The business side of photography
Job priorities for running your photo business:
1. You’re a photographer.
No that’s wrong.
When Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, everyone in the industry was expecting a windfall. But that expectation soon faded.
More than three years after the federal government legalized cannabis, there are more than 870 licensed cultivators, processors and sellers in Canada. But despite piqued interest following legalization, high supply and low demand have led to billions of dollars in writedowns and millions of grams of unsold marijuana.
(. . .)
Ontario has seen, in particular, a very large increase in the number of retail stores over the last 24 months, and because of that, the overall (market share) each store on average is able to get continues to decline . . .There are 425 cannabis stores and 421 Tim Hortons across Toronto.
This is another view-from-my-office photo.
Most photography web sites are about equipment. I’m referring to photography web sites not photographer web sites. Such photography sites write about gear because it’s quick and easy.
There are some web sites that offer photography advice and instruction. But these “nuts and bolts” sites are superficial and intended for beginners. Quick bites of junk food. Tastes good for the few minutes you’re consuming it.
A Toronto dentist recently told me that when he graduated from dental school in the mid-1970s, there were about 1,300 dentists in Toronto. He said that number has since increased at least 600%.
When he opened his own practice in Toronto, there was one other dental office within a one-block radius of his office. Today there are eight other dental offices within that same one-block radius and those eight dental businesses collectively employ about 18 dentists.
This is a view-from-my-office photo from a cold, rainy-snowy soccer game.
From the past two weeks:
• A Toronto professional photographer does family portraits for $500 according to his web site. The price includes a 45-minute session and 50 “fully retouched” pictures.
Fifty images in 45 minutes? Fully retouched? Ten dollars per photo?
At that price, who should have low expectations, the customer or the photographer?
If you’re a new photographer who does business headshots and other corporate portraits, may I offer some brief advice? I just spent an hour looking at a few dozen Toronto law firm web sites and most of them had poor quality business portraits.
This is just another view-from-my-office photo.
Corporate customers don’t buy photography, they buy an end result. How much is that end result worth to the customer? Or to rephrase that, how much does your photography contribute toward achieving the customer’s goal?
