Hi, and welcome to my first blog post!
My name is Karen Bagley, owner of Significant Moments Photography. I am an Atlanta photographer specializing in newborn and senior portraits. I wanted to start my first post off with a bang and touch on a subject that is very important to me. It will also help you better understand who I am as a photographer and the way I run my business. Any fellow photographers or visitors please feel free to chime in on the comments as I would love to hear other opinions on the matter.
To me it seems most photographers and photography in general has lost their way. Everywhere I look I see photographers offering all their images on a CD to the clients. It’s the Shoot and Burn mentality. Now you may be thinking “Why not? It’s convenient and it’s what our clients want.” This may have some truth to it and in today’s digital age it might seem like the best solution.
My earlier rather embarrassing work when I preferred to shoot and burn.
Everything from movies, books, music, and our photographs these days seem to only exist now in digital form. I can’t tell you how many clients I have had that literally have thousands of pictures saved on their computer or uploaded to Facebook, but when you walk into their home the wall space and shelves are empty. All their memories are stored probably lost to the abyss of computer file system folders or out there on some aimless cloud service to never be seen again.
Enough is enough! I don’t know about you but I didn’t get into photography for my work, my art, to sit forever in a folder somewhere. I want my art to be displayed to be something real my clients can see every day and bring them back to those important moments of their life. I want my work to bring up emotion in my clients. That can’t happen if it is never seen.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have sold image CDs before. In fact, it’s what I did for a long time up until about a year ago. It wasn’t until I happened upon a video on creativelive by Sal Cincotta that I realized where my business had gone wrong. All I was doing was giving my clients what I thought they wanted or needed, but I was wrong. I learned a lot from his videos and I suggest anyone interested in taking photography as a business seriously to check out his latest class found here Master the Business of Photography by Sal Cincotta. Watching his videos help remind me of why we do this.
I had lost touch with photography as an art and honestly my business suffered. I was producing image CDs in mass, but I wasn’t providing my clients with anything of real value, something they could truly treasure. I was just like every other photographer in Atlanta passing along cheap CDs offering nothing more than anyone else around me. My business didn’t stand out. It gets to a point where you can’t compete with the CD peddlers offering images for $99. Competing on price I would always lose. I felt like I wasn’t running a business anymore but just trying to stay afloat and relevant. I wasn’t sure what to do!
How my work has grown since I changed my mentality
That’s when I made the change!
I didn’t just stop selling image CDs but I changed the way I viewed photography as a whole. I realized most of my clients with today’s technology in phones, tablets, availability of quality cameras, etc. were quite capable of taking pictures of themselves that looked decently good. They didn’t need me to just provide them with more images. They needed me to provide them with a true experience and transform their moments, their memories into art. Every portrait I take from senior to newborn I make it something memorable for my client and have the goal of making their life something beautiful. My business has been something I can truly be proud of since I made the change and I think most of my clients couldn’t be happier.
Hope you enjoyed my first blog post and continue to read along with me and my growing business.! Stay tuned for my next post on my Top 5 Reasons For Not Offering Image CDs.