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We all love small portrait sessions: Families, seniors, headshots
Benefits to this kind of session:
- You get to be creative
- You get to know your clients
- You build personal relationships with people that appreciate your talent as an individual
- You are an artist
Drawbacks to this kind of session:
- You constantly have to find new clients
- You have to explain the value of what you are doing
- Often times clients will have quite limited budgets
- To do this full time you have to be constantly marketing
Another option that can be used to bring in larger amounts of income with comparatively little time investment: Step and repeat Portrait Booths at events
- Not talking about the often cheesy “hold up a moustache on a stick” photo booth
- Not pre-made kibox kits that is self directed that print off little 2×2 prints right then and there.
- Setting up a booth to take nice portraits that people can step in to, work with you for a minute and leave.
Benefits:
- Often dealing with larger organizations that have budgets for events.
- The hours are often relatively short (2-6 hours)
- Easy editing
- Don’t need to have nearly as many clients coming in to pay well.
- Often times a way to get you in contact with a lot of clients.
Drawbacks:
- It is Boring uninspiring work
- You don’t get to interact with clients in a personal way
- It often times takes more coordination before the event
- A need for a bit more gear.
How it is done:
Physical Booth:
- Usually about a 10’x10’ space
- Need 1-3 light
- Often times a backdrop
- Maybe a themed prop
- Place 1 light in the corner of the booth boomed as far in as possible while still being easy to navigate.
- Tripod centered
- Gaff tape line to direct the flow of traffic
- Best to have some sort of card with information on how to get the photos after the event
- 1-2 assistants to direct the line and hand out card/answer questions about receiving photos.
- You should spend about 20 seconds to a minute with each person/couple/family/group and take 2-3 photos of each.
How to get clients of this sort:
- FIrst, make a list of holidays and or times of the year organizations tend to throw parties/employee outings/community events
- Second make a list of Organizations and businesses that are likely to hold these kinds of events. (Hint: Look for companies that often are medium sized businesses with around 100-500 employees that could feasibly afford one of your in person sessions, but not so much that they would look down on the offer of a photo booth, i.e banks, construction companies, office parks, etc.)
- Third, cold call to set up an appointment to inquire about any yearly events and activities in which you might be a welcome attraction.
- Be sure to follow up.
- If this isn’t their first year doing the event they likely have an idea of attendance levels. Build an estimate considering around 50%-75% of families in attendance wanting photos at a cost ranging from $3-$10 per.
- This price can either be paid for entirely by the hosts of the event, entirely by attendees (less preferable, you will do less work in these cases) or a hybrid (same as other)
- Lighting is the same for each shot so you can sync across the whole event of shooting with only minor adjustments to exposure and occasional cropping.
- Deliver either to the organization for them to make available to attendees, or have your own link made available.