Relating to customers. A customer is a "paying" customer.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 20. January 2012 - 6:20
By now, you must have heard that Kodak has filed for bankruptcy. All the noise from the web is that Kodak is a bankrupt company because, although they invented many of the digital technology, they were not nimble enough… Those are mostly people that repeat what everybody else copied from the web. The problem is that these people don't have a “long enough” memory. Kodak's problems started long, long before the digital area.
What The Duck has this great cartoon about “Kodak's death”
Here are the 3 main events that caused “Kodak's death”:
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 10. November 2011 - 6:22
As a professional group, photographers move in a heard, they copy each other to the letter. The ultimate in copying each other is the huge number of photographers, by the thousands, that go to Yosemite to take the same photos as Ansel Adams. They go as far as going on the same date and at the same time in the, useless, hope that they will be able to duplicate Adams' fantastic work. The problem with these copycats is that they fail to realize that even with the same light, the same place ,and the same exposure they will never get the same prints as Ansel Adams. Ansel Adams' genius was in the darkroom, he was can easily be argued the best printer ever.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 30. September 2011 - 7:01
I came from Pentax, ditched my complete Pentax system and switched to Canon. 2½ years later, I'm still rebuilding my system. It's amazing all the little things/accessories that one accumulates over the years. Luckily, I didn't switch to Nikon! It turns out that all Nikon photographers are incompetents! Looks like Joe McNally, Tim Page, Hernst Haas, Steve Curry … don't know what they are doing.
A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses, and a good lens is essential to taking good pictures.
Nikon's Facebook page
1.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 21. September 2011 - 8:14
Dream on!
The only photographers that I know that “work comes to me” are the part-timers from the photo clubs that get one or two job per year. That doesn't feed the cat, the dog and pay for the mortgage.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 18. September 2011 - 17:44
Arno Rafael Minkkinen, a Finish photographer, just like me, changes of specialty every so often. If we were kids, people would say that we have ADD: Attention Deficit Disorder and need to take Ritalin (methylphenidate.) Regularly, he took the bus from the Helsinki central bus station. Eventually he noticed that many buses took the same route at the beginning but at time and distance went on, there were less other buses.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 26. July 2011 - 5:46
For the last few days, I've “chasing” 5 customers that currently owe me money. It's a few thousand dollars, some are getting late but not too late. I've heard many excuses and I've noticed that often people say one thing and really mean another.
Don't forget that as a photographer, I'm usually on the lowest ring of the ladder and even sometimes I'm so low, that I'm below ground.
| Customer Says |
Customer Means |
| Keep in touch |
Don't bug me, but you can place me on your mailing list. |
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 25. July 2011 - 8:13
Over the weekend, I was speaking with a 1 hour photo-lab tech. She works at one the biggest chain of drugstores in Western Canada, London Drugs. 75 super-stores and most of them have their own 1 hour photo lab. I was asked to keep her anonymous.
According to Anon Ymous, London Drugs prints around 3 million photos per year. And London Drugs is a “very sharp” operator, some will say ruthless. They analyse everything, including the returns, complaints…
According to their studies, there are 4 main reasons for people being unhappy with their photos:
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 18. July 2011 - 6:51
I was talking with Wanda, she has a booth at the Granville Island Market in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She has a booth of mostly wildlife photos from her husband and as the conversation went, we ended talking about print sizes.
She said that the 8 by 10s were her best sellers. She makes most of her own prints, Epson paper, mostly Premium Luster and an Epson 3880. She farms out the 20 by 30s prints.
- She said that the vast majority of her sales were the 8 by 10 photos.
- She said that she occasionally sells the 16 by 20.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 3. July 2011 - 14:08
In the last week of June 2011, Thomas Hawk wrote an article about the copyright lawsuit between Jay Maisel and Andy Baio. It was the first time I heard about it. Thomas Hawk took the point of view that Jay Maisel's lawyers “extorted” $32,500 from Andy Baio and he could do it because Jay had deeper pockets and bigger lawyers than Andy's.
132 comments later:
- Most of the comments were in favor of Jay Maisel
- The comments became a discussion between a ½ dozen people
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 25. May 2011 - 23:00
I was at a small business seminar. You know the kind that tells us: here's step one, then step two… Follow the steps and you are guaranteed to succeed.
Step One: Start in the area that has a high concentration of potential clients and visit each business in the field you are targeting.
Present your business card, and introduce yourself to the receptionist. Don’t be put off by the “NO SOLICITING” signs or similar warnings to scare off the faint of heart.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 10. May 2011 - 21:38
Most people think that they are not being paid what they are worth. In the early 1990s, Robert Half, the employment agency, did a study in the workplace asking people how they rated their own work performance, then asked the employer the same question. The result was (from memory):
- 80%+ of the employees rated themselves as good and above
- 60% of the employees were rated as average by their employers
We have a disconnect here. There are 2 reasons why you are not getting paid what you’re worth:
- You don't know what you are worth, or
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 4. May 2011 - 17:58
Don't laugh, this happens to me regularly. At least twice a month.
- The husband is not allowed to select the photos.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 3. May 2011 - 20:06
Producing a foto-biz.com post is hard. It takes imagination, time and hard work. It takes me usually an hour to an hour and half every daily. It's tough:
- What to write about?
- What's the material? Research and verify.
- Write the post.
- Post the post.
- And finally publish the post.
I get ideas from everywhere, I have a text file that is 28,560 lines long of text and ideas with most of them half baked or not baked at all. I do follow a few websites. And that's where the pirates comes in.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 2. May 2011 - 10:14
As much as 10% of the people in North America as signed up with Groupon! 10%, that's 45 millions! So the question is should you sign up as a photographer with GroupOn and get thousands upon of thousands of customers. Groupon will work with you to design the Groupon offer for you to get between a thousand clients to two thousand clients. Wow! In addition, usually it’s over the space of 2 or 3 days.
Submitted by Syv Ritch on 1. May 2011 - 15:05
The competition is so fierce that art directors and editors receive daily emails, postcards, business cards by the hundreds. Art directors, editors… need to discover new photographers but they still have work to do. So the hundreds and hundreds of emails, cards… mostly end up in the spam folder, in the physical garbage, in the…
Some photographers manage to cut through the wall of indifference, the garbage… Casey Templeton did. He sent 300 promo pieces and at least 30 have replied! A 10+% is huge! It's a fantastic success.
