Family Portrait Sessions - en mass

[jonathan_brown1]

I am considering setting up a one or two day portrait session at a

local park this fall to do environmental portraits of familes. I would

do it in blocks of about 45 minutes to 1 hour per family so about 5 or

6 a day. I would advertise to upper income familys through local paper

and my web site. I would charge a flat fee that covers settings and a

reasonable amount of enlargements, say $125 for a session.

 

Have any of you ever tried this before or heard of anyone else doing

it? Does this sound like a resonable concept? I am in a large metro

area so I feel the population base can support it but I would

appreciate any input.

 

Thanks,

[sabrina_h.]

I say anything to get your business off the ground is a good concept; as long as it works :

D

 

It sounds very interesting and potentially profitable. The only thing I would be concerned

about in my large metropolitan city is a permit. If it got too popular, you could face some

headaches. I would look into get a permit of sorts to keep the peace with your local

police. It shouldn't be too problematic.

 

I do well with online advertisments that I have in place and word of mouth. Sounds like an

interesting concept you have there ... I'd go for it!

[craig_gillette]

I think it would be the unusual city that didn't have some kind of "permit" process for using a public park for commercial activities. I think offering environmental sessions could work, I'd be careful how the appointments appear - making them appear to be individually arranged, not just as another time slot on a production schedule. Depending on location, planning for weather impact alternatives is probably a good idea. Keeping sun angles in mind, you may need to reset periodically.

[sabrina_h.]

Now that I think about it, my best buddy's mom has been painting portraits in the parks of

New Orleans for about 10 yrs. She seems to do very well.

[mike dixon]

In my experience, just posting an ad or two in the newspaper doesn't generate many calls (let alone sales). The other big problem I see with your concept is that you're expecting people with money to fit their schedules around yours--it seldom works that way. If you want to have well-heeled clients, expect to adapt to their busy schedules and take however much time is required to do the job right.

 

(And a bit of unasked for advice about your website: Make the large images smaller (you can only see a small part of each on the screen), and increase the quality of the jpegs (the big images are very pixelated and nasty looking.)

[steve_levine]

People are never punctual.Family A will be early,family B will be late etc.

[mark feldstein]

Greetings Jon! While I applaud your enthusiasm, there's a bit more to this than meets your eye, I think. First, if you're really going to get into doing this by marketing yourself and your concept, you should approach this as a business not a hobby. I say that because as a hobby, and at $125 per family including prints, which is really really cheap, you're probably not going to turn much of a profit for your efforts as opposed to your costs.

 

So, initially, you should come up with a business plan; what your costs are, marketing / promotional costs; the costs of assembling a portfolio of your personal work; film, processing, lighting, travel to and from the park(s); permit fees, insurance costs (if you have to get a permit you'll need to demonstrate proof of insurance and probably post a bond with the city you're shooting in. And...if you do that, you'll need a business license and you may be subject to county business taxes. Don't forget that you need to charge for your time both before and after shooting...you gotta spend time buying and testing your film, running back and forth to the lab, meeting with business prospects, meeting with them to select and then deliver prints. Get the picture? YIKES ! So, think about that $125 fee again. Also, your time frame of one hour is probably not enough. I'd allow at least two to 3 hours to keep families from bumping into each other, in case you fall behind, and to give yourself a break between shoots. What about planning for rain days and reshoots, if necessary?

 

As to marketing, as someone mentioned, newspaper ads are a nice idea but expensive and the rate of return on that kind of marketing investment probably isn't going to be real high. Formulating a marketing plan to work within your biz plan AND your start-up budget, will give you some insight into what it's going to cost to get going vs. how long it will take to recoup your initial investment and start turning a profit. Once again, if you do this as a business, you really need to assess your true costs. Or, if it's still a hobby, you're going to have largely the same costs and $125 per family really ain't much for what you're proposing to do.

 

What I'm trying to say Jon, is that there's a lot more to this than just taking photos. Good luck. Take it light. Mark

[mark feldstein]

By the way: As far as having seen anyone else try or actually do this before, yes. K-Mart and Sears, to think of two. They call them "loss leaders". They offer cheap portraits to get people to come into the store and pay contracted photographers a low hourly salary plus percentage of the prints they may sell the customer.

Mark

[sabrina_h.]

Another alternative, why dont you just run the business from your home and have your

clients meet you at the park or any similiar location that they choose?

 

I've shot a few portraits in the park for couples and individuals. I just have them meet me

at the location of their choice or one that i've selected based on their criteria.

 

I meet with my clients one time, the day of the shoot. I have a phone consultation before

the shoot (they see my portfolio on my website). They get a web preview of their images

to make a selection or a hard copy contact sheet sent via USPS to their home (with a small

magnifying glass that I bought in bulk) or electronic contact sheet via .pdf file.

 

They make their choices, I send the order out to the printer. I do quality control of the

prints and send the prints that they've selected via USPS. I print the USPS labels from my

home computer.

 

You dont have to spend a lot of time with your clients to make things work. They're busy

people and so am I :)