Backtracking for a minute …
We’ve already covered: Setting up a business | What else you may need for your portrait business | How to determine pricing | Booking/Confirming Appointments & Portfolio Building | Products, Shooting Inspiration, & Location Scouting
*Important disclaimer: I am not a tax/accounting/legal professional; what I share in regards to those matters is what I learned myself from my retained professionals or have been told by other Texas photographers who’ve consulted said professionals who practice in Texas. Hiring and/or consulting a professional when it comes to taxes and all things legal is money well spent.
Next up …
Photo printing labs
For printing for anyone (client files + starting out if you haven’t gotten a tax ID # yet), I recommend Mpix.com — you don’t need a tax ID# to order prints with them — nearly all pro labs require a tax ID # to set up an account. This is who I refer all customers to that order digital files … affordable and quality printing with no ordering minimums.
As for pro labs (which require tax ID #’s), Mpix Pro is a good lab to move up to from Mpix (owned by the same parent company). They have minimum orders ($12 to $15 per order). MpixPro charges $4 for overnight delivery — they’re based out of Missouri & Kansas (depending on what you order determines if it comes out of the Columbia or Pittsburg facilities). Other pro labs I love include Millers (the top end of the company with Mpix/MpixPro) and ProDPI.
I NEVER use the lab’s color correction service! For one, sometimes they charge extra for it, and two, most other photographers I was on a forum with years back said it never matched the screen they edited on. Despite the lab req’s to add their color profile to my computer/monitor, I’ve just used a Spyder color calibrator on my computer and my prints have always matched how I’ve edited them. Mac’s are supposed to be color calibrated to begin with, or at least have better color calibration than PC’s … I can say that I chose not to use most of the other labs available out there simply because of color issues in the past when testing them out (or crappy customer service for a couple of labs that I only use for the rare sale/promo for an item no one else offers). Mpix/Mpix Pro/Millers and ProDPI have always been quick to respond on the few things I’ve ever had to contact them about.
As for marketing materials, in addition to using Mpix Pro and ProDPI for some specialty items, I also use Overnight Prints and Vistaprint for bulk items such as promo cards (5×7 sized), business cards, notepads, signs/banners, address labels, and magnets. Sign up for Vistaprint’s newsletter, they’ll spam you like crazy, but you can catch deals on free products that you only have to pay the cost of shipping for! Overnight Prints also has regular sales on promo postcards as well as business cards. For both, also check Retail Me Not for sale codes.
Software / Actions / Presets
Do you own Adobe Photoshop? If not, are you in college? Check with your bookstore or Academic Superstore to see if you can get an Adobe discount on the educational version to save a bit of money. If not, you can get it via Adobe themselves with the monthly subscription rate if you have high speed internet and no bandwidth restrictions on downloading. You can also use Adobe Photoshop Elements, but there are a lot of limitations to it and custom design work is not a piece of cake.
My other editing go-to program is Adobe Lightroom. Stand-alone disc copies are no longer available, but the Adobe online subscription usually includes it in the monthly rate with Photoshop. If you can’t afford Photoshop and feel limited by Photoshop Elements, try this program out. Some photographers use this exclusively.
I use Lightroom to batch process everything and depending on what I’m editing, I do a lot of the basic edits short of retouching in it. Then I export everything that I’m presenting to a client to final edit in Photoshop. I have a boatload of PS actions and LR presets, some are freebies and some I’ve purchased but tend to stick to the same few all the time — Pioneer Woman has two free sets that I highly recommend for starting out (via the photography section of her website).
Packaging Materials
Maybe you wanna go fancy and spoil your clients … or maybe you don’t. However, I feel that if you’re offering a custom service with a premium product at a premium price, take the time to package it like its a premium product. Imagine if Tiffany’s didn’t offer that blue box with purchases under $500, you’d feel jipped — which is why I made each and every one of my clients feel like they were getting a gift and took a few minutes to present it well. They’ll talk about it to their friends along with how much they loved their photos.
That said, you don’t have to spend a fortune on packaging materials. To view some of my packaging from years past, click here for a detail shot as well over here where it was featured at Paperie Boutique in 2009 as well as in 2010 (where you can get additional ideas beyond what I’ve done; Pinterest is also another great place for packaging inspiration).
I bought sacks and most of my tissue paper supplies at one of two vendors at 1st Monday in Canton — this also kept me from stockpiling large quantities that most packaging vendors require ordering-wise; I bought what I needed for a set time period. For tissue paper colors I couldn’t get there, I went to Target or Hobby Lobby.
I used to use an ink stamp that I ordered from Rubber Stamps.net for my logo to customize the sacks; shipping labels for orders I’d deliver to the post office I’d print myself (or print from the USPS/FedEx website when I had to get someone else to do the post office/FedEx run). Stickers to seal envelopes and tissue paper are from Moo.
While many photographers have transitioned from discs (cd/dvd) to USB drives or downloads from Dropbox and other similar sites, that’s a call you have to make. You can do pre-printed discs or print your own discs/labels or order custom USB drives (some vendors offer periodic sales).
To protect photos, I used clearbags from Clearbags; depending on size, I either ordered boxes from one of several retailers or use envelopes available from Paper Source.
Ribbon and other decorative elements came from Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Walmart, 1st Monday vendors, and Etsy.
For mailing, I used either USPS flat rate priority mail envelopes that are free or padded envelopes I bought up whenever Walgreens had a sale on them. I reinforced these with the cardboard that comes in print orders and made my own “do not bend” labels using the 30 per sheet white address labels you can buy at any office supply store.
Questions/Comments? Ask/share in the comments below!
The post So You Want To Be A Portrait Photographer {Part VI} appeared first on Route Bliss.