Claire Hanley has been through the whole gamut of Lovegrove training with her husband Chris of Cherish the Dress™ fame. Together they graduated on Evolve 1 and have been instrumental in helping me take the Lovegrove workshops to the next level. Claire knows just what it takes to build a tremendously successful photography business right now and is on our stand to answer any questions you may have about career direction and development.

Blaise Williams has been in the hot seat at Lovegrove Consulting for quite some time now and is an expert in our range of portfolios among other things. Blaise runs my diary and generally keeps the business running effectively. Blaise is the person to speak to about portfolios for presenting your work and she will gladly talk you through the options and prices. And another thing, Blaise is Julie’s daughter.

Steve Devey is an expert photographer and has tremendous experience in off camera flash work as well as studio and location lighting. He knows our DVDs extensively and can guide you through the growing range of products and workshops we have to offer.

Marko Nurminen is our post production expert. He edits pictures for a lot of the big name photographers in our industry. He is available to edit yours too, so do ask him about our ‘Digital Services’. Marko is an expert trainer too and his workshops on Lightroom and Photoshop are legendary in our industry. Marko will gladly guide you through the maze of getting to grips with post production and streamlining your workflow.

Do come and say hi, challenge us, make us laugh, buy something, or book a workshop. Focus really is a one off event and this year will be better than ever.

Lovegrove Consulting stand at Focus will look something like this but with a few surprises. Do come and see us.

Arri have finally sorted out their supply problems in the UK following their company restructuring and I am happy to say we are re stocked and are once again offering their three key junior Fresnel lamps to photographers. The Arri 300w light is my favourite and perfect for full length bridal interior portraits. The 150w light is the baby of the set. With it’s inline dimmer the 150w lamp is perfect for head shots or as a back light. It can also be used in low light situations finely balanced with the ambient. The 650w Arri light is a bit fierce for close ups but perfect for lighting portraits in bright interiors or where a longer throw of light is required, group shots for instance.

We now have our battery powered Lowel id-lighting kits available. We will have them with us at Focus although they didn’t make it in time for our PDF or handouts. Do ask any of us for a demonstration of the Lowel light, Arris or Broncolor Mobil kit.

The LoveCube™ is now back in stock. We have them made to order in Scotland and the process takes about three weeks from order to delivery. We can’t stock too many because of a lack of space. Once the initial demand has been met we should be able to maintain a near constant in stock status.

We are exclusively exhibiting the Broncolor Mobil kit at Focus and have struck a great deal with Broncolor for the show. There are 10 kits at the Focus price so do get in there! If you would like to buy a Mobil kit but are not attending Focus, give Blaise or myself a call or buy online here at the Focus rates from now.

Click on the picture to download our brochure PDF

Here is a PDF of our product offerings at Focus. There are show offers throughout our range of products and we look forward to seeing many of you next week.

Damien.

The Lowel id-light out on location

Why work with continuous light? Well, all pro DSLRs seem to have HD video shooting capabilities these days and they are being used in many ways. From the basic shooting of promo clips for blogs right up to the production of hybrid wedding multimedia products. When it comes to shooting video alongside stills continuous light is a must.

Another reason we like continuous light is ease of use. What you see is what you get. There are no complicated exposure calculations or ratios to dial in. It’s just a case of switch on, point it in the right direction and shoot. If it looks good, it is good.

Mains versus battery: Where mains power is available and you have time to set up lights on stands nothing quite beats the Arri Fresnel range of lights. They are compact, powerful, well made and very good value for money. The light they produce is legendary. But when you need continuous light on the street or hand held in fast moving shooting environments battery lights are the way to go. There are several ‘video light’ solutions on the market. 100w is a must for most stills work ,so that rules out most on camera lights. In the 100w market there are three main players: Sachtler, Dedolight and Lowel. The Sachtler 100h and Dedolights are larger, less compact units and it is for this reason we started the Lovegrove collection with the Lowel id-light. Dedolights will be next because their unique lens system produces a pure beam of light like no other. Dedolights can be mains or battery powered too.

The Lovegrove kit includes the id-light with an XLR plug system, a set of barn doors, an extension lead, a 10Ah battery pack, a Ctek charger with XLR output lead, and a telescopic ultra light handle.

Lowel id-light: The Lovegrove Lowel id-light kit is finally here. We had to work hard to put together the right package and now we believe we have the ultimate combination to offer photographers and videographers alike. I had my first Lowel light while I was at the BBC many years ago and I am delighted to say in film and television circles it is still a market leading light today. Compact, lightweight, and powerful, the 100w id-light is a perfect unit for continuous lighting where no mains power can be guaranteed.

The Lowel lens is slightly frosted and the barn doors have quite a complicated 8 blade system.

Plug type: Some suppliers couple the id-light with a car accessory cigarette lighter style plug. We have found this to be unreliable and not up to the job. So fo the Lovegrove kit we have opted for a 4 pin XLR system that is standard across the TV and film industry. Upon request we can supply cigarette lighter style connectors to those photographers with legacy systems.

Lead length: The id light comes with a short power lead that is the perfect length when used hand held with a shoulder mounted battery but as soon as the light is used on a stand an extension lead is needed. We supply a 2m XLR extension that will allow the battery to sit at floor level and the lamp to be at the top of a regular lighting stand at just over 3m up.

Battery: I’ve always used a Lowel light in the past with a compact 7Ah battery pack. This has lasted about 30 minutes at best with the 100w bulb. I found this not quite enough and the constant high current drain meant the battery got quite hot at times. I recommend 7Ah for use with a 50w light. For the 100w Lowel we decided to go for a small increase in the battery size to give a greater capacity. At 10Ah you can expect your Lowel id-light to last for just over 40 minutes. Long enough for a wedding ceremony for instance. For a Church ceremony it will light a bride and groom right up until they go off to sign the register. That is the time to switch it off, then your assistant or second shooter can pack it away while you do the signing pictures.

With a good charger, an SLA battery should last about 5 years. At this point you can replace the cells yourself in a Lovegrove supplied pack without resorting to soldering as we use push type Lucar connectors to make our connections. A Lovegrove battery pack also has a user replaceable fuse rated a 10A to protect the cells and leads.

Battery Charging: This has always been a hit and miss affair with SLAs (Sealed Lead Acid batteries). The cheapest chargers pump in power and never stop, so you have to switch them off after a set number of hours or suffer a knackered battery. The next grade of charger uses a switch mode power supply to deliver a three step system. These chargers are far better than the basic ones but on float charge they often fail to maintain the battery at the right voltage level. The charger system we opted for was one from Swedish manufacturer Ctek. Our Ctek charger is slower than most but is brilliant at looking after the battery. Expect an overnight charge to bring the battery back to a fully charged state. Ctek have their own patented inline connector system so one charger can do many applications. We can supply additional output leads for legacy systems and Broncolor Mobil packs.

Virtually every car made since 1967 is negative earth and is equipped with a really good, well regulated lead acid battery charging circuit. So to make use of this we have produced a range of in-car charger leads that can be used whilst driving to and from a shoot.

Top tip: Never let an SLA battery go completely flat as it may well never recover from the deep discharge state. The Ctek charger has a really effective anti Sulphation pulse that can revive batteries that other chargers can’t. but even the Ctek charger has it’s limits, so when you see the Lowel light go dim switch it off and charge the battery as soon as you can.

Bulbs: The Lowel id-light cleverly uses automotive bulbs of 100w that last for ages. They are made to take the knocks and bumps of vehicle use and are available from any car accessory shop.

On the down side: Lowel kit is rugged and will last for many years however the id light has a floating circuit board with the dimmer switch attached and a bit of movement can be expected in operation. This in no way affects the light or its use and is just one of those things.

Have your say: Have you been using a Lowel id-light? If so how have you found it? Feel free to comment below.

Snow was falling, it was nearly dark outside but the light from one Speedlight was all I used for this interesting portrait.

We used the potted plants as dingle and the Honl gobo strapped to the Speedlight as a close coupled reflector. All of us were shooting completely different images from this session. Both the Nikons and Canons were producing extremely varied results. TTL often struggles to produce consistent results when Speedlights are used as backlights.

The same wall and set up as in the first shot above. Getting the right amount of diffusion to the plant shadows took a bit of tweaking of the light position and Honl gobo fitting. As I only had one gobo with me and we were shooting both Nikon and Canon, I fitted my SB-800 with a Speed Snoot opened out into a cone.

We used a different plant for this twin Speedlight shot taken in an adjacent room. I warmed up the Speedlight with a full CTO gel, set a white balance of 3200K, and the ambient daylight then filled the shadows with blue light.

Hear you can see the location in all it's glory. Two Speedlights with a different configuration were used to key and kick. The shadows tell the story.

This close up was shot from a classic angle that creates feminine pictures. I usually prefer to shoot from below the eyeline but I like a change from time to time.

A striking combo of lighting. I was again plagued with my supposedly non firing 580EX2 in master mode blurting out light. The main key light was another 580 in a Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe and I had rigged a pair of Speedlights as 3/4 kickers.

This is the same kick light set up in colour with a slightly different flash balance used this time. The key light was my Broncolor ring flash.

The Ezybox was used as a key light here and Honl full CTB gels were added to the kickers.

Even the mistakes can look great when you have +3 stops of flash comp dialed into to Speedlights.

Here is my last shot of the session. A hint of flare from the kicker Speedlight on the right adds to the look. We fitted Honl grids to kill the flare in subsequent shots. The Bron ring flash again gives us it's characteristic look.

Please feel free to comment on these ‘try out’ shots. This was Lauren’s first ever shoot and Blaise did the makeup.

The LoveCube™ takes centre stage for this shot of Becca.

Three Bowens flash heads with grids provided the key, backlight and background illumination whilst a Speedlight on 1/4 power triggered with a PW Flex was inside the LoveCube™

The day started with a simple lighting rig to establish the seperation of zones and the properties of shadows. My grey studio wall was about 2m behind Becca and was rendered black.

A single light on the background reveals the level of light control I need to maximise creative opportunity.

We used a beauty dish as a key light and LC11 gel on the background for this shot.

We used a softbox as a key for this frame. I used a Triflector too. The rest of the lighting rig was the same as the previous shot but with a different gel - LC45 instead.

Becca has clearly defined arm muscles as the double 3/4 backlighting has revealed here. LC35 was providing the colour this time.

In this frame, I used just one light and my grey wall to make a dramatic picture.

Simple lighting with pools of hard light is part of my style strategy.

The spot of light from a honeycomb grid fitted to a Bowens studio flash head is no match for a Fresnel lens but is fine for most social photography.

A higher key alternative to the shot above. Both the shots were taken in my white zone.

Next it was time for a bit of fun with the Broncolor ringflash.

The same yellow wall with a more standard Lovegrove lighting set up.

Russian Velvet is starting to reveal it's range of hues in my pictures.

We finished with another single light shot in my Russian Velvet zone.

If you want to join me on a creative studio lighting workshop you can get more details here. My complete set of the 38 gels in the Lovegrove Studio Collection is available in 12″x12″ squares here. Colour is my life and I see my life in colour.

Please feel free to comment on these pictures.

Tango the dog finally gets to share the stage with Sarah. This shot was lit using a Broncolor ring flash plugged into my trusty Mobil A2R kit. Wall colour was provided by Dulux.

Wow what a day! We shot simple set ups, and created repeatable dynamic images. We studied shadows, the qualities of light and had fun on the way.

The shoot started with a simple boudoir lighting set up. It doesn't matter weather you use a sofa, bed, bean bag or open space, upstage lighting is very flattering without being too revealing.

This was the first outing for the checker floor and white wall zone in the rear corner of the studio. A splash of harmonic colour was provided by Lovegrove Studio Collection LC34 gel.

I used LC20 for this shot of Sarah

LC30 set the mood for this shot. This four light shot was taken against my grey studio wall.

A quick switch of gel to LC 21 and the mood changed again

The colour in this shot was provided by a Colourama Coffee paper background roll

The LoveCube™ had to play it's part in the day too.

I couldn't resist an Atlas pose. The LoveCube™ isn't really that heavy, trust me. I popped a Speedlight inside fitted with a Sto-Fen and a Pocket Wizard Flex TT5 as a trigger.

I brought out the Fresnel head on my Broncolor Mobil kit to light this exquisite shot. The transition from lit to unlit area is just perfect. It puts honeycomb grids and snoots into the shade.

Just one close up from the plethora of shots lit with the Fresnel lensed light.

This high key shot was lit with one light and is probably one of the easiest in the set to take.

The colour 'Russian Velvet' looks so good I bought the dot com. Tomorrow's set of pictures features my Russian velvet paint at the next level.

I’d love you to join me on a studio lighting shoot experience. The journey of discovery and creativity will leave you inspired and empowered to shoot more pictures that will sell. My studio is equipped with 3 Bowens Gemini Pro R flash heads, 4 Bowens Prolites that I bought in the mid 90’s and my Broncolor Mobil kit. It’s all quite normal kit and my studio space is just 7m x 5m. All the systems and knowledge I use to shoot is freely shared with you my delegates.

Please feel free to comment on these pictures.

With Hannah pointed into the wind, I shot from below using a Nikon D700 and a 200mm lens. ISO 320, 1/60th at f/4 with the camera on a monopod. A fairly bright covered zone kept us out of the rain and in wonderful natural light.

My shooting workshops start in March each year for a reason. Three months from the shortest day gives me a whole day’s shooting and a bit of natural light to utilise in the covered areas and interiors on my shoot routes. If all my delegates owned a D3, D700 or 5D mk2 then I could shoot undercover all year round. It gets a bit nippy for the models at times but modern cameras come alive in the dark of winter.

One of my 1:1 delegates last week wanted to learn how to realise the potential of his Nikon D700 with a set of f/2.8 lenses in natural light. So I set up a three hour natural light shoot with Hannah and the rest of the day was spent fine tuning his business systems and profitability. It rained, it was dark and it was windy – perfect!

Turning the whole situation round so that the wind was behind Hannah it is clear to see the movement in her hair caused by the slow shutter speed. It is worth noting that we were shooting at about 2 stops more exposure than the camera would have given if it was left to it's own devices in Aperture Priority. 1/40th at f/3.5

It's all about timing in situations like this plus a rock steady camera on a monopod. 1/40th second at f/3.5

Here are a few high key shots taken in very low natural light. We shot at ISO 1000, 1/50th second at f/3.2

Identical exposure to the shot above. The dreamy processing makes a change to my usual straight colour treatment.

The third of these colour frames shows a bit more of our surroundings. The walls behind Hannah are grey, mid grey. ISO 1000, 1/50th at f/3.2 Nikon D700 with a 70-200mm at 200mm.

It was dustbin day and we were sheltering from the rain.

Another simple shot but with wonderful results. I taught how to find and expose great light on an overcast winter day.

We then went to my usual cafe / restaurant for a spot of lunch and I showed how to shoot 'cafe' portraits with a close proximity providing intimacy. Nikon D700, ISO 1600, 1/40th second at f/3.2

I just nabbed this still life in passing before we started our 'dark bar' session. You never know when a shot like this on a canvas or acrylic might just lift the space it's hung in.

We were up to ISO 2500 for this shot and the Nikon is still going strong. I can easily imagine this high ISO shot looking great as a 60" x 60" print. We have reached an amazing situation with regard to 35mm sized sensor sensitivity and picture quality.

This moment was all about the cheek triangle of light and how to use it. All these shots were created with the ambient light that was around us.

Another square shot taken at ISO 1600, 1/60th second at f/2.8

A low camera angle adds drama to Hannah's look in this frame. ISO 1250, 1/50th second at f/3.2

Careful camera placement has given Hannah a perfect rim light from the distant windows.

If you want to join me on a 1:1 shoot session tailored exactly to your needs or a business training session or indeed a mixture of the two give Blaise a ring on 01275 853204 for more information and prices etc. I have full Canon and Nikon kits and speak both languages.

Please feel free to comment on these shots below.

The LoveCube™ is a studio prop that will look just as cool in the woods, on the beach, up the Eiffel Tower or in your home. It comes complete with a light fitting (removable) so that it can be used as an illuminated coffee table.

Twitter continues to amaze me. I’ve connected with 800 or so photographers now and it seems the tipping point has been reached. I recently tweeted that the Lovegrove Flash Brackets were back in stock and all the 23 we had were sold in about two hours. 26 more are due with us tomorrow (4th Feb) Phew! This was the first time that the key benefits of the social platform Twitter had resulted in a wide purchasing response for us. As with all exchanges there has to be a win/win, and because I follow those photographers who follow me they can direct message me and this is my free to use help line. So if you’ve got a question, you can DM me and I’ll DM a reply. Why not use Email, I hear you ask? Well, with Email I often get life stories, convoluted mitigating circumstances and a string of questions that take lots of time to answer. So they get left for a day or two or three until I have office time to respond. With Twitter, the questions come in at 140 characters or less and the answers are 140 characters or less too. So I can handle them as I go throughout the day. Twitter lends itself to straight talking, well considered communication – perfect. Follow me at www.twitter.com/damienlovegrove and I’ll follow you too. If 140 characters doesn’t do your question justice, pick up the phone. You’ll probably get through to Blaise but she can arrange for me to call you back at a mutually convenient time.

I hope you agree that the recent ProPhotoNut 1000 pixel wide makeover has simplified the look. I’m going to add to the wider sidebar look by increasing the image sizes in my posts to 600 pixels. ProPhotoNut is still free from commercial advertising but as you will see it has become more of a portal to the Consulting site than ever before. I’ll continue to provide and create valuable content free of charge as this relationship works very well for all of us.

The SWPP convention in London last month was a great success for us even though we were a bit cramped on our stand. The 3000 extra show visitors and our increased number of product lines have triggered some changes for 2011. At next years SWPP convention we will have a whole isle in the Champagne Suite with our friends from Keepsakes, Sandex and South West Photomounts. Oh, and thank you to the 250 people that got up early to see my 8am – 10am talks at the show. Your support was very much appreciated.

Focus On Imaging at the NEC is the biggest annual show of it’s kind in Europe and this year promises to be the best yet. Below is a visual for our stand. Exhibiting at a trade show or a wedding show employs exactly the same strategies but with different end products.

Lovegrove Consulting at Focus will be a multi zone operation to match our brand diversity. Do pop over, say hello, book a workshop place and buy something will be the subliminal call to action.

The Passion on the Streets of Amsterdam workshop (14th & 15th May) is now booking. After the success of my first workshops of their kind in Tuscany last October I decided to take the same workshop on the road and where better to start a passion shoot than in Amsterdam. The Details are here.

The details of my exclusive especially prepared evening talk for Warehouse Express at a top London Hotel in May are being finalised as I write, and once everything is arranged the tickets will become available on the Warehouse Express site. I’ll announce their availability on Twitter straight away.

If you fancy attending a one day seminar, I’ll be at Garderen in Holland on Sunday 16th May as a guest speaker of the DIPP. The event will be open to all photographers and details of where you can get tickets will follow.

I am in the process of putting together a choice of the two finest (imo) battery powered video light kits for photographers. Each one will have a high quality purpose made power supply, a high tech multi-stage charging system and a fabulous lamp head.  The lamps will have different properties yet both are excellent. Why two choices? Well, why do we have Nikon and Canon? Because choice matters, and with kit this good you will soon find one that’s perfect for you. Details to follow soon.

That’s it for now. Please feel free to leave comments, ask questions and follow me on Twitter for late breaking news and the occasional bit of light banter.

Damien.

Mirage in the Western Desert in Egypt. Taken by me in 1996 using a Nikon F90 with a 300mm Tamron lens and an unbranded 2x converter on Kodachrome 64. This picture was shot for stock and continues to sell well today. Sales from this shot alone total over £20,000. Every GCSE student of Physics will recognise this shot from their text books. Dorling Kindersley love it too and it often appears in their publications.

Have you ever sat down and written a title for an essay with absolutely no idea how to complete the task? I perhaps stupidly suggested to Terry Hope, the editor of PhotoPro magazine that it would be fun to write a piece about just a few pictures that became stepping stones in my life. Then perhaps he could invite other photographers to write the same essay. He wrote back and said okay get the job done. So here is the start of what might be an interesting chain of personal stories loosely strung around photographs.

I struggled to choose 50 shots from 2009 so how could I ever choose just 5 shots to chart my career. I wanted to tell the narrative and use the pictures as punctuation, not just choose my favourite shots.

From the age of 19 to 34 I was trapped in a parallel universe called the BBC. I had no idea what real work was like, I never needed to write, use a computer or perform even basic tasks like thinking. I was told where to be, what to do, and at what time. The time bit was freaky, everything at the BBC is to the second and every clock throughout the corporation is driven by an electronic pulse generated in Broadcasting House or by a Radio pulse from Rugby.

In 1986, just two years into my career I started to take pictures for the Science Photo Library in London. SPL as it is called consisted of a couple of people and a dog in a first floor flat in Notting Hill. Now the SPL is a vast organisation with influence on a global scale. I’d like to think I had something to do with it’s exponential growth curve but I know for sure that they’d be where they are now without me. Not the other way round though, because the SPL was my ticket into photography.

Within a year of starting to shoot stock pictures I was earning. The money started to roll in and with just one day a month dedicated to photo library work I was already adding thousands of pounds to my annual income. The SPL asked me to shoot medium format and get a decent camera so I bought a Hasselblad 500CM. I shot everything on Fuji Velvia and I never looked back.

A screen shot of the SPL page showing the kind of stock images I shot in the 90's and 00's

In 1994 I teamed up with Gareth, a GP friend of mine, formed a company called Saturn Stills and started shooting medical stock. We used SPL as our agents and with just one shoot every two months we soon generated an income that was to pay for all our holidays. It was on one such holiday that I shot the first image at the top of this post, of a mirage in the western desert in Egypt. This is just one of my 330 or so personal stock images that continue to sell to this day. We were returning to Aswan from Abu Simbel in a coach. It stopped in the desert to allow the nomads with their camels to sell us trinkets. As I stepped off the coach it was like walking into an oven, it was certainly over 40 degrees and probably nearer 50 degrees. I had a minute or two at the most to get the shot and I used a monopod to support the lens.

This screen grab shows a selection of the images I shot with Gareth under the name Saturn Stills.

My first portrait shoot. Nikon F90, 80-200mm lens at f/4

Shot number two is from my first ever portrait shoot. It was taken in 1997 for OJ Lynch, an actor, TV presenter, stand up comedian and all round great guy. I took him to the Bristol waterfront for a shoot by the industrial museum and it is a location I continue to use to this day. After this session I decided I could make it as a pro photographer and I handed my notice in at the BBC. Incidentally OJ is currently starring in the Full Monty stage show in Frankfurt.

I've never put as much time and effort into a shot since taking this picture. Hasselblad SWCM, Konica infra red film.

This shot of a cottage taken in 1999 won me the 2000 Ilford black and white photographer of the year. I shot it on Konica 720 medium format black and white infra red film. The 720 stands for the threshold of sensitivity at 720nM. I used my Hasselblad SWCM with it’s wonderful 38mm Biogon lens, a Hoya R72 filter and my Minolta spot meter. At that time I was using the zone system as created by Ansel Adams. I metered every significant tone in the scene and mapped out the contrast and my mid point. I then processed the film using two developers, one to process the midtones and highlights with a high actuance and one for the shadow detail. It all sounds like a bit of a pain and it was. The resulting print made in my own darkroom on Ilford Galerie fibre based paper was sublime. The product of about 2 days work and it earned me nothing bar a glass trophy and a certificate. I had been driving past this cottage for several years on my daily commute into the BBC and I had worked out the right time of day to get the shot. One of the problems I had was with a tree. It was in the wrong place growing right up against the building and obscured the cottage from the angle I wanted to shoot. So I went up there with a bow saw and after half an hour of hard work it was gone. The cottage has since been restored and I’m sure the new owners were thankful for not having to cut down the tree themselves.

Here is a list of the cameras I’ve owned:

Film Era 1984 – 2000

• Pentax SP1, 50mm Takumar
• Pentax Spotmatic F, 35mm, 50mm, 105mm and 135mm Super Takumars
• Pentax ES11, 17mm (Tamron SP), 35mm, 50mm, 135mm Super Takumars and a 200mm Soligor
• Mamiya C330, 60mm, 80mm, 105mm and 180mm Compur Secors
• Nikon FA, 35mm, 50mm and 135mm Nikkors
• Rolleiflex twin lens reflex 80mm f/2.8 Planar.
• Hasselblad 500CM, 60mm Distagon, 80mm Planar, and a 150mm Sonar
• Nikon F801s, 20mm, 35mm, 50mm and 135mm Nikkors Not a joy to use after the solid FA
• Hasselblad SWCM with a built in 38mm Biogon and separate finder
• Nikon F90, 20mm, 35-70mm, 80-200mm Nikkors
• Nikon F100, 20mm, 35-70mm, 80-200mm Nikkors. This was my favourite 35mm film camera
• Mamiya 645Pro, 35mm, 55-110 zoom, 110-220 zoom, 300mm Secors -Lasted 1 season before switching to…
• Rollei 1008, & 1006, 40mm Distagon, 60mm Distagon, 80mm Planar, 75mm-150mm Schneider zoom, 200mm
• Hasselblad Xpan, 45mm, 90mm lenses. I won this camera in a photography competition

Digital Era 2001 onwards

• Fujifilm S1, 17-35mm, 28-70mm and 80-200mm Nikkors
• Fujifilm S2, 17-35mm, 28-70mm and 80-200mm Nikkors
• Nikon D200, 17-35mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm Nikkors
• Hasselblad H1 with Phase One P25 back, 35mm, 80mm, 110mm, 120mm macro and 210mm Fujinon lenses
• Canon 5D, 16-35mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm
• Nikon D700, 14-24mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm Nikkors
• Canon 5Dmk2, 21mm Zeiss, 24-70mm and 135mm Canons
• Canon 5D IR, with Nikon 14-24mm via an adapter (camera and adapter due in a couple of weeks)

My first shoot with Mike was one of my career best at that time. I was back on film and on medium format and it felt great.

Julie and I had been shooting weddings for a few years by 2001 and it was on a commercial shoot for a hair stylist that I got to try out the then new Hasselblad H1 camera. Digital backs were still tethered at that point so I shot on Kodak Tri x Pan and developed in D76 before scanning the negs on my Linotype flat bed scanner. We had a great location to shot in in the Cotswolds and borrowed a MK1 Etype for the shoot. This shot of Mike was one of the frames I took on the H1 camera and it wasn’t long before I’d own an H1 myself.

The best bit about an Etype is it’s curvy body shape and the only way to do it justice was to get on the ground and shoot low angle. I got Mike down there too and just the process of changing the viewpoint made a masterpiece that won me the title of MPA Portrait Photographer of the Year. As a wedding and commercial photographer I took that as a compliment. Julie had won the coveted MPA Wedding Photographer or the Year the year before and that was enough of competitions for us. Done that and been there. From then on it was our customers who were going to be our judges and we stopped entering the comps and started to earn money. Shooting for customers with the same gusto and determination that I had shot for the competitions was a sure fire route to our success. From then on our shots were never going to win awards but the mortgage would get paid off.

This wedding shot was taken in the evening sun at Blenheim Palace. No matter how many photographs have been taken in the world there is still room for originality. Hasselblad H2, Phase One p25, 80mm lens.

My last picture in this feature is from a wedding Julie and I shot back in 2005. This was the height of our wedding career and the shot is typical of the Lovegrove style. If in doubt leave it out was my motto. We shot simple near minimalist images and loved every minute of it. This picture is simple and yet so strong. The ornate Ogee moldings on the plinth and the yellow ashlar stonework are perfect elements to ’say’ fantastic venue. I placed the couple against the dark background to split the shot in two. I then directed them to touch foreheads and it took a bit of shuffling around to set up the perfect shadow. All I needed to do then was use a high viewpoint so I held the camera over my head to take the shot after pre-focusing it first.

With so many of my best shots having been taken in the past few years, it has been hard not to be drawn to current times to choose the pictures. All throughout my career in photography I’ve pushed myself out of the comfort zone and into the path of danger. My resolve and determination to succeed have then kicked in to rescue me. In the process I’ve learned just about everything I know and I am well on the way to realising my potential.

2010 is shaping up to be my best year yet in pursuit of new challenges in photography. It kicks off for real in March after Focus on Imaging and never really stops until Christmas Eve. Why not join me on a shooting workshop, a creative day, or for a 1:1 session this year to realise your potential.

Please feel free to comment below.

In this grid you can see how I’ve often used very tight shots to eliminate distracting elements and to add impact to the shots. The collection shows shots from, Cherish the Dress workshops, Passion on the Streets workshops and a wedding. Notice how in some of the shots I’ve directed the girl to place her hands on or around the guys head.

The easy option was to adopt a reportage style of shooting and capture what was there in front of me but I was put off this idea after having spent three years shooting news for the BBC. I was more interested in being able to create moments then capture them. The drama shooting style I had many years of experience of prior to jumping ship into news. The great thing about setting up your shots is that you can light them and choose backgrounds to suit. It’s a bit like being the director, camera operator, location arranger and lighting designer of a Hollywood movie, you have total control of every aspect of the process. The only problem is then the casting. With weddings, Julie and I have had to pick our clients carefully. We need to be able to work with them in a controlled and fairly structured way. There needs to be love of course but perhaps more importantly we need to spark it off with our couples so that we can create the moments to capture.

A happy yet intimate shot like this is far more wedding than fashion. I sat the groom on a step higher than the bride and brought him in to embrace her. The calm warmth of their feelings combined with their beauty makes the picture. I shot this frame eight years ago on a classic Fujifilm S1 camera with just 3.2 million pixels. ISO 400, 1/600th at f/4

In the early days, back in the late 1990s I wasn’t inspired by the shots used in mainstream advertising. Model brides who looked miserable and sultry, grooms that looked like wife beaters and a whole lack of love. Then came a Calvin klein advertising campaign with a couple embracing on a beach. It was shot in black and white on grainy 35mm film and the shots were taken of action, evoked emotion and passion, rather than static poses by models who were obviously not an item. The dramatic effect of this action was accentuated by a tilted camera angle. The shots looked reportage but were under extreme control of every aspect of the shooting process. That was enough for me to set out my style. Fortunately, Julie and I dropped the tilt and the grain before it became passe.

Capturing emotion in a created moment is not easy and initially I had to resort to the strategies that film directors use when working with actors. I had plenty of experience of this in my previous career at the BBC. Now though, I have strategies of my own. A system of posing people that stimulates emotions and a patter to go with it. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I had the maturity to earn enough respect with clients to make the process fairly straight forward.

You can’t stifle sheer joy. When Julie and I put this shot together back in 2002 we just let the true emotions flow. This couple are still our clients today. Fujifilm S1, ISO 400, 1/800th at f/4

If I am shooting using natural light, I select the subject position first so that the light is right. I bring my clients into the light, create the moment I want to capture using a combination of rapport and event sequence, then I capture the moment relying on timing an intuition. The emotions are genuine and the results look real yet polished. At a wedding Julie and I are always engineering ideal scenarios so that we achieve the shots we want without the need to wait for the right moment. This process has allowed us to shoot a lot more keepers and sell far more pictures than we would have done using a waiting game process.

If you want to take these kind of shots, your customers need to be up for it. This is a full on maximum intervention picture taking process and about as far removed from reportage, candid or fly on the wall as it is possible to get. When it all comes together it is amazing.

By 2003 Julie and I were using Fujifilm S2 cameras. This shot from that era caught the perfect moment of a kiss. This frame became our blueprint for kissing shots from then on. This couple are still our clients too. Fujifilm S2, ISO 800, 1/500th at f/4

A close proximity is a vital ingredient for a passion picture. You want to get your customers in each others personal space and you want them to look completely at ease with the situation. I often ask my brides to close their eyes and just lean into their grooms trusting them to be their support. Then the couple need to totally immerse their thoughts into each other and bingo, magic happens.
I have many set poses that I’ve rehearsed and used time and again. Not all my poses will work with all couples but I find it very useful having a repertoire that I can call upon at any time. There’s no getting away from the fact that you have to inject direction and encouragement throughout the shoot stage and I wasn’t mature enough to earn the respect of couples and handle this with sufficient ease until a few years into my career.

I research my poses by studying adverts for perfumes and clothing in fashion magazines and online. I keep tear sheets and screen grabs and I mix and match ideas and styles. Just about any product or garment that is supposed to make you more attractive to the opposite sex is sold on imagery of passion.

The cool colour in this shot came from using a tungsten white balance with my Broncolor Mobil flash kit. The couples expression work well with the steely cool look of the shot. Canon 5D mk2 ISO 100, 1/100th at f/4

The kiss is a subject matter in it’s own right. A great kissing shot it’s not about the process of kissing, it’s about the shared thoughts, the ‘in another world’ experience. The physical process of kissing is rarely attractive but the intimacy and expectation of the moment just prior to the kiss certainly is. Some moments are so monumentally happy for our wedding couples that the kiss is laced with smiles and joy. Other kisses are smolderingly lustful.

I’ve chosen to crop all of these pictures to square. Squares make powerful crops and never go out of fashion.

My forthcoming shooting workshops include two Passion On The Streets workshops in Amsterdam to be made available for booking soon at www.lovegroveconsulting.com

Please feel free to comment below.

Below are my favourite 50 pictures of 2009. It is a strange notion to choose pictures over a time span. I thought about sharing the following sets: My 50 career best pictures, or my 50 favourite pictures of the last decade, or perhaps 50 favourite pictures of the past year, or 50 best shots of the past month. I went for the past year option.

I wonder how many of my pictures I would have selected for all four sets? It’s worth thinking about this. Ask yourself, Is your photography going in the right direction. This is totally subjective and only your opinion counts. Another list category I thought about was the 10 photographs that charted my photographic career. This would be more of a narrative that discussed each images significance rather than the image itself. A lot of the shots I’d choose in the key career shots set would not make any of the ‘best’ sets listed above. It’s got me thinking so I’ll write about the career milestone shots in the coming months but for now here are my 50 favourite pictures of 2009:

The season started with my big flash in the country workshops. And this frame was one that shone out of the overcast day in the dark woods. Lit with two barefaced Broncolor Mobil heads powered from the same A2R pack.

The same workshop took us to the estuary of the river Severn where I took this frame. Again, it was lit with my fabulous Broncolor Mobil kit.

The same location with a different lighting balance on my Mobil kit produced this file on the next workshop. I shot this on a Phase One 65 megapixel camera.

Big flash in the country became big flood in the country when the heavens opened. Lit with a single Mobil head.

Once the rapeseed was in flower I was set on the idea of creating the 'Strictly Lovegrove' genre. I lit this with two Mobil heads powered from the same pack.

I took this shot in the fabulous city of Cork using zoomed in on camera flash in direct sunlight. I couldn't resist the pull of the three primary colours.

Lit with one Speedlight on a stand in Ashton Court estate in Bristol. Chloe is my angel of the South.

Stina in her yellow ruffled dress that Francesca, my 13 year old daughter has her eye on Lit with a single Speedlight on a stand and zoomed into 105mm

This was taken during the making of the Speedlight Mastery video. Two Speedlights on stands did the trick of lighting Ben.

A low angle viewpoint emphasises the lines in the architecture. I used two Speedlights on stands set in the same configuration as in the picture above.

Two Speedlights once again. I love lighting black surfaces

I love the tones in this image too. Keyed straight into the sun with a single Speedlight.

Manchester has a lot of rivets, and I like that.

A gust of wind made this shot of Paula come alive. It was lit by the Manchester sun.

I took this shot of Natasha on a Pocket Wizard creative day using my Zeiss 21mm lens. I only seem to see and shoot arty pictures with the Zeiss glass It was the Honl full CTO gel and the wonderful Ezybox that gave the light it's character.

This Strictly Lovegrove shot was lit with three Broncolor mobil heads plugged into a couple of packs in some disused buildings at a local mine. - Don't step back!

Stina, sequins and wonderful wall art in Bristol. Lit with a single beauty dish fitted to my Broncolor Mobil.

I lit Sarah with a Speedlight fitted with a Honl full CTO gel. The sun popped through to complete the picture.

Here I've got Sarah is in front of a whitewashed shop window. I lit this frame with a Speedlight on camera.

I used my Broncolor ringflash for this frame of Laura on a Street Fashion workshop in Manchester.

This piece of grafiti by an artist who signs his work off with 'Jody' is a familiar backdrop for my portraits. Two Speedlights on stands lit this frame. The colour was provided by Marko using one of his Lightroom Presets.

It's Stina again in that dress. I took this shot for my new video production and I used a couple of Speedlights on stands to light Stina.

Throughout 2008 and 2009 I was running my Evolve training programme and this shot was taken on an Evolve camera skills workshop. Shooting to sell is a vital part of the syllabus and shots like this sell well as big canvases.

I started to tick of my dream photoshoot locations in 2009 with a shooting trip to New York. This frame taken next to Stella McCartney's shop in the new fashion quarter was lit by the sun.

The New York sun in August didn't last long. Thunder clouds rolled in and we were moved along by security straight after taking this shot lit with a Speedlight on a stand.

A new piece of wall art in the meat packing district of New York was a perfect backdrop for this shot lit with two Speedlights.

Rivets make my day. A natural light portrait for a change.

Two Speedlights and a black painted concrete wall in downtown Manhattan and I'm away.

It didn't take long before the rains started in New York. I lit this shot with a pair of Speedlights but used a Honl full blue on the backlight. At least it was warm in August.

A natural light grab shot on our way up to the High Line.

Next it was Tuscany for three Passion On The Streets workshops and a whole lot of fun with friends.

It was a fine line between a murderous pose and a passionate embrace.

This was as close to the theme of 'Passion On The Streets' as we could get. Lit with a pair of Speedlights.

Some of the hills in Sienna were quite steep. Perfect for my kind of shooting. A single Speedlight did the trick here.

There was time for sophistication too as I partnered Chris Hanley teaching 'Cherish The Dress' workshops.

Here's another Cherish shot at the Hilton. Lit with one Speedlight.

And here's another lit with two Speedlights. That's Manchester in the background and we were in Cloud 23, the bar at the famous Hilton tower. We'll be back there at some point in early 2010 that's for sure. So do join us if you have yet to experience a 'Cherish' workshop.

This is another frame I shot for the latest video. It is in the Pitcher and Piano bar in Bristol and I lit Stina with two Speedlights.

It doesn't get any simpler than this. A bean bag and a soft box. It helps of course if you have someone to photograph who is as gorgeous as Lora. This was taken on another Evolve group shoot session.

Another frame featured on my latest video. The strong kick lights give this location shot a very studio feel. Lit with three Speedlights, one in a Ezybox and I also used a Trigrip reflector. The flashes were triggered by Pocket Wizard TTL units.

Another ring flash shot, this time it is in the wings of the Imagist Studio by the Colourama store.

This shot of Holly was shot using a pink gel on the flash head inside the 'Love Cube'. I've sourced a manufacturer for the 'Love Cube' and it should go on sale from the Lovegrove Consulting site in January.

Chloe as a goddess. Shot at a studio lighting workshop against a grey background lit with a gel.

Stina on the same grey background lit with the same gel.

A high key punchy shot of Lora taken on the same grey background as the previous two shots but with a different gel at a higher power setting.

The green in this shot of Sarah is real. It is a green background roll I have in my studio. I use it for black and white shoots as well as a chromakey background.

This wonderful shot of Sarah was taken moments after the one above. There is a bit too much light fall off on the right but I still love the picture.

Here is Sarah in my white corner. As you can see I like it to be shades of grey or sepia in this case.

This is my daughter Francesca shot through my Roger Noons diffusion filter.

And this is another minimalist studio floor shot. This one was taken on a Pentax I was reviewing for Warehouse Express.

Well there you have it. A motley collection with little coherence but fun to shoot. All these pictures remind me of a moment and have earned their place here not on artistic merit but because I like them.

Please feel free to comment. Happy New Year, Damien.

Here is my 4 light studio set up for the grid of colour shots above with the background light set to quarter power.

Now here is the same set up with the colour gel fitted to the background light, still on quarter power.

The Paint on the back wall of my studio is Dulux Ice Storm 2. It is as near a neutral as you can get with pigment and comes from their professional range. You will need to get it mixed for you. The computers at Dulux paint mixing centres have the recipe built in. The top light is a Bowens 1200ws head in a Wafer 140 soft box. The head is set to quarter power. The reflector is my original triflector bought in 1994. It was designed by the legend Stu Williamson. The background light is a Bowens 750ws head fitted with a Maxilight reflector. The two backlights on Henri, my model are Bowens 750ws heads with beauty dishes fitted with grids to avoid flare.

The gels were all photographed illuminating the grey background whilst Henri posed in the foreground to give a true skin tone reference. The gels were simply clipped to the flash head reflector with a single small crock clip (These will be available from the consulting site by mid January) and the power of the flash head was adjusted to reveal a range of luminance values with each colour.

The shot on the left is with no gel on the background light and the flash head set at half power. The shot on the right is with the background flash head off completely. I use a grey wall because it will go pure black when unlit with just 3 stops less light than my subject. There is always some spill light in a studio, especially one as small as mine and white backgrounds usually turn a muddy grey when unlit. The shade of grey should be chosen so that you can recreate the two shots above just by adjusting the power of your background lights. This will give you full control over the luminance of the background colour.

I have now put together the definitive collection of gels from literally hundreds of candidates. As part of the product preparation for the Lovegrove Studio Collection I shot every shortlisted gel to see how it looked in camera. Each one has been chosen because of the mood or character it evokes in a digital image. The way a gel photographs is often very different to it’s visual appearance so all the assessing was done using digital files straight from camera. It’s easy to see colours that work when you are looking at real photographs rather than gel swatches.

With such vibrant colours to hand, it is vital to be in tune with subtle shade and hue changes. A small hue shift can have an enormous effect on the mood a picture evokes and putting together a great collection of gels has been like creating a paint collection for houses.

I’ve put in a bit of hard work over the past two months to put this collection together so that hopefully you can enjoy creating beautifully lit masterpieces to transform your clients homes. If you shoot hair shots for stylists, accessories for fashion designers, make over portraits or magazine covers then these gels are for you. If you don’t shoot any of the above but you want to have a bit of fun then these are for you too because for less than the cost of just one roll of background paper you could be the master of colour wherever you shoot. Each gel is 12″x 12″ (305mm x 305mm).

The full set comprises 38 gels and will hopefully be available by the SWPP convention on the 15th of January. Each gel can also be cut into 12 Honl sized (4″ x 3″) smaller gels if you want to add some colour to your Speedlight work. The complete set of gels is expected to cost £45 – £50.

For wider shots, larger studios, or to create gradient backgrounds, it is advisable to use two or more background lights and gel sets.

See the full portrait colour swatch of gels here showing the effect of various power levels of light shone through each one. Then let me know  your favourites using the comments box at the foot of that post.

What’s your favourite colour? Let me know in the comments box below.

LC01

LC02

LC03

LC04

LC05

LC06

LC07

LC08

LC09

LC10

LC11

LC12

LC13

LC14

LC15

LC16

LC17

LC18

LC19

LC20

LC21

LC22

LC30

LC31

LC32

LC33

LC34

LC35

LC36

LC37

LC38

LC39

LC40

LC41

LC42

LC43

LC44

LC45

The pictures above show the 38 gels of the Lovegrove Studio Collection in numerical order. The missing numbers LC23 – LC29 are technical gels and are not part of this effects set. The gel sets are now in production and we should have stock in time for the SWPP convention in London at the end of January. The price of the full set will be determined once we have all the costings and is expected to be under £50.

My thanks go to Henri for modeling and to Lainie, Henri’s mum for looking after logistics during the shoot.

Please choose your favourite gel colours and let us know what they are. Plus feel free to comment, or ask questions below.

In this 2.5 hour production I shoot 23 set ups using single or multiple Speedlights. The simplest set up uses just one Speedlight on camera and the most complicated used 3 Speedlights off camera, a Lastolite Ezybox and a reflector. I’ve tried to show every nuance of the rig and shoot. I’ve avoided detailing some of the button pushing info that is flash model specific for brevity reasons knowing that this information is in the manual that came with the flash.

Some set ups are explained in more detail and others that repeat the same action are shot at my normal shooting pace to avoid too much repetition.

I am on hand to answer your questions here. I’ll reference and link to more resources as required or requested. So if you have seen the full 2.5 hours of the production please feel free to ask questions, leave comments, or contribute to the discussion below.

1. Identify your genres. Clearly define your genres and treat them separately in all planning, designing and forecasting. It is likely that you will have a different customer base, marketing and supply system for each product line. Here are a few of the more obvious ones for portrait shooters:

• Boudoir location shoot – Boutique hotel
• Boudoir studio shoot
• Lifestyle family location shoot
• Newborn baby shoot on location
• Studio young family shoot
• Specialist interest studio shoot: Music; youth orchestra members, local bands, Dance; ballet, jazz, Eisteddfod competitors, salsa, Strictly Ballroom etc.
• Makeover studio shoot, 18^th, 21^st birthday presents.
• Looking good naked shoots /calendar girls
• Model portfolio shoot mix of studio and location
• Fine art nude on location – in association with a boutique hotel perhaps
• Event: location shoot- Amateur sporting event, show jumping, junior rugby tournament etc.
• Event: mobile studio shoot, dinner dance, charity ball.

2. Design and develop your products. Keep each genre separate and remember that the devil is in the detail. Don’t try and do everything. If you are starting from scratch or going for a re-brand bring one Genre to market then add the next etc. Get your products spot on before starting the marketing.

A promotion you run with a local orchestra may bring in 30 or so individual clients for low key artily lit studio sessions. The products you offer the young musician will be based on a sale of perhaps 6 to 8 images as opposed to perhaps 40 for a lifestyle shoot. The music shots will best suit displaying in the public areas of the home, framed, or perhaps on canvases. Add-ons might include prints for grandma etc. For a pregnancy shoot, the products are less likely to be displayed in frames in the home except perhaps in bedrooms or other private areas. There may be fewer add on opportunities too. So a small album is a likely top selling product for the pregnancy genre. Whatever you choose to go with, the products offered to each genre must be designed to make the most profit from the images you shoot and be priced to sell in the right quantities.

3. Plan your customer experience. Start with the end in mind and plan your customer experience from their perspective not yours. Start from their first exposure to your brand, leaflets, website, telephone, and email contact points. Having an answer phone switched on during business hours while you are shooting rather than having someone on hand to speak to, and sell your products to prospective clients will punish your conversion rate. Think about the drinks you will serve, the fragrance in the viewing room etc. Details, details, details.

The supply of information about the shoot; what to wear, what to bring, the viewing; how can we pay, how many pictures will we see, can the children come too, all these questions need answers and you will need to decide how to do it. If you don’t want to be constantly on the phone there are better ways. We email PDF’s or standard body text before every contact point to minimise conversation time.

If a potential customer, or ‘prospect’ puts your search term ‘Pregnancy photography Barnes’ into Google, your landing page needs to be just focused on pregnancy photography. The navigation on the page for prices should link to just pregnancy photography prices, not wedding photography prices. Equally the products tab needs to take the potential customer to pictures of your pregnancy albums, not jpegs or a slideshow of the images you shoot. Your website needs pictures of what it is you want your customers to buy. Generating demand for the finished item is part of today’s retail language. All this might sound basic and it is. Here is a simplified web design strategy:

• Identify your target search terms for each genre.
• Create ideal landing pages.
• Search engine optimise your landing pages.
• Create a clear path through your site that effortlessly takes your customers to the ‘make a booking page’ via the info they need, prices, products etc. This page needs to be just pregnancy booking not wedding or anything else. It needs to have a good call to action and explain why they should book now for a ‘36 weeks’ shoot and that you can do an evening studio session if they prefer etc.

Once you’ve done one Genre, you can start on the next. This way, you will always appear to be the expert in the field rather than a ‘Jack of all trades’. This means you can charge a bit more too. Perhaps as much as 20% more, just because of your perceived specialist status. Once your customer has had their pregnancy shoot you can introduce them to your baby or wedding photography as required.

Good reading: ‘Don’t make me think’ by Steve Krug and ‘Search Engine Optimisation, an hour a day’ by Jennifer Grappone

4. Organise your promotions. Portraiture is just one big promotion. Weddings happen and brides need photographers but the same is not true for portraiture. Use your diary to schedule some of your 2010 promotions. Here are a few ideas for just one of the genres – family portraits on location:

• February half term – kids among daffodils
• Easter holidays – hay barn shoots (rent a local barn) plus kids with lambs?
• Mid summer term – Bluebell family shoots
• May half term – Flower meadow picnic shoots
• August holidays – Lifestyle ‘at home’ or holiday cottage shoots
• October half term – Sunset on the beach shoots
• November half term – Autumn woodland shoots

5. Set targets for each genre. Take into consideration your production capability. Be realistic and don’t forget to schedule sufficient editing time and viewing slots.

6. Engage in Marketing. Marketing is the process of gathering warm leads. A warm lead is one where the prospect has been exposed to your product and expressed an interest in becoming a customer. They may have entered a prize draw to win a family photo shoot or filled in an online contact form requesting more details of an offer. Typical marketing activities include the following:

• Targeted leaflet distribution to specialist groups. NCT, Ballet schools, youth orchestras, adventure clubs, sports organisations etc.
• Exhibitions. lifestyle and living events, school Easter fairs, school summer fetes, county shows, trade stands at supermarkets, shopping malls and in the high street etc.
• Trade associations and joint competitions with designer clothes shops, interior design shops, etc.
• Advertising

All these marketing activities are designed to generate warm leads and there are many, many more opportunities to gather leads than the ones I’ve mentioned above.

7. Convert the leads into customers. I asked telemarketing expert Julia Brooks at contacts4business, a marketing agency that specialises in developing sales leads for small owner-managed businesses, to give us some expert advice on how to win and keep a customer. Julia has a proven track record of creating and converting warm leads into great portrait clients for some of my consulting clients.

So what’s the secret? “Start with the right leads. This may seem obvious” says Julia, “but you need to know your target market. We at contacts4business have had most success with photographers who really know what sort of customers they want. Having a firm idea of what interests your prospective customers and knowing where to find them is what marketing is all about, but it’s never as easy as it sounds”.

“Some of our most successful photographers have forged alliances and built relationships with complementary businesses that often result in a “win-win” situation,” says Julia. “For example, if you specialise in portraits of children, you could work with a children’s designer clothes shop to offer a prize draw to win a complimentary photo shoot. Customers that spend over £100 in the shop will be entered into the draw. The winners can be called to book their shoot, but there’s nothing wrong with calling the runners up too, and there could be as many of these as the shop can generate draw entries. Pre-qualified leads like these make for the best return on telemarketing effort”.

Be Quick! “It’s important to follow up on your leads quickly with telemarketing in order to capitalise on interest and get a shoot or a meeting booked into the diary. The more time that goes by between contacts, the ‘colder’ the lead becomes, making it much more difficult to convert into a sale”.

Be persistent! (“this is my weakness” Damien) “Don’t be deterred” says Julia, “if you get a few “no thank-yous” when you are calling. Also, since you’ll be contacting many of your prospective customers at home, many of the calls will need to be made in the evening or at weekends. It may take 9 or 10 calls before you get the actual shoot booked!”

Follow up, follow up and follow up! “Stay in touch with all your contacts. If you make a call and find they are not interested now, ask if you can call them in a few months, or even next year. This may seem like a long time away, but building up your sales pipeline is essential. Make sure you use a calendar system that will alert you when it’s time to make these calls”.

Once you have a customer – keep them a customer. “Photography lends itself well to newsletter style communications, so ask your prospective customers whether they will mind receiving a newsletter from you. Email newsletters are very cost effective, and allow you to keep in touch with prospective clients easily, to appear “on their radar” frequently and hopefully to be in the right place at the right time when they need a professional photographer”.

And finally, Ask for referrals. “You don’t need me to tell you that referrals are a fantastic way of generating new business,” Says Julia. “So why not ask your existing customers to refer people to you? You recommend restaurants, films etc to your friends so why wouldn’t you recommend a photographer? However, you need to be proactive in getting referrals. Making an offer for any referrals received is always a good incentive!”

8. Keep at it. Marketing is all about effort and reward. If it takes 100 calls to get 15 bookings and you need 60 bookings you know you need to make 400 calls. So repeat 6 & 7 until the targets that you set out in stage 5 are met.

9. Financial Mastery. Keep separate records for each genre so you can see at a glance which ones are your profit heroes and which ones need attention or dropping. Dropping poor performing product lines may well release extra resources to expand the profitable ones. Here are some of the numbers for you to track:

• Acquisition cost – This is the cost of getting a new client and includes a share of sample products, leaflets, web design, advertising, telemarketing, stands and shows etc. If your marketing generates 200 customers in 2010 then your acquisition cost is 1/200^th of all the above items.
• Average sales value – total sales divided by the number of customers or jobs.
• Cost of goods – Albums, frames for the year divided by number of sales.
• Total fixed expenses – Heat, light, rates, camera and computer depreciation etc.
• Allocated fixed expenses – a fraction of the fixed expenditure is assigned to each shoot.
• Number of new customers generated.
• Number of repeat customers.
• Profit per shoot.
• Time taken to produce the profit.
• Hourly rate of income.

You may find you earn twice as much money per hour photographing babies than you do as a boudoir photographer or it may be the other way round. You’ll never know until you have financial mastery in your business.

10. Efficiency. Do the business efficiently and reap the rewards of your success. Efficiency is vital in order to release your earning potential. Having a high level of production capability is like rocket fuel. If over two weeks you can shoot 30 ballerinas, edit the shots and do the viewings this could easily return £10k profit. If it takes you a month to get the work done, your fixed expenses will double and your profit may be just £8k if you are lucky.

I am available for 1:1 dedicated business consultations to help you get focused on success. Contact Blaise on 01275 853204 or by email blaise@lovegroveconsulting.com in the first instance and she will arrange a complimentary initial phone consultation with me.

If you need help generating or converting leads ring Julia Brooks at contacts4business for a chat on 01763 209326 or email her at Julia@contacts4business.com

Please feel free to add your comments and suggestions to the benefit of all.

Blog

Martin has installed an email subscription system that will let you track the comments threads automatically. You can now see when I or someone else has replied to one of your comments without having to keep popping back to check. Changes we make to this blog are often as a direct result of your requests so please feel free to continue to suggest functionality improvements that we can implement on ProPhotoNut.

Blu-Ray – DVD

After a few disc reproduction issues we look to be back on track for pre Christmas deliveries as expected. I must admit it has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride here in the past few weeks. The Pre -Order £10 discount offer ends at midnight on Monday. Luke has even put a countdown on the offer page to remind us.

We shot 35 items for the new video and could only squeeze 23 into the 2.5 hour limit that the DVD format will allow. So we will go on and edit the 12 remaining items to make them available as paid for downloads. We will then be able to reward our customers with complimentary download vouchers on a sort of points system basis.

Workshops

The first three months of 2010 are probably going to be the busiest start to a season that we have ever had. As well as SWPP, and Focus On Imaging there are going to be a string of product launches to handle. Laura will be back with us in March but the workshops start well before then. Here is our first quarter schedule of workshops.

Marko Masterclass Lovegrove Studio – Monday 25th January 2010
Marko Advanced Lovegrove Studio – Wednesday 27th January 2010
Get Effective with Lightroom Lovegrove Studio – Thursday 28th January 2010
Get Effective with Photoshop Lovegrove Studio – Friday 29th January 2010
Studio Lighting Workshop Lovegrove Studio – Tuesday 9th February 2010
Studio Lighting Workshop Lovegrove Studio – Wednesday 10th February 2010
Creative TTL Workshop CREATE Centre, Bristol CANON USERS – Thursday 18th March 2010
Speedlight Mastery Workshop Bristol NIKON USERS – Tuesday 23rd March 2010
Shooting Weddings Workshop Stonehouse, Gloucestershire – Wednesday 24th March 2010
Speedlight Mastery Workshop Bristol CANON USERS – Monday 29th March 2010
Speedlight Mastery Workshop Bristol CANON USERS – Tuesday 30th March 2010
Camera Skills The Matara – Monday 5th April 2010

SWPP convention

I will be giving three seminars at the SWPP convention on the 15th, 16th, and 17th of January. They are all start at 8am and are entitled ‘Make the world your studio’ The good news is you only need to get up early once as the talks are all the same. The bad news is I’ll have to get up early three times. Those of you who know me well will realise this time of day is quite a challenge for me.

We will again be exhibiting at the SWPP trade show in our usual position upstairs in the Champagne suite. You never know, we might just have a large supply of Pocket Wizards for Nikon with us.

Focus on Imaging exhibition

We’ve gone a bit mad for the 2010 Focus exhibition and have enlisted the services of Henley & Henley design consultants to build us a top stand. The project is scary and exciting at the same time. What advice do you have for us for the Focus exhibition? Be creative with your answers.

Best wishes and seasons greetings, Damien.