business: wedding photographers working together
A few days ago I came across this 30 second video of images from Southern California wedding photographer Ira Lippke (subscribers view video here):
Ira Lippke Studios from Wedding Life Photography on Vimeo.
Though I’m not a wedding photographer the images were inspirational because of their unique style. I can’t imagine any photographer that wouldn’t be moved by his style and presentation and I quickly drew a couple of conclusions:
1) Ira is a very talented photographer
2) a short, well made video of a photographer’s strongest images will surely impress potential clients
So, of course, I wanted to know more. Digging deeper revealed he was associated with something called Wedding Life Orange County. The front page of Wedding Life exclaims:
Welcome to Wedding Life! We represent the top wedding professionals in Orange County. Imagine! Learn! Explore!
Top photographers, videographers, coordinators, caterers and various other wedding professionals have joined together to create an elite group of wedding service professionals under the Wedding Life umbrella. They are able to refer quality services among one another, strengthening each other’s business. Though each service provider runs their own separate business, the sum of their professional partnership creates an overall impression far above what any individual partner could display on their own.
Digging further, I found a collection of videos on their site that both shows the work of the photographers and also introduces you to individual photographers through taped interviews. Anyone interested in starting their own wedding photography business might enjoy listening to what these established pros have to say. It’s nice to have a client contact you feeling that they already know you and that’s what these videos accomplish.
The quality of the work on Wedding Life is jaw dropping and, to be fair, let’s remember that they are located in an affluent area (Orange County, California). The sun shines year round, palm trees are everywhere, beautiful smiles abound and the motion picture business is a stone’s throw away. So, I would imagine this is as close to a Hollywood wedding experience as one could imagine. You may not be able to recreate this experience in Green Bay, WI, or Amarillo, TX. But it sure is a goal to shoot for, huh?
Here in Cincinnati we have a similar group called The Wedding Mafia. A few months ago I wrote a post on my friend, wedding photographer Stephanie Carson. She is a prominent member of The Wedding Mafia group and they hold scheduled shows and social events for soon-to-be brides and grooms. By working together and holding each other to an elevated level of professionalism, they attract quality clients truly interested in hiring a professional. And caterers refer photographers and coordinators refer videographers and it all “stays in the family”.
Photographers…creative individuals, in general…can tend to be “lone wolves”. The idea that we’re better off by banding and marketing together is relatively new. I’m always a proponent of joining a professional photography organization and stress the importance of such an association. While joining a professional organization is an important part of your professional homework, these joint marketing efforts appear to be an interesting way to earn extra credit.
I’ll be thinking about how these relationships (and potential benefits) can be applied to my own world of commercial photography.
Good stuff. I bookmarked this one as I plan on going back to it when I have time and checking out that website and video interviews.
Who needs Google when you have Jim? You find some pretty good stuff for us here! Thanks.
There’s a lot of cool stuff going on out there, guess I’ve been on a good run of stumbling onto things!
Jim,
Very good find, I think you deserve more respect than stumbling onto these things, I think you know what you are looking for!! I have been planning with some vendors from my area for about 6 or 7 months on similar things to this, but the way these guys do it is unreal. I will for sure be sharing this with my vendor buddies in hopes of moving things along, with better ideas now. Thanks for “stumbling” onto this!!!!
PS
I did some shots with a point and shoot vs. a dslr I just have to put the article together and post it, will get to it as soon as I can. I will keep you posted.
I think I just put two and two together (I got three)! Jim, you posted recently about wanting to scale things back a little bit and you keep posting great links to websites that we all find useful!
You’re gonna go out of business if you keep surfing the net and not getting any work done!
That’s it, John, I’m looking for the “magic bullet” for business success, myself! Just thought I’d share my findings with everyone else.
The key to business longevity seems to be a willingness to learn and constant reinvention. It keeps things interesting, too.
P.S. and if I happen to find the “easy button” I’ll let you know where it is, too.
That’s the thing that keeps me in the field I’m currently in… programming. I get to constantly learn new things and, if I want, move to a different area of the field without too much difficulty. I see the same opportunities in photography. I enjoy landscape and scenic photography for my own enjoyment but can envision getting into real estate and, perhaps, corporate portraits.
I hope you got the humor in my last post. I like to be certain.
Be assured that I not only got the humor, I enjoyed it a great deal. You’d fit right in here at the studio. We’re pretty sharp at Daylight Photo but at the end of a long, hard day there may be a trivial slip up on some count. When there is we’ll look at each other with a serious face and say, “hmmm, I’m really beginning to question your commitment to this job”. Laughter keeps things rolling. Hey, maybe I’ll post something on photo studio humor sometime.
I’m glad to hear it! I often get odd, blank stares when I make attempts at humor. It’s nice to know it’s appreciated here.
If you don’t mind me announcing here, Gimp 2.6 was released today! I’m rather excited about it as it’s my only means of photo editing. It’s inclusion of the new GEGL engine paves the way for non-destructive editing and 16-bit/channel photo editing.
Hopefully a package will be available soon for Ubuntu 8.04 and included by default in Ubuntu 8.10.
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