friscoron
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 p.1 #1 · Senior Portrait Program Success Story | |
I've really been shooting professionally only since around 2008. In the beginning, I shot a lot of dance and then anything that came from that: senior sessions, families, whatever. It was a side job for a while. About four years ago, we decided I would leave my career as a corporate executive in the for-profit secondary education industry. I was not very happy in that industry and taking a huge cut in pay to do that. My wife went from stay-at-home mom to her career as a high school counselor.
So four years ago, we decided to build our business on wedding photography. It went pretty well, but man, I was having more and more fun, and really coming up with some cool imagery, whenever I got to do seniors. Almost two years ago, we realized this old 1892 brick building had 12 foot ceilings and exposed brick for walls, 8-foot windows, and so we decided to open a studio. It opened April 2016. That was about the time that we realized we could make more money with portrait sessions, and my niche was really with seniors.
So we just decided to start an ambassador program where the seniors would pay us $275 and get two individual sessions, and three group sessions: one in downtown Chicago in August, one a fashion shoot in my studio in October, and then a green-screen shoot in my studio in February, this past year with an Ice Queen concept. I got with about 6 local boutiques who styled my ambassadors with clothing from their stores for the fashion shoot, and then the most popular prom dress store agreed to let my ambassadors use up to three dresses each for the shoot, walking out with dresses that cost $700 or more. These girls were stoked! But it was a challenge to get the 7 girls we ended up with for the year.
Four of them ended up getting hired to do magazine covers for the magazines I shoot for, and one of them got two different covers.
We raised our price to $475 this year and no one blinked. We ended up with 11 for this year, including our first guy. Caroline is one, she's featured in another post here on People.
So this morning as I wrapped up a viewing with a 15 year old boy interested in modeling, I mentioned he should do the ambassador program in 2020 when he would be a senior. The mom turns to me and says, "He's in." Kid says he wants to do it. And that's when it hit me that a number of people have already said they want to do it for 2019 and 2020, and we can't even remember who, and we only take four kids per school. I talk to the wife and we put out a notice on our FB and IG -- and bam. Phone is ringing, email is blowing up, FB messages are coming out from parents who say their girl is frantic that she can't get in. In fact, we weren't really ready for this and we ended up accepting too many people. Some of them, we tried to explain the program, and they didn't care, they just wanted to be sure they were in.
So as of today, I have one school totally booked for 2019 and 2020, a second school will be full probably within the next day or two. It turned, as my wife said, to be a pretty intense afternoon/evening trying to keep up with all these people scrambling for a program two years from now.
I just felt like sharing this. Probably three or four years ago, I shot maybe 8 senior portraits a year. There's still a LOT of room to grow, and to get better. I haven't even come close to hitting the peak of what we can do. But what a fun day!
Here's a few shots from my seniors program, since this is a board in which you're supposed to share images.
1. My ambassadors in Chicago.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4278/35705244805_22dfc99863_b.jpg
2. Fashion Shoot in October, walking on Main Street just outside my studio. They're all laughing because a car is coming up behind me and they're sure I"m going to get hit.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4044/35705209395_a589042598_b.jpg
3. Sample of a fall individual session with one of my ambassadors.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4234/35536524352_89f0d5a043_b.jpg
4. Another magazine cover shoot with one of my ambassadors.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4258/35536468002_c09fa10f69_b.jpg
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