– Posted by Mark (Photos are from an engagement session I recently shot in San Francisco.)
Tonight is our business/marketing workshop for our Interns.
It’s a little different every time since we’re always trying out new ideas (and ending failed experiments) – but the three constant rules are:
- Be Different
- Do things that matter
- Show Everyone
Sub-headers would include:
- Experiment
- Experiment again
- Fail
- Fail again
- Move quickly
- Take your time
- Force yourself
- Don’t force other people
- Keep Reading Everything Other Than Books on Photography
We are now deep in our third year of business – and every year has been dramatically different.
Year One – Leah was in grad school while I still worked my computer day job. We built the business to the point where I had no choice but to leave my job to shoot all of the weddings we were booking (out of state weddings take up 3 days instead of just the 1 day for a local wedding.)
Year Two – I went full time Photo.
Year Three – We’re BOTH full time Photo (and having a baby.)
Of course that’s the simple version. It doesn’t tell you anything about how difficult it’s been, how hard we’ve worked, and how many things we’ve tried that were complete failures – and believe me – we tried A LOT of things. This is probably the 27th incarnation of this website. People come and go, every wedding is different, pricing schemes are updated, then brought back, then updated again.
It’s more than a good bit of madness – but they’re all experiments. We’re always testing our ideas.
We have to operate this way since our natural tendency is to do all of the things that everyone else (other photographers) aren’t doing – or not doing well. There is a lot of advice out there – a good bit of it free – and even more that you have to pay for. We know we’re stubborn as all heck – but we just don’t want the same advice that everyone else follows. Because we see too many others not making it. We see too many others buying advice that they aren’t able to make their own – or that they’re just not ready to handle or absorb.
And even then – our single biggest advantage is still the fact that we will work harder than anyone out there. Leah would say that’s a bit too much pride/hype/bragging. I would generally disagree – except for the part where it’s absolutely true.
See you tomorrow.
Love!