Hands-On Photography Episode 135 Transcript
HANDS-ON PHOTOGRAPHY Episode 135 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Ant Pruitt:
Today on Hands-On Photography, I'm getting into your email feedback and we're going to just sort of pivot off of a previous episode. We're talking about the business side of photography. Some of you folks are really curious about starting your own photography business. Well, I got to tell you there's a lot of work involved and we're going to dive into that. So y'all, stay tuned.
Speaker 2:
This is TWiT.
Ant Pruitt:
This episode of Hands-On Photography is brought to you by Nomad. Go to nomadgoods.com/twit and use promo code TWiT for 10% off your first purchase of any Nomad accessory. They have Apple watch straps, wireless chargers, ultra-durable cables, and more. Limited time offer.
Ant Pruitt:
Hey, what's going on everybody? I'm Ant Pruitt and this is Hands-On Photography here on TWiT TV. I hope y'all are doing all right. I'm unbelievable as always. This week, it's not a scorcher, so I'm not sweating like crazy here in the studio. I hope y'all are doing okay. This is the podcast where I like to sit down and share different tips and tricks that are going to help make you a better photographer, as well as a better post-processor. Every now and then I do get to sit down with a photography guest or I get to do like what we're going to do this week, sit down and look at some of your submitted feedback. Yeah, people can email the show and potentially have said emails discussed on the show. Imagine that!
Ant Pruitt:
Before we get into that, I want to say welcome to everybody that's catching us for the very first time and say, thank you for joining me today. Now go ahead and subscribe in whatever podcast app that you're using at this moment. I don't care if it's the Pocket Casts or the Apple podcast or Spotify or the YouTube channel. Go ahead and hit that subscribe button right now. And then, go ahead and give me a rating, a comment, all of that good algorithmic stuff to help push us up in the search engines, if you will. So please do that. It really does help us out and I really do appreciate it. If you are struggling to find all of the subscription options, just go on over to our website, twit.tv/hop, that's twit.tv/hop for Hands-On Photography, and you'll see all of our subscription options there as well as all of our previous episodes and previous show notes. There's lots of goodies in those previous show notes, so go check them out and check different links so forth.
Ant Pruitt:
All right, with that out of the way, let's go ahead and get started with this week's episode. As I previously said, today is going to be a bit of a focus on some feedback or commentary that I've gotten from you, the Hands-On Photography listener. I got three different messages here. It's two emails, and one is a message, but in a sense, I'm going to end up piggybacking... Is that the right phrase, piggybacking? I'm going to end up, I guess you can say adding a bit of an amendment or just talking a little bit more about what we talked about in episode 134 last week, where we spoke with Mr. John Davis and, he had his very first paid photography gig. We're going to talk about that a little bit more with the different aspect and some things to consider, but before we get to that, I want to talk about this first email that comes in from Mr. Lawrence. So let me go ahead and switch my screen and pull up said message.
Ant Pruitt:
All right. Lawrence says, "currently listening to episode 132- Selling Photography, and then a light went off..." And it suggested that he should ask me about print services. Lawrence says he often takes panoramic shots with his phone, and he's wondering if there's a service that could print out the wide aspect of photos as a one piece shot and not something that's quote chopped up. And he says that I could use this message on the show. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Mr. Keel, thank you for sending that in. And yes, we did talk a bit about a particular service on that episode and that service was Fine Art America. If you go to antpruitt.com/prints, it'll take you to my Fine Art America profile, and you'll see all of the different printing options in there.
Ant Pruitt:
And for most of the shots, I'm not going to have that long wide aspect ratio that you'll find in panoramic shots. So you're not going to see a lot of that available, but they do, they as in Fine Art America, do offer the option to print something on a wider aspect ratio. Now I talked about panoramic photography way back in the days. I think it was episode 42-ish, something like that. Mr. Victor will have it ready for me here on the screen. We talked about panoramic shots. Now with most cameras, you're going get a default aspect ratio. For example, you'll get a default aspect ratio of 4:3, or your camera will allow you to set it to a 16:9 aspect ratio. Then every now and then you get some that allows you to set up a custom setting, such as 1:1 aspect ratio, which is a square. When you're shooting panoramic, that aspect ratio gets really, really wide on the long edge and narrow or short on the tall edge of it.
Ant Pruitt:
So going from a 16:9 to something like, I don't know, maybe a 16:5 or a 2:1 aspect ratio, something really, really wide and somewhat narrow when it comes to the height of things. So a lot of printers, they're not going to print that out and if they do print it, I'm going to say it's probably discouraged because of how the print comes out on the paper inside of the printer. There's going to be a lot of lost paper. It's a lot of white printing paper that's still sitting there that's going to get unused because of how the print is laid out. Again, it depends on your particular printer, printing service, that is.
Ant Pruitt:
If you take a look at... I'll put a link in the show notes for another example on Fine Art America, not any of my images, but they do have some options in there and they use what they call rectangular format, and a lot of those are perfectly aligned panoramic shots. So you be sure to check them out. If you're going to shoot panos, upload them to Fine Art America. Again, as I said before, it's a free service to upload your images to. If you like how it looks, you can just buy your own print from them and allow them to print it out. So check them out. I'll put links in the show notes that'll help reference this information.
Ant Pruitt:
Now let's move onto our next email and switch my screen. This one comes from Tom Graham. Tom says, "I've had a SmugMug.." Well, actually let's get back to the subject line. The subject line is "Selling Pics," but he says, "I've had a SmugMug site for over a year with loads of pics and have not sold a single image. To be complete, you need to address how to promote the site." And he leaves the URL on the screen. It's tomgrahammedia.smugmug.com.
Ant Pruitt:
All right. So Mr. Tom, pretty good email here. And I get where you're coming from. There's a couple things I can address in here and I'm going to do my very best to keep this show somewhat brief and not super duper long I'm going to do my best.
Ant Pruitt:
So when you're talking about selling your prints or selling your images online, there's going to be a lot of legwork that goes into this. First off, it comes in just to how you capture your images. What's the quality of them? How do they look? The aspect ratio as we discussed in the previous email, the subject matter, if you will. Is it something that's going to captivate people? That makes them say, "Hmm, this is interesting. Maybe I should buy this." Or support the artist. ...I always hear this from a lot of people and sometimes their photography's just not very good.
Ant Pruitt:
When I looked at your site, Mr. Tom, that wasn't the case. You have some great images in your site that I got to give you your credit. They're not just snap worthy, snap, what do you call them? They're not just snapshots, if you will. They're actual beautiful pieces of art in my opinion. And I think, yes, you can sell these prints, but why aren't they selling? Well, my first question to you is, are you promoting it? Who are you promoting it to? How are you promoting it? When it comes to doing your photography business? One of the biggest aspects in it is being a salesperson. And I know salesperson is something that really, really takes a bad rep nowadays. They think about the old days of the door to door salesperson and they sort of nag you and spam you, if you will. Well, the really, really successful sales folks, they push. They promote, they promote, they promote, they promote. Did I say that right? Yeah. They promote. They're always pushing their products and that's a part of the gig.
Ant Pruitt:
So my question to you again, is how are you getting the word out about your SmugMug site? There's a couple things you can consider with that. You can have your own website that points directly to the SmugMug site. We talked about last week with Mr. Davis using a domain register like Hover, which is one of the TWiT sponsors, to have your domain point to SmugMug. When someone goes to do a Google search for your name, what's going to pop up? Is it going to pop up your website or is it going to pop up some random Facebook post that has nothing to do with your photography?
Ant Pruitt:
Okay. So there's a lot of stuff like that to consider, but I'm going to take a quick break and get back into this stuff for a second. There was another message that I wanted to share, but before we do that, let me take a few moments to thank the fine folks over at Nomad.
Ant Pruitt:
Yes, Nomad. They got together back in 2012 in Santa Barbara, California, and they started it as a Kickstarter project. They figured, you know what? We need to build something that's going to be ultra rugged and minimalist for the 21st century that would seamlessly integrate the everyday care. So in the past nine years, Nomad has expanded to a wide range of mobile accessories to fit any need. From the IPhone cases, to Apple watch straps, wireless chargers, to premium wallets and passport holders, all crafted with Horween leather. Nomad uses leather from the Horween tannery in Chicago, founded in 1905 and offers an unparalleled blend of quality and consistency. Leather accessories develop a rich patina with time, and it looks really, really good because it sort of just wears down and it gives it that uncharacteristic look that looks like anybody else's stuff. It just says it's truly mine and it just looks so dadgum beautiful and smells good because leather just smells great.
Ant Pruitt:
Nomad offers convenient wireless charging solutions for your home office and bedroom with the suite of charges for whatever Apple device you use, as well as the Apple watch and the Apple AirPods. Now Nomad is also offering AC adapters for folks like me that don't use a lot of Apple devices. I do have some Android devices that still need to be charged up. And it's nice that they give me these little bricks like this one here. That's going to give me a really, really quick charge. They offered a 30 watt and a 65 watt GaN adapters to help charge up your devices in a timely manner, not with that trickle down stuff.
Ant Pruitt:
The crew at Nomad has been tired of dealing with flimsy charging cables that seem to fall apart every few months, so they set out to engineer some of the most rugged cables all around. Reinforced with their double braided Kevlar, outer sheath and strong metal alloy connector housings, Nomad cables have been engineered for extreme durability and heavy everyday use. They're also a climate neutral certified brand. Big ups to you on that Nomad. Nomad is and always will be a company that prioritizes design and quality over everything else. One of the most important aspects of Nomad when designing new products is they use the highest quality longest lasting materials that are available to design all of their concepts from the ground up rather than white labeling some existing products that are out there.
Ant Pruitt:
Nah, not doing that. So folks go to nomadgoods.com/twit and use promo code TWiT for 10% off your first purchase of any Nomad accessory that's nomadgoods.com/twit with promo code TWiT. And this is a limited time offer. We thank Nomad for their support of Hands-On Photography and all of the shows here at TWiT.
Ant Pruitt:
So I want to get back into this business talk. So you know, you get your first paid gig, but what happens when you get your second gig? What happens when you get your third gig? Ooh, things are starting to get a little bit serious for you on the photography business side. Right? Well, there are some things that you have to consider.
Ant Pruitt:
This was brought to my attention one day in our discord, on our club TWiT discord, that is. One of our members says, and I'm going to pull it up on my screen. "Hey, Ant I wanted to say..." And this came from Great Scott. I love that username. This says, "Ant, I wanted to say, I thought that selling your prints episode was a great idea. I would love if you did a part two and gave suggestions on how to set up a business so that a person could sell. Totally understand that you aren't a lawyer and that this differs from lo-cal, but tips on how to get started would be super helpful. I wanted to sell an occasional print, but I have no idea how to even get started going about the business side on this. Absolutely free to use this comment and or idea on your show. Thanks for a great show and helpful tips and positive vibes." Hey, first off, thank you for being a club TWiT member. I really do appreciate that. All of us here really do appreciate you being a member of club TWiT.
Ant Pruitt:
And secondly, there's a lot that goes into it. When you're getting into this photography business and you sell some prints here and there, that's fine. You can sell some prints here and there, but that's not necessarily saying you are an incorporation. You know, that's not saying that you are a business, if you will. That just says you're a hobbyist that happened to sell some stuff. And granted again, here's my disclaimer, I am not an attorney, not a lawyer, anything like that, but I am going to share with you some of the things that I've dealt with over the years that have been helpful for me. And I hope that it can translate into some information that you can use as research to get started with your own business endeavors.
Ant Pruitt:
When you're first starting out, it's not really as stressful if you're only selling like one or two prints a year and you're only making... you're not even making a hundred dollars, not even making a thousand dollars or things like that. It's literally just like you selling one of your, I don't know... an old t-shirt or something to somebody in a yard sale. It's just, that's just what it is. And the IRS comes around, the tax people, they will literally say that, at least in my experience, they'll say, "Hey, this isn't necessarily a business. This is more of a hobby, but thank you for advising that you made this much money based on selling..." Yada yada yada selling prints or whatever.
Ant Pruitt:
With that said, there's a couple things you need to consider as far as the business side of things. First, you need some type of record tracking. I use the folks at FreshBooks. Yes, they were a former TWiT sponsor, that's how I found out about them 10 years ago because they were on the TWiT network. I use FreshBooks to help me keep up with every single thing. Because I got to tell you, you can be a spreadsheet super guru, what have you, but man, that stuff can be really, really annoying, and the organization of it can really get lost. FreshBooks allowed me to, or any accounting system or accounting software, it'll allow you to keep up with the stuff that you bring in from an expense standpoint. And keep up with the stuff that you bring in from revenues and keep up with supplies.
Ant Pruitt:
It's just a lot of different things that helps you stay on task far as the end of the year, and being able to look at where you are with how much money you've made or how much money you've lost. And being able to report that from a taxation standpoint, because all of it has its own different... Every state has their own regulations and rules. So your mileage may vary when it comes to that. I definitely recommend looking at something like FreshBooks or whatever accounting software that you can get your Hands-On free or not.
Ant Pruitt:
So after you've done that and you start to see that you're getting more and more clients. Then, yes, you probably want to consider starting a business. A couple things people do is, they look at what's called an LLC or they look at an S Corp. Ideally I believe the best... I went the route of an LLC and that's limited liability company. That helps me out with the taxation stuff. It's really, really easy to file for an LLC, to get one. Get yourself a federal ID, and a lot of these resources are available online for free. Granted getting an LLC is going to cost you something. You do have to pay that registration periodically and so forth. So get yourself an LLC to have yourself set up as a business. Then as you're continuing to grow your business, everything is being run through that LLC and not necessarily run through you, giving you all of this ridiculous liability when it should be on the business side of things.
Ant Pruitt:
So you have the LLC. You have your accounting software. What's next? You're ready to go, right? Yeah. Start creating your work. Start creating your content and then start marketing. Start pushing it out there. People need to hear about your business. You're going to have to get out there and be like the old school sale person and knock on doors, and I mean that metaphorically. Knocking on doors is a metaphor. Nowadays, solicitation is damn near outlawed wherever you go. It seems like everywhere I've been here in Sonoma county, there are solicitation signs up that says "no solicitation" just about everywhere I've gone. How do I know that? Because I've been out trying to pitch my business. I've been out trying to get people here in the area to sign me up, to do some work for them, with my art.
Ant Pruitt:
So since I can't go around door to door knocking on doors, what's the next thing you have to do? Well, you can work emails. You can work the phones, just whatever it takes, check them out on social media. You need to do the research to be able to get access to the people that are making decisions that are going to buy your services. If you're just someone that's trying to make your art known, to be able to sell prints and things like that, no, you don't necessarily have to go around knocking on doors or metaphorically knocking on doors, but you still need to have some type of promotion plan out there.
Ant Pruitt:
A lot of people like to buy ads on Facebook. I don't advise that, but there are some people that I know that do that and it gives them good results. I would say, make sure you get a website. You have to have a website, have to have it to where your content is there, have to have it to where, when someone goes to Google and search your name, your name is going to come up with your work and access to all of your work and how people can purchase things. So get yourself a website. Building websites are easy. There are all kinds of services. There's wix.com, I think that's W-I-X, there's Squarespace. If you're, heck, you're a TWiT listener, so you're probably nerdy enough to build your own from scratch. So build yourself a website. You got to get that done and just promote the heck out of it.
Ant Pruitt:
If you follow me on Twitter, you will see that my Twitter feed has a lot of promotion in it. Yes, I talk to people on Twitter fairly regularly because I like the conversations over there. You will also see that I am, number one, promoting my stuff, whether it's my YouTube videos, whether it's my art. Then I'm also promoting Hands-On Photography. I'm also promoting other stuff at TWiT. Just look, you'll see a pattern in there. There's a mix of me being me, the creator, and just chit chatting and having a good time with other people conversing and so on and so forth. Then there's the marketer of me on social media, because I can't necessarily go out and put flyers up everywhere. Maybe I could, but it's not something that I'm willing to invest in. I think I'm getting better reaction by using the online platform, such as social media to promote myself.
Ant Pruitt:
Something that a lot of people tend to forget about, is the world of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social media platform. But LinkedIn, from a photography standpoint, at least for me, it's been my biggest way to get connections to people. I'm a photographer. I shoot professional head shots. LinkedIn always has people looking for professional head shots. Always. LinkedIn always has people that are real estate agents that are not only looking for head shots, but they're also looking for real estate photography. Why would I go anywhere else? So I will go to LinkedIn. I will promote myself there. I will do the research to look up the people in my geographical location that I could potentially have access to and say, Hey, let's sit down. Let's chat. Let's have... Let me pitch my services to you.
Ant Pruitt:
So if you are going to do this stuff, it's a lot of work that goes into it beyond just posting it on the website or beyond just posting it on SmugMug because photography is so accessible to people these days. Everybody can snap some really cool photographs, but not everybody is going to have what it takes to make that into a business. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of self-promotion, takes a lot of research.
Ant Pruitt:
Thinking about the research side of things. If I look at my service where people are ordering prints, I go and I look at analytics of my Fine Art America account. I'm looking at what are people clicking on the most? When are they clicking on it? So that gives me an idea of the type of things that people are looking for at that particular time. Same for my YouTube stuff, same for Hands-On Photography. You folks help me to help make this show even better based on the feedback that I get from you all. I want this to be something that's going to be helpful for everybody, and it's going to help everybody else grow in addition to help me grow. I hope that makes sense.
Ant Pruitt:
Mr. Keel, Mr. Great Scott, Mr. Thomas. Hey, that's the real talk I'm going to give y'all this week. You're wanting to do more and sell more prints with your SmugMug. You're going to have to promote it. You're going to have to push it. You're going to have to tell some other people face to face. I have business cards around here somewhere. I have business cards with me. I keep a couple in my wallet quite regularly. And I also have my TWiT business cards too, right here. Here's one of my TWiT business cards. Whenever I'm out, if someone decides to have some sort of conversation with me, even if I'm at the grocery store, just buying a gallon of milk and someone tells me how healthy milk is, I tell them, "yeah, it's great. But did you know that I'm also a photographer? Here, let me give you my card." I will do that in a minute. I need to promote this.
Ant Pruitt:
Some people are not comfortable doing that. And I had my moment of time where I wasn't comfortable doing that. But as soon as I get that "in", if you will, I'm going to take a few seconds to say, "Hey, I'm Ant Pruitt. I'm a content creator. I do photography. I do videography. I would love to help you out. I'd love to set up a shoot with you and your family because I do some great work and I can really make y'all look good." Something along those lines, and then I hand them a card. That's just what you have to do.
Ant Pruitt:
I go to the bank to make a deposit or what have you. I'm talking to the tellers here, "hey, it's time for y'all to get your head shots. It's the end of the year coming up here. Make sure y'all give a call because you're going to need some head shots at the beginning of the next year." It's self-promotion you have to stay on top of that. Unless you want to hire a salesperson to do that for you salesperson or marketing person, but take it upon yourself to do it yourself.
Ant Pruitt:
I'm going to get off the soapbox right now. I hope that's been helpful. I'm going to put a lot of links into show notes here, that'll be some resources for you to check out. Hey, if you have any questions, comments, feedback, go ahead and send them on over to me again, HOP@twit.tv. I love hearing from you all, and I hope today's episode was another helpful episode.
Ant Pruitt:
Also make sure y'all give me a follow on the social media platforms. See, again, that's marketing and promotion. Follow me over on Instagram. I am ant_Pruit on Instagram. I want to get my follower number up over there. My Twitter handle is fine, so I'm not going to ask you to follow me over there unless you really want to, but you can follow me on Twitter too. I'm ant_Pruit.
Ant Pruitt:
Want to give a shout out to my man, Mr. Victor, for making me look and sound good each and every week. And again, a big shout out to all of you, the Hands-On Photography listener that comes back each and every week. Also those of you that are continuing to tell others about the show. Thank you so much for doing that. And again, for those of you that haven't done so, make sure you tell at least two friends about Hands-On Photography, and then also tell one enemy too, just to get on their nerves. All right, everybody, that's going to do it. Hey, safely, create and dominate and I will catch you all next time. Y'all take care.
Speaker 3:
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