Wow, what a year 2009 was! It was the year I started Homegrown Memories Photography and today marks my ONE YEAR anniversary!! I learned so much last year. Not only the technical stuff, but I learned how much work is involved in starting up a business....and making it work. I'm so grateful for all the clients I had in 2009, that trusted me to capture their families, their children, and those special times in their lives. To all of you, I say THANK YOU!
With all the information I gathered along the way this past year, I've decided to makes some changes to my business plan and policies. If you didn't already notice, a few things have changed on my WEBSITE and my blog. The biggest change would be the name. I wanted to keep the name, but make it simplier. SIMPLIFY is my new mantra for the new year - I don't need anything complicated :) So now, it's simply Homegrown Photography.
In 2009, I attended a few workshops, networked with some other photographers, did a TON of research, joined a few organizations and found out something shocking - I needed to change my pricing - in a hurry! According to the Professional Photographers Assoc. (PPA), I was actually losing money in 2009. Now if anyone knows anything about business, making a profit is pretty important - wouldn't you say? So with that in mind, I had to re-vamp my pricing.
Something you may notice with my new pricing is that the session fee does not include a CD with images anymore. I know alot of you prefer this and I'm sorry that I can no longer offer this. I've tossed and turned about this for the entire year I've been in business and I finally decided that it's the right thing to do - for both of us. You see, I'm not only a photographer, I'm an artist. When others look at my pictures, I want to know that what they're seeing is the great effort that I put into it. But if I don't have complete control of the printing, then who knows what the final product will look like. I use a state of the art lab that can print on several different types of paper - paper that has 100 year archival protection. If you take your CD to Walgreens to have them printed - I know that Walgreens is going to adjust the exposure and color so that it's in-line with their machines and its not going to turn out the way you thought it would. In the long run, I feel that this is the best way to ensure my clients will truly be receiving the highest quality prints possible. But you REALLY want some images to post on your Facebook account, right? Well, don't worry - Homegrown Photography now has a FB fan page. So once you have purchased your prints, I will post those pictures on FB and will tag them for you. Pretty nifty!
Last, but not least, I'm offering a REFERRAL program for clients to start receiving credits towards session fees and prints! Starting today, any clients that send a referral my way, will receive a $20 credit towards either a session fee or prints from a previous session. The fine print: the referral must book a session and be paid in full before referral credit is given.
So once again, thank you so very much for making Homegrown Photography a part of your life and I hope to work with you again in 2010! Stay tuned this week for some specials especially for my past 2009 clients and shots from a recent Senior session! Here's a sneak peek:
With all the information I gathered along the way this past year, I've decided to makes some changes to my business plan and policies. If you didn't already notice, a few things have changed on my WEBSITE and my blog. The biggest change would be the name. I wanted to keep the name, but make it simplier. SIMPLIFY is my new mantra for the new year - I don't need anything complicated :) So now, it's simply Homegrown Photography.
In 2009, I attended a few workshops, networked with some other photographers, did a TON of research, joined a few organizations and found out something shocking - I needed to change my pricing - in a hurry! According to the Professional Photographers Assoc. (PPA), I was actually losing money in 2009. Now if anyone knows anything about business, making a profit is pretty important - wouldn't you say? So with that in mind, I had to re-vamp my pricing.
Something you may notice with my new pricing is that the session fee does not include a CD with images anymore. I know alot of you prefer this and I'm sorry that I can no longer offer this. I've tossed and turned about this for the entire year I've been in business and I finally decided that it's the right thing to do - for both of us. You see, I'm not only a photographer, I'm an artist. When others look at my pictures, I want to know that what they're seeing is the great effort that I put into it. But if I don't have complete control of the printing, then who knows what the final product will look like. I use a state of the art lab that can print on several different types of paper - paper that has 100 year archival protection. If you take your CD to Walgreens to have them printed - I know that Walgreens is going to adjust the exposure and color so that it's in-line with their machines and its not going to turn out the way you thought it would. In the long run, I feel that this is the best way to ensure my clients will truly be receiving the highest quality prints possible. But you REALLY want some images to post on your Facebook account, right? Well, don't worry - Homegrown Photography now has a FB fan page. So once you have purchased your prints, I will post those pictures on FB and will tag them for you. Pretty nifty!
Last, but not least, I'm offering a REFERRAL program for clients to start receiving credits towards session fees and prints! Starting today, any clients that send a referral my way, will receive a $20 credit towards either a session fee or prints from a previous session. The fine print: the referral must book a session and be paid in full before referral credit is given.
So once again, thank you so very much for making Homegrown Photography a part of your life and I hope to work with you again in 2010! Stay tuned this week for some specials especially for my past 2009 clients and shots from a recent Senior session! Here's a sneak peek:
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