You are a star, just keep at it, stay focused on the important things, enjoy your photography and enjoy life.

Cheers, Damien.

I’m back. You are right, there may not be an Evolve 3. My diary is currently full of 1:1 business consultations that target business needs in a truly bespoke way that I wonder about the value balance between group training with some dedicated time versus a series of 1:1 business sessions combined with any practical training required. The group element from Evolve 1 has been tremendous and the Evolve 2 group are beginning to really work together. It is difficult though to put a value on the extra curricular group support. All I want to do is deliver the help and business strategies my delegates need. In return they have to put in the effort to ‘Make it Happen’.

Give me a ring to discuss your needs further and lets see how we can work together to make your business achieve the success you desire.

Regards,

Damien.

Karl

http://www.ilifephotoblog.com

great insight delivered to the point as usual. I am currently on a well respected training course you may have heard of and I think your points on what to expect from mentoring and who does the work could do with being spelt out loud and clear.

Keep up the fantastic work.

Yes there are a lot of training companies out there. When I started, training was provided by companies and organisations like the Guild of Wedding Photographers. They had literally thousands of photographers buying into a training manual that taught photography by numbers. It did the job that was needed at the time and the manual readers became talented technicians. It was not for me however and I wanted to shoot things my way.

Nowadays photographers have a choice about where to get trained. See my article on this matter here

The Evolve programme is a bespoke programme based on individual studios who have unique products to take to market. Each studio has a different marketing mix of strategies that are customised to utilise their strengths and opportunities. Yes, we have a double day workshop on sales and marketing but the main support is given on a 1:1 basis.

I do want to commit elements of my business training to DVD soon as I know it will be very successful as a product and a marketing tool to drive more customers to my 1:1 and Evolve training. In the same way that my other DVDs have sold well and created demand for my workshops.

For now, we are running a major one off business event in June that will be recorded on video to form part of a bigger DVD type project in due course. Our business spectacular event in June is going to be so feature packed and information rich it is our flagship business product for this year.

I hope this helps. Damien

I learned my trade while I was a cameraman and lighting director at the BBC. 12 years of shooting people in all situations and with fantastic resources gave me the shooting experience I needed. When I left the BBC I continued to shoot my ‘video style’ in stills. I then embarked on seeing every top photographer I could to glean ideas and develop my picture making techniques.

I spent several days with Martin Parr, and several more with Andy Earl. I went to seminars and workshop events by all the top photographers I could get access too from Gordon McGowan to Yervant.

My mother was and still is an art teacher and I owe a lot of my understanding about picture composition and tonal rendition to her.

In 2000, Julie and I did the bespoke training at CPT (£8000 ish) and although we did it primarily for the business training, we were fortunate to be shooting alongside some of the UK’s finest photographers during the practical sessions. Jo DeBanzie, Tamara Peel, and James Bignell to name but a few.

I’ve never stopped learning from other photographers and I’ve yet to take my best pictures.

Damien.

Just to add to Stuart’s comments, do you feel the market has now be saturated with training companies trying to feed off tomorrow’s professionals?

Also, would you ever do a DVD on marketing, sales etc that you have in place with Evolve Programme?

Dave