Biz 101, Competition, Customers, Marketing, Pricing, Quotes, Rants, Scams

Which photograph do you prefer? This will be for a mail-in to construction companies.

Photograph A

or Photograph B

Which version do you prefer?

Thank you. For comments, you can use the Contact Me form.

• Did you know that Case is the second largest manufacturer of agricultural equipment and the third largest manufacturer of construction equipment? Maybe you know that.
• But did you know that Case is part of the FIAT empire? Yes, the Italian car manufacturer of the FIAT 500, of Ferrari or Lancia fame.

This photographer walks around while carrying a Canon 7D, a Canon 500mm f/4 with TC 1.4x converter with a gimball head and his open tripod.

He's not the only one to walk around with an open tripod. I don't understand why most photographers walk around with their camera on the tripod with the tripod open. I understand that it takes a good 10 seconds to open and close the tripod. The vast majority of the time my tripod's height is 3 feet tall. When I walk around with my camera on the tripod, I keep the tripod with the legs closed. It's less intrusive, it's easier to walk and to carry the outfit.

I saw this photographer walking around the Reifel Bird Sanctuary. I was there for a couple of hours and I would say that he walked around the sanctuary carrying the whole "shebang" at least 90% of the time. His neck and shoulder must hurt from carrying the tripod open.

I'm doing a new website for my commercial photography and was looking for the dos and don't on how to present the pricing. Some people have no explanation, just a “contact me” web form. Of the few web sites that I have seen, 3 web sites had an almost empty web page, with just one word: Pricing or Prices, and nothing else.

But there are some really bad web pages. Or should I say photographers? Here are a couple of these web pages. These are not section of web pages, but the complete web pages minus the actual name and phone number, if it was present.

Last night, I was doing my exercise on the couch in front of the TV, aka channel surfing and exercising my thumb on the remote. Suddenly I found a camera ad. Cameras? Lets watch, It was an ad for Nikon with Ashton Kutcher. Nikon even has a full website, just for him: http://ashton.nikonusa.com/. Ashton Kutcher knows nothing about camera or photos but he has a Nikon camera.

I was reading the February 2012 issue of a magazine for professional photographers. They had some lens write-ups. I'd like to quote some portions:

• Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM: “since it's an L lens, you know that it offers top-of-the-line optics with eight elements…”
• Canon 500mm f/4L IS II USM: “Though formally announced last February, … no estimated delivery date but this monster of a lens will certainly be an impressive upgrade…”