Creating videos that work for your brand or business.

When we are discussing new video projects with clients, we like to take a little time to understand the story so far and also their new journey. So our conversations are to understand exactly how we can add to that DNA creatively.


Personal Training and Testimonials

In advance, we build an asset list to shoot and keep in mind the visual messages we would like to deliver, shooting we approach in a natural and unscripted way.

In the top film, we filmed two clients working with Fitness Coach Ste at the Hollinwood Muscle and Fitness Gym and then sat with them afterward and let them tell us in their own words in one take about their experience and thoughts, as an insight to others.


Feature Promo Film

We used some common assets in both films, intro, end sequence, and a few clips.

Canon Professional Network Website Resource

I don't shoot wildlife but if I did would want to make images like this, real.

Many of the Canon shooters I meet through my workshops are not aware of the CPN website, well they are missing out on something.

Here is the link http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/index.do

On the site are a heap of interesting and current posts from great photographers out there showcasing their amazing work.

Everything is covered from Fashion to Motorsport with a lot of useful information on how to use your camera gear to make the best images.

Really worth a visit.

Photography Business Whats your budget.

The first thing your probably going to need to establish coming into the Photography Business is your budget.

The amount of funding required to get going, don't think of just photography equipment. You will need a budget for training, travel, website the list will be quite substantial.
Get used to this kind of thinking because it's important to establish your start up and working budget and also the client budgets as you branch out commercially.

Draft up a first year projection P & L and Balance sheet.
Its easy to incur costs and even easier to under price jobs which will reduce your margin. It will be important to perform financially covering all costs now and in the future plus make a living.

Understand the different elements involved in pricing jobs and the value of your work when completed, don't be a busy fool.

If you have never costed your work maybe you should log the time and resources involved, often jobs at the lower end up eating up more resources than you think.

Plan to be successful.

Starting Your Photography Business

So you may be thinking of starting your photography business, be sure you understand what is involved in starting a business.

It’s important to have in place a business plan, an understanding of sales and marketing, financial budget and know who is your competition. 

There is a lot more like break even point, cash flow etc. Get the basics covered to be sure of a good start.

My biggest piece of advice to anyone new in the business is to take a small business class, get some kind of sales training.. It doesn’t matter how great your photographs are or how good your equipment is if you can’t sell your work.

 

With a solid plan in place you will likely have less stress and more time and energy to focus on your photography rather than fire fighting, making your output better and be more creative.

Get organised, be fearless, push out there.

Make The Space Work with Dynamic Content

Make the available web space work, whether with you do this video or animated frames, engage the viewer the best you can.

Original images by Rad Hourani for Exit Magazine, as featured at models.com

Alan Bailey Writer, Actor and model.

Photographed Alan Bailey a few weeks ago, a hugely talented guy who is a writer, actor and model.

He has written and acted in his feature film The 9th the movie trailer is below.

The 9th Official Trailer from The Film Mill on Vimeo.

His film project sounded amazing. The 9th will make it's debut at one of the big film festivals this year, my feeling it will be a huge success so watch out for him and the film.

Here are a few of the shots we took when we met.

Focus on Imaging 3 - 6 MARCH 2013.

Catch me at Focus on Imaging 2013 NEC BIRMINGHAM 3 - 6 MARCH.

FOCUS ON IMAGING is Europe's biggest annual imaging show, covering all your needs from image capture through to output and beyond. Whether you are a professional image maker or processor, a buyer of image making equipment or materials, a manufacturer or distributor of products or a keen hobbyist, a visit to FOCUS ON IMAGING is a must. 

I will be going along to FOCUS with the great people of Calumet

Blogging - When the stats sore.

I have been blogging for a few years now and it never ceases to surprise me how popular certain posts are.

Month after month they draw consistent viewers, however from time to time due to the subject being in the news or a feature in the press the hits shoot up.

The last few days has seen such a spike with one model I shot a number of time over the last few years.

A Google search quickly reveals what is going on in their lives, always interesting from my perspective.

So...Blogging Tip of the day
The key to making your web content search engine friendly and to maximise your drawing potential is to make sure you enter a relevant title in the H1 field, titling images.

Keep the title relevant

Happy blogging.

Photography Business - Making it pay.

One question that gets asked a lot about the Photography Business is How to make it pay.

For the occasional shooter being honest it is unlikely you will be able to make anything out of photography. Coming into it to make money from the get go is going to leave you disappointed.

My first P & L reflects my lack of success, when I got to a certain point I knew tht this was no sprint, more of an iron man event.

Whether you intend to be a full time pro or a serious amateur one thing to keep in mind is to have fun, embrace your mistakes.

Music V The photography Business.

Both the Music and The Photography Business face challenges, at the same time there is real opportunity.

These two industry's have seen massive growth then faced in different ways uncertain futures.

The opportunity for photographers is to embrace new areas of work and market new skill sets.

Video is one such opportunity that in part is popular by sites like YouTube so the amount of people looking for dynamic content is ever increasing. Some photographers who wish to stay at the front are embracing it.

Creativity and price is key.

Some photographers have held back from venturing into this media however established photographers are increasing including this as part of the services they offer.

One thing is for sure, times are changing, so accept, embrace this roller coaster.

Lightroom for photographers

Lightroom for photographers, well firstly it's important for me to say I am not a user now or ever have been.

Why, I prefer to work on my images from a clean file, bottom up.

When shooting I choose the profile and match custom settings on the job to achieve a look similar to what the client is after, this is saved in camera.

Back at base the RAW is then worked towards the look we signed off in the shoot.

So Lightroom, well it simply has no place for me, it's my choice I am happy to work between Bridge, Camera RAW and the latest version of Photoshop.

Bish bash bosh.

Explaining your costs to the client.

For those who feel they need to explain your costs to the client, tell them how long it take in post production to get to the finish product, maybe this is time best spent doing something else.

Savvy clients already know the time involved to shoot and edit a basic video, retouch a beauty shot or retouch 12 high res files.

So instead spend your time looking for the clients that will suit the quality of your work.

More sophisticated clients, appreciate excellent photography. They understand licensing. The are more likely to appreciate YOU.

Shoot it, retouch it, wetransfer it.

Shoot it, retouch it, wetransfer it.

Wetransfer was introduced to me by one the agency's I shoot for, with a 2GB transfer limit you can send individual and multiple files uploaded to the wetransfer server through your browser.

You get an email confirming the upload was successful and another when those file/s have been downloaded.

Having used this service for a while, which is FREE, thought to pass it on.

Give it a try.. www.wetransfer.com

Website update & whats new at jasonharry.com

With the dismal summer gone, winter settling in it was time for some new content, the website front page and blog have fresh imagery with more images and video content to be uploaded soon.

More frequent video posts from me will be coming this way, next up a brief video showing the equipment I use with my basic DSLR video setup, I have found there is real benefit to both sides of my photography and video work using the Calumet monitor.

The Calumet monitor featured a week or two back is really good for preview or play back, am finding it great for checking the details and critical focus, a sound investment.

NEW Photographers, where do you start.

A few days ago I blogged about meet 40 new photographers from one of Manchester's Uni's.

Below were my key points, notes made in my phone before we met. On the day day we discussed more but in advance my first thoughts were as follows

Be a business from day 1
Get into the camera, know it inside out, master it
Follow international talent, trends that are in and coming
Get to print
Get your website up, .co.uk .com, get a blog, link facebook Linkedin
Get a following
Get a proper email address
Get a part time job
Master working on low light
Don't be a geek
Work with good in THE places
Aim for the top three, others will come
Your work should have a feel, don't copy styles, but copy the best 8:)
Train you eye to good taste
Allow five years
Develop yourself like a fashion brand, be consistent, consistently good
What's your rate/ fee whats your added value?
What sort of photographer do you want to be, whats the market?
Do what you do, make time for visual pushups

Well that was most of my thoughts before we met, not in any kind of order of importance.

Have a plan, be knowledgeable and good push push push

Add or take from this what you want, good luck.

Today I met 40 of Manchester's newest photographers

Today I met with 40 of Manchester's newest photographers, all year one Degree students. We talked about "the business."

Statistically only 0.5% will continue long term into a professional career, only 1 in 200 is a low success rate, so being honest with what's in front of them was order of the day.

My advise was to be a business from day one, don't get to year three and start looking for work, be active and put in a lot of hours both in study and in the business. 

Being a photographer now is not what is was 30, 20 or even ten years ago. Joe McNally told me when he started his job title was photographer but more recently he is a freelance image provider, now with video being more linked to our task list image technician is a title being banded about.

The students we all keen and I hope our conversation will help them be very driven between now and year three... hopefully they can buck the trend and make their dream a reality.

Joe McNally website http://www.joemcnally.com

Good luck to all of them.

Wedding Photography.

Wedding photography if you haven't covered one already is a great occasion.

Katy and Matt are an amazing young couple they are so filled with happiness and love it just overflowed the whole day. Katy made the initial enquiry two years before the special day, I previewed the venue with Katy early this year and my first impressions were wow.

Go prepared to work in fast bursts, in high ISO and very often some high contrast light.

As the official shooter for the wedding I brought in a second shooter to ensure the day was covered, sending Rowena to some offbeat angle for her to look for magic moments. I was covering all the essentials but having Rowena with me I knew we had everything covered; She came back with some real gems there is no chance I would of captured any of them, you can't be everywhere.

Congratulations from the bottom of our hearts to Katy and Matt, and their families

MODEL AGENCIES by Benjamin Kanarek

Model Agencies

A Few Interesting Tips
There are some interesting adages one might wish to use in describing relationships with model agencies. I have dealt with all of them and the one thing I can say is this; It is not so much the model agency, but the bookers who work for the model agencies that will leave you a lasting impression about them.

Now that may seem obvious, but it really isn’t at all, as bookers move from agency to agency more often than passengers on a subway line. Yeah, I am exaggerating, but it is very often. Thus, when you think you have built up a solid relationship with a booker at an agency and find out that she left for another, the reality of this move is worse than you might imagine. Not only have they left the agency, but quite often, come of the talent from that agency leaves with them. Not add insult to injury, being that the politic in model agencies are what they are, there is a good chance that trying to establish a solid working relationship with another booker may be problematic, as they may be jealous that you didn’t give them your time and decided to book via someone else.

Model Agencies

The above example is not an exaggeration, as I have experienced this time and time again.

Something else you must be made aware of is a kind of bait and switch technique, that is used often to get you to book a model with less notoriety than that with whom you really want to work with.  How does that work you ask? Well, let’s say you are casting for “So and So” magazine. You ask for suggestions for girls available for the magazine. They send you 8 or 9 models and in that choice there are a couple of Top Models. You get all excited and say, yes, please put an option on so and so for “So & So” magazine. They say, “we will try, but in case they are not available, why don’t you also consider so and so as well”. Most photographers won’t want to be impolite and generally say, “perhaps why not”.

Well you are now only a few days away from the shoot. You have a good 2nd option on those two Top Models. Well lo and behold, guess what happens? A couple of days before the shoot, you find out that they are NOT available and you are basically forced to take their second rung of models. You ask, “Why not confirm them or put them on 1st option?” Well, one of the techniques is to always give a 2nd option, in case the model gets called for an Ad Campaign, which pays a lot more than “So & So” magazine. Of course, if you can confirm the girl, that is the best bet, but still will not guarantee the booking. They will always find a way out if necessary.

My advice, is to put as many options as possible on the girls you like and hope that at the end of the day, one of them turns out to be a go for your “So & So” Magazine Editorial. Or better yet, if you can afford a casting director, go for it. They have tons more leverage than you do.

Oh yeah and one more very important point. The photographer is also a client, especially when casting for an editorial or an ad campaign and thus should be treated as such. In some places that is not the case, which I and many others find infuriating at best!

Original Post at BENJAMIN KANAREK Blog.

BK a Paris based Fashion photographer shoots for the top two fashion magazines, his blog is one of a few I goto on a regular basis.

Photography Business The financials.

To maintain your photography as a successful business it is important to keep control of the financials.  

Coming from a finance background you would think I would be better than most when it came to keeping the financials side in check.

As I look back at my early years it was like this skill set was very much switched off, I have said before don't buy too much stuff, Less is more.

If I can offer some advice keep track of the costs and the detail, all those trips you make, meetings and associated expenses that will over time mount up.

Why are you incurring them?

Financial control and reporting should direct you to ask why are you incurring this expense type, is it rechargeable and importantly built into your pricing?

Financial control, reporting and making commercial decisions is an area I worked on for a number of niche company's. We produced weekly Profit and Loss reports, for those who wanted it, information drilling down to the detail.

To help me keep everything in order rather than keeping a written journal or diary, that in all honest could get lost at some stage I use my iphone and a dedicated email account, sending messages from one to the other as I incure the expenditure. Don't loose track of what is costing and the amount of time you spend on x y and z.

Weekly P and L may seem a bit too frequent for some, however I suggest keep on top of the detail, know what is working and what isn't.

Hope this post was useful, keep focused.

A photographers life.

Below is something I saw yesterday, and thought to share.

The reality is so true, the perception is often far removed from the actual, you know we just turn up press a button a few times job done, yeah right.

Perception 
1. We take pictures and
2. Have fun



Reality
1. Meetings, networking, marketing
2. Social media and blogging
3. Studying and learning new techniques
4. Editing photos, production and other computer tasks
5. Taking pictures


If your starting out on this exciting adventure...  good luck, it's simple yet complex.