I often compare our portrait studio business to farming. Traditionally we plant seeds in the spring with our marketing and promotions for summer and fall. We “harvest” through Christmas. After that, the doldrums of winter set in, right?
Even though our cash flow is significantly less during January and February, we have found that successfully “selling” to our customers at every opportunity is like “planting” seeds year round. The payoff is in the harvest of rewarding cash flow through the slower spring months. During each contact with our senior clients and parents — the session, preview presentation, sales meeting and order pickup – we inform them that prices are effective for reorders throughout the school year. We also invite them to choose a pose for their portrait announcement and when the open house is planned they can simply call to order as many as they need.
At Chris Lommel Photography, we don't hard sell our customers on large prints and large quantities. We inform, suggest and show products at every opportunity. We want them to feel comfortable with their purchase and look forward to becoming a repeat customer. Like most studios, we display large portraits throughout the entry, sales room, camera room and dressing rooms. But we also show small prints, multiple image mats, folios and frames, including boxes of stock frames to communicate that we sell them and they are not just set up to display our photography. During sessions in the camera room I am tuned in to conversation and questions from parents that indicate an interest in what they want to purchase from their son or daughter's session. I can suggest unique ways to fulfill their needs. A casual comment from a parent about their need to do a new family portrait “some day” leads into my offer of a free family session they can do anytime before mid June. We are finding an ever growing popularity with outdoor portraits. These sessions offer opportunities for candid and relationship photography, leading to multiple image and larger orders. New technology allows us to serve our customers in more ways than ever.
My new found freedom is in the digital camera equipment (Canon 1Ds, 1D Mark II and 20 D cameras) I have used exclusively since the fall of 2003. I blew the dust off of my photojournalist's cap and now enjoy the freedom and portability I had when shooting 35mm cameras for newspaper work. The quick response and ease of use with these new cameras allows me to concentrate on capturing storytelling moments, true expressions and unique compositions whether I'm photographing high school seniors, children or families. Moving from medium format film to the 35mm format for portraits was an adjustment. But with time and experience I found the camera can and should become an intuitive extension of the photographer. It allows uninhibited and direct connections with the people I am photographing. Regardless of the type of subject I am working with, I find the most important element of the session is the "experience." If people are having fun and enjoying the session, they will look better in their portraits. Free-flowing, no stress sessions also allow flexibility for unplanned and unanticipated moments. The result: Portraits that communicate personalities, relationships and emotions.
Making people comfortable with us and our work starts with the first phone call from prospective clients. We work hard to "stay positive," in all of our dealings with customers throughout the final delivery of their order. It seems like a common sense statement, but is important enough to share again. We learned the hard way when a customer from more than 30 miles away shared a valuable lesson with us. She felt great about her's and her daughter's experience at the session. She loved her previews and couldn't wait to order.
We were understaffed during her order so the meeting seemed rushed. When she picked up the finished portraits, we were busy and didn't take the time to go through them with her. It seemed all of our work to create the positive relationship and a satisfied customer was for nothing because her last contact with us was a let down. She shared this with us causing us to pause and reflect on how we deal with customers each time we make a connection. We rely heavily on referrals, a cost effective way to grow any business.
Seniors and Parents Love the Outdoors
Regardless of how many appealing images we make in the studio, casual outdoor portraits continue to grow in their appeal to high school seniors and their parents. We anticipated this six years ago when we worked with a landscaping company to design and install a large pond, creek bed and multiple waterfalls along our south side tree line. The water feature provides the focus of our portrait park. Full sun in the morning and mid day provides the sparkle for dynamic images. North light in the afternoon and evening is perfect for softer portraits of any type. The search for ideas to build new settings on our 2.5 acre site is an ongoing process.
I expect it will never be “finished,” but continue as an evolutionary natural environment that gets a little prodding and care from the hands of our gardeners (my mother, family and me).
Outdoor settings offer unlimited opportunities for casual and creative portraiture. As a photographer, I enjoy the times when senior customers are seeking something “unique” in their portraits. We can break out of the box and let the creative juices flow. However, we find customer choices of our indoor and outdoor work confirms the continuing demand for straightforward high quality attention-to-detail portrait work. Getting customers to buy new ideas in imaging is a process that required us to show them what could be done. Instead of 4x5 proofs we use a “preview album.” It's a booklet displaying their session four images to a page. We use John Hartman's Quickproofs action set in Photoshop to build pages that include our studio logo, phone number, the circle “C” over each image and options to order prints in four different styles: color, sepia, black and white or selectively colorized. We select images to preview in these various styles and on speculation create a colorized image or composite. Now that customers “see” what they will look like in black and white or with an article of clothing colored, they buy it.
We offered this service for several years but rarely sold it until customers could see the colorization or composite design I created just for them. The additional charges for this colorization or composite work is listed in the preview book under the image and added to the print charge if they order it.
In addition to their images, our preview albums contain a letter of explanation, a sales brochure picturing many products they can buy and a CD containing two computer files. One is a Pictures to Exe created presentation of their images set to royalty-free music.
The other file contains those same images in a format the customer can control on their PC. Image numbers appear with the images on their monitor and match those in their preview album. We encourage using the preview album as a “workbook” in choosing favorite poses. The package becomes an effective sales tool and often decreases the time spent in the sales meeting, which occurs about four weeks from their session.
An important part of the sales session includes discussion and selection of a pose to use on the senior graduation announcement. These are ordered with a simple phone call in the spring. When it comes to copyright release requests we do our best to balance between the need to satisfy our customers and the need to protect our business interests. A release is not granted for any type of product that we can produce. We do allow portrait use on cakes.
Our reasons for maintaining control over how our portraits are reproduced is clearly stated in marketing and sales materials available to all prospective and current customers.
Chris Lommel
Chris started working in photojournalism as a Monticello High School student. After earning a degree in journalism, he continued to work for weekly newspapers in Monticello and Elk River. More than 20 years he ago began photographing weddings and making portraits. Since 1991 he and his wife Kim have operated Chris Lommel Photography as a home-based portrait studio serving high school seniors, families and children. Says Chris: “Our dream is being realized as I photograph in our portrait park settings which include a white porch, weathered building, custom cedar gazebo and large waterfall, creek and pond areas. For us photography is more than just a business. It's a way of life and I love it.”
In 2004 Chris' portrait titled “Passion for Dance” was named top entry of all Minnesota prints submitted for competition at the Northern Light Regional Convention. That same year he was recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists. Chris' first-place newspaper photojournalism feature depicted personally-made images of his treatment for bone marrow cancer.