I had the misfortune a couple of weeks ago, to watch a professional video person act very unprofessionally at a wedding.

As usual when the ceremony begins, I set my camera up at the end of the aisle. If there is a video person there, he or she usually sets up some where close to me. But the video person had decided the best view to capture the ceremony was on the open seat, next to the father of the groom. But being the artist that he was decided he also needed a different view, so he got up and walked to the other side of the aisle and sat beside the father of the bride.

Maybe I forgot to mention that it would take to long to walk all the way around, he might miss some of the action. So he decided to walk straight across the aisle in front of the bride and groom.

Now being the artist that he was he knew he could get a much better view of the exchange of rings. So up he gets and lies on the ground right in front of the bride and groom and has a great view shooting up at them. To say the least it did wonders for my photographs of the ring exchange and I imagine the bride and grooms family and friends were thinking that this person is so artistic.

Now we still haven’t finished, as you know couples like to light a unity candle. I feel the best view is straight down the aisle and seeing the candle between the bride and groom. But being the artist and professional the video person was, he felt the best view is to get a close up of the couple lighting the candle and of course you want to see there faces. So the best place for that is on the other side of the unity candle right in front of the couple. Boy that was another great photograph I took.

Well now they have kissed and their walking back down the aisle, being the professional, I’m ready to capture them walking down the aisle. Oh hold it there’s the video person stopping the bride and groom, he is posing them in the middle of the aisle and telling them how to kiss so it looks spon-taneous. Well I did get a couple of photographs of them coming down the aisle, I think my best one was the look on the brides face as she is looking at the video person. I don’t think that was a smile.
I have worked with a quite a few video people. Most of them do a good job and you wouldn’t know that they’re there. But I have also heard of photographers working the same way trying to get every angle possible.

A few things to remember, do not use a flash during the ceremony it is very distracting. Use a telephoto lens to get the close up photographs, that way you don’t have to move. If you want a different view, have your assis-tant photograph from a different area. If you do move around move behind the guests and quietly.

This is a very special moment for the bride and groom. They were the ones that invited the guest to witness their ceremony, NOT YOU.

You know that you have done your job correctly and professionally, when the bride and groom look at your images and say WOW! When did you take these we didn’t even see you.

You have now given them their MOMENT.

David

Scholarship Recipient Goes a Long Way

Judy Horn

At the State Convention at Ocean Shores in 1999 and at the Olympia Convention in 2000, I was awarded the Lynn smith and Barb Short Service Specialist Education Scholarship by the Southwest District Association. I was also awarded an educational scholarship from the Pierce County Professional Photographers of which I am a member. I combined the three awards and attended the Creative Retreat in Paradise, Texas in May sponsored by PPA and their Art Tech group. What a terrific learning experience and enjoyable time.

I flew to Dallas where I was picked up by a family friend and given one of his cars to use to get to the Retreat. Driving through Dallas and out into the wide-open spaces by myself was quite an adventure-. It so happened that a Spring thunder storm devel-oped and I found myself driving through hail, driving rain, lightening, and wind while listening to the radio on which the announcer was giving moment by mo-ment updates of funnel clouds being spotted and touching the ground. The sky was almost totally black and it was about one o'clock in the afternoon.

So this is excitement, Texas style! All I wanted to do was to reach the ranch in Paradise, which at the moment I felt was a misnomer, find some shelter and be with other people who had much more experience with this type of thing than I did. After driving off the main highway, down a muddy road and through one of the most beautiful fields I had ever seen, I finally reach the ranch and felt great relief.
Not long after arriving, five of us were given the task to take the ranch "people mover" that was like a limo style golf cart, and stake out a location for the evenings photo shoot of a little girl on her horse. We headed down a path through a fence and found ourselves on the bank of a pond with the wheels spinning and sliding in the red clay mud which was wet from the recent storm. What a mess, if we moved in the seats we slid closer to the bank. I made the mistake of wearing white sandals on our scouting trip, first lesson, white sandals and red mud don't mix, next time wear your boots! I was designated to drive the cart out of the mud while the rest of the gang pushed. I felt like I was in one of those monster truck mud runs. We made it back to the ranch and I drove into town to shop for more sensible foot wear.

The workshop soon got under way with excitement and energy running high. The main work area was set up with about twenty new Macintosh computers networked to several of the newest printer models manufactured by Epson and HP. We had the newest types of papers available to experi-ment with. I was now feeling the I really was in Paradise. To a digital artist, this really seemed like heaven. We soon got busy "playing" with the computers and sharing information about what we all do and how we do it. There were about thirty of us who attended from all over the country.

One of the highlights for me was the oppor-tunity to spend some quality time one-on-one with Jim Chamberlain. A year and a half ago when he came to speak at Ocean Shores, I sat with my note pad and wrote down almost every word he said and then went home and created images similar to his. It was very exciting for me. Jim and I were able to compare notes and the similarities between our digi-tal systems and the work we do. He gave another pre-sentation and again I wrote down almost every word. On Saturday evening I was given the opportunity to do a presentation to the group about what I do, and it was really a thrill to see Jim writing down what I had to say and asking questions alone with everyone else.

Everyone was so absorbed in working that meals became almost a nuisance. In my "other life" as a community development planner, attending a work-shop meant living from one meal to the next, won-dering as we finished breakfast what was for lunch. It was not so at the Creative Workshop. The cook would announce that dinner would be ready in 20 minutes and then have to return to ask us to come to the dining hall. "Just a few more minutes." Pretty soon he would come in again and tell us that if we didn't break to eat he would put the food away. We were all so busy learning from each other and experimenting that it was hard to think about anything else, in-cluding meals. The com-puter room was kept open until after midnight each night so people could work as long as they wanted. What fun and what wonderful networking and learning.

Thank you all so very much for the opportunity to participate in this experience. I hope you will all benefit from the workshop by utilizing what I learned to assist you with digital manipulation of your beautiful images. I hope to see many of you in Las Vegas, I am attending representing the American Photographic Artisans Guild of which I am executive secretary. I had three images selected for the salon and one of them also for the permanent loan collection, two on the art tech side and one on the photography side. I also have one in the Hall of Fame exhibit created at the retreat in Texas. Again, thank you very much. I will be sharing what I learned in Texas at a convention in Wisconsin in October and want to say thanks to Mike Elwell and Lorie Wood for their assistance as well.

Judy Horn

Directions To Browns Point

David Lobban

From the North: take Hwy 509 south to Browns Point, it will turn into Marine View Drive. Turn right on LE-LOU-WA (shops will be on right side), stay on road it will turn into TOK-A-LOU, follow road around. As you start to go up the hill the park will be on the left-hand side. White iron gates at park entrance.

From I-5 and Hwy 18: Take 348^th street exit of off I-5, you will be heading west. Follow road all the way to the very end. You will come to a stop sigh and the street will be Marine View Drive, turn right than make your first left on LE-LOU-WA (shops will be on right side), stay on road it will turn into TOK-A-LOU, follow road around. As you start to go up the hill the park will be on the left-hand side. White iron gates at park entrance.

From Tacoma: Take Hwy 509 north from Pacific Ave or I-705. Hwy 509 will turn into Marine view drive. When you get to Browns Point turn left on LE-LOU-WA (shops will be on right side), stay on road it will turn into TOK-A-LOU, follow road around. As you start to go up the hill the park will be on the left-hand side. White iron gates at park entrance

Richard Birchfield

by Brad Bogue

For those of you who are acquainted with some of the Seattle print makers, Richard Birchfield, one of the leading print and slide makers currently active in the Seattle area and a member of Seattle Photo-graphic Society died this past week.

He was an outstanding photographer who won the award at the Puyallup Fair for the most points accumulated in all divisions this past year and I believe also in 1998. He kept active in his photo-graphy right up until the time of death. He will be missed.

Professionalism; The Real Key?

by Brad Bogue

May I suggest a basic reason you may not be able to charge what you're worth? Are you stuck in this picture: You may be able to expose film properly and make creative images, but, whenever you raise your prices you loose clients. You know you're as good as "the big name photographer" across town, but you can't raise prices enough to compete on the same level. You're there, right?

Go into the grocery store and stand in front of cans of soup. Pick out minestrone soup. How many varieties are there? Basically they are all the same. Look at the price 75 cents to over two dollars for two servings of soup. Hmmm, the higher price must make the most money, right? No, it just costs more. If you're in the business of selling soup would-n't you want to be priced to be the most profitable? Naturally, certain soups have low profit while others have higher profit. Some companies can sell their product for a lower cost because they have lower operating costs as well as production cap-acities to match the volume they want to market. In other words, if they keep their operating costs low by oper-ating from one plant instead of two and they know their capacity (they can make 10,000 cans per month as well as having standing orders for 10,000 cans). Based on their expenses (e.g.. the cost for their business to exist is $9328.50 per month and they have orders for 10,000 cans then by dividing the expenses by the cans ordered leaves a cost of 93.285 cents per can. Say the soup company owner wanted to make a profit of 8 percent over and above the cost of oper-ation (equipment costs, the plant lease, the wages for employees, Insurance, materials that become the soup and transportation). The soup manufacturer must sell the soup for $1.01 each. In real life the store also marks the soup up to cover their costs and a bit of profit leaving a higher price still for the consumer to pay. For our example we'll say they mark it up 30%. Now the soup is selling for $1.31.

If you or I go into the store and see the can of soup selling for a range of 75 cents to two dollars with the example can at $1.31 which would you buy? It depends upon how you view the product. Some people believe there all the same. Some people believe the higher the price the better the product (actually this has a bit of truth to it). Some people buy certain products for prestige. Some look for bargains on the higher priced goods and buy them only when they are on sale. You see, it all depends upon your view. Another way to look at it is if cost didn't matter (very well off clients) what would you do? Would you drive a VW or a Mer-cedes? Your choice.

Scot Bourne says you need to know your costs before you can decide on what to charge. If you work at a regular job then all photography you undertake becomes overtime work. What are you worth to your employer? You're worth that and more to yourself. Add to that your daily cost of doing business and you have your basic cost. E.g.. Wages as overtime = $24/ hour. Photographing a wedding you use 5 rolls of film for 5 hours of coverage and the film and processing bill comes to $100. That's 1 roll per hour or $20. Now you know your basic cost is $44 per hour. Add to that your equipment cost per hour, your transportation costs per hour (take your daily or yearly costs and divide to get the cost per hour) and your clothing costs. If this was your sole source of income then you'd need to add in your housing and family maintenance cost per hour, too. Now you know that whatever you do at or to a wedding your cost actually is $44 per hour. If you charge less it doesn't reduce your cost per hour; it doesn't even reduce your profit since there is no profit built in to the $44 per hour figure. It reduces only the wages you put into your pocket. If you charge less than your basic cost you are actually paying that customer to take their order away and you're probably paying them to complain about your work, too.

Let me relay a couple of stories to you.

Quite a while ago I was a member of a square dance club. As an officer I was in charge of providing pop to be sold during break. It made a little money for the club and was a welcome treat on hot evenings. Water was available and free. The previous officer
bought store brand pop (like Western Family) and sold it for 50 cents a can. I switched to name brand pop and sold it for 75 cents a can. His profit per
can was 33 cents. My profit per can was 50 cents per can. The national brand sold around the same number of cans each month as the store brand, we
made more money. Yes there was a bit of com-plaining about the cost increase and I suspect that some people did not buy pop because of it. The fact
remains that the sales did not dramatically decrease.

In our studio we raised our prices at least six times last year. This year we did almost double the num-ber of seniors and are contracted for one less
wedding. Our profitability is better than ever, still not adequate, but, better. We are tracking our costs associated to every job. We have learned that we need to make pricing decisions based upon our costs rather than a hunch. I am beginning to see it is not money that drives our customers, it their desire to own our work?

Something to Think About

Brad Bogue

The following is something to make us stop and think. Take this quiz:

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America contest.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and
actress.
6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.
2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.
3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and
special.
5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.
6. Name half a dozen heroes whose stories have inspired you.

Easier? The lesson?

The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones
that care.

This is being passed on to some of those people who have made a difference in our lives.

New Webmaster

Eric Rehn has taken control of the PCPPA website and perhaps with an interested director some interesting things will happen.