According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, 70% of all businesses fail within their first 10 years of operation.  It’s not hard to understand why.  They fail because they suck.

As you know, I’m moving to the Boston area.  To do this, it has been necessary for me to contact dozens of small businesses, both to prepare my home for sale as well as to look for a new home.  I’ve contacted moving companies, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, landscapers, painters, lawyers, plumbers, auto movers, electricians, insurance agents, etc.

About 40% of these businesses never return my phone calls and emails.  Never.

And you wonder why most businesses fail?

In other words, the bar for doing business is incredibly low.  If you are responsive, courteous and honest you have a huge leg up on the competition.  This is your advantage – you can choose not to suck like everyone else out there.

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I’m packing up and moving to the Boston area.  For the next few months I’ll be either traveling, in temporary housing, or packing and unpacking. My Mac Pro is going into storage, as will my professional camera gear.  All I’ll have with me for the next few months is my G11.

I’ll be back in July.  In the meantime, there’s no need to check in here – just subscribe to my feed and you’ll know when I’m back. Have a great summer everyone!

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Sometimes it’s good to reflect upon how meaningful our jobs are.  Doctors can feel good about saving lives.  Teachers can feel good about developing young minds.  And let’s not forget portrait photographers, who create cherished heirlooms that last for generations.

Here is a portrait of my father’s family (he’s on the back row on the right).  The other young men are his brothers, the young lady on the front right is his older sister, the older lady is my grandmother, and the baby is my oldest cousin.  It was taken when my father was 16 years old, in 1951. Remarkably, it was taken in Seoul during the middle of the Korean War.  Even during this horrible time – when food was scarce and bombs were falling on the city – the family somehow scraped up the money to find and hire a professional photographer to take this shot.

It’s hard to tell since this is a scan from a print made from a scan, but I’ve seen earlier generations of this image that are tack sharp. I’m guessing the photographer used some large format camera like a 4×5. The lighting is perfect!

Anyway, can there be any possession in a family that’s more precious than this?

All families should have images like this. So get out there and start selling. You’ll do well, but you’re also doing good.

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Canon is doing a lot of things right these days.  The 1DX was built “just right”.  And now – on paper at least – the 5DmkIII looks to be just about perfect.

Things that I like about the 5DmkIII:

• Unlike the 5DmkII, Canon chose to put a professional-level focusing system in this camera.  The days of crippling this line of camera bodies with primitive focusing systems is a thing of the past. I credit Nikon (who put a pro focusing system on the D700) with pushing Canon in this direction.  The focus system on the mkIII is allegedly even better than their current focusing champ, the 1DmkIV. YES!!!

• Dual card slots for extra peace of mind.  AND I like the fact that the second slot is SD.  That way there is absolutely no confusion as to which cards are the primary and which are the backup.  Imagine if the secondary slot was also CF.  Unless you were ultra-careful about keeping them segregated you’d end up with a mess.

• Megapixel restraint.  I like the fact that they didn’t up the pixels.  As it is, 22mp is overkill for me, I would have preferred 16, but still I admire Canon’s restraint. The temptation must have been there to make this a 30mp+ camera.

Combined with the Digic 5+ processor, this camera should be light years faster than my 5D classic. I look forward to trying it out.

The bottom line:

I am going to buy one within the next year.  Yes, I have repeatedly written that I am not upgrading my 5D classic – that I am using that camera until it dies.  That’s still true.  However, my backup camera – my Canon 30D – is dying if not just about dead.  The 5dmkIII will now become my primary camera, while the 5D classic will get demoted to backup/2nd camera status.

By the way, that’s a great strategy for your primary/backup cameras – just rotate.  Your older body is your backup while the newer body is the primary.  When the older body dies, buy a new body and demote your current primary body to 2nd status.  But again – with today’s cameras being so good, there’s no need to buy the new camera until one of your current bodies dies.

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I come from a creative family – on both my mother and father’s sides.  We’ve got architects, musicians, a photographer, and two film makers.  My older brother Karl has been in the film industry for a long time, since he attended NYU film school.

He’s now the director of photography (DP) for a new Nickelodeon series called Black Dawn.  The series concept can be explained in four words:  skateboarding – teens – battle – aliens.

Here’s a highlight reel from the pilot:

It’s actually quite unusual for Nick, as it’s a drama and the vast majority of the shows there are sitcoms.

Anyway, you can read about the filming of this series on Karl’s blog.  For those of you interested in video, the entire thing is being shot on a Red Epic.

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While there are a lot of talented photographers out there, I’ve never seen a photograph or portfolio of photographs that made me drop my jaw in awe.  The kind of awe that makes you say “my God, I don’t believe what I’m looking at”.

The first time I observed an awe-inspiring talent was more than 20 years ago when I saw a Wynton Marsalis dual concert – he played the Haydn Trumpet Concerto and then a few minutes later played a jazz set – with equal virtuosity.

It’s been 20 years, but I’ve just seen that kind of talent for a second time.

Check out this video of Richie Kotzen.  Here is is playing “Paying Dues” a song he composed, recorded, sang the vocals, and is playing ALL the instruments (guitar, bass, drums).  My jaw hit the floor when I saw this.  His level of virtuosity with all the instruments is mind-boggling, as are his vocals.  Make sure you play this loud through a good set of speakers or headphones.

One person possessing this much talent should be a crime.  It’s definitely inspired me.

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Image Quality

Image quality is a complex topic. It has many components: detail/resolution, color, dynamic range, etc. Some of this stuff can be measured, others cannot. For example, I can’t come up with a quantitative measurement to explain why film looks so beautiful.  It just is.  To top it off, IQ is also subjective. What looks good to one pair of eyes may not look as good through another.  In short, it’s a messy topic.

I’m going to take my usual non-scientific approach. I don’t do really precise tests – head on over to the internets for stuff like that. However, I do get a little more geeked out than usual here. It is what it is.

Detail

The first component of IQ that most people look for is detail. How detailed and sharp are the files?  I think this is probably the most important quality of IQ, because color can always be manipulated in post, but there’s only so much you can do if the image files aren’t detailed.

Putting my geek hat on, here is the test image that I took.  I used the EP3 with Panny 20mm f1.7 lens and I also took the same shot with my 5D and 35mm f1.4L.  For those of you keeping score, that’s $1,250 worth of camera/lens compared to $4,200 of camera/lens.

Here is the test image exactly as I framed it:

I took 3 frames as carefully as I could, focusing on the words inside the red circle.  First I took 3 raw images, then 3 in super-fine jpeg, and then finally 3 more in fine jpeg.  I then selected the absolute sharpest image of each.   I did this with both the EP3 and my 5D. Settings for both cameras were identical:  ISO 200, f2.2, 1/200 sec.  The in-camera jpeg sharpening for both cameras was set to -2.

Here are the extreme crops.  The color differences are simply due to my sloppy/quick white balance settings with the image taken under a halogen light.

RAW

Super Fine jpeg

Fine jpeg

To be honest, you probably can’t make any absolute conclusions using my admittedly sloppy and unscientific test, but I will say this much:

- The level of detail is close enough between the EP3 and 5D as to be immaterial.

- The EP3′s jpegs are better than the 5D’s.  I’ve always known that the 5D’s jpegs were not very good, which is why I always shoot my 5D in raw.

- There really isn’t any detail/resolution penalty for shooting the EP3 in jpeg. If there is, it’s minute.

- There isn’t any detail/resolution penalty for shooting the EP3 in “fine” jpeg versus “super fine”.  This makes sense, when you consider the fine jpegs aren’t that much smaller.  The EP3 raw files are about 10mb, the super-fine jpegs about 6 mb, and the fine jpegs about 4.5 mb.

- Keep in mind that the 35L is one of Canon’s sharpest lenses.  To some extent the detail that you see above is as much a measure of lens quality as it is sensor quality.  I think this test acquits the Panny 20mm f1.7 very nicely.  It stands toe-to-toe against one of Canon’s best/most expensive lenses.

- Although not seen in the samples above, in lower light the EP3 has an advantage – image stabilization – that the 5D doesn’t have.  I expect low light shots (taken at, say, 1/20 sec.) to be sharper with the EP3.

Dynamic range

The biggest weakness of small sensors has always been the relative lack of dynamic range.  This was why I sold my Panasonic LX3, I just couldn’t stomach the lack of dynamic range.  Here’s an LX3 sample from a couple years ago – look at Annika’s face and you can see what I’m talking about:

The EP3′s dynamic range is better than a small-sensor point-n-shoot, but not by much.  In fact, it’s so bad that I would say it’s nearly unusable unless you’re in very low-contrast light (e.g. in shade or a dull, cloudy day).

In any kind of sunlight, the EP3 just can’t hack it.  Look at these simple snapshots:

Dynamic range is so poor the EP3 sometimes can’t even handle simple indoor shots with window light:

It’s hard to judge from this small photo, but on my big screen you can clearly see how, even moving the exposure slider 4 stops to the left, Annika’s face is still overexposed.  And she is NOT even being hit by a beam of direct sunlight – she’s just a few feet closer to the window than MaryBeth.  This result was NOT due to poor metering. The poor result was due to lack of dynamic range.

The EP3 even struggles in overcast conditions:

Could I have “saved” these shots by underexposing 2-3 stops then moving the “fill light” slider way to the right in Lightroom?  Maybe – but it would be far from ideal and would result in sloppy/noisy images.

I’m not sure I understand how a camera released in 2011 can perform this poorly but all I can do is report what I see with my own eyes.  For those of you who are wondering the metering is not the issue.  The highlights are not blown out due to poor metering, they’re blown out due to lack of DR.

High ISO noise

To be honest, I really don’t give a rats ass about super high ISO capabilities.  I shoot 90% of my images at ISO 400 or below.  Using a fast lens like the Panny 20mm 1.7, going up to ISO 800 is usually all I need, even when shooting at night.  That said, I didn’t do any sample tests, but the high ISO noise appears to be about one stop worse than my old Canon 20D.  ISO 800 looks about the same as ISO 1600 on my 20D, and that’s a camera that came out in 2004.

Conclusion

The EP3 is an interesting camera.  I really, really wanted to like it.  I was very enthusiastic after my first couple of outings with it.  But as I used it more, and under more varied conditions, it’s Achilles Heel was revealed.

Here’s the best way I can describe it:  imagine taking a Porsche 911 and putting a Yugo engine inside.

The EP3 is gorgeous.  It’s well-made.  It feels solid.  It has an innovative and terrific touch screen.  Focusing is fast and accurate.  There is a lot to like about the EP3.  The bad news is the sensor is really not much of an improvement over my small-sensor Canon G11. Olympus made a curious decision to stick with a really old sensor instead of upgrading to the newer sensors that go into the Panasonic m4/3 bodies.

I’m sure the sensor in the new E-M5 is a big improvement over the one in the EP3, but that doesn’t help current EP3 owners.

The final word:

I sold my EP3.  However, I am keeping my Panny 20mm 1.7, which is a great lens.

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Anyone out there who has passed the “newbie gains” phase knows that making big progress in the gym can be very, very tough.  You see lots of guys (and gals) in the gym who look exactly the same year after year.  Sure, they’re in pretty good shape, but getting to exceptional shape – the kind of shape that turns heads in amazement – takes a long, long time and is often never achieved.

Ahhhnold was in exceptional shape

One of the best articles I’ve read on the subject was written by John Romaniello, who advocates specialized training.  That is, focus on one body part at a time for a month or so, while keeping everything else on “maintenance”.  The idea is that maintaining your condition is easy, while improving your condition is hard – so really focus intensely on one body part at a time.

I switched to this strategy on January 1.  For the month of January, I specialized on legs, working them intensely 3x per week while my entire upper body only got one very brief “maintenance” workout per week. It worked. My legs are noticeably improved, while my upper body stayed the same and did not regress.  Now for the month of February I’m specializing arms.  Next month will be the back, etc.

This same strategy will work for a photography business.

Let’s say you’ve been in business for a while and you are overwhelmed with all the things you need to work on.  Your website needs updating.  Your pricing needs updating.  Your sample albums need to be redone.  You suck at posing.  You want to try off-camera flash but don’t know how. You need to implement a new marketing plan.  And on, and on, and on.

If you try to do everything at once you will (1) burn out and (2) probably fail.

Everybody has limits.  Time limits.  Energy limits.  Money limits.  Emotional limits. Stressing the entire system at one time will result in marginal overall progress.  Instead, dedicate the next month to improving just ONE thing.

PhaseOne 645 AF, Fuji Pro400H

Let’s say that you suck at posing and you believe it’s holding your business back.  Great – for the next month or two dedicate yourself completely to posing. Drop the website design project. Forget about your pricing. Put the new sample albums on hold. Every single day, once you’ve done the required minimum necessary to keep your business running, work on your posing. Study the posing of photographers you admire. Read about posing – there are tons of articles out there. And most importantly, practice your posing.

Schedule a few shoots every single week. You don’t have to make money on these shoots. Just work on your posing. Shoot former wedding clients for free or for a low rate just for practice. Shoot your married friends. Shoot friends with their boyfriend/girlfriends. Just shoot! Experiment replicating poses you’ve seen elsewhere. Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.

A month or two later your posing should be better. A lot better. What was once a weakness is now a strength, or at least is no longer a weakness.

Now that you’ve improved your posing, move on to your next project. And then the next. And the next. In a year your business will be far, far ahead of where it would have been had you tried to do it all at once.

Specialize and move forward.

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Lots of interesting new cameras:  Nikon D4, D800, Olympus E-M5, Fuji XPro1.

Cameras, cameras, cameras!

While they certainly look interesting, I’ve decided I’m not really going to give any significant input on these new cameras for two reasons:  (1) I’m sure they’re all great cameras perfectly capable of stunning results in the right hands and (2) a hundred blogs will be reviewing these cameras better than I can.  I simply don’t have the patience to do detailed camera reviews.

And at the risk of sounding anti-gear (I’m not), I’m currently thinking more about actual photography than I am about gear, which has little to do with photography.  Plus, I’m on a simplicity kick.  I’m trying to simplify every aspect of my life.  I want to do less, and I want to own less stuff.  To that end, I’ve been eBaying a bunch of gear (camera gear, guitar gear, and other junk).

Looking at my photography life, I’ve realized two things:

(1)  I don’t need to upgrade my 5D Classic, ever.  I’ll use it for professional and personal work until it dies and needs to be replaced. So all this talk about the D4, D800, D1X, etc. is fun to read about, but is otherwise of little interest to me.

(2)  I don’t need an “intermediate” camera.  That is, I’ve come to a realization that a second camera system (bodies, lenses, flash units, etc.) is something that I don’t really need.  Why?  Because (a) if I’m shooting my kids around the house, then I can just reach for my 5D – a smaller camera system isn’t an advantage since I’m not lugging it around.  And (b) if I’m out and about with the kids, I don’t want to carry any kind of “system”, I want a small point-n-shoot that I can put on my belt.  And when I eventually break down and buy a smart phone, I won’t even need the point-n-shoot.  So no Fuji XPro1, as great as that system probably will be.

So with that in mind, the camera that interests me most is the Canon Gx1.

I don’t know if I’ll get one to replace my G11, but a camera that size with a nearly-APS-C sensor and 24p HD video would make a great vacation / day with the kids camera. No need to change lenses or add external flash units:  just shoot.  It’s given me something to think about.

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Here’s the bad news:  my conservative guess is that the typical wedding photographer easily leaves $500 – $1,000 on the table with every single wedding.  That’s based on what I’ve learned about their pricing practices during dozens of coaching sessions.

Now the good news:  you can earn back that extra $500 – $1,000 per wedding overnight just by redesigning your price list. You can do this without improving your photography, marketing, website or sales skills.  All it takes is a few moments on a word processor.

This post is about my pricing principles and how I use those principles to construct packages that work.  Now there’s more than one way to successfully price wedding photography, so please don’t get all bent out of shape if you’re successful doing the opposite of what I’m recommending here. What follows is a method developed through trial and error that has worked for me.  Your mileage may vary.

Principle #1:  packages work

Do you think that McDonald’s would make more money if they did away with packages and sold everything a la carte? Seriously?  The concept of packaging together products and services to increase profit is a business practice that’s lasted hundreds of years because it works.  I’m confident that the practice of packaging will be here thousands of years from now.

Believe me, I’ve tried a la carte pricing in the past.  Do you know what a la carte pricing really means?  In practice, it means that every single client gets your “base” price, which typically includes coverage only with no products.  After the wedding you hope and pray you can sell them stuff – most commonly an album.  But how many couples are broke after the wedding?  Most of them are.  If you want to sell an album to the majority of your clients, you’ve got to include them in packages.

Principle #2:   packages are good, but too many are bad

Okay, if packages are good, why not create a dozen of them so you’ll be sure to have something for everyone?  Bad move.  Too many packages just invites confusion and, ultimately, paralysis.  In addition, a long price list is instinctively something associated with low-end products.  Think about going to a restaurant.  The diner has an enormous menu with pages and pages of items.  The fancy restaurant has a limited menu with just a few choices.  Which one would you rather be?

Over time I’ve found that three is the perfect number.  Four at the most.  Give your potential clients a short, simple menu with three basic choices:  base, middle and high-end.  That’s all you need.

Principle #3:  the middle package is the “money” package

75% of my clients end up purchasing my middle package.  That’s all I care about – selling the middle.  That’s because the middle package contains an album, and upselling the album is what gets me an extra $900 – $1,200 on average.  In fact, I’m pretty much indifferent between my top package and my middle package.  Sure, the top package costs more, but since it also includes more stuff there’s less room for upselling.  All it takes for me to hit my goal is that middle package.

And remember that people are not rugged individualists – most people want to be in the middle.  With the group.  With three packages, the majority will gravitate towards the middle, especially if you make it very attractive to go there.

Principle #4:  don’t include too much “stuff” in your packages

What’s wrong with this package?:    8 hours of coverage + engagement session + rehearsal dinner coverage + 30 page leather 10×10 wedding album + dvd with wedding and engagement images + mounted 20×24 print from the engagement session to display at the wedding + 2 parent albums + sign-in album with engagement images +  one 11×14 print + five 8×10 + one 24″ canvas gallery wrap.

Okay, this is kind of extreme, but let’s repeat the question – what’s wrong?  The very first thing the couple will ask is:

- how much will you reduce the price if you remove the rehearsal dinner?  the sign-in album?  the parent albums?  the 11×14 print?

You get the idea.  The more “stuff” you cram into each package, the more you are inviting your clients to bargain you down by taking stuff out.  You don’t have to let them do this.  Make the packages so simple that there’s really not much they can take away.

Principle #5:  don’t include albums in your packages, only album credits

This is my most important principle.  If you included, for example, a 30 page 10×10 album in a package, then that automatically sets a ceiling on the album.  Anything extra is an “upsell”.  And that 30 page number gets embedded in your clients’ brains.  They begin to expect just a 30 page album and that’s all.

Instead of including albums, include album credits.  That leaves the number of pages to be an open item.  The client may end up with a 20 page album or a 60 page album.  It gives you freedom to sell big albums, which is where big profits come from.

Principle #6:   put your most expensive package at the top of your list

Imagine that you’re moving to a new city – one that’s a lot more expensive than where you’re currently living.  You want to spend up to $500,000 on a new house.  You spend time online looking at houses and all of the ones you’d consider living in cost $800,000.  You’re in shock.  Then you find a good realtor who shows you a house you love that costs $700,000.  Now does that house seem cheap or expensive to you?  Well, it used to seem hugely expensive, but now it seems cheap! Magic, isn’t it?

That’s why you need a top package.  You don’t necessarily care if anyone actually buys it, but it certainly will make your other packages seem quite reasonable by comparison.

Putting it altogether

Okay, now that you understand my principles, let’s go through the exercise of constructing some sample wedding packages.  I’m going to assume you’re in that vast middle range that charges about $2,500 for your base price.  Here’s how I would construct the packages:

Base Package:   $2,500

• 6 hours of wedding day coverage
• DVD with your image files

  album pricing:

• large (12×12):  $60 per page
• medium (10×10):  $50 per page
• small (8×8):  $40 per page

So what’s happening here?  First, note that the price differential between the base package and the middle package is exactly the amount of the album credit.  In effect, that means that the extra hour of coverage and the engagement session are the “bonus” or the incentive for moving up to the middle package.  That’s a pretty big bonus and is a strong motivator to get your clients to move up to this package.

Next, note that the second item in the package is the e-session or an extra hour of coverage. Why did I write it that way? Because if your client has already done an e-session, or if they don’t want to do one, then they can’t bargain me down by removing it. I just say, “okay, great, then you get 8 hours of coverage instead of 7″.

Lastly, note that the album credit is enough to get them a 10×10, 20 page album.  This is critical and the holy grail of my system.  On average, my clients end up with albums close to 40 pages.  In this particular example, a 40 page 10×10 album would result in $1,000 of extra revenue.  So instead of $3,500, you would have made $4,500.

Now this is quite different than a standard up-sell, where you include a 30 page album in the package and then try to sell them 10 extra pages.  In my system, the client doesn’t know how many pages to expect.  I tell them right upfront I have no idea how many pages the 1st draft will be, only that my first draft typically averages between 40-60 pages.  How many pages they decide to keep are up to them. This is all above-board, non-confrontational, and results in very happy customers.

You can read about my album sales process in-depth right here.

[By the way, 1 page = 1 side.  Make this clear on your price list.  It's kind of incredible that people get confused by this, since every book they've ever read in their life is 1 page = 1 side.  Since when does 2 page = 1 page?  Whoever messed this up in the first place deserves to be eaten alive by red ants.]

Highest Package:  $5,000

• 7 hours of wedding day coverage
• engagement session or 1 extra hour of coverage
• 2nd photographer
• $2,500 album credit
• DVD with your image files

The same principles apply here.  The price differential between this package and the middle package is exactly equal to the increase in album credit, so the 2nd photographer is the bonus incentive for moving them up.  Again, you shouldn’t really don’t care if you sell this package or not, but it makes my middle package seem less expensive.

Wrapping up

So there you have it.  These are the principles of my package construction process.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a $1,000 photographer, a $2,500 photographer or a $10,000 photographer. If you use these principles, you should be able to boost your revenue per wedding by 20-50% with your very next wedding.

Keep it simple and you should be good to go.

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