As 2010 draws to a close, this is a good time to look back and ask ourselves the $64,000 question: “How was business this year? Was 2010 better, worse or the same as 2009?” Can we define this year as a success, a failure, or simply static?

As much as it hurts, I suspect that many photographers found 2010 to be no better or worse than 2009, despite assurances from the economic wizards that the recession has been over for quite some time.

Why?

There’s a question, right there. Why has the photography business been so bad for many of us, even though the recession is supposedly behind us? Why have so many talented photographers quit the industry for the security of a regular paycheck?

To find answers to these questions we have to look within, and examine our own businesses. What possible explanations do we have for not performing as well as we could have? Surely, there must be someone or something we can blame…

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Photography Business Ideas business success, creative marketing, photography business

Do you enjoy macro photography and creating images of small things close up? If so, then you will immediately know that photographing the intricate details of a bug or a flower at f/2.8 is a poor idea, unless you deliberately want most of the photograph to be out of focus.

Depth Of Field

As photographers, we’re all familiar with the concept of depth of field and how it relates to the chosen lens aperture. If we shoot with our lens wide open then we’re going to capture more light, but we lose focus in parts of the image because our depth of field is shallow. This is fine for portraits etc. but not so good if the details are important and we want more of our scene to be in focus.

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Sales & Marketing marketing photography, marketing strategy

Yesterday, I posted the first part of this article on marketing (Photography Marketing Is Not Dead Yet), with the premise that many photographers are apparently still stuck in the old mode of thinking when it comes to the subject of marketing; the old methods are far less effective now than they used to be, and it’s time for a change…

Welcome To The [Social] Machine

The dawn of the social web is here; actually, it’s been here a while now and it’s already mid-morning, but there’s still time to hop on board before lunchtime.

The long and the short of it is that consumers no longer want to be marketed to – they’re fed up with being assaulted at every turn with commercials, advertisements, pop-ups and junk mail. I’m sure, as consumers ourselves, we can totally understand this position. Instead, our customers want to become part of the marketing and, through the socialization of the web, they’re able to do just that by trusted peer-to-peer recommendations.

Times have changed rapidly over the last few years – interruptive marketing methods are no longer effective, and we have to make the switch to permission-based, collaborative methods that revolve around the nucleus of the social sphere in which we now operate.

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Sales & Marketing facebook, LinkedIn, marketing strategy, photography marketing, social media, twitter

While talking with and listening to other photographers lately, I’m left with the sense of doom and futility shared amongst some people in the photography business. Not only do I find this sad and depressing, I believe it’s totally unfounded, and is compounding an already negative issue – that marketing is not working that way people expect it to.

It Doesn’t Matter How Much Marketing I Do…

This statement is dangerous in the extreme to any hope of success in business. Most of us became professional photographers because of a passion for the art of photography and what it means to people’s lives. We didn’t think in terms of being marketers or sellers, but that is precisely what we are, like it or not. The fact is that if we can’t market ourselves, or we can’t sell what we do, we’re not going to be in business for long.

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Sales & Marketing Brian Solis, marketing strategy, photography marketing, Seth Godin

Somebody somewhere, I forget who or where, was recently bemoaning the state of the professional photography industry and complaining that almost every photographer they know is struggling to survive, or is on the verge of going out of business.

How Can This Be In Today’s Modern Age?

For some reason, on my way to the studio on this lovely early winter morning, I was pondering this question, and also on how much simpler life seemed back in my younger days. I really don’t consider myself to be old (not even 50 yet), but the world today feels a lot different to what it was when I was in my early 20’s.

A Little Nostalgia

I was born in 1962 and I remember Neil Armstrong landing on the moon on our tiny black & white TV. The day I first saw my favorite TV show of the time (Thunderbirds) in color was an epiphany; rotary phones that stayed plugged into the wall were how we thought phones would always be, and the Internet hadn’t even made it into the realms of mainstream science-fiction. Computers were something big companies and the likes of NASA used; we certainly couldn’t imagine them sitting on everyone’s desk, or watching the kids fight over who gets to use it at home to get on Facebook…

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How To Be A Professional Photographer business success, professional photography, professionalism