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Volume Photography

Lesson 30 from: Senior Photography: Break the Mold

Blair Phillips

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Lesson Info

30. Volume Photography

Next Lesson: Rethink Products

Lesson Info

Volume Photography

This is something that I used to kick and scream about. I'm not a volume photographer. I'm way more skilled than that in a volume photography where you just sit people down and shoot images of the same thing on and on with crappy lighting. I'm not down with that. All right, Well, who said that you had to shoot school pictures like everybody else always shoot school pictures. Who said you had to do sports pictures like we had pictures made when we were kids? You said you had to do it that way. So you can be a volume photographer, but you could be a really good quality volume photographer and what it does with May I'm shooting high school sports. I just got into this. I just started literally two months ago, and I already have five contracts, five high school contracts in less than two months, five of them. It puts all my word into an endless supply of seniors. I've got five high schools that are going to see me work with them all year round, and it's like I swear it's like being a celeb...

rity when I go to these high schools. Now, after photographing the girls like Oh, my God. Sensibly. Phillips, There's there. Phillips. I'm, like, calm down. Just a photographer, but I don't know why, but they think I'm some kind of a superstar, so I'm gonna roll with it. You know? I'm like you. Can you clean this? You all form a little bit of stepping bubble gum. I'm kidding, but and it's year around money, okay. And the high school sector, you have spring, summer, fall, winter. They play sports year round. So that same thing, if I can have a child bring an envelope and have a line of people with envelopes full of money, why would I? Why am I not gonna be there to accept that? But what you can do is I bring my brand and my style to the school. I run it under a separate name. I'm gonna run it under a separate name from here on out because I don't want people to associate necessarily. Blair Philip photography. I can say, you know, action sports a division of player Phillips entire feet. Because what? I'm offering it to school for pricing. Obviously, a lot lower than one offered the studio. So think about that. It also is just It's a lot of fun to shoot. I am enjoying it. I'm really enjoying it now. How in the world you land a contract. That's what a lot of people probably want to know. How do I go into a school and pick up our sports contract with me? It was so difficult because I had already my back was against the wall. I couldn't just walk in there and say, Hey, I want to be your new guy They've been working with the same photographer for 20 years, which means the images look the same as they did 20 years ago. They want to change, so the way you have to do it as you walk in there, you find the athletic director. He's the person that makes the decisions. You have to become his friend. What you also have to do is you have to shoot some samples, both realistic samples and non realistic samples, do something over the top and then do something like he would normally for the school to get their attention. And you go in and you express your professionalism and you say, Listen, you're not gonna have chase anybody around worried about where your images are. If I say I'm gonna be here at two o'clock, I'm gonna be here at 12. 30. I'm gonna be here. I'm a dedicated team That helps me with This is what I tell him. I go shoot it by myself. But I let him know that I have people at the studio to help me and listen the fastest turnaround time in the business. Okay, I shoot your images this Friday. You're gonna have your images next Friday. That's how much I want your business. And they're like, Wait a minute. What? Well, so you're telling me that you can shoot this Friday and you'll have all these images back next Friday? We're all sign up. But the only way that works is because I had all these examples to show them. And I'm like, Look, you know what you may be getting I don't know if it's like this or not, and they're like, Good gosh, where in the world it has come from, they love it. And then what happened was the way I got five. And I found out I heard the great fun that all the athletic directors and this one little division was having a lunch up this little local restaurant and they were having a meeting heard up to the great fine. So I just happen to be in the area with all my get up. And I just happened to go in and said and new, one of the athletic director's from where I've been working with him. I just started with him and I said, Hey, listen, what are the chances? Give me, like, five minutes? Just just a chat for men, about some pictures like Yeah, respond, man, it's fine. I go in there to set up this table. I mean, I look like I look like I was pro mod. I mean, I was like, I've been doing this for a living forever. And I see you guys, if you don't mind to get your attention for just a minute, you know? And then you guys get bombarded with people coming into your school all the time, you know, wanting to do pictures, wanting to do this, wanting to do that. I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm just here to provide on awesome service for these kids because What is gonna happen is these kids, they want more these days. They're gonna quit coming to the school and getting their images made. They want what I'm doing. So they're gonna bypass the school and come to me. I don't want that to happen. I want to work for your school. I want to get back to your school. I want my daughter to grow up and go to your school, Which some of them. I don't want to go that school, but that's a pitch. Now let me explain to you something that has happened recently. This happened just this past this past week. On Friday, the first school that I started working with H and H Color Lab offers a plethora of products. I took advantage of the banners that they have, and I said, Why don't we shoot on green screen all the high school seniors when we hang those up in the school on Friday And then on Friday afternoon, we take him that you have somebody take him down, take him onto the field and hang them all up on the on the fence. Great idea. They loved it. They said, Let's do it right now. I went to the school, set up a green screen shot seniors, one after another, took two minutes, a piece of event. Come back, put the banners together, extracted him off the green screen, put him together, and I should show you what I've got here. What happened? I showed up at this school in Hung these up number one. The principal called and left a couple of messages on my phone and said, Blair, I don't know what in the world we're gonna do, But I have parents that are driving me absolutely crazy because they want to know how they can buy these banners and they want Tobe I'm or off like I just gave. We were doing it for the school. Well, the parents that she said the parents are ready to write checks and she said, Not only do we have that problem, but now every other sports team at our school says if they don't get a chance to have these banners, they're going to another school. They want these banners. And I had the principle from another school, the visiting school with that football game because they all everybody has to come through the gate where all the pictures are on my logo's on it. That principle from the other school found me and called me and said, I don't know what's going on, but we want you to do that for our school, and I had to call her back and say, You know, Mamet, unless you just must not be in the loop. But I just got your sports contract about three weeks ago, so I'm actually already scheduled to do that. I have calls an uproar with these banners right here. So I'm gonna show you what they're looking like. Show you here. Now, you hang this up in a high school. That's a pretty cool looking piece right there. And these kids feel like they're in an under armour commercial. You know, they love love, love that. And the parents think about a Friday night football game and you bring your relatives to the game and you see your son hanging up on the fence there with all of his body's I mean, man, that just that is spreading like wildfire. So what I've done is compensation Here. Look, here's a few more images up. Compensation. Don't offer up a bunch of compensation when you're trying to land that contract because this standard in my area is 25% of your sales. Go back to the school. I'm not doing that. I don't want to do that. I want to figure out ways that I can use my photography to compensate the school. Very simple. These banners I want think they cost me around $25. All right, I sell it back to the back to the parents or the school. How are they want to do it for 70 bucks? It's not a lot of profit, but I'm still making money. But I'm not giving 25% of my whole year's worth of work. And so far everybody said, Do That is awesome. We don't want any more compensation. That that is compensation. Enough. Another way that I that I pitch it as I say, Look, if you give me this contract, I want to come in here and work with your yearbooks toe Have I want to come in here and teach a minimum of two classes to them, show them the functions of their cameras, show them how to work it and I'll come to a few of the games and even photograph alongside of him. They love the fact that you're giving back to their Children. These are some of the unrealistic images that I'm talking about. Not these. These are all green screen. And like I said, it is going like crazy. These were some of the images I put together to go and pitch, so I grab some of these guys after practice. One day I set it up. I wanted to give it a different look. Use some lighting. These girls here do something different. They've never had an image like that. That's not a very racy, edgy photo. But it got the attention, the attention off these coaches. And then whenever I'm doing my normal poses instead of, you know, instead of posing with a volleyball like this, like there used to with the volleyball in here, I let him know through my sample images. You know what? We're gonna break it down. We're gonna make it easy. I'm gonna start to give all of your players something that instead of their parents getting their images are actually, this is what this is what the kids do normally say, you know, this is their images that they got back school pictures. Teacher passes him out on that immediately. They turn him over immediately because I don't want anybody to see it because they're never proud of him. But now, all of a sudden, the kids were like, I want to see what I want my mind like, Oh, that looks so good. That's awesome. And then they're showing their friends and they're showing their friends. Kids are starting to get pumped up about it, and I'm just doing what I do. So I show these types of images Now this next image is my traditional. This is my traditional team photo. That's my traditional team photo. It's just relax. It's loosely posed. I have lighting on it like this. Next from the cheerleaders. All right, I'm running five lights here. If you want to know how I set this up. There's two lights in the background that our own far corners here, and they are pointed towards each other this way. And what they're doing is they're illuminating that back wall somewhat. And then I have two lights just out of camera back behind them. That are facing this way, using it as an edge light, you know? Look at the girl on the far left. Do you see how her arm is separated? And then the girl on the far right, her arms separated, Their legs are separated off off the court. So I have five lights. I have one large mainline, a four by six main light right here. So, I mean, it does take a few minutes to set this out, but if I'm gonna go do it, I want to leave my brand. I want Mark my brand on it. I don't want to give these schools something they're really proud off. So on average, I'm just gonna throw on average out there and say that you could work with a school. And you know what? If you could What if you could make 10 or $15,000 a year off of a school? I mean, I would I would load my equipment up and go out there and do that. It's literally like shooting fish in a barrel. I can shoot. I shot 108 football players at at this very school. 108 football players both senior varsity and junior varsity. And in one hour and 45 minutes, I show up said everything up. I shoot for an hour and 45 minutes and I go home. And that night, my 1st I did. I was so excited. I went home and I opened up every single envelope and got all the checks out. I had a stack of checks and I sat right there and added every one of them up just cause I was that excited, I was like, Bingo. We're going after more schools now, so I'm diversifying. But I'm putting myself in a diversity that is good for me. You don't think that all these girls right here are gonna want to come to me for senior photography or just say, if even four of them do. That's four more than I had, right? So we have multiple products that we sell. That's another thing in the school sector. Don't just sell the pictures. If I'm going to sell anything, I'm gonna have multiple things. Take a look at this right here. I'm gonna show you what we're doing That's so different. All right. This is a standard water bottle that we get from H and H Color Lab. There's nothing you know. It's a great quality, but what do we do? We design it. We take the time and create a template, and we design it indicative of something that a kid would actually really won't instead of just, you know, like a coffee. Maud. When you have a coffee mug and you just put the image on their A picture and nothing else, it's like all cool That's so clever. No one wants that. These kids are buying these things left and right, and they don't even want one. But they want it because it's designed indicative of my brand, and they love it. So if I didn't offer it to them, they couldn't buy it. Parents All right, every parent is they're tearing these things out. This little chain. This is a dog tag made out of metal, high quality print information. Age and parents are loving this. Now I'm making all my money off of this stuff. No, I'm only marking this up to where I'm making 345 bucks because the more I can get out there in front of people that better off. I'm gonna be right. So key chains, IPhone cases, these bag tags You saw this yesterday. Thes bag tags. People tear these up. They're made out of, like, really hard acrylic. And I'll tell you about some fund raising opportunities that H and H helps me with. Get into some dance schools will get in that in just a minute, so don't lose sight of that ornaments. Everything you can think of. They have products available for it. Everything. Those band, I would say, my favorite for sure. And the thing that we get the most compliments owner, obviously, the banners. Here's how I shoot him. We show you how to shoot him really quick because it's really important to have a lighting just right now. Green screen. Look at this kid on the left. See how he's got good edge lighting. The lighting has to be really strong. His edges of his body. That's gonna help extract him from the background, and it's going to make it look realistic. You can't take a regular picture and put it into, like, a high definition seen. It's gonna look all messed up. And this poor girl with her hair so I don't know what anyways. That's another. That's another story. Another story. I'm one to talk about someone's hair right anyways. Lorenzo. You probably used to do that. Now look what happened to you ordering. All right. Now, when I check this out, I photographed 108 football players. Today I go back to the studio and in the morning those images are cold, quick edited. They're uploaded, ordered there. Already done. It's that fast, and it's because we're using easy sports. H and H has their own division of sports. They have their own dedicated staff towards They have their own programs. It's so easy to order this. Stop it associates names with everything. It's ridiculously easy. So I encourage you. If what you're using now is kind of giving you a fit or you're really scared about it, call ancient age that they've got tutorials. I'll have someone walking through it. They will help you with that first order to see it all the way through prime example, I said, my first order. I goofed up. I messed up on the color. They said, Blair. Whoa, These images don't really look like your images that normally do? Do you want to fix that? Let me see. Oh, yeah? Well, just about messed up. They help me with that. So sports, I'm telling you, sports is the way to go. I'm even thinking of trying to get, like, 20 sports contracts. And I might even I might even pull back away from some of those weddings I'm doing. And I might even I might even limit my sessions in the studio. And I might even take three months of the year off. Who knows? Who knows? There's potential there. That's amore. Time for my family. I'm on it. So let's see if the Internet has a couple of questions. I'm sure they've got one. And actually, you have one. What you got, man? Um, this is awesome again, you know? Yeah, nothing. You just also, uh, So when you shoot those free lying and I set up, is that the way that you show us with the strip lions? The exact same way? That way you don't get the lens flare because you normally when I'm shooting these, I'm shooting in the hallway at the school and I have to keep the lights really close. So by keeping those lights really close, I would get really bad lens flare. But having those strip banks those egg crates in there that's gonna desperately help you from their dramatically help you and how the U older or how do you shoot the background? Is it, although from down directly, it's all the green screen? I have a green screen screen back background that I got from Westcott. And let me tell you, Westcott has the number one leading extraction toe in America. You by the green screen background and you get the software that comes. You click the button and it pulls everything off fine hairs and everything. It'll just drag it right off. So easy, save you hours of time. That's how I'm able to do these. It's such a quick case in the background that you shoot it or not complete those Air one. Like when I'm out in Seattle and I see something really neat and intriguing, I'll take an image of it and actually all takes about five or 67 images, and I shoot that in like an HDR mode and merge it all together and create an HDR background, and you can buy HDR backgrounds online as well. So do a Google search Google search of HDR backgrounds. Where do I buy them? And you can definitely find some there. So let's see how we got one more here and then we'll go to the Internet. Yeah, with the banner that you, uh, put their, uh how did you present that to the school again? I mean, was that something? Did you show them one of those? Yeah, already. Is that something you offered them? And it was included in a price already. Now, the 1st 1 I did, I came out of pocket all because they had never seen it. Except I did shoot an example because I can't explain to them how cool this is unless they see it. I shot the example. They said, Let's do it. I said, All right, line them up and do it. I didn't even want to get involved. And how much to charge what it was gonna do. I knew if I got him up in the school, everybody is gonna want him. So now I've got I had to go back to these parents and say, Listen, you know, if you want these they're $75 now it's not the parents. They say I want three of them. So the first batch I did out of pocket just to get it going, so may have to come out of pocket just a little bit. So your first, the first football team that you did all of the players was out of pocket. Yes, all of them was out of pocket for a couple of weeks until I presented it. And then the parent started paying for him. Okay, You gotta if that was my son on there because I had two football players, I'd be buying them. Hey, let's just pretend like this is your new song. And you can also tell you this one in just a minute. What's the Internet saying? What's up? Got knocked out a lot of questions because ax man photo stuff and we're all of wonder. You know what? You used to process your green screen photos. And if you guys didn't catch that, that was the Westcott green screen background and their extractor tool software that comes with it. I just want to make sure you guys did hear that correctly and then, um and then your HD select image selections are from doing Google Search and finding and buying one online can do that or, you know you can find there's ah company. And I think it's called Votomatics that you can shoot. You have to shoot from a tripod. You set your camera for bracket exposures, meaning you're gonna bracket all the way from, you know, way under exposed toe way overexposed. And it's gonna take a sequence of images and then you're gonna merge that together through a program such as photo Matics and it's gonna create that a true HD or look, And then that's what you're gonna use. Now that you have an awesome image, you're gonna put it on top of an HDR background, and it's gonna look wholesome, so you have to shoot the right background. You know, you can't just put that that image on a plain background, and it looked the same. It has to be. I like to put my athletes in places where they don't belong. So take it. Take it. For instance. Here, when's the last time you saw a girl hitting a softball in a warehouse? Probably not recently, but I like it. It's different. It's intriguing. It gets people looking. So you gotta be outside the box a little bit, right? Yeah, It makes the students look like superheroes in their own, like cool video game. Yeah, Like I said, I'm a superstar at these schools Now They think that I'm hung the moon crazy cool, and those up. A couple people Lynn, M. C, G and M Design are both the wondering. What material are those sports posters printed on? I'm not exactly sure. It's almost like a It's the same time. It's a really hard material. That's kind of like a vinyl. It's a vinyl material on day. Put the rivets in them. The good thing about these is through H and H. You can leave these things outside. They could get rained on their made for weather so you can hang them indoors. You can leave them outside, and they've got it figured out of that price point that they give him to before they give him to you, for we can make a pretty nice profit off. So it's not one of those things that this so expensive that we can make small profit from your selling in quantities to Because everybody wants. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, let's see. Another question up is from Amanda Snyder from North Carolina and also Stephanie D. Do you have to get a separate business license and everything when you have a separate divisions, like with your school in sports photography? And you have the clients in the sports section also sign a contract slash model release? Yeah, she would want to set up a separate LLC. Basically, that is a completely separate division. Run your taxes for everything that you do their run that through a whole separate book. But luckily it's not. It's not a lot to keep up with. You know, it's very simple. Very, very simple, you know, And you can always you're gonna also that could help you with a little bit of a tax write off if you need some equipment and things, you know, that's a good avenue to go from there. So you have a question over here, Lorenzo? Yes. Uh, although do they have, like, most of us? I'm sure you know. So, yes. Absolutely. They have all sorts of sizes. I think they go all the way up to like a four by eight or something like that. But I've found just for my personal use and asking parents and asking the schools that this size right here seems to be the best. And that is the two foot to foot by five foot. It seems to work the best because everybody can handle him. And it doesn't. It doesn't become so large that it's hard to manage. It would be cool to see what people would do in the same scenario with, like a bride and groom. You never know, like a pre wedding shoot, what they would do with the wedding. That could be kind of fun. You never know going back and just a little bit. Teoh the images you took of the hunters. Yes. All right, let's see. This is from Green Earth Photography in Denver asking if you did something different like that and you need to buy special equipment and props for that shoot. How do you charge them for that? Well, the cool thing is, I didn't buy anything above and beyond what I already had. I took three lights that I already had, and I took the camera that I already had I relied on them to provide the props. You know, I went out in the woods, so that's where my creativity came in. And I found spots in the woods that I thought would be very nice and looks photograph nice. And I use the elements of what was there because on something like that, you wanted to be organic and indicative of what it would normally look like. Now they brought all of their hunting equipment and things like that. So they they brought it off for me again was like shooting fish in a barrel. So, you know, I think sometimes if you bring too much, it can start to look a non organic and not quite as original. Okay, let's chat. Room is off the hook right now. Can you please hold those banners up again? And can you also let them know the different sizes that they can order for sure, The smallest to the largest thing. This is a two foot by five foot. Now they come even smaller and they come much larger. Just goto h and H color lab and look at their specialty banners. And I think you're going to be really blown away with number one, the quality and the number two, the price will be really blown away. And I smell really good, too. So you'll be blown away by the price. But they won't be blown away in the weather. That's exactly right. Now I want to get into I've got a couple of more things that I'm doing their volume. I know you. He's like, Are you serious right now? All right, picture this. Do you think I would ever go and photograph a preschool? Yeah, why not? Preschool. I wanna go photograph a preschool. That seems ridiculous. Why would I want to do that? It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Right? You got it. So I'm gonna bring my style and my brand. And as a matter of fact, if you go to, you have to go to my Instagram to see the picture of my wife. Posted it yesterday. It's Blair underscore Phillips on instagram, and you'll see a picture of my lovely daughter and the most recent when I did, I did this Wednesday and Thursday before I did the 28 sessions on Saturday. So Thursday and Friday. Well, I show up to the preschool. I bring a set. I don't just bring a backdrop. I bring us set. I'll make it look awesome. Indicative of my brand. I use high quality lighting. I have people that are buying 30 about forties off a preschool image. What does that say about your brand that says You're doing something right now? I've got about eight preschools that I'm shooting all year, both in the fall and then in the spring. And it's a cash cow. It's so much fun. And I'm developing relationships with all these parents that have other Children that are going to grow into seniors girl into marriages, and then they're going to start hunting, photograph their hunting pictures. So it's always something. Think about now one of my biggest sellers. Okay, this is what kicked it all off dance photography. Now, who would not like to go and Gasol is, and this is realistic here. I'm being real with you. I'm not trying to brag and say I'll make a lot of money and lovable. I'm being real with you. I'm no different than any one of you sitting your bottom in that chair right there. Nobody. But when I started, I landed my first dance school. Okay, I can go to this dance school and work for three evenings, not days. Three evenings and my profit, not sales. My profit is over $15,000 for working three evenings. Do you think you think I'm not gonna go after more of those? You're on that whiteboard that I had to the studio that said goals and day of studios. That is my biggest moneymaker right there. That's my biggest money maker. But if you're gonna go in and do it, you've got to use good lighting. You gotta use good lighting. Lighting is key. This is this. This is my standard look for a dance portrait. But my parents love the fact that they can notice a difference. And they have Portia quality lighting and my dance stuff. Now dance packages H and H prints these for me as well. I'm not gonna go in and offer a ah, high end product, even on a dance studio and give them low end materials. It matches my brand, right? It's brand reflective. And I got I'm giving you guys all my pricing that I've worked on for eight years the packages. The moms can't go out on the hallway and say, Hey, Karen, if you do this, you can get around this and get what you want. No, no, no, no, no. I've worked it out. Same thing with my sports. All my sports packages. H and H prints. All of these. They've got all these there. You just drag and drop your images in so easy. So if you want to get started, you can make excuses. Or you can use companies that will make it happen. Right? The kids come in, they dropped their money down in it seals up. They hand it to me. I shoot him. And off they go. I'm loving life. Look, when they come back, I don't even have to touch him. Check this out. They come back. And these right here they're prepackaged with the kid's name on top in alphabetical order. No, what I do from there, I put him back in the box. I taken to the school and this is how it works. Take them all back to the school. And I say, All right, guys, here, Ugo and I leave. I've done what I give them to the athletic director. He sounds off on a piece of paper. Santa delivered him and we're out. We're gone. Dance studios are huge. Huge, Huge money number one, they're paying to go there. So, you know, they have a little bit of extra money. They care about what they look like. These girls right here, they're gonna become your high school seniors. Same thing with these guys. And I just want to show I want to show you some more of this stuff that we're using to capitalize on these dance studios. This is a lot of stuff, but check it out, all right? You want to see what I'm selling? A dance studio? Look at all this looking everything. This otter box cases who would not want an honor box, haste is customized. What about a laptop? I mean, a IPad sleeve that's customized. I can just drag and drop and put this stuff in here and order a product. Alright, Wallets, Wallace, that moms will actually carry and use. It's crazy garden flags. Let me show you this garden flag from the south here. I can use my pocket knife. Watch this. All right. Garden flag. Why? On Earth. Would you ever want a garden flag hanging out of your daughter? Why not? Why not? We've got templates available. Imagine that. We've got templates available for all these products as well. It's not what I'm showing you these. Um, this doesn't know the when I got back. I won't talk about gifting again. This is a senior announcement. This is a graduation announcement that I've caught up into small pieces and it's got key pieces, and they're announcing the graduation off from West Row and then we rotate. It's got her face. This is something that a parent could buy if they would want to make it available for them to buy, say some more than stuff really quick. I've talked about graduation announcement earlier. All right, now watch this. What if we take that very first graduation announcement that goes on top and we give Mom this one? We take just a couple of minutes and just trick it out. But some Rhinestones on it. You don't think that mom is gonna take this toe? Everybody that she can think of and say I want to show you this. Yeah. It takes, like two seconds to do something like that. What jewelry? What about jewelry like this that people would actually wear about stuff like that? Be innovative. Don't stop looking. Look at this table right here. Everything I could possibly need to sell to someone is here. H and H has figured out OK, we've got to go out and get the latest greatest equipment and the greatest greatest of everything we confined and make it available for these people so they can make money. And that's exactly what we've done here. It's ridiculous the amount of products we have here and they've helped me with everything. All my ordering, everything the way that we handle ordering the, um, whether we handle ordering the dance studio pictures. I've got a program for that easy event. It's a scan system. Basically, the kids come in, I take their card, I put it down a little pedestal, a photograph, take their card, all states in order. And when I get back to the studio, we scan the card and then we scan whatever packers, They won't be that easy. I feel like I'm at Walmart checking people out. I like it. I get scan happy. Sometimes. I order three or four packages for the wrong people. But I love it. I love it. This is really popular with a lot of my volleyball girls. The statue is people love these things, loving him these little these prints here. When you go back and forth and it makes like shows, movement cannot see that makes movement. It's going back and forth here. I'll throw it just getting I'm getting mouse pads. Not just, I mean, did I ever think is a senior photographer? I'm gonna be selling mills pads. Your really cool resell most bags, All right, But if I can sell my mouse pad for 20 bucks, that might cost me, like, eight bucks. Why am I not? And then things really stink. What I'm gonna do for you guys is like I said, part of coming to creativelive and part of being here and submitting those videos and why it is so important to keep those videos coming in for creative lob submissions is all the stuff that we're gonna hook you guys up with. I got some really, really cool things in store for you guys coming up. So there There's just a plethora of things and the moral of this whole program is to hopefully get you excited and thinking, Wait a minute. I feel like my business is drying up. I don't have the clients coming through the door that I used to look. Hello? Diversify. There's ways to get your checkbook back up to where it needs to be. Is this easy? No. Is it easy once you get it going? Yes. I'm not going to go broke. I'm the kind you can cut my legs off. And I'm gonna say, Don't worry about our crawl. I'll be there and you're gonna do the exact same thing. So we're gonna Randy for a quick question. We're gonna give our Internet viewers just a moment to cue up some really good questions. I want some good ones now and let's see what Randy has to say. Commercial products. Did you play with them outwards? That is a personal question. Did not play with the personal. Whatever. Shooting the arrows. Did you shoot? Oh, I got you. I got you. It's been quite interesting because all of those things that I get I mean, of course you know they'll send it to me and they're like, Hey, you know, here, you prime example. I'll give you one of the company's probably no one's ever heard of under armour. I'm sure you never heard of them. Well, I now get a really nice discount from under armour 50%. So now under armour. I've got a huge hook up with them. That's a big help. But I get a lot of free products from other people stuff that I really wasn't even interested in. And they'll send it in and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, this is the coolest thing ever like I would have never even known was available. So yeah, I mean, you get the perks that you get from it are awesome. Now I'm not making money off him yet, but in turn, I am because I'm getting a lot of free stuff. So there are perks and photography is, well, perks and photography as well. So let's go to the Internet and another dying to ask a few questions. You were so innovative. This is great getting people thinking of just not concentrate on one area of their business to expand. And let me say this to I have to give credit to my wife because she is a very big part of all of this and I would not be here doing it if she were not pushing me in that direction. I'm the one that's on the forefront, and she's the one that's on the back on the back end of things, making things happen on the back end. So I had to make sure that she gets a lot of credit for this as well. On Adam, he helps move these banners does a great job, so I always have to give credit where credit is due. So I want to make sure that we're doing that as well. But yes, shoot. Let's start. Let's start us off with talking about your templates. I mean, this is like overwhelming products, and you put so much time already into customizing and designing, making an amazing template. So these air available on your store, correct? Yes, Blair Blair films workshops dot com Everything, like even even like a bag tag template. You know, if you want to do a bag tag and you don't want you don't want to try and design all this stuff, we've already got it to where It's sized for this product and you can change things around. He ordered. Through H and H you order the product through H and H. You get the template from our website and we went on there and made all the templates half price. We've slashed everything in the store half price until the end of the day tomorrow just to help out just to help out. Perfect. Thank you so much again that Blair Phillips workshops dot com go to the store section. There's different areas under the store section. Different areas have different templates, so there's one for marketing and business. That was some of the marketing templates used yesterday. Today we're talking about the product templates. So that's all the right there at your fingertips. You guys okay? So, getting back to questions now, Alright, Windy and is wondering, Do you shooting all of this on your own? I mean, this is a lot of work 100% by myself, and I'll tell you why I do it by myself now. I'm young now. If I were 60 years old, I would definitely probably not do this by myself. But while I'm young, I'm gonna hit it really hard. The reason I don't bring in other photographers is, quite frankly, because I don't feel like I want the stress of worrying if they're gonna do it as good as I'm gonna want it done. What if I have a school of 200 kids and to him up photographers calling sick? I don't have the luxury of calling in sick, but yes, it's very common. Thursday, I shot a preschool Friday. I shot a preschool Saturday. Had 28 appointments. Sunday morning early. I boarded the plane to come here. I've been teaching for three days now. When I fly back tomorrow, I have a volleyball team to photograph. I have weddings every weekend. I mean, I'm a very busy guy, but I get it done because have systems in place that I'm like. I'm like the Marines are are the seal team I run in, I get the job done and I get out. So yes, I do. I do the shooting all by myself. But I could not do the shooting without my wife there to do all the editing for me. There is no way. No way. All right, that is fantastic. We all need Suzanne way. All need one for sir. Okay, Next question for Apollo Giordano photography. Can you please explain how you organize student by student and how you upload the pictures? Too easy event. I think he means as you're shooting them. I mean, that's a lot of kids to keep track of and who's in what order? And and that's a great point. Almost every athlete has a number Number 58 Number 40 to number 43. And what I do is I have someone there with me. I'll have either a coach or I'll take someone from the studio and their sole job is tow line. These kids up, I'll even put tape on the floor and give instructions. Alright, guys, listen. Everybody live right here. Stand order and I'll put tape on the floor of where they're supposed to stand and I'll show him all one time is a group. I'll say, Look, this is gonna be your pose. You're gonna stand here left, left, right here. Drop your shoulder, hand on the hip. Everybody's got it. So that way I don't have to try and pose every single person. And then when they come up. We write all their numbers down on a piece of paper and order. So if you're number 46 42 43 I write on my paper. 46 42 43. So I know that when I snap here, I've got number 46 out beside it. I know your name, so I have a visual identification of Who is this? I don't know. It's number 46 0 that's Adam Lambert. Or that's Randy Petersen. So we have a name recognition with that, so it makes it really, really easy. You almost can't mess it up. You really can't mess it up. Perfect. Awesome. Thank you for explaining that. All right, next question from O Brown asking if you shoot by yourself and you have multiple sports contracts in the same area. What happens if they have games on the same day? Yeah, I'm not really photographing a lot of the games. Part of my deal was that I will come to one sporting event for each sport, so I'm only going toe one football game, one of one wrestling match. I wanna one volleyball game. I'm not going to multiple games, you know, and That's something that I offered at my first few schools. And I realized if I have 20 schools, that means I'm going to a lot of games. I don't want to do all that. So I'm not gonna keep offering that. That was something in the beginning that I thought I would have to offer in order to let me get the contract. But now I'm realizing I don't even have to offer that. So, you know, I'm not really gonna offer that up a lot more because that could turn into a full time job all within itself.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Senior Posing Guide
Blair Phillips Discounts

Ratings and Reviews

David - Muse 10
 

As an experienced photographer myself, this class was both helpful and inspirational…we're never too experienced to learn from someone. Blair is really a lot of fun to watch and listen to. He has a way of making things fun with his high energy and dry sense of humor. To be completely honest in my review of this class, the lighting and posing sections, while VERY good, have been done over and over again by lots of photographers and didn't offer much in the way of new ideas. The real value was in the customer service and marketing techniques presented here. Blair's use of video as a marketing and communication tool with his clients is very unique and sparked TONS of ideas I would like to implement in my studio. His simple pricing structure and the way he presents it to his clients is also unique and has helped me rethink some of my own methods. "That being said" (Blair should appreciate that phrase) this class is totally worth the price and will continue to be a good reference for me. Some photographers are excellent at their craft but are dry teachers; others are great teachers but their "real-life" work doesn't live up to their classroom presentations. Blair is the real deal and makes this class very exciting.

a Creativelive Student
 

Blair is great. This class is packed full of great info and is a genuine good hearted person.. Really like his approach with high school seniors. I recommend it.

a Creativelive Student
 

This has been my favorite class on Creative Live. I loved how Blair explained exactly how he landed dance and sports contracts. This class was packed full of ideas for marketing and selling products. There was just so much great information. Thanks, Blair!

Student Work

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