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Anthony’s NotesA personal field guide
From the notebook

VisionMongers

David duChemin

Book Cover

My Summary

Main Ideas, Takeaways & Similarities

Questions

I. What is the problem?
A. How is this problem formulated?
B. Why is this problem important?
C. What is the history of this problem?
D. Which prominent personalities have been interested in this problem?

II. What solutions to the problem are there?
A. What are the conclusions reached?
B. By what argument(s) is the conclusion reached?
C. What facts or assumptions serve as premises?
D. When a prominent personality offers a solution, does he also argue for or against other prominent personalities? Does he raise objections to alternative solutions? Does he consider objections to his own solutions?

III. Evaluation
A. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the alternative formulations to the problem?
B. Has the importance or history of the problem ever been misrepresented?
C. Are the solutions logically related to the premises?
D. Are the facts true? Are the assumptions acceptable? Are the objections answerable?

AI Summary

Highlights

The first steps occur before you even sign a contract. Like a dance, this is where you begin to know your client, listening to their needs and asking about needs they themselves may not have anticipated. They’re the client, and while it would be nice if clients knew everything they needed or wanted, (Location 1355)

it’s the job of the photographer to guide them through that process. The more you do this, the more aware you will be of the areas in which your first-time clients need guidance. Many of them will be unaware of the specific deliverables they will need, not to mention realistic timelines, budgets, or even their own need for model releases. (Location 1357)

“Great images are important. Great images shot by someone people like and enjoy working with are even better.” (Location 1371)

While it’s not always possible, I ask for a 50 percent deposit to secure my time, and I am very clear about the penalties for canceling. I know this will be harder for some of you than others, but remember you are selling your time—that’s the biggest piece of inventory they are buying from you, and if they cancel two weeks out it’s more than likely you won’t be able to fill that spot. (Location 1375)

When contracts are signed and a deposit is received, I begin asking for a phone call or a face-to-face meeting to discuss the brief in greater detail. It doesn’t matter if this is a wedding or a commercial shoot—if you’ve been hired to shoot something, you should have a clear and specific idea of the client’s expectations. You can’t meet and exceed expectations you don’t know. Don’t hound them or overcommunicate, but be sure you fully understand the brief and the context in which you’ll be shooting. Discuss the timeline for post-production and delivery of files, prints, albums, or other deliverables. (Location 1378)

“It is client care, excellent product, and overdelivery that will build your business.” (Location 1398)

being consistently concerned for your client’s needs and paying attention to details from the beginning through the point where final products are delivered will build your client base faster than slick sales efforts and one-client-is-like-another service templates. (Location 1401)

flow chart of the steps you need to make within your niche to serve your clients. Sit down and create a standard contract that you can edit for specific assignments. Make an evaluation form. Have some branded thank-you cards printed. Consider the whole process from beginning to end, and then make a checklist. The more easily you can track the process, the more certain it is that you’ll guide your clients through it, and no one will slip through the cracks. (Location 1407)

The best thing a beginner can do is to master marketing.” (Location 1457)

more you give out for free, the more that investment is returned in referrals, contacts, and clients. (Location 1463)

You know your work better than some corporation, and you believe in it more, and you will market it with your heart. If you want something done right, do it yourself. Don’t expect people will come to you; knock on all doors, get your name out there, convince yourself you are good, and then convince others.” (Location 1473)

The moment you decide to combine your craft with the world of commerce, you have decided to put your craft, for better or worse, out for public assessment—and it will be measured by the dollar. If you’re like me, your subsequent reaction will fall somewhere between the following two extremes: The first extreme is the revulsion of the artiste. “I’m an artist, not a whore,” you say. “If people don’t want to buy my work, at the prices I demand, then stuff ’em.” The second extreme is the greed of the salesman. His vision and passion are first for the dollar. One makes a lousy businessman, the other a lousy artist. And, in the broadest terms, neither is suited to a life in vocational photography, one that necessarily combines craft and commerce. (Location 1483)

How Can I Serve You? (Location 1501)

I am not after their money; I am after a long-term relationship with them. (Location 1503)

“Beginning a negotiation and any marketing initiatives with this question, even when unspoken, leads to work that pays better, fosters long-term clients, and is more gratifying.” (Location 1508)

“All of this marketing stuff, while important—even crucial—is only second fiddle to relationships and the personal touch.” (Location 1527)

If you want the real goods on marketing as a photographer building a long career, there is no formula—you have to seek, nurture, and cherish authentic relationships in any way possible. Before you get deliriously distracted with the following discussion on logos and branding and social media, keep in mind that the most important skills behind your marketing are your people (Location 1540)

The Four Pillars (Location 1545)

Creativity (Location 1549)

Everything you do, every piece you send, is a reflection on you. If your marketing is creative, it speaks very clearly to your own creativity. (Location 1550)

PDN do annual self-promotion issues that showcase the best of the year’s self-promotional efforts in the industry. A read through one of these can be very inspirational. Look to Applied Arts and Communication Arts for their annuals as well. (Location 1553)

“It’s not about being slick—it’s about being professional and consistent.” (Location 1556)

Congruency (Location 1559)

every initiative needs to be congruent with who you are and the market to whom you are selling yourself. (Location 1560)

Consistency (Location 1565)

Every piece and each initiative should look like it came from the same place. (Location 1567)

Additionally, it means that once you have created a visual identity—chosen a font, logo, and so forth—you consistently use it. It should be on your cards, your letterhead, your envelopes, your invoices, and in the signature on your e-mails. (Location 1572)

You’ve got to stick it out. Marketing isn’t magic, it doesn’t happen overnight. Create a good plan, then stick it out for a year. Repetition and familiarity build confidence and top-of-mind awareness with your potential clients. Switching your logo every two months is a bad idea; it defeats the purpose of having a logo at all. Switching strategies mid-stream is equally damaging. If you start a mailing campaign of six mailings over a year, don’t scrap it when the first mailing goes out the door and the phone doesn’t start ringing. Clients usually need to see your stuff several times—up to 10 times, depending on what study you read—before you get the call. Come up with a well-thought-out marketing plan, then stick with it and give it a chance. It’s easy to get bored with your own work, your own logo, your own website. But you see it a hundred times a day. If the client needs to be exposed to your brand several times before acting on it, it’s because that exposure (Location 1579)

leads to a familiarity—each time you change the plan, the design of the website, or the look of your materials, you revert back to the beginning. (Location 1586)

“No branding effort can begin until you clearly understand your own story and vision for where you are heading.” (Location 1602)

The reason so many photographers lack a clear brand is that no branding effort can begin until you clearly understand your own story and vision for where you are heading. With so many photographers floundering while trying to serve a dozen markets, (Location 1607)

Before you can begin branding as a marketing effort, understand your core values, your “distinctives”—those things that make you uniquely you as a photographer and as a business. Go back to the beginning and discover who you are to your market, and what you offer that is uniquely you. Then build a brand on top of that. (Location 1639)

Positioning is generally seen as an intentional effort to occupy a specific place in the thinking of the marketplace, and I bring it up for this reason: everything you say about yourself—and everything others say about you—directly positions you in the minds of the market. You can do it intentionally or you can let it happen to you, but you will find a place in their minds. If that place isn’t accurate or, worse, is the opposite of where you want to be, then you’re in trouble because perception is reality. (Location 1649)

The biggest thing you can do to affect your position in the minds of your market is to work with them. Firsthand experience and relationships with you will trump other (Location 1656)

impressions. But if you never get the chance to make those impressions because you’ve been sloppy with your positioning, you’ll have to rely on the reality created by that perception. (Location 1657)

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (McGraw-Hill, 2000) by Al Ries and Jack Trout. (Location 1680)

“Trust is gained slowly and lost in the blink of an eye.” (Location 1690)

But be brilliant and likable and you’ll be a step ahead of the diva. Your clients are normal people and, like all normal people, they hire people with whom they identify, trust, and enjoy working with. (Location 1724)

Serve them relentlessly. Make their needs your absolute priority. It’s not about you. (Location 1734)

Provide great catering—even if that’s just bringing a cooler of cold bottled water and some fruit to a location portrait shoot. (Location 1736)

Following up with clients after you’ve overdelivered on the project is the best way to keep them in the fold. (Location 1749)

Send thank-you cards after the shoot, tell your clients how much you enjoyed working with them, and ask them if there is anything else you can do to serve them. Asking them for feedback and honest evaluation at this point will not only help you see your blind spots but will communicate to your clients that what you care about is overdelivering, that your ability to serve them begins with (Location 1753)

Keep a client list and send personalized holiday cards, as well as occasional updates or gift certificates. Kevin Clark does a customized Christmas card every year that features his kids (all of them gorgeous), and they showcase the creative photography and post-production work he and his team are capable of. They also remind clients that Kevin is out there, and it builds on the growing relationship he has with them. (Location 1756)

Have an open house once a year and wine and dine your clients from the past year or two. (Location 1762)

I encourage you to connect with someone you’ve been wanting to connect with, even if that’s another photographer—tell them honestly you want to pick their brains or introduce them to your work and that you’d like to meet them, take them to coffee, or share a meal. (Location 1782)

Put it on your marketing calendar—make the time for two new conversations a week—and see where it leads. Make a list of everyone you deal with, or want to deal with, in your work, and find a way to connect with them. (Location 1790)

They already have a reason to recommend you, but they might need a reminder once in a while—a little extra push (Location 1876)

to get out there and proactively promote you. If you get a referral, send them a gift certificate and a thank-you card. Or movie passes, or a framed print you know will look great in their office and generate conversations. Or a nice coffee table book. Don’t be slick, and don’t make it merely a marketing effort. Your gratitude and kindness, and the offer to serve their friends, is more powerful than a slick coupon or a kickback for making referrals. (Location 1877)

“Like a photograph, every element within a logo contributes to its mood and feel. Every element says something.” (Location 1966)

Companies like Modern Postcard (ModernPostcard.com) (Location 2051)

“Money spent on a good designer is money well invested.” (Location 2081)

“People get so caught up in materials and spending big money,” he said, “that it becomes a substitute for what they should really be paying attention to—working on their craft, connecting personally with clients, and managing their money.” (Location 2123)

If you’re slick and have no content, or if you’re overly self-promoting, people sense that and move along quickly. (Location 2199)

If you want a professional website and not merely a showcase of all the great cat pictures you’ve taken, then you need to edit your selections tightly. Showing your potential clients fewer images—your very best stuff related to the market you’re wanting to work in—will give each of those images more impact. Don’t show them the B-roll stuff. (Location 2302)

“Intentionality is something fewer and fewer people are practicing as they do their marketing.” (Location 2322)

“All my best professional opportunities have come as a result of conversations that were initiated on, or because of, my blog. Without exception.” (Location 2361)

“Beginning with smaller, local magazines gives you the experience an editor at a larger magazine will look for before they trust you with an important assignment.” (Location 2579)

So here’s a starting point: make a list of the top 100 clients you want to work for. These might be corporations if you’re a commercial photographer; it might be magazines if you’re a travel shooter or edibles photographer. Picking 100 forces you to dig deep and fine-tune your Google skills. It’s also a manageable number for your first forays into direct marketing. (Location 2582)

marketing is a long, slow, intentional road. (Location 2602)

If you decide to go with direct mail, remember it’s only as strong as the combination of the elements involved: a great mailer, a targeted and reliable mailing list, and the commitment to see it through. This is a long-term strategy you’re working on. If you want gigs tomorrow, direct mail isn’t for you. If you want to establish yourself in a market and build long-term relationships with prospective clients, it’s excellent. But it’s still only the beginning. (Location 2617)

agents only want you when you no longer need them. (Location 2624)

Services like ADBASE (ADBASE.com) make it easy to find and connect with potential clients by attaching extensive mailing lists to easily designed and great-looking HTML-based e-mail mailings. (Location 2631)

Selina Maitreya’s How to Succeed in Commercial Photography (Location 2651)

“The gains made occupying a niche and being regarded as an expert can be immediately lost if your target market suddenly perceives you as a generalist.” (Location 2809)

Do what you can to be honestly perceived as an expert, if not the expert, in the field. If you opt to serve both a niche and a broader market, then you’ll most likely need to separate your operations and your marketing. (Location 2818)

“Reducing yourself to being merely a button-pushing technician is a fast way to lower rates and unsatisfying work.” (Location 2834)

Why I mention this at all is because I see competition as an intrinsically destructive force in a creative person. There is a sense in which competing pushes you harder, that comparing your work with others encourages you to hone your craft more aggressively or inspires you to move in different directions. But more often it pulls our focus from where it ought to be—on our vision, our work—and on to others. It encourages us to dilute our vision and thin ourselves out as we chase a carrot we probably shouldn’t be chasing. It encourages us to forget that it’s okay to be an individual. You can’t shoot for every market, you can’t produce images in every style, and when you try to do so you create a moving target for potential clients who look, not for a jack of all trades, but for someone whose vision and visual style matches what they’re looking for. (Location 2845)

“Your marketing should be about you, not about how much better you are than others.” (Location 2861)

“Keeping your overhead as low as you can keeps your belt tight, and it means you can move faster, change directions quicker, and compensate for the ups and downs of business (Location 3096)

with fewer casualties.” (Location 3097)

“Value is not determined by price. Value is about what a client gets for the price paid.” (Location 3274)

“Pick a number that makes you uncomfortable and then add 20 percent.” (Location 3334)

“When you know what a client’s priorities are, you are better able to hold your ground on a quote.” (Location 3352)

“Have a new conversation every year and discuss how much you will raise your fees. If it doesn’t scare you—and if you don’t lose at least a few of your clients, and get some push-back from others—then you haven’t raised the fees high enough.” (Location 3383)

Life offers no rewards to the tentative, to those who tiptoe cautiously through life only to arrive safely at death. (Location 3661)

“If you do it right, market yourself well, make genuine connections, manage your money well, and never stop making decisions based on why you wanted to do this in the first place, you might just pull it off.” (Location 3665)