High-school seniors, especially girls, are thrilled to get the chance to be a model for a day with our studio. It’s not always about the pictures for our clients and their parents, however. The main reason our studio has been so successful with high-school seniors is the unforgettable experience we provide from beginning to end.
Our studio’s senior marketing has been unconventional. It’s easy to shower your market in direct mail or buy sponsor banners on the varsity football field. Those tactics are not necessarily bad, but everybody’s doing it. So how are you going to stand out to your target audience?
Being a location portrait photographer has its drawbacks. We are often at the mercy of our environment, which means we are going to be faced with lighting challenges. If your schedule is busy, you won’t always have the luxury of planning all your sessions at sunset. Being forced to learn to overcome these situations, I picked up a few skills that are sure to help any photographer overcome bad lighting on location.
It’s no secret that high school senior photography has changed over the last five to seven years. As with all genres of photography, our style of shooting must always adapt to the trends. Our studio has grown in the wedding market, but this year I set out to grow a new line of business for us: senior portraits.
Before I opened my first studio, I was still coaching football and shooting out of my house, so most of my sessions were on location. That first year of shooting was all about trying to get better in hopes of making photography my living.
Thriving photography businesses adapt to the changes in the market they specialize in. We wanted to do something different within our senior market that would create a lot of buzz and momentum for client referrals. After many hours of brainstorming and deliberation, DigiSmiles Splash Week was born.
The March edition of Shutter Magazine is all about seniors, one of my favorite subjects. It’s about the ability to create with a client who, for the most part, actually wants to be there, wants to be photographed and is willing to try new locations.
Branding: The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product or business from other products or businesses in the same market.
With this month’s theme being “Seniors,” it’s the perfect opportunity to talk about diversity in building your business. Seniors can be an incredibly strong revenue component, and they can push your creativity.
There was nothing flashy about my senior portraits—well, perhaps the borrowed tuxedo top I wore over plaid shorts against a blue backdrop. (The image, of course, was cropped above the shorts.) Yet my mom remembered and coveted those portraits throughout my life.