme of 'All White."  She had a white dress and we did most of the shots on high key.  Of course we put in some dark objects like the band around her neck and at some point I was bored of the high key so we did some darker images as well.  It was a lot of fun to try and stick with a theme though that was decided beforehand.  Props make for a fun shoot as well as it gives the subject something to do with their hands.  Hands are the hardest part of the body to pose in my opinion.  Badly posed hands can ruin a great image.  For me, clenched fists just don't work, I like soft hands.  I also avoid the backs of a hand laid flat.  The image below for example, I love it, but I find her right hand distracting because it is flat on her chest.  I wish I had caught it at the time and had her just turn it or at least cup it so it wasn't so flat.

The makeup for this shoot was a big challenge, which is why it is so vital to have a skilled makeup artist.  I still needed to spend a lot of time in Photoshop fixing areas of the skin that were painted white and just wouldn't look even.  

For equipment I used my Canon 5D mk II.  I used two different lenses, the 50mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.8.  The 50mm was used for almost all of the images with the 85 just coming in for a couple.  For the shots on high key we used a white paper roll and white tile board on the floor.  We had two Alien Bee 800's on the background and an Alien Bee 1600 up front with a large Octabox.  We used a video light for the darker shots, the Lowel Blender.  We like it because it can be either daylight or tungsten white balanced. It really isn't effective unless you have very little ambient light.  Our most favourite places to use it are indoors with dim light to add drama or at dusk or night time outdoors.  

Enjoy, and thanks for coming by the blog.  If you want to see all the images we did you can find them here.

Before I go I thought I'd share another blog I found on the internet.  I think I'm a little behind on the curve here, this blog seems quite popular, but just in case I wasn't the only one to not know about it, check the Phoblographer out.  It is a nice blog that reviews gear, shows some nice images and doesn't appear to be brand loyal to any camera manufacturer which is nice.  

Werewolf

Werewolf
Originally uploaded by jessewg

Well it's time for me to feature another photographer and an image they posted in the Photography Ramblings Flickr Group. The image "Werewolf" was posted by 'jessewg.' You can find his photostream HERE.

"Werewolf" was shot with a Canon 5D mk II at 16mm (unsure of the lens) f 16 1/45 of a second and ISO 160.

The last image I featured was a gorgeous black and white image, and I find myself prone to enjoying black and white images, but this one really popped out and caught my attention. The tension that is obvious in the image makes you feel like the man is going to leap inside the frame. The tilted horizon actually helps that feeling, increasing the forward leaning tension. The light falling on his body, more than the face really emphasizes the whole point of the photo featuring the thing that is most interesting, that person that is leaning over that rock. Also the exposure of the sky and the person are perfectly balanced and the black shadow really helps the composition. Love this photo.

If you have a photo you'd like to contribute to the group, please do so HERE. You may find it featured here on the blog!

Just Leave it Behind You

The image above is my favourite from my last model session.  I had the image in my head before we started, it popped in there while I was driving to the studio and I'm very happy with how it mirrors what was in my mind.  I get pretty excited when I pull off my imagined images in real life.  The lighting was simple, I just threw an Alien Bee strobe right in front of the model and shot the profile.  The wall behind the model is actually white, but since it isn't lit it went a dark grey.  I used Silver Effex Pro from Nik software for the black and white conversion.  Then brought it into photoshop where I blurred the material in some places (the strobe made it much to sharp) and added a cloud like texture to the back of the image behind the model.  Then back to Lightroom where I prefer to do my dodging and burning nowadays just to finish it off.  I used my Olympus E3 with the Leica 25mm f1.4 lens.  1/250 of a second, f8.0 ISO 100.  I had help holding the material out behind the model, no special fan or wind tricks (thanks Spencer).

So what does this photo mean to me?  I'm not sure, it just popped in my head and I executed it.  I think it's one of those images that some will love and others will disregard which I'm particularly proud of.  I realized at some point last year that actually having everyone love each and every image you do is a dead end street.  At some point you have to please yourself to as an artist, or frankly you have failed.  There is a difference between having mass appeal and unique appeal.  I'm not saying that you are a failure if lots of people love your work, but I am saying that pursuing mass approval relentlessly is a dead end street that isn't particularly filled with happiness.  I'd much rather have 10 people absolutely love the images that I create from my heart than 1000 people love the ones that I crank out knowing they generically pleasing.

I produce a lot of images that have broad appeal.  We all do.  And I don't mind it, after all I need to make a living and sell images.  However with each shoot, whether with a model, at a wedding or in a portrait I will try and push myself to produce at least one image that excites me, not the client.  Is it always received well by that client?  Nope, in fact I'd say less than half the time, but it serves to keep me excited, moving forward and developing my style and love for photography.

So where has all this come from?  I read this really great post by David Hobby today which had my mind turning all day.  It was one of those rare posts on his blog that has nothing really to do with gear or technique.  It was just an honest rant, and it struck a cord with me.

The Flickr group is going well.  Please keep posting and participating.  If you like this blog please like it on Facebook.  Thanks!

UHALM

UHALM
Originally uploaded by LPSKé

So, as I mentioned we have a new Flickr Group. I started it to bring an extension to this blog as well as to create a pool of interesting photos to talk about. My intention was to bring photographers together that were willing to share their work and have it brought in front of readers of the blog.

So I am really pleased that in the past few days we've had 69 members join and post up 76 photos. I guess I didn't expect it to grow that fast, but hopefully it keeps growing. Please, if you haven't joined, sign up. If you have Flickr friends, send them an invite by clicking on the 'invite' link in the group.

And that leads me to a photo that caught my eye in the pool by LPSKe, a photographer from France. The image 'UHALM' just begged to be clicked on as a thumbnail. I love the square crop, something I've always enjoyed with photographs, getting away from the 2:3 crop factor we are so familiar with. The fact that the boy is just below the horizon, really brings out that feeling of being surrounded by water. The brightness of the skin really forces your eye to the person first before you start letting yourself wander around the photo. This is one of those images that bravely breaks the rule of thirds placing the main subject right in the middle of the frame, but it works well here.  Plus the horizon line is nicely placed helping out the composition.  There is another person off in the distance in what I picture to be a really quiet place, and I wonder who it is. I think the horizon is slightly tilted, but I don't mind, I'm not a landscape purist and it feels like all that water in the foreground is transparent, but it really isn't. Can't help but try and see through it though.

LPSKe doesn't share exif data, but it appears the image was taken with the micro four thirds Panasonic G1 and 14-45 lens from the footnote to the image. Thanks for posting it up in the pool LPSKe, it's a stunning image! You can find more work from this photographer in their flickr stream here or on their website here.

I've started reading Dane Sanders new book, the Fast Track Photographer Business Plan. Watch for a review coming in the next couple of weeks.

Photography Ramblings has a New Flickr Group!

Well, why not?  I created a Flickr group for the readers of Photography Ramblings Blog.  What for?  Well

• For discussion of blog posts or any photography topic
• For everyone to get feedback on images posted
• For me to have images posted by you, that I can talk about on the blog.  Each week (hopefully) I'll pick one photo from the pool posted by another member.  I'll then talk about the image and what caught my eye.  What I like about it specifically and any technical information I can get about it as well.  I'll even contact the person that posted it and ask for their comments about it.

Please join, I think it will be a nice little group!  Hope to see you there.  I put a link to the group on the right hand side of the blog as well as in this post.  I also threw some photos in the group, but hopefully we see some from photographers other than myself real soon.  Don't be shy, I can't wait to see your images!

What a Gas

So a couple of weeks ago a model I had worked with a couple times this year had some time off from university and we decided to squeeze in a shoot for fun.  My buddy Spencer was wanting to do a shoot with a gas mask.  We did one a couple of years ago, but actually never finished processing it in Photoshop (it was shot for a big composite) and I had forgotten about the mask I bought on Ebay as a prop.  Anyway, we (Adam joined us for a while but not long, Christmas flu) all gathered in our studio and played around for a while with the mask and a super cool smoke machine Spencer bought.  Then the mask got old and started bugging the models eyebrow piercing so we moved onto other things.



But not before using a fisheye lens for a while.  This is me (top left) and Spencer (top right) holding some lights for Adam.  The final shot is going to be cool if Adam ever processes it (hint hint).

I was having a blast.  I wasn't getting paid, it was just for fun, so I was using the camera I love, my trusty old Olympus E3 and two lenses I love but don't use much, the Olympus 8mm fisheye and Leica 25mm f1.4.



We moved onto some more traditional stuff to make sure Alex, our very patient and fun model, had some shots that were not behind a rubber mask.  Above I was fussing with his scarf or coat (can't remember) as I'm learning to obsess on details.  There is nothing more frustrating than getting a great shot and then noticing a coat is crooked and looking all weird, making me either throw the image away or spend time in Photoshop fixing things.  I've learned the hard way this year to spend a few minutes looking over the details.  Notice our ceiling in the studio wasn't together yet?  We finally hung the paper roll system last week and the ceiling is nearly back together with the paper rolls tucked out of sight.



So I haven't finished processing the images yet.  I worked on them a little today in between designing wedding books and framing prints for our studio (it looks so much better to have your images up on the walls!).  So why do I keep pulling models through the studio and working for free?  Well here is the thing:

• It allows me to be creative in ways I don't always risk on a paid job.  Once I have a new technique or style in my arsenal, I can bring it into my regular work almost risk free and with samples to show clients.
• It keeps it fun.  When I'm working I'm having fun, but I always have in mind that the person that needs to be pleased in the end is the paying client.  In the TFCD situations (trade for CD) I really am only out to please myself.  Sure I want to make sure the model, hair stylist and makeup artist get some good stuff that they like, but ultimately I'm there to satisfy my own cravings to create images, and if I fail I don't have to worry about not getting paid.
• I get to use my old gear.  I don't use the E3 much anymore.  I love it, as I love that Leica lens.  For me, that is fun.  
• Practice makes perfect.  I play hockey, and over the Christmas break I got pretty rusty.  All skills are like this I think and this time of year isn't nearly as busy as the summer for us.  When wedding season gets back into full swing, I'll already be warmed up.  Or, I'll have never cooled down.

The trick is to manage expectations with these kind of shoots.  I've learned to be open with models that my paid work comes first.  If I get a paid gig, their gig gets cancelled.  If I have products to get out to paying clients, that gets done ahead of their images.  And I make sure that the photos I give them are credited back to me, so at least I get a bit of advertising.  In fact, that paid off today when we booked a clothing shoot with a designer based solely on the images we have done with models in trade for time.  Given that I find this kind of photography as fun as weddings and portraits, it allows me to further diversify and hopefully keep business coming in when it might be otherwise quiet.  

Aperture for $80!!

Aperture is only $80 in the new App Store on Mac Computers. Just do a system update and the new store will be there. Not sure if this is a limited time thing, but I'm considering buying Aperture even though I'm a Lightroom user. That is a really good price!!!!

I Just Have to Share...

...these videos.


stillmotion's guide to lenses for weddings and events // a cinema caravan tutorial from stillmotion on Vimeo.

introduction to shooting outside from stillmotion on Vimeo.

an intro to shooting a ceremony with EOS // canon cinema caravan from stillmotion on Vimeo.

New Polaroid is Coming

I'm pretty curious about this new Polaroid 'Gray' that is being revealed tomorrow.  I'm not even sure why.  I remember the first time I ever used a Polaroid and how amazed I was at it despite the poor quality and chunky white borders I just loved it.  I recall shaking the paper when it came out though I can't remember if you needed to shake it to make it work.  Anyway, they are coming out with something new and I admit it, I'm curious.

My new shiny Black Rapid Double Strap arrived today.  I had bought a connector kit that tethered my two individual straps together, but I didn't like it.  It just didn't feel secure  or comfortable.  But this thing that arrived today, the real Double Strap, it seems pretty cool.  Right now I usually hand hold one camera while my other is on an R-Strap.  Most times I prefer just having one camera, but at wedding ceremonies and some events I really like the convenience of having one camera (usually my full-frame) with a wider angle lens and another (usually my crop sensor) with a telephoto lens.  No changing lenses and I have everything covered.  I can't wait to use it!

By  the way, I added a background image to the blog, one I did of my E3 a year or two ago.  I like it, but I'm concerned it significantly slows down the load time of the blog.  Let me know if it is unbearable and I'll take it out!  Thanks for dropping by.   Oh and wish us luck, we have been invited to submit some photos to a wedding photography book.  I'm hoping, keeping fingers crossed!