Focus on Folios

Posted on May 18, 2007
Filed Under Packaging = $$$$ | 2 Comments

By (Guest Contributor) Dave Wacker

Over the years, folios of all shapes and sizes have been the mainstay of our high school seniors’ and children’s portrait presentations. Folios have brought in thousands of dollars to our bottom line. When Mom can’t decide which of her baby’s poses to choose, we sell her a multi-opening folio, then add one for Dad’s office, and two more for the grandparents. People who say they can’t afford a 20″x24″ portrait will invest far more in a collection of folios. Folios fit everyone’s home or office. There is always room for a folio on the shelf, desk, or in an entertainment system.

All the folios we sell feature our gold-embossed logo, which makes them effective marketing pieces. Folios have become an even stronger marketing tool since we started entering folio competitions. When we win an event, we bring the subjects to our studio and photograph them with the winning folio, the awards, and our photographer. We give them the folio, the ribbon, and take them to dinner.

Word spreads as they share the news with friends and family. We follow up with a newspaper ad thanking them for helping us create another Best in Show, and display their images on our website.

Despite predictions of a decline in folio sales with digital capture and paperless image presentation, we’re seeing the opposite. Digital photography allows us to offer seniors so many must-have images that 8-up folios are no longer the standard; 12-up and 16-up folios and books with 20 images have become the norm. Folios displaying 22″x11″ composites are getting the most attention. The incremental sales of folios and composites have raised our average significantly.

Packaging presentation items have become an asset to sales, rather than a business expense. We have raised our annual gross, in spite of the population decline. More income, less work: a formula that works for us.

Dave Wacker, owner of Photography by J.D., a family studio in business for 101 years through four generations, is co-author of The Wackers’ Digital Cookbook & CD, a PPA Affiliated Juror, and an international lecturer. This article was originally published in Studio Photography magazine. All images in this article are copyrighted by Dave Wacker.

Slow the Right Way: Slow Photography

Posted on May 15, 2007
Filed Under Marketing Yourself | Leave a Comment

By (Guest Contributor) Dave Wacker

In Slow Photography, presentation plays a key role in the package. Think about your marketing and presentation style. Do you personally welcome every client into your studio? Is there a neatly landscaped drive leading to your studio? Is your marketing literature printed on quality paper with an elegant font, and enclosed in leather-like folios?

Do you sit down with clients and plan their upcoming session a week or two prior, explaining your various portrait styles? Do you show portraits in frames to match their home décor and folios that will become family heirlooms?

In our studio, we’ve been doing what’s now called “Slow Photography” for 101 years. Styles and equipment have changed, but since the beginning of our grandfather’s photography business, we have used TAP photo packaging products to create the final presentation of our portraits.

For example, we use TAP folders and folios from Wn albums & frames (formerly Wooden Nickel), for our high school senior business. When seniors inquire about graduation portraits, ours sales associates greet them with a warm, friendly voice, and invite them to schedule pre-portrait planning consultations and visit our website, http://www.photobyjd.com/.

At the consultation, portrait styles, clothing, backgrounds, and locations are decided. Large prints are displayed in frames and small personal images are shown in TAP folios, folders, group mounts, and wallet boxes. We also offer TAP folios that hold a photograph and a DVD containing a client’s favorite images in a multimedia show. Together, the image and DVD entice the viewer to want to see the entire DVD presentation, which also helps to keep our work on display, rather than hidden in a desk drawer.

“Slow Photography” separates us from the soccer mom shooters and weekend wedding warriors. Sure, some clients still go to the mall for pictures of Little Johnny with Santa.

But when it’s time for an anniversary picture, an engagement sitting, or fine senior portraits, they choose our studio—fully prepared to spend more time, and more money, with us.

Slow Food: The Restaurant Equivalent of Professional Photography

Posted on May 11, 2007
Filed Under Marketing Yourself | 6 Comments

By (Guest Contributor) Dave Wacker

You enter a restaurant and are immediately impressed by the rich carpeting and painted walls that make you feel as if you’re in the Mediterranean. The maître d’ welcomes you and shows you to a table that’s set with a fresh floral centerpiece and encircled by soft leather chairs. Your server introduces himself, hands you a menu and wine list enclosed in leather folios, and describes the specials of the day, the chef’s favorites, and his personal favorites. For two or three hours, every detail is attended to by your server at your pace. At the meal’s conclusion, the check is presented in an embossed leather folio.

The preceding scenario is what a group of restaurants in Madison, Wisconsin, have started to call the “Slow Food” experience, the polar opposite of eating at a “Fast Food” restaurant. It may be eight to 10 times more expensive, but for celebrating the special events in your life, such as a wedding anniversary, important promotion, special birthday. it’s well worth the additional cost. The service exceeds expectations; no lines and no waiting. A peaceful, relaxing atmosphere enhances the occasion.

Now, review the above scenario and substitute a professional photography studio for the fine restaurant. The analogy fits perfectly, all the way to calling your style “Slow Photography,” where success is all about the experience and presentation.

In my next article, I will go over how you can use “slow food” techniques in your studio to create “Slow Photography”.

What Do They Mean By Photo Safe?

Posted on May 8, 2007
Filed Under Tools of the Trade | 15 Comments

Many photographic products today are labeled “photo safe” but what does photo safe mean? Does that mean the product is archival quality? Are photo safe products acid free?

The terrible truth is that photo safe doesn’t actually mean anything specific. It is a term that was developed to serve a marketing purpose. Something labeled photo safe could be acid free, archival or near acid free or just won’t stain your photograph when you use it. The words “photo safe” are only as good as the company you buy them from.

Does this mean that a company that uses the term photo safe to describe their products is unscrupulous or misleading? Not at all.

Plenty of very reputable companies use this term to describe their products. Photo safe just happens to be a more self explanatory phrase that makes more sense to customers than the more accurate acid free or archival quality. When a company says their products are photo safe, you know immediately what they mean.

If you are working with a company that has a good reputation, you can trust the photo safe label.

If you have any doubts as to what a company means when they say “photo safe”, your best course of action is to just ask them what they mean by that. If they are a good company, they should have no problem explaining what their company’s definition of photo safe is.

You might even want to think about using this tactic with your own clients. While your clients, who are not photo savvy people, may be intimidated by phrases like acid free and archival quality, they will have no problem understanding you if you tell them that your products are photo safe.

What Do They Mean By Archival Quality?

Posted on May 4, 2007
Filed Under Tools of the Trade | 13 Comments

One photo mount says that it is acid free. Another one says that it is archival quality. Are they the same thing? Can acid free be considered archival and are all archival quality products the same thing?

First, let’s clarify what archival quality means. Archival quality means that it meets the standards used by curators and librarians when they are handling old or rare items. In order for a product to do that, it must be chemically inert, so as not to affect the item in any way, and it must be reversible, meaning that it can not permanently change or affect the item.

Acid free, as we learned in the previous article, means that the paper has a pH higher than 7. This means that the acid free paper can have a pH from 7 to 14 (14 being the highest number on the pH scale). Archival quality paper on the other hand must have a pH between 7 and 8.5. This is considered to be pH neutral and will have no chemical interaction with the paper or objects touching the paper. This means that while all archival quality papers are acid free papers, not all acid free papers are archival quality.

The next question is should you invest in purchasing archival quality photo paper and photo packaging over acid free paper and photo packaging?

While archival quality paper products may sound better, in the end you may be only throwing away your money by paying more for these products. This is because chances are your clients will not properly store and handle their photographs in an appropriately archival fashion.

Archival products only work to help preserve items when they are used with archival techniques, which include temperature controlled environments, controlled light levels, gloved handling and many other things that the average household simply does not have the ability to do.

That being said, if your client is willing to pay the extra costs involved with having their product printed and packaged with archival quality products, then there is nothing to stop you from selling that feature to your clients.

Archival quality products are one of those things that sound nice in thought but in practice will not help your photographs last longer than acid free products.

What Do They Mean By Acid Free?

Posted on May 2, 2007
Filed Under Tools of the Trade | 11 Comments

Acid free is a term that you may hear tossed around quite a bit with regards to photographs and photo packaging. Generally this term is used when someone is referring to paper and paper products.

In order for a paper to be considered acid free, it needs to have a pH balance of 7 or higher. The higher the pH number, the less acid the paper contains.

So why is acid free considered to be so important to people when it comes to photographs? The short answer is because people want to protect and preserve their photographs.

The long (and much more technical answer) is that paper is normally made up of several highly acidic products such as bleach, wood pulp, chlorine and alum. When moisture and air are introduced to these high acid items, they create acidic compounds that literally start to eat away at the fibers in the paper. The shorter the fibers get, the more brittle the paper gets. Over time, these acidic compounds will turn the paper to dust. This is fine if you are talking about an old newspaper. This is not so good if you are talking about a treasured photograph of Great-Grandma.

For this reason, it is best to use acid free paper with your client’s photographs. For everything from printing the photographs to the selection of storage and presentation products for the photographs.

Does using acid free paper guarantee that your client’s photos will last forever? Unfortunately, while acid free paper will help to keep a photograph looking good longer, it does not mean that the photograph is safe from harm. Paper will absorb moisture and acid from the air around it, which will eventually eat away at both the packaging and the photograph. In light of this, you may want to give your client a few lessons in how to properly handle and store their images so that they will last as long as possible.

When you purchase your photo packaging, it is always a good idea to be aware of the properties of the materials that are used. Proper presentation and storage will ensure that your photography and your client’s memories will be around a good long time.