A Little Love Note About Outsourcing

Erica Schneider, of Acres of Hope Photography, has been outsourcing post-production work to PWD Labs for over a year and has no plans of going back to doing the work herself. As a successful wedding and portrait photographer, Erica knows that her time is better spent connecting with clients and running her business. Erica explains it best: In the midst of a busy 2010 wedding season, I found myself completely overwhelmed with editing jobs. Struggling to keep up with thousands of images a week, I began to loathe sorting and dreaded the editing even more. I was stressed, busy and unable to focus on the aspects of my business I wanted to focus on – primarily, customer service. I longed to have enough time in my day to send little email love notes to my clients the day after a shoot telling them how great they did, or a welcome-home-from-your-honeymoon love note. I wished I could hand-deliver prints to my clients instead of shipping them off in the mail. I wanted to pour more effort into styling my shoots and developing more personal relationships with my clients. That’s when I decided to look into outsourcing post-production. I “interviewed” four different companies that July. PWD met my simple, must-have criteria: the ability to create a custom editing profile and easy uploading of files. I don’t believe they were the cheapest or the most expensive option, so the deciding factor came in customer service. PWD “wowed” me from the start. They were extremely responsive, answering all of my questions via email and phone. Melissa, Jerry and the rest of the team welcomed me like I was their top priority. To this day, I’m still surprised to learn that I’m not their only client! Over the course of the year, I handed over more and more post-production in order to streamline my workflow: color-correction, black-and-white conversion, sharpening and finally retouching. At one point, I had a boudoir client that was interested in full-body retouching on her images. I had not ordered retouching from PWD before, so I emailed about pricing and details. The next day, I received a response from Jerry, CEO – on a Saturday! I was blown away. Little efforts like this (and there have been many more) have made a lasting impression on my mind. Nothing trumps excellent customer service. Oh yeah, and to finish my story, I got set up so I could deliver boudoir images that are always retouched, making my clients feel absolutely glamorous and amazing! PWD recently shared their news with me about partnering with Pictage. As a long-term Pictage member, what’s better than hearing that two companies I utilize on a daily basis are joining forces? I’ve always believed in working with the best, and now the best are working with each other. PWD has exceeded my expectations as a business partner time and time again. All in all, PWD is one of my favorite companies to work with. Ever. I am relieved to know that for as long as I am in business, PWD will be my post-production studio of choice. And the Pictage/PWD integration is going to be the best thing since sliced bread. Seriously, this is going to be awesome! Written by Erica Schneider Erica is a San Diego based Wedding, Lifestyle and Boudoir Photographer who loves capturing people in LOVE.  Erica is an active member of WPPI and PPA, and has been featured on popular wedding blogs such as Style Me Pretty, Green Wedding Shoes, Junebug Weddings, The Wedding Chicks, DIY Bride and The Knotty Bride. Learn more about Erica at Acres of Hope Photography.

PWD Customer, Emily Potts, Making Waves

Our wonderful client, Emily Potts, is making waves in the photography industry.  Just today she announced that she will be part of a free online learning experience for new photographers, and… Emily will also be teaching a Master Class at next year’s WPPI.  Go Emily!

Below is a description of the free online class put together by The Joy of Marketing.  Click on over to find out how you can learn from Emily and other great speakers, including Kevin Kubota and Lori Nordstrom (another PWD fan!).

Emily Potts of Moms With Cameras is excited to be offering FREE education through The Joy of Marketing! This course includes sixteen hours packed full of valuable information served up by Emily and fifteen other amazing photographers. Created for photographers who have been in business for five years or less, attendees will learn the A-Zs of photography plus how to market their businesses and sell their images! Go to http://thejoyofmarketing.com/a/1096 to register for the course for FREE! If you just can’t wait to get your learn on, you may order the course materials and get started right away . . . make sure to take advantage of the early-bird special before November 8th! I know you don’t want to miss this incredible opportunity!

Life in the Balance :: Let Go

Guest author Emily Potts runs her own photography business, heads the exceedingly popular Moms With Cameras blog, and still finds time to be “Mom.”  As a fan of PWD, Emily has honored us by extending to our readers the same kind of heartfelt advice and insight Moms With Cameras has become known for.

(Ok folks, you’re going to be able to tell I’m the mother of a small child, but here we go . . . )

Do you remember the moment in Finding Nemo when Dory tells Marlin, “It’s time to let go!” Poor, control-freak Marlin clings to that whale’s uvula and struggles to summon the emotional strength to take the risk and release his grip. Marlin and I have a lot in common.

The last time I chatted with you all, I asked you to circle items on your overpopulated to-do lists that you could delegate to others or simply discard. I also asked you to highlight the items you felt were extremely necessary that you and only you complete. The first time I ran through that exercise, the vast majority of my items were struck through in technicolor pink. I mean, surely my assistant can’t package orders; I need to check the images and make sure they’re all okay. And I can’t hire someone to clean my house; it will mean that I have failed in my role as a wife. And retouch my images? (Insert huge, appalled gasp <here>.) What if the lab screws them up? What if they don’t understand my artistic vision? Forget the fact that most of my retouching is blemish removal! What if they do it wrong?!

You know what? Upon pulling myself out of near-hysteria, I stopped pondering the depths of everyone else’s ineptitude. Instead I started to consider the possibility that maybe (just maybe) other people had some talent of their own. It could be possible that they may even be better than me at some things. For example, maybe (just maybe) an accountant may be better at tax preparation than I am. And that new cleaning service may plow through my house in half the time it usually takes me. And my lab may know how to color-correct and remove a zit. They might even be faster and better at it. Hmmmmmm . . . .

So my friends, I am going to thank you so much for reading this. I ask you to take one more challenge. Embrace your inner Dory. Let go. She sure seemed to be the one who had more fun.

Life in the Balance :: Evaluate

Guest author Emily Potts runs her own photography business, heads the exceedingly popular Moms With Cameras blog, and still finds time to be “Mom.”  As a fan of PWD, Emily has honored us by extending to our readers the same kind of heartfelt advice and insight Moms With Cameras has become known for.

My grandmother was recently in the hospital. During one of my mother’s visits to check on her, a nurse struck up a conversation. She and my mom chatted about all of the usual small-talk topics, including the welfare of their children. When she got to talking about me, my mother mentioned that I had been under quite a bit of stress in the past few months. Upon discovering my line of work, the nurse was shocked. “What does she have to be stressed about?” she asked. “All she has to do is point the camera and shoot!”

Ahhh if only it were that simple. That’s really what I would like to be doing . . . pointing and shooting . . . (A camera, folks!  I’m not that mad about the comment!)

That really is what I would like to be doing, though. I would love to devote the majority of my time photographing people. It is the part of my business that I love, that energizes me, that stokes my creative fires. In my personal life, I’d like to be reading books to my son, working in my garden, cooking meals for my family and taking dance classes. At this point, I’d love to be doing anything in my personal life on a regular basis! But lately, I haven’t been. I have been hacking away at the to-do list I mentioned in my last post.  In doing so, I have come to the realization that I have only 24 hours in the day. And I’m human. (I would so love to be Superwoman, but the sheer fact of the matter is I’m not.)

What does this mean for me? That I have to get help. I have to admit I can’t do it all on my own and that trying to only makes me a tired (and sooooooo cranky) wife and mother, and that it’s probably prematurely aging me.

For this challenge, I am going to ask all of you to pull out the lists you made last time. Take a highlighter and highlight those things that YOU absolutely, positively MUST do yourself or your business/home will crater in on itself. For me, this includes things like photographing sessions, conducting sales appointments and running the family schedule. Those are the things you have to keep doing. (It should comprise maybe a third of your list or so. If your whole page is neon yellow, you need to try again!) Now I would like you to look at the list and determine what things you know you can unload on someone else, or simply stop doing. In my world, these are things like retouching, packaging orders and scrubbing baseboards. Circle those things. Now, I am going to ask you to find someone else to do these things or make the decision that these things (like baseboards) simply don’t belong on your overcrowded task list any longer.

When Is Photography Illegal?

On March 1st, Florida Senator Jim Norman proposed a law that would make it a first degree felony to take a picture of a farm, any picture of any kind from any location even if it’s a public one. This news item got me thinking: when is it illegal to take pictures of something or someone?  I realized I didn’t know.

Once, I stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina. I was on a road trip with my friend and was, of course, taking pictures of everything. While my friend filled the car up with gas, I went into the gas station and was looking around. I took one picture of a huge display of twinkies or something, and almost immediately the lady who was working there went bananas on me.

She wanted to know why I was taking pictures, and didn’t I know it was prohibited here, and you don’t just go around taking pictures of people’s stores, on and on. . . . She wouldn’t let it go and was getting more and more upset, and honestly it got a bit scary. I got out of there as fast as I could.

I survived.  Hopefully, the lady got over it and it didn’t ruin her day.

In my situation, I didn’t even know if it was illegal for me to take pictures inside that convenience store.  If I’d known it was, I wouldn’t have done it.  I was thinking about all of this yesterday and called my friend Carolyn Wright, a fantastic photographer and an attorney who specializes in photography related matters and runs the amazingly informative website PhotoAttorney.com.  Carolyn says, “there’s a difference between the legality of taking a photo and using a photo:  it may be legal to take a photo but illegal to use it, especially commercially.”

It’s our responsibility as photographers to know the local laws regarding photography.   The laws do vary from state to state, and the laws aren’t always black and white.  I definitely recommend learning as much as you can about when it’s legal to take pictures and when it’s not.  There can be a lot to learn, but knowing the laws will take the uncertainty out of things, as well as free you up to focus on making great images.

There’s another issue here too.  People might feel weirded out by having a stranger take their picture–whether it’s legal or not.  That’s understandable, right?  Talk to them and make a connection.   Show them you’re a nice person and that you’re interested in them and in telling their story and celebrating what’s unique about them.  Showing someone you value them and what they’re all about will go a long way in creating a good photographer-subject relationship.

Good luck out there.  Happy shooting!

–Josh Lamkin, PWD Editor

Life in the Balance :: List

Guest author Emily Potts runs her own photography business, heads the exceedingly popular Moms With Cameras blog, and still finds time to be “Mom.”  As a fan of PWD, Emily has honored us by extending to our readers the same kind of heartfelt advice and insight Moms With Cameras has become known for.

 

I sometimes feel as if my work & personal to-do lists are a pair of opposite-sexed rabbits. Every time I look at them, it seems the tasks have multiplied exponentially. Other working parents tell me this is just what life looks like in this stage, but sometimes I feel my task list will never stop the out-of-control breeding.

Do any of you feel this way? My guess is yes. I recently returned from WPPI and a recurring theme in many speakers’ programs was the desperate quest for balance. I think those of us who own their own businesses are mostly in the same boat, aren’t we? We are all struggling to juggle the seemingly endless tasks that accompany running studios and we feel that our lives are consumed by an unending list of to-dos.

I was so honored when I was asked to write for all of you reading this. When I decided to write specifically about working towards a life in the balance, I knew I wanted to make this a series of posts as opposed to one longer article. At the end of each installment, I am going to ask all of you to take a challenge, and hopefully, each challenge will lead you a little closer to equilibrium. I do not expect this series to be a panacea for the daily to-dos brought on by small-business ownership. I do hope for it to offer a little clarity for what you need and want to do for your business and what you can relenquish so you can do what you need and want to do in your personal life. I hope it helps you take steps towards having the life you really want instead of watching it speed by in a frenzy of busy, but dispassioned activity.

For this challenge, I am merely asking all of you to make two (probably very large) lists: one of everything you routinely or frequently have to do for your business and another for all of the tasks you need to do for your home-life. And that’s all for this time . . . I know you’ve got other things to do.

PWD Labs Interview on KEH Blog

PWD owner and CEO Jerry Weiner was recently interviewed by Patrick Douglas at KEH.  Read Jerry’s thoughts on business, the printing industry and more over at the KEH Blog.

The WPPI Memoirs – The Trade Show

While we intended to write more about our time at WPPI, we quickly learned that a daily summary was much too ambitious.  Below, Melissa finds the time to wrap-up a wonderful and crazy trip.

 

Melissa Bugg – PWD Managing Editor:

Monday morning.  Day 1 of the trade show.  I ate a good breakfast and got my caffeine fix and made my way to the ballroom.  I was ready for what was to come.  Or so I thought.  The next two days were a complete blur.  I think I met some people, maybe even talked to a few of them, I don’t remember.  I’m pretty sure I blacked out.

The next thing I know is it’s Wednesday morning.  I had a dream the previous night that PWD took part in the Indy 500.  We were the pit crew.  The only pit crew.  For every single car.  And somehow, we made it through without causing anyone to lose their place in the race.  And then I realized it wasn’t a dream.  We had just been through our first trade show at WPPI.  And we triumphed.

In the days we spent in Vegas, we met some of our current clients as well as many new ones.  We learned a lot, saw a lot, and slept a little.  An immense thank you to all of those who make WPPI happen  – we appreciate you so much.  Thank you to all of you who came to see us at our booth and made sure we were properly hydrated.  We’re very much looking forward to working with you and we’re excited about what the coming year will bring!