Wedding

[Clawed]

wlbphoto/robkelly - thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. It's pretty clear that I need to be mindful about consistency, or at least make sure my clients know what to expect if they hire me. I just did a shoot a couple of days ago, and I was looking through the images I had worked on until that point, and I thought about what has been discussed here. I had to make a conscious effort to make sure there was an appropriate level of consistency throughout the series. I have a tendency to give every shot it's own flavor and process each shot individually, but that means that things like color balance / skin tones are not 100% consistent.

As for the marketing, I have not even made an attempt to do so outside of the website and my business cards (obviously though, they do nothing on their own, unless a potential client is directed there by an outside agent). All business is from referrals, which shows the potential is there.

 

[rub]

Hmm. I'm not exactly sure what I think of them. I think you have brought some creative ideas to the table, but for me, personally, I feel they are overdone. Too much editing, possibly too much recovery. Concept? B+ Execution? C-

I took a peek at your website, and I think your portrait images are much stronger than your wedding images. I think it has something to do with the vignetting you have used on some wedding images, but also for me they seem to have much better control of light.

Thanks for sharing and I look forward to seeing more from you.

Kristal

 

[camz]

As for the marketing, I have not even made an attempt to do so outside of the website and my business cards (obviously though, they do nothing on their own, unless a potential client is directed there by an outside agent). All business is from referrals, which shows the potential is there.

Yup landing clients are usually through the referral circle. A key in landing referrals is to actually capture your future clients during the wedding itself as a lot of the targeted market could be wedding guests - yup we're there to impress them too .

Here's one marketing tool that we use which may help you. What we do is present a slide show of the engagement session or same day edits in our handy dandy Asus laptop. Set it in a little table somewhere close to the bar or reception entrance and have it playing throughout the night. Next to the laptop is a stack of our business cards with all our information. It works as a marketing study and advertisement. Simple, effective and free without having to open your mouth or make a "sale"(You can also do the same thing with albums...but the specifics of that one's a secret ).

As far as your editing style, if you can sell that type of branded product why the hell not. But it's also good practice to be able to have a theme in your finished product as it will give you the skill to be able to reproduce consistency throughout the series (from what you said you seem to have trouble with this). If you were to edit let's say a 700 image spread, and edit those 700 image spread differently with different styles...well my gawd man that's alot of work. For what they pay you will it still be worth the effort as a business? Also without having the end in mind takes additional effort and time to get to where your going opposed to having a certain way of editing. The latter will achieve less work, more consistency, more time in order for you to shoot and make money.

So from a work flow standpoint alone , to me it's hard to justify varied edits as your only product. Having a combination I think is the way to go. From an Aesthetic standpoint, that depends on your market.