This summer I started a Photography business with one of my best friends, Ashley Meredith. We don't have a studio yet but it's something we dream of one day having. Right now what we have is the shared passion and love of Photography. I don't remember how it all started. I don't even remember whose idea it was. All I remember is the hours of preparations we put into starting our enterprise!
It all started with the the status on a facebook page asking for potential names. We had so many wonderful and creative names thrown at us. I knew it was going to be a hard decision until we read one particular idea. It said "Keep Smilin' Photography". See Ashley's father passed away a few years ago and that was one of his favorite sayings. I loved it immediately and Ashley did too! It felt right for us. One person commented that it didn't really sound professional but it sounded fun and easy going and exactly us!
So we had a name. Next Ashley got us set up with an email address (keepsmilinphotos@aol.com) then we fumbled through setting up a free website. (http://www.keepsmilinphotography.webs.com/) See the free site was okay but we wanted better. So we purchased a domain and contacted our good friend Neil Brown to set us up a good website. We can thank him for our current website. (http://www.keepsmilinphotography.com/) It's completely awesome! Thanks Neil!
Our website had some hits but our biggest success as advertisement so far has been and will continue to be our facebook page! (http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Keep-Smilin-Photography/100872646636971) We have 577 fans right now and it goes up every week. I've had many appointments set off of this page and I'm thankful for every person who has helped it and our reputation grow by sharing it!
So we have an email, a great web page, and a facebook fan page. We needed a logo! That again is thank to Neil Brown. He is awesome with a computer and know that even with his current limitations he will find his way again. (story for another day) He sent us several. I am sure he thinks I am totally picky because I asked to change it many times. But he was patient and wonderful and came through with a logo I found absolutely perfect! (see above) With the logo, Ashley and I got creative and bought iron on transfers and made a few tee shirts for each of us. This summer I'm going to have a few screen printed professionally. If you know of anyone who does this give us a shout! We used Picnik for our photo editing at first then we graduated to Photoshop CS5 which we both love.
With all the prep work complete all we had to do was shoot the pictures, Edit the pictures, and deliver the pictures. Which brought us to pricing. We were fairly new to photography for money and felt that we needed to get our names out there and show what we are capable of taking before charging alot. So we came up with a very attractive price of 7 portraits on a CD for $25. each additional portrait $5 each. Problem with that is we'd usually take between 100-300 pictures per sitting and we always ended up with anywhere from 50-200 edited portraits. That is an insane amount of work for just $25. We talked about this and told ourselves that we'd cut back on the number of photographs we shot. Even cutting back we ended up with alot of work. And usually the majority of them went unpurchased. That brings me to where we are right now.
We've taken thousands of pictures. Proved to ourselves and hopefully others we are capable of. We feel that in the last year we have improved our techniques not only with photographing but with photo editing as well. So we've decided, its time. Its time to step it up and ask for what we are worth. We are raising our prices in the near future. We are currently in discussion of offering several packages tailored to our clients needs. Designed to both limit us to photographing only what our clients want as well as paying us a fair price for us and our client. Its a big step for us to take. After all, what if people think we aren't worth a price increase. Well, we are taking the risk. Don't panic. Our prices will not be outrageous and they are still very fair. They just compensate us a little more for the hours of work we put into not only taking the photographs but processing and editing them. No photo shoot I've ever done has taken less than 5 hours total. Most people do not realize what goes on after the shoot.
So if your a previous client or a potential client we'd like to know what you think. As soon as we come to an agreement on the packages I'll post them not only on here but the web pages as well. The last thing I'd like to say is thank you for supporting a budding business. We appreciate all of your continuing support.
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