Rebel Fish respects and admires Jessica Strickalnd (http://www.jessicastrickland.com). Here are some things she suggests you do to take your business to the next level:

Small things that I love to do and have changed my “perceived” value….

1. Take them to dinner for your first meeting

2. Send a personalized thank you for booking…include a gift certificate for their favorite restaurant.

3. Send a gift off of their registry…as a thanks and looking forward to your wedding fun thing! Very personal…love this one!

4. Always be prepared! I have sewn/cut/pinned/destained dresses, fed kids, pinned on buttons, sprayed hair, bobbypinned updo’s, pinned on boutineers, gotten coffee, picked up flowers, picked up people, bussled a million dresses, etc, etc, etc…..(just as you all have!)and none of that is in my job description..it just simply shows that I care because I truly do!

5. Bring a small (flexible) cooler of water & snacks(well, in the spring & summer) to every wedding & engagement shoot. I can’t tell you how many couples have come to the car, after a shoot in the summer….sweating and miserable…and I hand them both cold bottles of water and a bag of chex mix or whatever…and they get soo excited. (although it does sort of make me feel like a mom!) ha!

6. Blog every wedding and shoot that you can. Share your candid thoughts and emotions about the couple in your blog post. This alone has completely changed by business. People are soo touched by it…I can’t even tell you. I think it’s just soo important.

7. Constantly work to have GREAT work! Only really GREAT work consitutes pricing upwords of 8K in my opinion….so always be working to be a better photographer so that you can justify high prices. Bad work with high pricing is bad for the industry, the photographer, the clients, etc! Stay inspired! Do an inspire session before each wedding, get fresh ideas, challenge yourself to 10 new things each time! Sounds cheesy, but is sincerely has completely changed my work over time and TOTALLY allowed me to charge MORE! I still do it, to this day, before each wedding…and have for the over 300 weddings I have shot! I never miss it!

8. Do things because you can. Throw in an extra album page or two if you know they would love it. Do an extra 5×5 book of 20 images in the favorites folder on Pictage…as a 1 year anniversary gift. Re-release their event to them on Pictage…after it expires….just to be thoughtful! (and watch more orders come in!) Such small things…but really….huge!

Ultimately, I think when people genuinely feel like you have gone above and beyond for them and you truly care….then they just don’t look at you with a pricetag, anymore. It’s beyond that. Your value is just soo much greater for simply caring.

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Rebel Fish often gets folks asking her how she gets such fun reception photos with ambient light and great action. Here’s her standard run-and-gun set-up:

Use a relatively wide zoom (she uses her 2.8 16-35 L-series Canon)
Set your camera to manual
Set your ISO to 800
Set your shutter speed to 15
Set your sperture to 3.2-4 ish
Keep the lens relatively wide (closer to the 16)
Point your flash straight up (if you have ceilings to bounce off)
Pull your little white reflector on your flash up just about a quarter inch (If you don’t have one, you can rubber-band a 3×5 card to the back of your flash and have the top of the card extend just about a half-inch past the top of the flash. This will create a nice catch-light in your subject’s eyes)
Set your focus to one-shot (vs servo). This will allow your camera to use the focus beam assist from the flash.

Fire away! Try it at home! Woo!

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Wow. Rebel Fish finally solved the raw vs. JPEG question for herself, anyway. She’s been shooting raw becuase it’s been much faster in post-processing in Lightroom. She knows the quallity of JPEG in modern cameras is sweet, and few people can tell the difference in final outputs.

After Lightroom beta 4 came out, the speed of JPEG processing was snappy enough to warrant taking another look at JPEG shooting.

She tried an engagement session tonight to see how it would go.

She’s blown away by how limited her Lightroom editing is! All of her presets that she built in LR (that save her hours upon hours of editing) look like poo on JPEGs. The JPEG has a significantly limited range of what you can do to it compared to a raw image. Becuase you’re applying a white balance, sharpening, tone, contrast to the original image, when you bring it into LR, it’s like applying effects on top of existing effects. The result is crap. Trust Rebel Fish. Crap. You can’t push the saturation without seeing noise. You can’t jack up the contrast without banding.

She never would have put raw over JPEG in anything but speed before now, but seeing how limited a range of effects she can create in LR, She’s never shooting JPEG again.

JPEG shooters: you’re shooting yourself in the foot. The power of Lightroom or Aperture or Bridge lies in their ability to avoid you having to open images individually in Photoshop. You can get that sexy, surreal color. The cool desaturation effect. Cross-processed looks. Anyhing you like–all without having to open and edit the image, saving you hours upon hours. Because JPEG cripples the file, you can’t get some of the cool effects. It’s honestly like the difference between AM and FM: the JPEG doesn’t allow you the full range of frequency.

RF

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As a photographer, you’re in the business of selling photos. Anything used to create those photos is considered a manufacturing tool and, as such, is exempt from sales tax when you purchase it. Your computers, your cameras, lenses, etc. are all exempt. You may have to pay a use tax (depending on your state), but it’s less than sales tax.

You just need to provide your sales tax ID number to qualify for purchases without sales tax.

This doesn’t apply to things that you are the end-user of (e.g. a printer for invoices, paper, post-it notes), but it does apply to equipment directly used to create the final object of sale (albums, photos, disc, etc.)

As a bonus, Apple now has a business division that will give you a 3-5% discount on your equipment if you order through them. Simply call 1-800-MY-APPLE and stumble through the menus (press the number for purchasing a new computer, then press the number for businsess or government). They will allow you to purchase without tax _and_ they’ll save you an additional 3-5%.

They do things a little funky… They’ll ring your computer up with tax, then they’ll reimburse you once your tax ID has been verified, but you’ll save hundreds!

RF

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