Photography is copyright of
www.theredshutter.com
I want to start by telling you of how the photography business is carried out here in Indonesia particularly Surabaya - my hometown. The business photography is all about price tags. What does it mean? Well, you get a potential client, and you quote your price - say $100,- And then your potential client gets news from his cousin/friend/whatever that this photographer can do the same for $50 only. That's half the price. Upon hearing the news, he's not convinced with the $50 photographer, so he gives you a call back... excuse me, your $100 package, what do I get?
And you tell him you get so and so pictures + an album it's our best package sir. He ends the phone call.
Now he's going to call the other photographer and asks the same question - so your competitor tells your potential client that you get almost twice the amount of pictures, a much better album and your competitor says that he is currently using the best camera there is out there.
Being a customer with no photography background and thinking how expensive the wedding already is, he decided to go with the $50 photographer. Few months later, the couple gets the result of the photography and finds that the pictures are absolutely fine. So he starts telling other people that your price tag is too expensive and that people should find your competitor instead.
It's sad that your customer has no way of appreciating the art of photography.
Why is this happening? Because in my city, the appreciation of art has not been too developed. The customers are not able to differentiate what is a good picture and what is a bad picture. I'm so glad that this trend is soon changing with the next generation but not for another 15 - 20 years...
So the question now is:
If you had the opportunity to explain your $100 tag price to that customer? What would you have said?
I would have told my customer that the difference is in the quality of the pictures. Your $50 will go into my effort, my skill and my experience of documenting your precious event with the best possible outcome. And if you have awards, you might mention your achievements also. But of course this explanation doesn't click with them because as I've told you, they are not able to tell the difference. So you need another way of explaining it.
It's just like my cousin's wedding. You see they decided to invite a famous singer to come sing at their wedding. They wanted their wedding reception to look nice. But the parents feel like they've coughed up too much money inviting this singer. The groom tells his dad that the concrete walls are ugly and that the least they can do is cover it with plain fabric or something...
The father doesn't like this idea, he feels the audience will focus on the singer, not on the surrounding walls. At the end, the groom had to give in.
When the wedding finally took place, the groom is surprised to find fabrics dropping down surrounding the reception building.. no more ugly concretes. He was happy about it and asked his dad why he put the fabrics?
The father told him, " Honestly, I didn't do it to make your reception more beautiful, I did it because the sound system operator told me that without the fabrics, the voice of the singers will bounce off the wall creating a lot of echoes and won't sound nice."
So the father had his own reason.
I imagined myself that if i were to tell my customer that my pictures would look better than my competitor, it will not click with him as well. I needed to tell them something concrete.. something practical that will connect with the left brain, not the right brain.
It's really tough carrying out an art as a business. It's all about price tags and finding someone to do it for cheap. There's no union to set the standard price or to gauge which photographer belongs to which class deserving a minimum price tag...
That's my share for today.
