Chairman of the Board
Doug Peninger dpeninger@SEPPAonline.com
President
George Singleton gsingleton@SEPPAonline.com
1st Vice-President
Kevin Jiminez kjiminez@SEPPAonline.com
2nd Vice-President
Mary Fisk-Taylor mfisktaylor@SEPPAonline.com
Secretary-Treasurer
District of Columbia
Florida
Janet Boschker jboschker@SEPPAonline.com
Salon Exhibition Chair Executive Director
Delaware
Jessica Vogel jvogel@SEPPAonline.com
Georgia
*** Paula Mignagna
***Anthony Maril Joe Tessmer
*** Jackson Koontz Kaye Newsome
*** Spencer Smith Jason White
Rick Gibbons ExecutiveDirector@SEPPAonline.com
S out he r n E x p o su re
Souther n Exposure magazine is an online publication of SEPPA and is published monthly. Editor V ictoria Kelly vkelly@SEPPAonline.com 919.818.0726 Ad Sales & Business Manager Rick Gibbons ExecutiveDirector@SEPPAonline.com 866.982.4856
Maryland
*** Lidia Miller Steve Clark
Mississippi/Alabama
*** Wesley Ellis Gil Brady
North Carolina
*** Ellis Williamson Rose Mary Cheek
South Carolina
*** Patty Hallman Gregg Martin
Article & Ad Submissions 5th of every month OnLine Publication 20th of each month SEPPA 3710 North Main Street High Point, NC 27265 866.982.4856 Acceptan ce o f a d v e r t i si n g d oe s n ot c a r r y wi th i t en dor se m e n t b y t h e p ub l i sh e r. Opi n i o ns expre sse d b y Sout h e r n Exp osure o r an y o f i ts aut h or s d oe s n ot n e c e ssa r i l y refl ect t h e p osi t i on s of t h e Sou theaster n Pro fessi on a l P h ot og r a p h e r s A ssoc ia t io n . Asso ci ati on f i n a n c i a l i n f or m a t i on avai la b l e up on re q ue st .
Tennessee
Virginia
West Virginia
*** Jeannie Forehand Barbara White
*** Jim Carpenter Robert Holman
*** Pat Dodd Brentv Kepner
*** state president SEPPA representative
Delaware
Mississippi/Alabama
District of Columbia
North Carolina
www.ppsgw.org
www.ppofnc.com
Florida
South Carolina
www.fpponline.org
www.ppofsc.com
Georgia
Tennessee
www.gppa.com
www.tnppa.com
Maryland
Virginia
www.delawarephotographers.com
www.marylandppa.com
SEPPA is a regional affiliate of the Professional Photographers of America and hosts an annual District Image Judging. To learn more about PPA, click HERE.
www.ppma.net
www.vppa.org
West Virginia www.ppwv.org
Corn Dogs, Olive Oil and Pink Mashed Potatoes Christine Walsh-Newton, M. Photog., Cr., CPP In 1983, I worked for a concession stand company, traveling from street fair to street fair across the state of Ohio for five months peddling corn dogs. In exchange for working a number of ungodly hours that had to be against some kind of labor law, I received a paltry weekly sum and all the corn dogs I could eat. They were hot, filling and affordable. I sold them by the thousands. Thirty years later, the sight of a corn dog still turns my stomach. Hold that thought. Tucked in the woods, on the shore of a lake is a little bistro. In the middle of nowhere, Ohio, it's a small treasure to the locals. A bit on the pricey side, with a delicious menu, it became “the place� to go when there was something to celebrate. Birthdays, anniversaries, post-wedding parties; from a table of two to a family group of twelve or so, we'd appear several times a year for a nice evening of food and wine. On one of these occasions, the menu had slightly shifted as it sometimes did. It had become trendy to stack food items into a tower, and my medium rare filet mignon was served on a bed on dirty mashed potatoes and topped with the vegetable of the day. Individually, the items were delicious, but I preferred cutting into a nice maison-but-
Christine Walsh-Newton, cont’d...
tered steak without having to scrape mashed potatoes off the bottom and green beans off the top. I ate the meal with no complaint, but decided that next time I should order the items to be served unstacked. A medium-rare steak... well, let's just say, pink mashed potatoes aren't very appetizing. The next time I ordered that meal from the little bistro on the lake, I asked for the items to be unstacked. When the meal was delivered, it was on three different dinner plates. One for mashed potatoes, one for the steak and one for the green beans. Our table for two already contained two water glasses, two wine glasses, two salads and two plates of appetizers. Suddenly, it needed to hold four more plates, one for my husband's meal, and three for mine. I caught the snicker of the wait staff while I tried to arrange the table, and finally had to place one of the plates of food on top of my water glass and was forced to hand my salad plate to the waiter, even though I hadn't finished.
Hold that thought, too. The other day I was shopping for some imported olive oil at a small store in my area. A lovely lady, Kimberly, had opened an olive oil and vinegar shop, somewhat unusual for our area, but her extensive knowledge of her product line and her excellent level of customer service has won her a loyal customer base. As I shopped, I noticed that the olive oils from Italy were missing and asked if I could speak with her as there was a particular reason I wanted some. Due to some trucking strikes on the west coast, her shipments had been held up for an additional week and the oil I was looking for wasn't available. She asked about the intended recipient of the gift, their food and cooking tastes and recommended a substitute oil from Peru. I sampled it, listened to her explain the qualities and subtleties of the oil and was convinced it would do nicely in place of the oil from Italy. I bought the Peruvian oil with no regrets and went happily on my way. And now, hold that thought, as well.
Clearly, I was considered one of “those” customers that had somehow offended the chef (we'll call him “Richard”) with my request. Now, maybe this strikes you all as a little funny, but at the time, it wasn't. I had pleasantly and discreetly asked for my meal that way, and the resulting effort, orchestrated to embarrass, left such a bad taste in my mouth (pun intended) that our visits there eventually stopped and we haven't been back in a number of years.
And...this has to do with photography... how? I began to think about our businesses. And how the boutique studio model has become popular. We want to be refined, elegant, specialized and serve the uppermost clientele in and out of our area. Sometimes we do a bang up job of it, like Kimberly. But sometimes, well, sometimes we act just like Richard. And we chase our
Christine Walsh-Newton, cont’d...
clients away. I began to think about our clients. And how sometimes they ask for something that is not exactly what we have or wish to provide. Maybe the client has brought in 39 Pinterest pictures of poses so tacky we want to jam our fingers down our throats. Setups we've seen a jillion times. Props we are SO. OVER. Stylistic concepts as common and ordinary as a corn dog. We've been there, we've done that, and we have the t-shirt and the keychain. But yet, here's a bright shiny new client face that wants the tacky corn dog pose. Because they haven't seen it a jillion times. They like it. They often love it. And sometimes it's “the pose.” The one they absolutely have to have and plan the whole session around. It happens all the time. I've been reading a lot of questions on some of my forums and online groups asking for advice in how to deal with these kinds of clients. I'm a little bit horrified when I see requests of this nature treated w ith disdain, with contempt, with a “how dare you insult my artistic integrity with your request for tackiness?” attitude. An attitude so thick with indignation that I don't believe for a minute that the photographer is able to completely hide it from the client. And I wonder if the client winds up feeling like I did at the bistro on the lake. “But that's not my style,” they whine.
And the photographer in the industry forums is coddled and placated and their attitude is echoed and approved of by others. Advice to charge extra fees, delete the images, refund the client money and a variety of other creative solutions are often given. And I'm thinking to myself “Are you kidding me?” When did a client request become an issue? An insult? A situation worthy of this level of angst and unrest? In the olden days, before digital, before there was a home studio in the basement of one house on every street, there was one, maybe two photography studios that served an entire town. Studios that you could walk in and ask for a certain kind of photography and get what you asked for. No one told you that you were asking for something that wasn't “their style.” Requests for something special were not countered with policies and rules and additional fees. Did you want family photos? Wedding photos? Anniversary, graduation or first birthday photos? Pictures with your cat, your car, your tennis trophy? Unless you were a total creepster asking for something crass and/or illegal, your request was usually granted. But these days... we're acting a little spoiled. A little bit full of ourselves. A little bit like that bistro chef who stuck his nose in the air and made sure I felt as if I were asking for a corn dog in his culinary kingdom. The next time a customer asks for something that makes you want to roll your eyes, or asks for something slightly different than what you offer, hold that thought.
Christine Walsh-Newton, cont’d...
Are you going to act like Richard or are you going to act like Kimberly, the lady who couldn't quite offer what I wanted, but worked with me to find a compromise that pleased us both? Somewhere along the line it seems that the customer has been made into the enemy. The last time I checked, those customers were the key to photographers being able to support our businesses, selves and families.
Christine is a portrait photographer and owner of Gallery C in Dover, Ohio. She is a co-author of “The Daily Book of Photography” and authors “Wootness: The Big Girl and Guy’s Guide to Starting a Photography Business.”
Along with the dream clients that hand over artistic control to us, it's just a fact of life that we are going to have a higher percentage of average, every day clients, whose tastes are more common, and whose need for creativity and specialty is not as high as others. But, they walked through OUR door. They chose US. They have shown that they do, indeed care who they choose as their photographer. Just because their photography requests and ideas do not completely match our own is not a reason to throw down the “they're not my client” glove. Let's get over ourselves and step up to the plate and deliver some stellar customer service. Like Kimberly, we can take this opportunity to work with our clients and offer them some creative additional options. Let's utilize our knowledge and skill set to serve each client as best as we can to fulfill their requests and make them happy. If we don't, they may very well never be our client again.
SEPPAonline
find us (and like us) on Facebook!
IT’S HIP TO BE SQUARE... Victoria Kelly, Cr. Photog., CPP
Some time ago I wrote an article about “Square” and how it had changed how I process credit cards in the studio. At that time, Square basically had one function: it processed a credit card and did a payout to my bank in about twenty-four hours. The percentages were right for my studio and so I happily trashed my big machine that was tied to a phone line in the studio and saved myself some money. Fast forward a couple years and Square has added some new tricks…so in the interest of sharing these with you I’m offering you an update on Square and how I’m using it. BIG IDEA #1: It doesn’t happen very often but occasionally I end up needing to generate an invoice for someone to pay online. Most recently this happened with a substantial order for holiday cards. The client lived out of town, the cards were going to be dropshipped and she preferred to pay via credit card. What to do?
You now have the capability of generating an invoice via Square.
get that piece up and running after the holiday craziness.
Just go into your dashboard and in the “Sales” dropdown menu select “Invoices”.
I booked a holiday gig for the Sunday before Christmas and needed online booking FAST. So I went into my dashboard, set up my staff and the session itself, added it to my blog as a clickable link and I was in business.
The invoice itself is pretty simple…you fill out a few fields (client name, email), decide on payment terms from a handy dropdown menu and then select your item from the library that you probably setup when you started using Square. If your item isn’t in the library, no problem. Just key in the wording you want to use and the price. Square does everything else for you. You may remember that Square charges a larger fee if you key in the credit card number. With a Square-generated invoice it’s the client who is keying in their own number and it’s my understanding that Square treats this as a “swiped” card so you are charged the lower fee. Cowabunga! BIG IDEA #2: I have been using online scheduling quite successfully for sometime now. It’s great for yearbook appointments, headshots, preview appointments and other odds and ends. Let’s face it…if someone wants to schedule their appointment in the studio while they’re sitting at the computer at midnight…I want them to be able to do so! I had noticed that Square was now offering online booking and was intending to
The system will let your clients book an appointment, change it or cancel it. With each action there is an accompanying email that goes out to the client. One of the best parts, though, is that it will send an automatic text message to your client’s cell phone reminding them of the appointment. I don’t have to remember to do that and we all know reminders cut down on no-shows. I’ve been using Square for a couple of years now and it has made reconciling bank statements and tax time a breeze. Square generates a spreadsheet that I can import into QuickBooks and my accountant is all smiles when I hand him a single report showing all of our credit card transactions by month for the entire year. Now…Square isn’t for everybody. Again, you should review your business practices and make a comparison between what you’re paying with a regular merchant account and what you would be paying with Square. But if you do…I’m thinking you just might be surprised. And then you can hum “It’s hip to be Square” all through the day.
Victoria Kelly, cont’d...
BIG IDEA #1
BIG IDEA #2
Come on, now... you know you want one of these tickets. How, you ask? It’s easy... Be one of the first twenty-five registered for FLASH2015 and we’ll GIVE you one! (Really.) Pretty simple, eh? Visit the SEPPA website at www.SEPPAonline.com and click on registrations.
Cye Gray and Scott Garlock ($49...) Shooting Safari, May 2, 9am-4pm Platform, May 3, 9:30am - 11am
We’ve often heard it said that a picture paints a thousand words. For Cye Gray and Scott Garlock, preservationist photographers, that is absolutely true. Cye and Scott are interested in OLD THINGS. And by “old things” we’re talking buildings and places. Their mission is to photograph the forgotten buildings and places you might not think of every day...to research the stories...to capture the essence of the people who lived in them, worked in them and maybe even called them home. Join Cye and Scott on the FLASH Shooting Safari...it will be an adventure where “thinking outside the box” means taking a walk back in time.
Ann Monteith Business, May 1-2, 9am-4pm Platform, May 4, 8am - 11am
Did you know that most businesses fail within the first five years? Is it a lack of vision? commitment? passion? If you’re an emerging professional (and even if you aren’t) you owe it to yourself to make this investment in the success of your business whether you’re a residential gallery or storefront. “Ann Monteith” is the name everybody knows when it comes to getting down to the basics of a studio’s success. She’ll show you the way when it comes to analyzing your numbers, planning your business strategy and how to say “no” when it comes to dropping those product lines that just aren’t profitable. Separate registration required: visit Ann’s website: www.annsworkshop.com
save the date! May 1-5 Charlotte, NC