Hi. I had the chance to speak at Renew Social Ventures yesterday (where we also have our studio space) – as part of a panel on social media, and collaboration using social media tools. While I’m not quite sure how qualified we may be to speak on the subject – it got me thinking about some of the things that Leah and I do with our Interns, and really our three core principles:
- Be different
- Do things that matter
- Show Everyone
It’s been a crazy year since we started all of this last August in 2009. Since then I’ve left my day job to do this full time, we photograph more weddings out of state than we do in Georgia, and we have a serious 3-month photography internship. Some of our Interns have even moved to Atlanta just to work with us for those three months.
I’ll tell anyone who listens – once your photographs are ‘good’ (whatever that means) – it’s ALL ABOUT THE MARKETING. One of the main strengths of our photography internship is that we specifically teach the interns how to market themselves, get business, and make that transition from free work over to actual paid work – which is a difficult transition for many.
Below is a short video of a portion of my rambling and spaz-tastic talk on how we apply our three core principles to our online marketing and internship:
We recently put on a workshop in Montreal, Canada. We’ll be in Phoenix, Arizona teaching a workshop and then we’re flying out to Kathmandu, Nepal to teach another workshop at the base of the Himalayas.
I know there’s a lot of competition – and heck, we’re creating more with our Interns. We’re building something special. Our Interns are important to us and we spend a great deal of time selecting them, and then developing them and their skills. It’s all free as far as monetary costs – but it’s a great deal of commitment from them, and from us. Because if I agree to take on an Intern say from Colorado (and we have) – then it’s my responsibility to not waste their time.
I’m not really friends with too many photographers because it’s counter-intuitive to what we believe. We want to make connections with more clients than photographers. Not only that – many photographers just don’t get us, and they don’t get what we’re building.
We’re running at full speed and figuring it all out as we go. When we say we want to photograph you, it means we’d like to get to know you.
Atlanta. Photographer. Video. Social. Media. Marketing.