In-Person Meeting #1

We'll review your individual lists of 20 potential clients and identify any additional details you need to collect. Also, I'd like to hear from each of you the action items you find the most challenging in seeking paid assignments/gallery shows.

Do you struggle with making 'cold calls' to potential clients? with interviews where you bring your portfolio to show and discuss assignments? with negotiating fees and expenses?

There's a finite list of business tasks every photographer must master to make money selling photography. We are completing these one by one, on a weekly basis.

We've started with your list of 20 potential clients complete with specific contact info. Next will be drafting the 3-5 standard business forms every photographer must have at the ready BEFORE accepting any assignment or gallery agreement.

Other essential business tasks include obtaining business cards and leave-behind samples of your photography and creating two copies of your portfolio: one for mailing/sending to potential clients and one for drop-off and pick up at local clients' offices and perhaps a third that is a website. These copies are in addition to your master portfolio which stays with you at all times.

Another important business task for commercial photographers is to learn how to customize their portfolios for each potential client and submission. There are simple, effective and very concrete ways to do this which maximize your chances of getting hired which means getting paid!

One of the biggest challenges for young and emerging photographers is learning how to negotiate with clients and with business people in general. Often, photographers are so ecstatic about the prospect of having their imagery used/displayed that they fail to properly negotiate for adequate compensation for the value their photographs are providing to their client. This undermines the entire commercial photographic industry in addition to cheating yourSELF out of the compensation you've earned and deserve to receive from anyone who uses your photographs.

Rehearsing scripted responses to standard negotiations and learning to feel the fear and push through for what you deserve in business negotiation is the key to making money selling photography and exhibiting in galleries. Everyone can learn to do this effectively. Like anything else, it just takes practice and especially for creative, sensitive-type people, it does not come naturally, but must be learned. Like rehearsing lines for a play in the theater, learning to negotiate respectfully and firmly will greatly increase the income you make with your photographs.

So, come out and enjoy a pleasant evening with other business-oriented photographers on the deck of Opal Divine's-Penn Field under the beautiful Texas sky on Wednesday, May 7 at 7 pm on South Congress.

I look forward to meeting you!

Lorene