Ben's Photo Biz Blog

I’m pretty good with computers. I have Windows machines (but I do love the Mac) and I know my way around them fairly well. Often, I’m the guy friends and family turn to when they have problems with there computers. Like web design, I know just enough to get me in trouble. When I say trouble, I mean I can figure most things out it just takes me a LONG time.

For some time I’ve been wanting to access the hard drives on my desktop computer over my wireless network with my laptop. I’ve also wanted to find  a better anti-virus program other than Norton. All of this stuff is no big deal, I could figure it out if I wanted to spend the time to figure it out… but I don’t want to spend the time.

So, Lisa Mandel recommended her computer guru Kenton Klein of HealthyPC. He came over and in less than one hour networked the drives I wanted, dumped Norton for a FREE anti-virus system called avast!, pointed me to Casper to backup my hard drives with, and cleaned up all the junk programs that start up every time I turn on my computer. My laptop is running like new again.

So, my point is… FIND A COMPUTER GURU AND PAY HIM/HER TO CLEAN UP YOUR SYSTEMS. It is worth it, trust me!

If you live/work in the St. Louis Metro Area, I highly recomend Kenton. Here is his contact info:

Kenton Klein
314-640-1984
Kenton [at] thehealthypc [dot] com

Scout Bourne hosted one of the classes I attended at Imaging USA in Nashville a few weeks ago. He was one of the few speakers not selling anything… workshops, training DVDS, books, etc…  (no offense to the speakers who were).

Anyway, he runs a great blog Photofocus and is a Twittering machine too.

I don’t have time to go into too much detail right now but two of his recent posts are particularly interesting to me right now:

And You Call Yourself a Professional? and Pricing Professional Wedding/Portrait Photography: Resources and Ideas

Give them a read and subscribe PhotoFocus.

Ben

St. Louis Bride Magazine hosted a bridal show at Windows Off Washington last weekend. I didn’t have a booth but I stopped by to do a little networking with other vendors. My good friends Liz and Kristie of L Photographie had a super fun photo booth set up for all the brides-to-be…. I might not be getting married but who am I to pass up an opportunity to wear a Tiara and white boa? Not to mention have my photo taken with/by two of the best photographers in St. Louis!

This is my new business card. I just picked up the order yesterday from Diversified. 250 shiny new mini-ads for me to hand out all over St. Louis.

Lesson #476 – Do NOT submit business card orders at 2 AM… when you’re tired… the last two digits of my studio cell number were completely wrong. Totally my fault. I fixed it already (the image above is correct).

I am so smart!

Ben

Tracy Carolyn posted this on her blog…. and I love it so much I put it on my main blog site… and I still love it so I’m posting it here too. Friggin’ hilarious.

As photographers, we spend a lot of time in our car driving around to location shots and consultation meetings. All that mileage needs to be tracked. I tried out the mileage apps for the iPhone: MileBug, FYI Mileage, and Shansa File-A-Mile.

MileBug is by far the best. It may seem complicated bit it’s pretty easy to use. There is a free version which has a 10 trip limit. But full version is only $3.99. They have a website too: www.milebug.com

You can track trips by separate category (business, personal, medical, etc), you can change the mileage rate, track expenses (tolls/parking), and more. The app will export the forms below directly from the iPhone (if you have email enabled). You can just cut-n-past the following tables into excel. It’s pretty sweet. You can even export ONLY the business trips or only the Medical trips. You can have the data sorted in different ways too.

Shansa File-A-Mile uses the iPhone’s GPS, a great idea, but it was mileage was “as-the-crow-flies” not actual driven miles. And the export systems isn’t nearly as awesome.

FYI Mileage was pretty good but it’s export function isn’t as cool as MileBug either.

I swear I don’t work for these people. I’m just a new photographer who likes helpful technology. I think they made a great product that can help save us money in deductions and an IRS headache down the road.

Thanks!

Ben

Benjamin Trevor Photography
www.benjamintrevor.com

I know I have a lot to blog about after the Imaging USA conference last week but I want to get this out there while it’s on my mind. It seems many photographers have dropped offering 4×6 Proof Prints (or at least don’t include them in the standard packages) and only offer online proofing. Initially, this was going to be my plan too but I’ve decided to include 4×6 Proofs in all my packages.

Here’s why:

Before Christmas I took some portraits of my friend’s family. A few weeks later his family and my family got together for a holiday dinner. I thought it would be nice to bring some prints from the photo shoot to share with everyone. I printed about 20 4×6 prints at home and brought them to the dinner. They were a hit. As I watched their faces light up as they thumbed through the prints and passed them around the room, I realized they wouldn’t have the same experience if they had to crowd around a computer monitor to see the proofs.

On top of that, his wife took the prints with her to work to show off her baby. A woman she works with has since gotten in touch with me to photograph her family. I HIGHLY doubt this would have happened if I just posted them in a gallery online. Of course, an online proofing, sharing, and ordering system is indispensable but the cost of the prints is easily offset by the tactile and emotional experience of sitting around a kitchen table with your family choosing your favorite shots. (Not to mention the advertising it brings when those proofs are shared with friends.)

So there’s my pitch on a nice set of 4×6 proofs in a nice box included in every wedding and portrait package.

Thanks for reading!

Ben

I had a GREAT weekend in Nashville at PPA’s ImagingUSA conference. I will write more about it later but for now, here is a shot of all the hand outs and stuff I walked away with. I certainly learned a lot

Thanks to Paul Nordmann and Kurtis Hall of Nordmann Photography for driving me around and putting up with me.

Extra special thanks to Lisa Mandel of Lisa Mandel Photography who invited me to join her conference.

It has been a LOOOONG time since I’ve posted. It’s terrible. I know.

The back end of 2009 was a rough one.

The two movies I worked on were the most unpleasant of my film career, I got a bacterial pneumonia that required a week in the hospital and two weeks of IV antibiotics at home, and to top it all off… my girlfriend and I broke up.

So I think I might have a good excuse (or three) for not having blogged in a few months.

2010 however is starting to look good!

I moved back to St. Louis in December. I found a GREAT loft downtown on Washington (a stones throw from Windows On Washington) that is not only a great living space, but is also big enough to use as a studio. I’ll post some pictures soon.

I made enough money on the last two movies (as hard as they were) to make the move and focus some attention on getting the business up a running. I will probably have to do another movie in the next few months to pay the bills but I’m hoping to avoid it. We’ll see how it goes.

For now I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the things I need to do:

Pick a Lab*

Pick an Online Proofing System*

Pick and Album Vendor(s)

Revamp the website a little bit.

Solidify my pricing structure.

Get my contracts in order.

Create new business cards.

Set up the business!

I’ve got the fictitious name registered but that’s about it. I meeting with a business consultant and an accountant next week to help hold my hand with everything else I need to do (taxes and any other registrations I need to do, accounting methods, etc).

*For my current online proofing and lab I’m still using SmugMug. However, I really want to use a local lab. I want to support other small local businesses. I’ll most likely use Diversified for most my prints but I have to figure out a good online proofing system that I like.

I’ll post more detail on each subject as I figure them out.

That’s a quick update on what’s going on!

Thanks for reading.

Ben

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve posted something. After the two weddings in Colorado I got back to Shreveport and started on Straw Dogs right away. Making movies take 110% of my attention. Between working 14+ hour days on the movie and trying to get over 6000+ images sorted and edited, there hasn’t been much time for blogging.

Hopefully in the next weekend or two I’ll have time to share some of the details of what has happened since my last post.

In a nut shell, the weddings went great. Check out benjamintrevor.com for sneak peeks from both weddings. The  response has been tremendous and I’m already getting inquiries about weddings and portrait sessions. I’m going to have to fast track getting the business set up too.

Thanks for reading!

Ben