The following is a transcript on an interview that Professional Photographer magazine will be publishing next month.
What’s your photographic background?
Like many photographers who eventually turn professional I was a very keen amateur. From about the age of about 11 or 12 when my Dad gave me my first camera, a rangefinder zeiss, I took rolls and rolls of black and white film. I made notes after each exposure in order to try to understand how on earth the camera worked.
I grew up up in New Zealand in the early 60’s and I had to wait for a week for my developed prints to come back to the local shop. Colour film was too expensive to mess around with then and my Dad only loaded colour film into his camera at Christmas!
At secondary school I joined the camera club and it was then I really began to understand how a camera worked, and how to make prints.
I set myself up as a stock photographer and left New Zealand for the UK in 1985 and travelled for four years around the world largely funded by stock photography sales. I took with me a Practica MTL3 35mm and a Bronica ETRsi. I still have the Bronica today and I traded in the Practica for a Canon AE1programe in 1988. I’ve used Canon gear ever since.
Can you provide us with some general info on your business please:
Tell me about your niche: events and parties (this is what we’d like to concentrate on).
I work with an assistant, two freelances, and a great local lab. It all hangs together at the seams most of the time but it’s exiting and I suppose I wouldn’t have it any other way.
At my studio in Battersea we also do lots of informal portraits of families, corporate headshots, and product photography. We also use this studio as the office where all the photography post production is done.
Most of our week is spent on photographing Events and Parties. We travel all over the world and work with mostly corporate customers photographing their events parties, launches, PR, and conferences.
I also have a large gallery of images from around the word built up over many years as a stock photographer. Framed prints are sold to businesses and private individuals in the UK and around the world. I also sell the London photographs from a new mobile exhibition unit in the Northcote Road Market in Battersea, South West London on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
How did you come to shoot events?
Many years ago I supplied a set of framed photographs to a large international bank in the city. It was December and the photographer they had booked for the Christmas party wasn’t able come for whatever reason so I lied ‘no problem I can do this in my sleep” and got the job. I promised them I would do everything the other guy had undertaken to do; walk in photographers studio, real time slideshow, prints on the night for guests to take away, the whole works. All I owned was my trusty Canon and the Bronica, I needed to somehow lay my hands on lights and backgrounds, some means of printing, a projector, two digital cameras, a laptop, another photographer (preferably no less experienced than me). There was also no money up front and it was beginning to look like I would have to make the same call the other photographer had made a few days earlier. I was able to lend a Canon 10D and a D60, these came with their owner Richard who still works with me occasionally today. His girlfriend ‘borrowed” a mac clamshell laptop and printer from her work and goodness knows where the projector and screen came from. I rented the lights with money borrowed from my aunt.
Luckily everyone who attended the function had plenty to drink and didn’t notice our inexperience but it was a success. Since then I have photographed most of their events in the UK and around the world.
There’s a real lack of decent events photographers – why do you think that is?
There isn’t lack of good photographers, in fact quite the reverse. I think there is more talent around than ever before. The current economic situation has squeezed many photographers in business and those starting out to an extent that many will do anything to get work. In high end event photography reputation counts for everything, and many clients are not willing to take a chance on someone new despite the fact that they are probably quite able to handle the job.
How long have you been doing this for?
How did you get started?
I didn’t ever plan to make my living as a photographer.
I was happy as a keen amateur making a little money here and there doing the odd wedding, and taking stock photographs.
I don’t really know that there was a day that I woke up and pronounced to the world that ‘today is the day’ but I guess when I worked briefly as a paparazzi photographer, that Friday evening in August 1988, after being chased across Leicester Square by one of Peter Stringfellow’s bouncers might have been that ‘seminal moment’.
How hard have you had to work to make your business a success?
I’ve had to work very hard to make my business a success. However it took me a long time early on to realise that it doesn’t matter what industry you are in the same principles of building a profitable enterprise applies to mostly all sorts of businesses. As photographers we all get a bit precious about our style and our creativity, and although that is what sets us apart from our competitors we still need to find new customers, keep existing customers hiring us, and above all we need them to pay their invoices on time.
I look at my business in the same way as somebody who sells widgets does. If you give the customer exactly what they want, and exceed their expectations then they’ll book you again. If you don’t give them what they want they won’t book you again and they’ll also tell their friends and colleagues not to book you either.
It’s very expensive to attract new customers but if you can keep your current customers happy repeat bookings will keep flowing in.
Has being so niche helped you set up a successful business?
There are a number of parts to my business but each part of the business is treated as niche. The various things that we do are divided up and promoted in such a way that most of my clients think that what we do for them is all we do. For example Event and Party photography has it’s own website and separate domain name. Portraits, products, Interiors and Art for Offices are also treated separately.
How much competition do you face?
Competition is fierce. If you type in ‘Event photographer London’ into Google there are over 5 million listings. Most prospective clients don’t look beyond the first page and the choice is bewildering. Just about all of our work comes by way of recommendation or is work from an existing client. I do rely on new customers finding my details from an internet search and I spend a lot time on SEO.
What services do you offer?
I offer all the usual services you’d expect a small studio like mine to have available, ie portraits, product photography, architectural and interiors work, and these all link in nicely with the events and party work. The workload can be spread relatively evenly across the week. Many events and mostly all parties run into the evening so we are able to fit the post production in amongst the other work that’s done during the day.
How do you make your money (selling prints etc). Please cover all aspects, we want to know all about your photography business.
Having almost lost everything in the last economic downturn I’ve tried to protect myself in this recession by spreading the risk across all of the things that I do. For example from the end of 2008 we noticed a significant drop in sales of framed prints and photography services to private individuals, luckily the corporate work we were doing then was still strong. And in the first half of 2009 the corporate event work almost stopped completely, but luckily a large hotel group had placed an order for framed photographs which kept us busy. The corporate work and the event and party bookings came back as quickly as they went away and things seem to be on the mend.
The Event and party photography we do accounts for about half of the turnover, particularly during the summer months and in the run up to Christmas. The sale of framed prints to offices and to private individuals accounts for about a quarter of the turnover, and portrait, architectural and product photography accounts for about a quarter. Christmas is a really busy time for us and a third of the year’s turnover is achieved between the beginning of November and Christmas eve from events and the sale of gallery prints.
Who are your clients?
We have a good mix of regular clients, mostly blue chip corporates and PR companies. We do lots of celebrity parties and events too, and often we don’t get told who they are until we turn up at the event.
How do you supply work to your clients?
Do you sell prints? And, if so, how and where do you get prints done?
Most clients these days want their finished images in the form of digital files and often start the process again if they want prints.
We also supply prints at events that may be either paid for by the client or bought on the night by the guest. Sometimes supplying prints on the night can be hugely popular with the guests but we have also photographed events where the sale of prints has been quite low. I’ve always steered clear of actively selling prints to guests on the night unless the client specifically asks for it, most clients don’t like their guests hassled into parting with their cash having already paid a fee to attend.
We use a great local lab in South West London. Often we produce sets of prints in stages throughout an event, we’ll send a DVD by courier to the lab and they’ll send the finished prints back by courier a couple of hours later.
What other services / genres to you shoot commercially?
We shoot Interiors and Properties for a large Property developer based in North London. They recently redeveloped a derelict church and turned the building into seven luxury flats, stained glass windows in the loo, that sort of thing. Photographing Interiors and Architecture is a much slower process unlike people photography where you work handheld and have to act quickly. Most of this sort of work is medium format using a tripod which involves thinking carefully about the image and taking your time. It’s also great to see your work published in a high end brochure.
How do you see your business developing?
It’s only on the rare occasion that I go on holiday that I think about how my business should be developing. The photography industry is moving at such a pace these days that keeping ahead of the curve is often difficult.
Photography is no longer the mystery that it used to be, clients know exactly what is and isn’t possible as they all own digital cameras. Many photographers are giving away copyright free these days and supplying high res DVDs free of charge. I’ve never quite got to grips with giving images away for free as the potential to upsell images again after an event is lucrative. But you’ve got to give the client flexibility, it’s common them want to take control and produce media themselves, and so we build that into the package.
In the next year or two I would like to explore the possibility of selling our services from a gallery. I already do this to an extent from my mobile exhibition trailer I use in the Northcote Road market in South London.
But we live in uncertain times and paying for photography is often a discretionary purchase. It’s a sobering thought signing up to years of rent and business rates when one can do it all online a minimal cost.
What equipment do you use?
At my studio we use 3 canon 1dsMk11 and we are hoping to secure an order for 2 of the new Canon 1ds mk 1V. 580ex flash, 550ex flash, 380ex flash, 2 24-105mm L lenses, 17-40mm L lens, 14mm L lens, 70-200mm L lens, 28-135mm 3.5-5.6 lens, Bronica Etrsi, Quantum battery packs, 2 Elinchrom lights with brollys and soft box. A selection of backgrounds and stands, a bag of leads and bits, a stack of memory cards: mostly 2.0 GB, 2 x manfrotto tripods and heads, canon G9 compact camera, On site printing equipment, 1 projector, 1 powermac quad, 2 macbook pro 17” and an old powerbook G4. We don’t use windows pcs anymore, only mac computers.
Anything else you think we might find interesting?
There are two things that I’m working on at the moment that I’m finding really interesting.
The first is I’m working on a book. It’s a coffee table style book, and it’s set of fine art photography prints of London and life in the capital. It’s taken two years longer than I expected and although I said this last year I’m hoping to have if finished for Christmas.
The other thing I’ve found very interesting is learning about website optimisation. I’ve found it very frustrating paying for seo work and not being able to understand what it is I’m paying for. I now do all of the web promotion and seo work myself and I would recommend anyone reading this give it a try and it’s not as complicated as we are all led to believe.
Websites/links:
http//:www.eventphotographylondon.uk.com
http//:www.photoarte.co.uk
