Rejected? Keep trying! {Delaware Lifestyle and Fashion Photographer}

Feeling low?  Trust me, as a small business owner who is running a photography business, I know what it's like to put your work, your self on the line and be rejected. I recently entered a major photographer competition, and let's just say, I did less than well. While I scored, which is better than a competition that I entered in 2013, my scores were low.  I admit, I spent a few days being upset, and wondering where do I go from here?  It's like riding a horse. You just hop right back on.

Success does not come easy, it comes with hard work. And if you give up, you will never really know how close you were to making it.  I wanted to share this link with you about famous people who were initially rejected at what they do at first, but went on to become amazing.  You have no idea how close you are, just keep working hard.

http://www.distractify.com/people/famous-people-rejection-letters/

This is one of the images that I submitted to the print competition. Titled, "Let them eat cake".  Styling a Marie Antoinette inspired shoot was a lot of work, and I was very proud of this image. The model loved the way she looked.  I scored very low on this image at competition. But I will not give up. 

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What do I carry? {Delaware Lifestyle Family & Fashion Photographer}

I get asked all the time when I am out on shoots, what kind of camera bag do I have, because my bag is so cute and doesn't look like a camera bag. I take that as a HUGE compliment! I have a serious purse addiction to begin with, so with all of the options of camera bags out there, I know first hand that it can be difficult to pick one. So here is my review of my two camera bags from JoTotes .  Besides being affordable, stylish, and amazing, these bags are really great quality.

My first bag that I purchased was the Rose bag in teal. I purchased this bag well over three years ago, before I had Charlotte, and it has held up amazingly. I am pretty rough on my gear, and this bag has been through countless weddings, being dropped, being tossed into the car, and my gear is safe inside of it.

(all product images directly from the JoTotes website)

The Rose bag was big enough for me to carry two bodies, two lenses, flash, batteries, cf cards, and my personal items such as my wallet and keys.  When I shoot weddings, I am pretty firm on what I shoot with, and that is my 5dMkii with (at the time) my 50mm 1.2 and 70-300 lenses.  If I rented a different lens, or had more gear on hand, I would keep my back up in my back up bag that was with my second shooter, and add whatever gear I needed.  One of the features that I love the best is that the inside is velcro, and the sections are padded, so you can adjust and move the sides to fit your gear perfectly no matter what you want to carry. Also those metal studs on the bottom keep the bottom of my bag from getting scraped and messed up. I now use this bag as my back up bag which has my two back up bodies, two back up lenses, charger, batteries, and battery grips for those cameras.  For a while, I actually used it as a diaper bag for my daughter.  The fact that it had sections that I can move made keeping the diaper bag very organized.


Now, as a treat to myself in 2013, I purchased a new bag when I went through a rebrand of my business. Of course, I already knew that I was going to pick another bag from Jo Totes, but which one?  After an hour of searching and flipping out, and asking my husband and sister which one I should get, I settled on the Gracie bag in the color Greige. A nice, neutral, khaki type color.  Unfortunately the site does not have the bag in my color, so this is it in Butterscotch and Lilac:

I love this bag because of the size. It is nice and roomy, and fits nicely when slung around my body with the include strap.  Plus the metal feet on the bottom. Also, pockets and zippers!  Since being with my husband, he has instilled in me the importance of pockets, and this bag has pockets and zippers galore. Typically I keep my extra batteries, charger, business cards and keys in the front two pickets.  My wallet and person stuff in the inside zipper section, and I can even fit my ipad into this.  Now that I mainly photograph families, this bag hold my main camera body and my two lenses, with room for my water bottle and snacks.

Both bags are made out of high quality faux-leather, so they are vegan friendly.

The Rose bag was $89, and the Gracie bag was $119. In my eyes, money well spent, and again, the waulity has been amazing.  If you are in the market for a great quality bag, Jo Totes is the way to go!

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Getting your name out there {Delaware Lifestyle Portrait & Fashion Photographer}

I will tell you, one of the most important aspects of business is having people know your name.  People love to talk, especially when they have had good experiences. People also talk when they have bad experiences. Either way, you want to make it your goal that people are talking about you in a good way.

When I was photographing weddings, I paid for a lot of advertising.  And for me, that advertising did not pay off at all. I did not get one single lead from paid advertising.  Which for me is somewhat hard to believe considering that I am centrally located to areas like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and can even travel to New York.  3 years of spending money on advertising gone down the drain that could have been put to amazing thank you gifts for advertising that worked.  Want to know what that was? Word of mouth!

I will readily say that almost all of my business has come from word of mouth. My clients are amazing, and I treat them like such. And I want them to tell their friends and family members about their time with me.

As of late, one of the best tools that photographers have used for advertising and connecting with our clients has not been as valuable as of late. And that is Facebook. Yes, it is free and that is a great thing.  But a lot of photographers are finding that we are reaching less than 5% of our fan base with free ads, and if we want more of our fan base to see that, we have to pay.  Being that Facebook is free in the first place I am not going to complain too much. I have no idea how their algorithms work either. Some days, new people and new pages show up on my newsfeed, other days they don't.  I have a couple of ways to keep my name and business out there and to keep my name fresh.

1) Have your fans interact with your page.  It's not all about posting your photos and your work.  Have conversations on your page.  When people comment or like on your page, it shows up on the ticker, and more often than not, people will want to see what they are up to.  Since I photograph families and babies, I have no problem with bringing up topics on childhood, activities, food, and fun things.  The more people that interact by commenting and liking, the more my post is seen, and more people can come see my work.

2) Don't rely completely on social media.  While that may seem like an odd thing to say, it is true.  We definitely cannot rely completely on social media. While tools like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter are amazing tools for connecting and showing your work, ultimately, connecting with people on a real, personal, face to face matter is what is important.  So make sure that any encounter with your clients is one that they will remember.

3) Offer a reward program.  This is probably one of the biggest things that work for me, rewards!  Whenever a new client books that is referred from a previous client, the client that referred them gets a gift print credit that they can use towards ordering images from their own sessions. It has been a blast!

Hopefully these tips will help get and keep your name out there! Pin It