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"Silos" ©Brian Kosoff

Co-ops are a good place to start

My very first gallery presentation was actually in 1976 when I was 18, which resulted in my first solo show in New York City. Times were very different in 2001 when I presented to a co-op gallery, to which my acceptance was already a certainty. With co-op galleries, if your work is of reasonable quality and they need another paying member, well…you’re in. But co-ops deserves consideration, since my show there eventually led to my first gallery presentation that “mattered.”

What brought me to this co-op gallery was simple — my wife. One of the attractions of our cute Hudson River town was the fact there were seven galleries near by. When we’d walk by a gallery, my wife would nudge me about joining one of them or seeking representation. Even though I was spending a fair amount of time shooting landscapes after rekindling my interest in it a year earlier, I’d usually dismiss the idea saying I really didn’t have that much time to spend on it. But to be honest, I was uneasy about being seen as a commercial photographer “playing” at being an artist. But my wife continued to encourage me, and I eventually showed them my work, handed them my check, and was accepted as a member. If only it was so easy at non co-op galleries!

Look at all your work together

A few months after joining this co-op gallery, it was my turn for my solo show, in April 2001. The day I hung the show was the first time I had been physically surrounded by my new work and the first time I noticed that I was already showing rudimentary signs of having a style. It was illuminating. I highly recommend that every serious photographer literally surround themselves with their work and give it a good look all at once.

The show opened and I have to admit I was extremely curious how the viewers would react. I pretended to be just another viewer while eavesdropping on people in an effort to hear their honest reactions. I was very pleasantly surprised. My fears of being chased out of town by torch-wielding townsfolk turned out to be unfounded. Not only was the work well received, I actually sold prints — quite a few in fact! By the second weekend of the show, I had made a very respectable profit, and it began to appear that I could make a living doing this type of work. I would no longer need an expensive photo studio in Manhattan and the pressure from such a high overhead. I was elated; however, one gallery would not be enough to replace my established commercial photography business. I would need more galleries.

Show them what they want to see

First I did a little research to narrow down my list of galleries to ones that seemed to have an appreciation or interest in my genre of work. Just like showing my work to advertising clients: show your hamburger picture to MacDonald’s ad agency, your lipstick photos to Revlon’s.

Once I had my list of potential galleries in NYC, it was time to make calls. Some galleries were willing to see me for an in-person presentation; others just wanted me to drop off my portfolio. I had two 11×14” portfolios of my landscape prints, matted and mounted — one for drop-offs and one for in-person presentations.

Be prepared to put on a show

On day, I had arranged to drop off a portfolio at a gallery and also had made an appointment for an in-person presentation at Edward Carter Gallery. Both galleries showed a lot of B&W landscape work, ECG at one point touting itself as the biggest collection of Ansel Adams prints. The morning of the Carter meeting I received a call from the gallery where I had dropped off my portfolio. They thanked me and said I could pick up my portfolio at any time. I was disappointed but arranged to pick up the first portfolio and then went to see Mr. Carter at ECG.

When I walked into ECG I was blown away with how beautiful the gallery was. It was not the typical white walls and emptiness. This gallery had dark gray, nearly black walls and the prints, mostly Ansel, just popped off of them. There was a seating area, double Eames chairs, and Mr. Carter asked me to sit. He removed an Ansel print from the small wall directly in front of the chairs and asked me to present my work in that spot — the same spot where the Adams’ print had just hung!

Now, I had a lot of experience, about 25 years worth, showing my work to people: art directors, creative directors, picture editors, etc. But this was different, it was my personal work. It’s one thing to show an AD who works on a cosmetics account your assignment work with other cosmetics clients, and something else entirely to show someone work that has much deeper meaning for you. And as I held each image in the spotlight for Mr. Carter to see, I couldn’t help but notice that I was facing several Adams prints, and behind me were several more, and I’m starting to think to myself, “Who am I kidding?”  Whether you love, hate, or are neutral regarding Ansel Adams’ work, there’s no denying his contribution to photography. He’s not called St. Ansel for nothing. There’s actually a mountain named after him.

Don’t jump to conclusions

So I finish with my presentation, and the whole time Mr. Carter had been stone-faced, poker-faced, so I was not expecting a desirable outcome. I boxed up my prints, sat down next to him, and he turned to me and said, “I’d be honored to represent you.” That was not quite the response I was expecting. So, trying to be cool and acting as though no other outcome could have been possible, I ask him what the terms of representation were (good comeback!). Of course I started dialing my cell phone the second I walked out of the gallery, only to be frustrated by a lack of reception until I stepped outside onto Broadway. “Honey, I got an NYC gallery!!”

Coincidently, later that week I receive a call from the owner of the gallery where the staff had told me to pick up my portfolio. She asked why I had picked up the portfolio when she had been interested in meeting with me and talking about representation. Apparently someone on her staff had made an error. I had to tell her that I had just signed with another gallery — a real bummer since 9/11 ultimately put ECG out of business, and her gallery is still doing really well.

About a week after my meeting at ECG, I went with my wife, my parents, and my uncle (who was an avid photographer and had introduced me to photography) to ECG. There, next to prints by Ansel Adams, hung my own prints. It meant a lot to me then — and whenever I see my work hanging in the company of gifted photographers, it still means a lot to me.

©EDMONSON Photographers

We have a wedding site, an Indian wedding site, a site for David, a site for me, and an associate site for weddings. Then we have a commercial site, a portrait site, a catering site for my brother-in-law who is a chef, an Italian event site for two of my sisters who are living in Rome, and a couple others. We use our sites and the blog to be able to cross link and drive traffic to each other. We also invested in the liveBooks SEO service and now about a third of our business comes from people who are just searching for us on the internet. Another third of our business comes from vendor referrals — people in the industry who we work with. A perfect example of that is the photographer Robert Evans. He shot Brad Pitt’s wedding simply because he had given images back to a florist he worked with. No one had done that for that florist before, so he stood out and they recommended him for the wedding. So if you can find ways to give back to your vendors, it always pays off because they’ll send you some business. The other third of our business comes from word-of-mouth bridal referrals and people who endorse us in the community.

We advertise on a few exclusive websites and we’re part of organizations that help us create buzz, like WPJA, WPPI, and PPA. We also advertise in publications in our local markets, but the best way to get publicity in magazines is to just send them images from real weddings. That’s a great way doing editorial work, and it also helps the magazines out. My basic analogy about your business is, it’s like you have a container that you want to put a bunch of water in. Some of the cups that you’re using are big cups, and some are Dixie cups. But the more you’re pouring in, the better off you’re going to be. So whether it’s SEO or word of mouth, every little bit helps.

Then when potential clients come to us or to our websites, we found that for all our clients, when they initially have contact with us, they want see content that is very targeted towards exactly what they’re asking us about. If they ask about baby photos, they want to go to a site that looks like nothing but babies; if they want us to do a wedding, they want to go to a site that is nothing but weddings.

©EDMONSON Photographers

Most websites I see have portfolios divided up into four or five different types of photography. Then they have their blog link there, and their pricing. And they blend together after a while, because all the sites are the same. Everybody is showing that they do a variety of stuff. We just found that, for us, to connect with our clients, especially a higher-end clientele, they like things that are rare and unique, or specialized. They want to go to someone that is considered an expert in their field. So if you present yourself as a jack-of-all-trades, you may come off as a master of none. Versus if you have different websites, you’re able to show these different clients that you invest yourself into this particular niche, whatever it is. All of a sudden they’re building this trust with you. And you’re giving them a reason to want to use you because they think this is what you eat, dream, and sleep about, is taking baby photos, or taking commercial photos, or taking wedding photos. And it doesn’t actually have to be that way. It’s just the way that you’re presenting it to them.

And then, when they’re looking at our work, we don’t come up to them and necessarily start telling them all the other different kinds of stuff we do. We just show it. It’s like when we meet with wedding clients, we still have a few of our commercial products up and available, because it builds our trust. We’ve shot a number of recording artists and we have their gold records up. And they’ll start to think, if this band I know trusts them to do their photography, why can’t I? Typically, people when they come to meet us, they already know that they like our work. The only reason why they come to meet us is to find out our personalities, because they’ve seen the work online or someone else has put in a good word for us. So we don’t have to do a lot of selling then, at the point that they’re coming to meet us.

Then over time, once they get to know you, they like you, and they love your work, you can introduce them to some of the different types of photography that you do if you have different sites. All of a sudden they start to be your ambassador looking for ways to help you promote your business. And when you’re talking about today’s economic times, we all know that it’s not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, because all of a sudden if that hype, for whatever reason, start to slow down, you’re dead in the water.

An image from the Edmonson's Indian wedding site. ©Edmonson Wedding

When we started working together, my father’s business was primarily commercial photography: magazines, books, CD covers, annual reports. So one week I got sent to the West Coast for an assignment, and he got sent to the East Coast for an assignment. And I said to my father, I came back here so that we could shoot together, but I don’t feel like we’re doing that. This is the commercial world, and that’s the way it’s going be; but we have our Saturdays, and wedding photography has changed. Have you ever considered doing weddings? I showed him that wedding photography today is little bit more lifestyle, more photojournalistic. I also showed him how the coffee table wedding books now are more of a magazine layout, which he could relate to.

So we kind of put our sign up in the world to do weddings. The first year, we did everything wrong. We did 120 weddings at $1,000 each, which was way too much. But you learn from your mistakes. So we changed our prices and we ended up doing more weddings the next year. We almost burned ourselves out because we were just all about volume — that’s what we thought success was.

So we learned from our mistakes again and changed our business model. One of the big ways we did that was with our websites. I have background working with websites, so when I very first started, I started off doing it all by myself, ’cause I thought nobody can do it as good as I could. But then I ended up realizing that the only way to grow your business is if you free yourself up to do what you’re best at, which is getting  business, running your business, being a photographer. So we started out with four sites. Those first four were a site tailored to our American weddings, a site tailored to our Indian clients for Indian weddings, a website for David Edmonson, and a website for Luke Edmonson. One of the reasons we had our two individual sites was because some of the organizations that we are part of, for instance WPJA, have specific parameters for the type of images that you show, and if you can identify who the photographer is. For us it was much simpler just to say, let’s take our consistent look and feel from our wedding sites, and we’ll make separate sites dedicated to each target audience.

The second reason we wanted separate sites was that, when we looked at our client, we saw that our most profitable clients are either our high-end Indian clients and our high-end American clients. We’re not making much profit on the in-between, middle-ground clients. But if we were only going after one group or the other, then we would be limiting ourselves. So we said, let’s go ahead and invest in completely separate websites.

Then number one, we could choose a domain name that meant something special to our Indian clients. That’s why our domain for that site is EdmonsonShaadi. “Shaadi” means matrimony in the Hindi language. And the messaging, the tone of what we wanted to say to clients was different, simply because culturally Indians are Hindus, Muslims, and Christians and have 10 thousand different languages and dialects. So rather than presenting ourselves in English, we wanted to be able to talk to say thanks to them in their own languages -– the different greetings that they would expect from other people who understand their culture. We were blessed to shoot a wedding in New Delhi, India, and we had the ability to see things first-hand. For us, when we’re looking at how to divide up the website, it was really important to be able to show our Indian clients things that relate specifically to their expectations. And then, vice-versa, for our American clients we could do the same.

©Edmonson Photography

Another thing that was important to us was that our separate sites link to one another, to allow people to navigate to the different types of photography we do. So for our wedding sites, at the bottom you’ll see that it says “Wedding,” “Indian,” “David,” and “Luke.” That is simply because we want our Indian clients who maybe know somebody who is non-Indian, to realize that we do work other than just Indian weddings, and hopefully recommend a new client. And likewise for our American clients, who could see we do Indian weddings and might tell a friend.

The same thing goes for our commercial and portraits and other related businesses. One of the things my father taught me long ago was that it’s very hard to be profitable the first time you do business. Profitability comes from a lifetime relationship working with someone. So we start out showing clients that we put an emphasis of the type of photography that we’re doing for them, but then we expand to their other needs.

For instance, someone might start out as a wedding client; then, of course, they’re going to have portrait needs. Maybe that starts with babies, maternity photos, and eventually those become senior portraits, family portraits, and so forth. Perhaps the dad has a business, so it’s awesome if he can see that we do commercial work as well. There are an infinite number of ways to grow your business by just putting it out there. One of the things that we found was that whenever we were initially introduced to a client, they wanted to be able to see that we focused on them. If it’s a commercial client, they didn’t want to see any portraits. They didn’t want to see any wedding photos. They wanted to see commercial photos. Likewise a bride who is looking for wedding photos, that’s all she wants to see. It’s only later in the relationship, when they started to explore some of our other offerings, and once they’ve already gotten connected to you and liked you, all of a sudden they start thinking of you and other ways that they can use you in their life.

When working with consumer photographers (anyone who markets directly to the public), I always like to encourage them to show images that will make their potential clients believe that if they hire them, they’ll create that same MAGICAL moment for them. Those magical moments are why a consumer client hires a photographer. Regardless if it’s to capture their baby’s first year, their family portrait, or especially that bride’s special day, they want to believe you are the person to make that moment happen.

These are my recommendations for putting together a website of your wedding photography, which have helped my wedding photographers increase their bookings from 25-45% to 50-100%.

DOs:

• Make your galleries quick and easy to look at (15 – 25 clicks per gallery)

• Tell a story with multiple weddings –- the start of the day to the end of the day. Example: Bride getting ready, father seeing bride, bride walking down aisle, the I Dos, the kiss, the bridal party portraits, reception vignettes (flowers, table cards), the first dance, the father-daughter dance, people having a blast at the reception, the cake cutting, and finally the cliché end of the night moment (holding hands walking off into the night). Yes, you heard it right, that cliché moment gets a bride every time.

DON’Ts

• Have 10 galleries – each titled: “Joe & Sarah,” “Marc & Beth,” etc. that only show the best photos from each of their weddings

• Show a bride or anyone at a wedding at their worst moment. Some photographers appreciate a photo for its caught-moment approach. I appreciate that too –- but if it’s on your wedding site, a bride will imagine herself in that photo every time. If a bride looks too heavy or someone is causing trouble, she will think the same will happen to her if she hires you. I know this sounds elementary, but every client I work with has at least one photo that MUST be taken out.

GALLERY IDEAS:

• Have one gallery showing the entire day from start to finish, drawn from different weddings

• Have multiple galleries (no more than 3-5) breaking up the categories, such as, Getting Ready, I Do, Group Shots, The Reception, and Bridal Portraits and/or Engagement Photos

Finally, remember you are being hired to help capture that special day (a.k.a. that MAGICAL moment). Everything — including your website, portfolio, and personal presentation — has to convey that you are exactly the right person to do that.