MATHIESON A Unique Approach or common sense?

For over thirty years I have been involved in professional photography as both a photographer and, at times, working with suppliers in an attempt to help photographers make better business decisions. I have been, and still am, a passionate believer in the value of associations like the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers but things change and over the last year my life and the industry here in Australia has changed at even faster rate than ever before.

One of the advantages of traveling a lot and of working overseas is the ability you gain to look at our industry and some of the things we do from the outside, and in many cases you end up questioning the way we work. My wife, Maya and I now run a small photographic business from our home in Australia. We have three streams of income, weddings, boats and babies. Many of you would have seen me talk about our wedding business and mention the boat business - what is new is our baby business.

You see I, like many photographers, needed a source of constant income all year round, weddings and boat photography are seasonal, in summer you do well but the winters can be long and lean so we wanted to find an income that would always be there. Well in Australia people have babies all the year round and gee whiz they do in the UK as well! People spend a lot of money having kids and we as social photographers are well aware that baby photography can be lucrative or can it be?

Here, like most places, much of the traditional studio photographers' bread and butter income has been taken by the operators working in shopping malls. One well known business here in the land down under has a turnover of over sixty million dollars working in this way. Our industry here has been critical of these businesses, photographers are guilty of making comments about poor quality and the work all being the same but while photographers are busy being high and mighty their businesses are all suffering as mothers choose

these photographic companies over the more traditional choices - your studio or mine. The Associations in large part have not helped, they are all about building quality in the market and often events run by the Associations are all about the photographers ego tripping and back slapping each other; meanwhile there businesses are getting smaller.

It was important for us to find out why mothers choose these operators. Why they went there to the mall and did not come to me or you? What are they doing that is so attractive? Most important what could we learn from the way they work and could we build a business or stream of income like we wanted?

There seem to be a very few fundamental things that they do but which we do not do. Firstly for the mum, it is convenient, no appointment needed, just turn up and have the kid's photo taken. Secondly it is seen as inexpensive. We are seen as expensive. I have said "seen as" that is not necessarily the case, but the public perception is we are expensive and at all times we must remember it is the perception that matters, not the realty. The next thing they do is not charge a fee; or if the do it is linked to an offer that is very good value for money. We often charge sitting fees. Next they pre-print a set package that is shown to the mother when they return to see the images. It is already done, take it now for a special price or perhaps you want the package and extras or lastly maybe just a couple of prints. Lastly they offer some form of payment plan so mothers can afford to take the package which is often priced quite highly, but because of the quantity of images in the package is seen by the mother as good value.

None of this is secret information, in fact all of you most likely know what you have read, what concerned me is that we as an industry have not learnt from them at all, We have not learned from them, at the same time they are making huge profits from a market that was once largely ours.

Having thought this through we decided to try and see how we went in the baby market. We knew our new business had to be "convenient", more than the Mall operators if that was possible. We had to offer a package or packages, we had to be seen as affordable and offer great value. We had to offer payment plans. To do this we decided to firstly photograph in peoples' homes, nothing more convenient than that, mum is happy, baby is happy and you do not need an expensive studio or high street shop front. We knew we needed to pre-print a package that was amazing value for money and to offer payment plans, this meant we had to take some notice of the systems successful businesses use and to systemize our photography and packages. We asked mothers what they wanted, and listened. The answers were - something for us; something to give to grandparents and something to give to others, like the baby's aunties and so on. I cannot emphasize too much - we asked mothers, not one or two, but twenty - we did our market research. We then took the ideas and printed sample packages returning to the mothers and asking them what they were worth, in other words we asked the market what it wanted and then what it was prepared to pay.

The aim price point we had in mind for our basic package was 400 pounds so we needed to work out what to do at that price point which met the expectations of the mother and more…and to do this for every baby. We were not about to design an individual package for each and every baby, as they say "been there and done that".

The photography was easy; photograph the babies on white cloth, lit by window light or a cold light source, not flash. Photograph on f2.8 so the background is not seen or is so blurry it does not matter. Cover any bright colorful objects with more white cloth and using a digital camera take 200 shots most of them different. This takes no more than fifteen minutes. So we have found that allowing an hour per sitting is heaps, and remember you need to build a "relationship" with the client, for you will return to sell your package.

It is six months since we started the research process, we have photographed over one hundred and fifty babies and are doing a constant ten a week, that is a steady income of five thousand pounds a week. Our average ended up being one hundred pound higher than our base package by adding options for our customers to buy.

Of course there are a lot of details that are involved in setting up and running a business like this, details that we are happy to share. I will be doing a lecture tour for the Society in early March next year when you can come along and learn the entire process. Making money at baby photography is easy!

Malcolm mathieson

Kidshots

Malcolm Mathieson M.Photog, HFAIPP, FSWPP,ANZIPP

The SWPP 2008 Convention was an outstanding success,
we have 130 days to get ready for the 2009 convention - which starts on January 14, 2009

Photo Quote: Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject. - Eliot Porter