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Authentic and Creative Photography

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

At 7 pm, I decided to go to another Canon workshop. This one is about using creativity and authenticity to make your photographs stand out from competing photographers’ work. Photographer Pye Jirsa talked about the business of photography, and selling moods, emotions, and feelings to clients who want cool pictures of a special moment. There are many photographers out there, each with their own style. It is therefore important to use creative techniques that will differentiate your work from others. Photography also involves psychology and market research, which is usually the pre-shoot, where you interrogate your client with many questions in order to figure out their needs and wants. Booking photography clients involves finding out their human needs and then identifying their needs/wants.

  • How do you differentiate? Start by doing a Mind Map. Write down a specific topic in the center of the paper, time yourself for 10 minutes, and the jot down whatever comes to your mind associated with that topic. It is like brainstorming. Whatever ideas that branch out of the central topic will lead to other ideas branching out of these branches. At the end of 10 minutes, stop and read what you have. Consider reading backwards from the ends or last ideas you wrote, and move inwards to how you came up with these ideas.
  • Clients’ value the end result, which involves working backwards. Feature dumping involves sales before understanding. There is a difference between what you see and what the client sees. The client’s perspective is more important because you are trying to service a need. A happy client will likely refer you to others.
  • Authenticity is the truth to the client’s spirit and vision.
  • It is even better to photograph with authenticity and creativity. How? It is all about human psychology. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs consist of self-actualization, esteem, love/belonging, safety, and physiology needs. A good salesperson sees the opportunity to understand love empathy and understanding.

What’s In It For Me anyway

  • Croc brain is about closing the deal. It involves combining “what’s in it for me” and understanding.
  • Avoid the Neocortex. Don’t give the client time to think, analyze and negotiate.
  • Remain in the Limbic or midbrain, which involves focusing on emotions, memories and social situations. Purchasing decisions is based on gathering certain facts and emotions. It is therefore important to get to know your client by asking many questions to gather information about their needs and wants. Then, pre-visualizing and know the exact images to capture before the photo shoot.
  • Wall Art Vision Exercise = Who is your audience? What is the message? Set a wall art price expectation beforehand.
  • Make it your own. Cognitive Dissonance Anchor has to do sales pitch.

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