Holiday Greeting Cards only 75¢

Holiday Greeting Cards only 75¢ with your customers family picture and verse. Friends and family always treasure Holiday Greeting and even more when they see your clients latest family portrait. Photo cards are kept and valued for many years. These are the larger 5×7 folded style cards. Make a little extra profit this season, contact Pechman Imaging to order our money saving picture cards today.

High School Senior Albums The New Money Maker

Your exquisite family and senior portrait photography deserves a leather photo album of its own to sell as a collection! Photo collection albums are soon to be a main stream product. When these albums are presented to todays senior and family portrait customers they are being snapped up very quickly. Start by offering your portrait customer a five(5) page leather bound book as a collection of the best images from their session in a bound series of 8×16 or 10×20 panorama prints. This is something totally new and will encourage via word of mouth customers to come to your photography studio.

Leather Senior and Family Photo Albums are a classic product to be offered to your customers where you can actually make a profit without having to contend with low end photographers trying to muscle in on your studio photography business. To learn more about these family albums or other professional photo printing products contact Pechman Imaging Customer Service.

Proof Books, Grow High School Senior Portraits

Proof books and photo albums will grow your senior portrait photography sessions. During the past few years the high school senior portrait business has been changing again. This time some senior photographers have decided that the way to deal with copyright issues and hundreds of photo proofs is to use some kind of web site or cheap copy machine proof for selling. Several of these studios, much like the photographers from the 80’s who refused to deliver finished quality paper proofs in 8 pose leather folios, are now fighting to remain in business. Other savvy senior portrait photographers have taken the opposite approach, they are going for a super upscale presentation. Large proof books and photo albums full of Kodak Endura Professional photographic paper collage prints. Many of the poses even have photo retouching. Kodak Metallic photo paper dust jacket covers are also being used to enhance the senior portrait proof book. These upscale books don’t come cheap but customers with money and the desire to have the best are calling these photographers for appointments. Just as the 8 pose leather folio made a big hit with top quality and lots of choices in the 80’s, today’s, multi image, photo retouched, proof books with 10 or more 10×10 digital prints and 50-100 images are making the big splash and putting profits in the hands of high school senior portrait photographers.

Free Photo Hosting Website Launches

Pechman Imaging has launched a new Free Photo Hosting Website. No gimmicks, just FREE!

Professional Photographers, get to increase their profits and the lab makes more prints. It is that simple. While other services assess and keep 10% to 20% of the photographers web online retail sales, Pechman assess $00.00 in fees, nothing, zero dollars. And each image is posted FREE!

Studio profits are only limited by the number of images posted on Pechman’s Web Hosting Service. Post Weddings, Sports Events, Undergrads, Dance and even Portraiture on line at the price(s) you set up.

Photographers have complete control. Only they release the appropriate files to be printed. This means that the photographer can retouch or complete artwork on images prior to submitting hosted print orders to the Lab.

Start collecting profits now!  Click to learn more about our FREE Photo PostingService or contact the  Pechman team for a personal demo.

Now, you have the means to maximize your profits from every session and event you photograph. You make the profit, Pechman Photo Labs make the prints. Truly, a win-win relationship.

 

Flood Of Weddings Coming

Expect weddings to increase by 30% through 2018 says a leading insurance research firm. Retail custom jewelry stores are planning ahead as Generation Y begins to say, “I do” in huge numbers. Average age for brides is 27 which coincides with the first wave of Gen Yers and represents a boon for both photographers and jewelers. But there is a catch. How will those Gen Y brides make their purchases? Fact: Gen Y grew up with a mouse in their hand not the TV remote. Because of the internet, they have become very “brand-oriented” and comfortable shopping on the internet. Armed with plastic money and by the click of a mouse Gen Yers have great purchasing power right at their finger tips. Wedding photographers take note. When an engagement ring is purchased, the event planning process begins including the selection of a professional photographer. Niching pros can make that selection process very easy for the bride. Surprisingly, very few photographers take advantage of a networking process that could include their local custom jewelry stores. Meaning a direct internet, network path via a data link between your studio and cooperating jewelry stores. The sales promotion: every bride that purchases a ring receives a complementary portrait session and professional photo print which provides an opportunity to book their wedding event. And that their engagement pictures could be incorporated into their leather wedding photo albums. On your web site and that of the jewelry stores, the entire promotion is easily accessed by a click of a mouse. To begin with you could provide the jewelry stores with current gallery prints for their web sites. Why is networking with jewelry stores so important? Gleam over the data below to find out why. ~U.S. “fine” jewelry sales (high priced gems) are now $45 billion (plus) each year. ~On line jewelry sales are expected to grow to $8 billion in 2008. ~Households with incomes over $75,000 are more likely to purchase “fine” jewelry. ~69% of people who visit jewelry sites are WOMEN. ~72% of 18-34 year old are online users. ~For Valentine’s Day, 32% made purchases on line. ~U.S. marriage rate: 6 per 1,000 pop., female median age-25.1, with males at 26.6.

Increasingly, the future competitive battle ground will take place on the internet, not the hard copy yellow pages. Note: a ring purchase is key to your studio’s future success. Simply connect the “dots.” Ring purchase……..engagement pictures……..booking the wedding……..sale of on line pictures of the event……..future booking of bride’s maids and contacts made at each wedding event…….eventual family portraits………anniversary portraits and seniors. Fact: by networking with local jewelry stores, a single ring purchase could lead to $ thousands $ in future revenue for a wedding photographer and jewelry stores too. Your important selling point to jewelry stores is the fact that hundreds of high school seniors visit your web site and will see the link back to their jewelry store. Obviously, mom’s will see the link too. Serious wedding and portrait photographers should fully explore this great profit potential opportunity. Another lost photographic opportunity (connected to jewelry stores) are anniversaries. ~56 million married couples in the U.S. ~3.4 million spent $1,200 (last year) on a variety of diamond jewelry equating to $40 billion. ~Equates to a potential of 112 photo sessions per studio amongst 30,000 yellow page studios.

Given most photographers are reluctant to network with local retailers provides a lucrative opportunity for those that do, especially when marketing to Gen Y who are experienced internet shoppers. How to proceed. Make contact with several custom jewelry stores with your proposal. You will need to show them samples of your work which should be on your web site. Your offer must be relevant to their needs, not yours. Emphasize that engaged couples do need a photo for the newspaper. And you will provide that free (no sitting fees, etc.) Most newspapers want a file not a hard copy glossy. You will have no cost except for your time. You may have to provide your retailers with a small flyer (brochure) that you can easily make in your studio explaining your offer to the engaged or anniversary couple. Jewelers should use your offer as a “closer” that saves the couple money on session fees, etc. Consumers appreciate “value.” When the couple calls or emails your studio for an appointment is the time to talk about setting up an appointment to actually book the wedding. Do not wait after you complete the free engagement picture because that might be too late. If you book the wedding beforehand, some of the engagement images could be part of the final album. (Emphasize this factor as a selling point because your competition might not offer engagement sessions for FREE or at all.) Of course, the couple can order finished prints right then from a discounted price list. Same applies to anniversary couples too. ALWAYS keep in mind the concept of VALUE. And do not forget your participating jewelers with annual, free portraits of their families. Network: work hard at having local retailers place a link to your studio on their web site and you do the same for them. A high hit rate on your site will turn into high revenues. Always keep in mind that Gen Y will only increase their internet spending.

 

Photo Buttons Add Profits To Any Assignment

Photo buttons have a wide variety of uses, and many of them revolve around parents ordering them with pictures of their kids. If you have been to one high school sporting event in your life, there is no doubt you have seen exuberant parents proudly displaying their sons and daughters with a photo button. They make great gifts, promotional items, and party favors for all occasions; fundraising, birthday, wedding, anniversary, sales and product promotion, political campaigns. They just keep ringing up the profits for your studio.

Professional photo buttons are the larger 3-1/2 size that is more popular because they use a much larger professional photo printing area. This allows you to put the student athlete’s picture on the button and include some text. The larger size lets everyone recognize the student from a greater distance.

If your studio customers are looking to publicize a business, promote a campaign, have a cause to popularize, fund-raise for a cause they believe in, or show support for a person, band, or team, photo buttons are a terrific solution.

Your photography will become lasting mementos in the form of 3.5″ photo picture buttons.

 

Fun Sells Portraits

Hollywood and amusement parks share a common marketing proverb — fun and excitement sells! Hollywood has made outstanding use of digital applications to cinematography, especially when applied to science fiction films generating $billions$ in revenue. With current movie goers it is rare for a vintage science fiction movie to stand up to today’s digital special effects. Even with digital cameras and an abundance of software, there are still far too many professional portrait studios preoccupied with business as usual while adhering to an old and outdated dogma. All professional studios need to be in a creative mode with an abundance of new digital photographic products that promotes renewed excitement for portraiture in the 21st century. Photographers entering the pro-market are busily re-inventing portraiture to gain a foothold with the wave of savvy and technologically empowered consumers, that is, brides and high school seniors. Software has opened the door to the creative mind; those with the talent and willingness to explore and innovate will excel. Mastery of Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter software just might make the difference for success or even survival in the portrait market. Hopefully, most studios will leave the ‘dull and boring’ world of being a clone of their competition to evolve into an exciting and fun retail enterprise –– where the consumer easily relates to the photographer’s creative initiative and energy.

Where to begin? May I suggest the following as a basic in-studio exercise to please the visual palette and explore the artistic possibilities. Using your Photoshop program, open an image, go to filters and experiment with each filter, using the adjustments and sliders provided for most filters find what looks best to you. Critique what you see, likes and dislikes.

Filters to try:  Artistic – color pencil through watercolor; Brush Strokes – accented edge through sumi-e; Texture – craquelure through texturizer.

When combined with use of Photoshop’s tool box the possibilities become endless. This simple exercise will enable a photographer to create works of art that will hang on the wall as a large portrait versus that of a generic 8×10 tucked away in some album to be forgotten or worse yet a screen saver or cell phone picture.

I recommend keeping a notebook handy so that you can record your filter combinations. Most of all have fun with the process! Survey your customers on their likes and dislikes. At some point you may want to consider doing some professional photo printing samples. Make portraiture fun again for both you and your customers. For those photographers who cannot spare the time to learn the ‘nuts and bolts’ of Adobe Photoshop or Corel Painter, a professional photo lab can take your ideas from conception to a final product just for you​.

 

Chain Reaction Marketing – Add Senior Photo Sessions

Let’s face it, most professional portrait photographers are fighting to book high school senior portrait clients. Sales revenue may be holding even with last year but sessions are still down from previous years. What is needed is a spark – a catalyst to set off a chain reaction of bookings. A catalyst can be any marketing tactic that will attract attention resulting in a call to action – in a studio’s case a desire to be photographed.

A simple very effective tactic is One gets Two and works well with high school senior portraits. The One gets Two tactic has many variations. Perhaps you can think of more. The basic tactic is to offer something of value that would encourage a senior to help book another, usually a classmate who is a close friend. Your “value offer” must be something that is desired and will induce motivation. One concept used by some photography studios is the Friendship Collage where about six images are arranged in an 8×10 digital photo prints collage, which is given free to both high school seniors after portrait packages are purchased. Friendship forever is the motivating factor whereby the collage print will be treasured for a lifetime. Marketing the Friendship Collage has many variations too. Seniors who have already been photographed can be contacted again and informed about the free offer. They will then start contacting their friends to get someone to book an appointment so that they can both get the Free Collage. You can photograph the Friendship poses during this new second session. For those studios that cannot bear to offer anything free they can offer the collage print at a discount. Advantages of the 8×10 photo prints size are that four to six images can be depicted for minimal cost and photo retouching will not be required because of the smaller head sizes. Image sizes could be a 4×5 mixed with several 2×3′s.

Another variation of the One gets Two tactic is the Two Photo Sessions for the Price of One. Here we are talking about session fees only. This works well with twins and friends. These would be photographed back to back with friendship poses sandwiched in the middle. For most senior girls this type of session can be very fun.

I do not recommend giving away professional photo printing products that represent your bread and butter sale. Ordinarily, an 8×10 collage print for a senior is not considered as bread and butter.

The One gets Two tactic is really a referral, word of mouth program in disguise. Each sitting told about the Friendship Collage now has the potential of doubling a studio’s sitting count.

Your comments or suggestions for other Chain Reaction Marketing techniques or professional portrait studio business ideas are welcome.

Photographers Meet The Needs Of The Modern Consumer

What are professional photographers actually doing to meet the needs of the modern, younger consumer. Communication is a key strategy. Younger consumers eagerly seek out niches because the Internet simplifies this task for both them and the niche business. Value and newness of product are keys to niche creation. Strikingly, the automobile industry has taken this strategy to heart as evidenced by over 30 new models being introduced in a span of a few years. Simply stated, today consumers of professional photography are expecting something different. They will search until they find it, most probably by using the Internet.

1. The innovative, portrait photographer is constantly developing and implementing their positioning strategy as to how they are being perceived by consumers. Their studio’s image becomes the focal point based on a. products offered, b. pricing strategy and c. promotional strategy.

What is key is the willingness to experiment and quickly refine or change products, pricing and promotional strategy based on consumer feedback. Differences in brides’ and seniors’ expectations from one year to the next are immediately capitalized upon. Most new photographers are very enthusiastic and are willing to niche market.

2. New photographers have studied their traditional competitors with the conclusion that the ‘traditional style’ will continue to be in less demand by portrait active consumers.  As a result the traditional market will continue to shrink. They see the traditional photographer having the following problems:

a. slowness in adopting the best merits of new technology, b. eschewing the full spectrum of software in general and c. being too eager to tell the consumer what they need rather than ask what they want.

3. The new photographer is not bashful in showcasing their digital artistic talents and abilities to customize any product to please the consumer.  Album designs are totally unique with no two brides receiving the same layout. Similarly, senior proof books for purchase are also unique. Quality products are offered at all price levels. Selling up is easy given that consumers eagerly recognize the merits of digital artistry and the photographer’s willingness to customize the product just for them.

The new photographer is not intimidated by traditional photography. They are eager to create niche products and use the power of the Internet to attract consumers and grow market share by using their digital talents both with camera and software. There is recognition that the portrait market is calling for ‘bolder choices’ with variety that adds spice to the consumer’s photographic experience. Traditionalists need to take notice!

Tidal Wave Of New Talent Enters Professional Photography

A tidal wave of “new talent” has recently deluged the professional photography market. While some photographers have taken a different marketing path using new ideas and strategies, others have opted to follow in the footsteps of their traditional competitors. Significant is that digital software is paving the way to seriously modify established and sacred, traditional photographic philosophies for both the portrait studio and professional photo lab.

In the past, professional photographers had only to ‘repackage’ the wants, needs and desires of consumers from one generation to the next. Until recently, one had to only look back in time over the past 40 years to observe that very little has changed in regards to wedding photo albums, wall frames and even most poses. The new photographer, by communicating effectively with the modern consumer, has encouraged serious questioning of traditional values maintained by studios locked into the past. Most young consumers, whether high school seniors or brides, want change: they want the benefits of modern, digital technology. Success in the future will depend on how well photographers address elements of change in consumer wants, needs and desires in their market place.

Many will argue that a portrait or a candid is still a portrait or candid, being relatively unchanged by time. But the new techie photographer will argue that by merging software technology with digital photography and professional photo printing, the definition of what a portrait or candid can be has changed. As an analogy, the horse and carriage evolved into a simple ‘horseless’ carriage before evolving into an enclosed chassis on wheels. And, the automobile is still evolving.  Will digital photography evolve in a similar manner as new technologies emerge? And, to the detriment of the professional, will technology continue to reduce professional photography to a consumer ‘do-it-yourself-project?’ The amateur sees photographic technology in a simplified manner: “I have a 12 mega pixel camera and so do most of the pros,  I can make ink prints like some of the pros do and I have Photoshop like the pros do, so why do I need the services of a pro?” Sadly, professional photography is on this slippery slope and far too many professional photographers are not fighting back or do not know how.

Just perhaps techie photographers, both old and new, will create products and styles of photography that will widen the gap between the pro and the amateur. Let’s hope so. What the professional industry needs are portrait products that only they can successfully provide that satisfies consumers’ wants, needs and desires.