Here are a few shots of the new book. It’s actually two books within one slipcase, organized like my web site, with stories in one book and portraits in the other. It’s hard to do get a full appreciation for the book without handling it – the cover material has a metalic texture and sheen, but a super soft, highly pet-able feel. The color palette is warm, understated and professional, and contrasts in such a cool way with the vivid green spreads that introduce each section.

I’m really excited to get out in the marketplace and show it off. Many thanks to everyone involved in its production – please scroll to the bottom of the entry for credits and links.

Image edit and masterminding: Selina Maitreya
Identity and layout: Andrew Voss of Spunk Design Machine
Book design assistance and construction: Scott Mullenberg
Pages printed at Workprint Studios

They’ll be going out every six weeks or so, with pinpoint targeted accuracy to magazine and agency folks who care about food in some way, and to a wider group in the Midwest. Thanks to Craig Johnson at Agency F for the design help, and to Franklin Press for the beautiful print job. And, of course, thanks also to Selina Maitreya for the ongoing strategic guidance. I’m lucky to have such a creative and intelligent group helping me – I’ve definitely learned that this kind of thing can’t be done solo.

But here I am now to give you some of the scoop! First of all, branding. Maybe you caught my announcement of the new wedding portfolio site, where you can see the wedding version of my new logo in action. If not, let’s put a spotlight on the logo, because I for one have a hard time getting enough of it.

Man, I am so. . . stoked. . . about the job Andrew Voss has done so far on design. (And by the way, I never use the word stoked.) He hit it out of the park, as far as I’m concerned. It’s modern but authentic, sophisticated yet hand-hewn. I love it, and I feel like it speaks to my photographic style perfectly. Big props to Mr. Voss for the logo and the layouts he’s come up with for my print portfolio, postcards, letterhead, business cards. . . the whole works. I can’t wait to unleash the green side on the world in the coming weeks.

The wedding site was accompanied by a new print portfolio book, housed in a spectacular hand made slip cover and cover made by the immensely talented Scott Mullenberg. If you’re in the market for a custom book maker, you couldn’t do better than Scott. His product is absolutely top notch, he’s creative, responsive, and professional. I’ll be using him for my non-wedding portfolios, and for all high end wedding albums I produce.

Once the wedding site and book were wrapped up, I moved on to marketing my wedding business. Compared to last year in particular, the rate of bookings for 2010 has been gangbusters so far, and I think a lot of the credit for that should go to Andrew’s beautiful design and Selina Maytreya’s editing and sequencing of the images used. I’ve had nothing but fun working with these guys, and I feel like I’m projecting a much more true idea of my capabilities to the world, which feels great.

In other wedding news, I will be the preferred photographer for events at Solera Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, which is particularly exciting because I have so much respect for the food they put out. I photographed a wedding there last June and had a great time using their bright colors and wide windows and views of Minneapolis as my backdrop. Hopefully I’ll be there lots more in the months to come.

Most recently, this week Selina and I have been at work editing my non-wedding work. They’re still in a bit of flux, but here are the sequences for the three galleries I’ll be relaunching my site and print portfolio with as they stand today.

Portraits

Foodies

Sun City

Having this new edit is super energizing; working on your own portfolio by yourself, it’s easy to get bogged down in your attachment to certain images and your own individual artistic sensibility. Working with another person you trust – especially someone like Selina, who has a ton of experience in the industry – clarifies the work you do, and how it holds together as a whole. I really like the way these images flow one to the next to lead a viewer through some of the best of what I’ve photographed so far. It’ll be fun to package it all up and throw it to the winds in 2010.

Most people react with questions like, Who the hell are you? Why me? What are you going to do with the pictures? People are conditioned to be suspicious of attention directed at them by people they don’t know. So at the very beginning of a project, when I approach someone for the first time with this completely unexpected idea, there’s this period of only a few minutes where I need to show that I mean no harm, or the project is never going to happen.

As I’ve thought about it, I’ve realized that building trust is the base of almost everything one does as a photographer.

• Working with new commercial clients – and booking weddings – comes down to whether people can rely on you to be creative and professional every time out.
• Gaining access to people and places hinges upon your ability to empathize with people and understand what you’re asking them to do for you, and be sensitive to their situation.
• Establishing a business network is nothing but trust. Even building a base of blog readers is a matter of getting people to trust that you will have relevant things to share on a regular basis.
• Once the camera finally gets picked up – what it all comes down to – trust between a subject and photographer is the start of making any amazing picture.

If I can’t inspire trust in the people around me, that’s a real problem.

After a few months of consciously building a team of collaborators and ‘bosses’ (see the Big Project posts), I can attest to the importance of not going it alone. Creative work is first and most importantly an exercise in self-searching. You explore your perspective on the world and create something that communicates that perspective. Without creative collaborators and bosses, it’s so easy to look at finished work and disappear in to the woods of self criticism, or on the flip side, to make work that is meaningful to you, but doesn’t speak to anyone not occupying your own brain. It’s only through sharing with some kind of group of trusted people that creative work gains legitimacy and confidence.

If you’re in the process of building (or rebuilding) your portfolio, or writing something big, or contemplating a career change, find yourself a boss. I can say that in my experience, ironically, by finding someone to act as your judge you’ll feel more powerful and confident almost immediately.

Please – take a look at the new portfolio and see what you think. I’d love to get your thoughts in the comments.

What’s been cool about the process is not that Selina chose a lot of images that I hadn’t selected on my own (although she did). What’s cool is that by asking someone with some distance from the work to look with a critical and fresh eye I not only got a fresh edit; I also got an outsider’s perspective on what makes my work unique, and the language to express that uniqueness. I’ve gone from the general idea that I do natural, photojournalistic, fun wedding photography to the specific core of what comes out of that practice: capturing emotions throughout the day in a different, more intimate way than other photographers. Because I’ve talked this all through with a person who has reviewed thousands of photographers’ work over the past 30 years, I now have the language, and I also have the block of images that illustrate the language. Super exciting.

Now that the work is solidified it’s on to the branding. I’ll be working with Andrew Voss, a designer here in Minneapolis. He’ll be working with me freelance, although he also holds down a full time gig at Spunk Design Machine, the agency responsible for all things marketing for the Seward Coop, one of my newest clients. I’ve also started the search for a book binder who will help me with my wedding and commercial portfolios when I get to that point, as well as potentially constructing my wedding albums starting next season.

All of this great stuff. . . it ain’t cheap. At this point I’m six billable hours in to my work with Selina. (Think lawyer rates.) The current plan with Andrew means about 50 hours of his time. (Not lawyer, but still.) Then there’s the actual printing of business cards, price sheets, postcards, the whole ball of proverbial wax.

On the other hand, at the other end of this process I anticipate doubling my wedding rates. (Which is a weird idea that I’ll probably need to devote a whole post to at some point.) When I’m there it hopefully won’t take long to recoup my investment, and be at a point where I feel like I deserve and need to be. At this point it’s a leap of faith.

Since those initial conversations, my job has been to throw ANY image up for consideration from my archive in to a big pile for Selina to weed through and include in new edits of my print and web portfolios for each business. Once we’ve got that new core, then come the next steps. For the commercial work that will mean more self-generated shooting assignments that fill specific holes in the current work. For the wedding work the next step is finding a designer to help me with identity creation, as well as business cards, postcards, and other collateral.

Since the wedding work is generating a big chunk of my income at this point, and since the new wedding identity won’t be a matter of producing any more images, that gets rebranding attention first. I’ve talked to a couple designers whose work I admire about working together, and the cost estimates should roll in by early next week.

As was the case with my conversations with the photo consultants I considered hiring, it’s been good to talk to the designers; when you hear yourself talk about what you do, it clarifies what’s important to you, and what’s at the heart of your business. Those insights are what branding is all about, and I’m really excited to mind meld with the designer I end up going with and see how they take their understanding of me and my business and translate that in to a visual identity.

Overall, things feel real good right now. There are many many moving pieces that will need to find their places for me to be where I want to be, but Selina has emphasized the importance of just concentrating on the very next thing in front of me and not looking too far ahead. So far, so good.

Ever since I started shooting professionally I’ve hated pricing my work, as does every photographer out there, I’d imagine. No matter how much you research what the market rates are, how many scenarios you run in fotoQuote, how many other photographers you consult, in the end it always feels a little bit arbitrary. After all, any pricing is just a matter of what someone is willing to pay for a product or service. As a result of that slice of arbitrariness, I’d enter negotiations sheepishly, because I couldn’t confidently convince myself why I was asking the price I was; it felt like a best guess, not a true measure of value.

That changes when you have a clear understanding of your photographic vision. When you know and can verbalize the value that you are able to deliver to a client, it’s much easier to assign a tangible number to it. You know why the client contacted you specifically, and you believe in your ability to deliver. When you can speak your vision you can explain clearly to a client why you’re worth the amount you’re asking and not be reduced to a commodity to be purchased at the lowest possible price.

Turns out that knowing yourself and being true to that isn’t just the core of creative discussions; it’s also the core of negotiating.

The funny thing is that I actually thought about canceling my introductory phone call with Selina; she was the last of the five that I talked to, and I had already had a couple other conversations that really excited me, with consultants used by some photographers who I really admire. But I kept the appointment, and I’m so glad I did.

Now that it’s behind me, I can say that I enjoyed the process more than I thought I would; each person I talked to gave me at least one insight in to my work and its presentation, or ideas for personal projects. I did my best to find the consultants out there with the strongest ties to the photo community, with the strongest backgrounds, and I truly believe that any of them could help me along my path; but it’s such a personal chemistry thing in the end.

Another side benefit of my conversations was to get a gauge on where my work stands here at the outset, in the eyes of some people whose job is to know the photo industry and help guide us to where we want to be. (Granted, there’s some incentive for the consultant to overstate their opinion of your work. But on the other hand, the photo community is smaaaaall, and trust is a big chunk of the basis of a consultant’s business. So there’s equal, or probably more, incentive to be straight and realistic.) To my slight surprise, what I learned is that in the eyes of these people, my portfolio is a little closer to prime time than I thought it was. It’s what I hoped people would think of my work, but that’s different.

Next comes Selina giving my work an in-depth look through, both online and in print. Then we talk about a lot of the things I’ve already blogged about in this little series, and come up with a plan to start getting me some of those assignments I’d kill for.

To close the book on this chunk of the Project, I’ve got a couple recommendations for those of you thinking about starting your own consultant search, based on what felt right about my process:

• Do lots of research before calling anyone. APhotoEditor and Agency Access have lists to start you out. Look for clues as to who has helped the photographers that you admire (but don’t put too much stock in that; each client/consultant relationship is different, and you’ve got to go your own way). Pay attention to who speaks nationally, and if there is a predominant style associated with a consultant’s client list.
• Be very clear with yourself what you’re objectives are for working with a consultant.
• Make sure you have the budget to pay your consultant for the size project you have in mind.
• When the time comes to start talking to people, contact everyone on your list and ask for an introductory phone call. The point of the call is to get a sense of each other.
• Prior to the calls, come up with a short list of questions to guide the conversation. You can plan on a 15-20 minute phone call, so it doesn’t need to be a huge list of questions, but they should address your biggest concerns. For me that was getting a sense of each consultant’s process, and how they work with their clients. Not only will the list help the conversation get rolling; you’ll also present yourself right off the bat as someone who is serious and motivated.