Inside the Photography Business: DJ Paine
PhotoMerchant: Tell me about yourself and your photography business.
DJ Paine: Studio Promise is a family photography studio on the Gold Coast which opened in 2009. We do portrait, wedding, commercial and family photography. There are three couples involved. I’m the chief photographer, my wife Benita does all the administration and public relations, Michele is our designer, Sean is our marketing person and John handles our finances.
My background is in illustration, graphic design and photography. I photographed my first wedding in 1994 and then in 1995, I helped a friend open a photography studio. After working in and managing his studio for two and a half years, I went out on my own. Sixteen years later, I’m a photographer with a studio on the Gold Coast.
PM: What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about running a business?
DP: Work with people who excel in areas where you don’t. Bring people together who fill gaps to create a strong business.
PM: Why do you think your customers like working with you?
DP: I’m biased because I’m the photographer, but I believe we produce quality work that people can’t create themselves. I talk to a lot of people who aren’t professionals who own cameras almost as good as mine and it’s not enough to own the equipment. You have to take it to the next level and give clients a fantastic product.
A lot of people like to think that photographers are artists in a creative industry, and we are to a certain extent. But really we’re running a business in the retail industry and we need to be providing the best client experience that these people have ever had. That means having the best person on the phone to talk to the clients, getting back to them straight away and doing everything we can to give them the best experience possible.
PM: Is there anything you’ve changed about your business since you started?
DP: Since starting out on my own, I’ve fundamentally changed my entire way of thinking. I know think of myself as a business person, rather than an artist.
In starting Studio Promise, I wanted to start a brand that was bigger than me as an artist. I wanted to create something where I could employ other photographers, and one day, when I’m old and grey and I decide to sell the business, the Studio Promise brand can continue.
A shift has to happen in your head and the ego needs to be put aside to run a viable business that can exist without you. You can be an artist, but you’re also running a business and it needs to have longevity outside of you the artist.
PM: How do you manage your workflows and calculate the costs of running your business?
DP: Accounting isn’t my strength, so on the costs side we have a finance person and a bookkeeper.
With workflows, once a week the team gets together for a meeting to go over finances, general business, workflow and jobs that are coming up. We also look at big picture issues and constantly ask ourselves, “What can we do better and where is the business going?”
Workflows are about communication. We’re working on a new system of documenting workflows so we can all work together better. I’m creating a database of all the providers we use. We use PhotoMerchant, Google Calendar and Docs, Your Mailing List Provider for emails and Dropbox to sync our files. Our client management system is currently Lightblue.
Our dream is to merge everything together into one magic system that can do it all!
PM: What do you do to stay competitive with other photographers in your market?
DP: I think traditional competition is a flawed way of thinking about the photography industry. I run the Gold Coast Pro Photographer’s Lunch once a month, which is a networking event. We have anywhere from 15-40 photographers attend and we talk about the industry and sometimes we’ll have a guest speaker. We’re all about sharing and communicating.
At Studio Promise we believe we shouldn’t treat anyone else as our competition, we should treat them like family. I have found running the lunch and working with other photographers has been an advantage for our business because we’ve built a trusted network of photographers who can help each other and refer work. For example, you might be new and struggling to find work, while Bill across the road is turning clients away because he’s booked or doesn’t do a particular style.
When photographers think of others as competition, it leads to negativity across the industry. I’ve got this vision that the Gold Coast photography industry can become a great community where we all support one another, the work is fantastic, and we’re all charging the right amount, instead of having an industry where we’re all trying to pull each other apart.
PM: If you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be?
DP: Try to shift my thinking from being an artist to a business person sooner.
Don’t get me wrong; I live and breathe and love photography. I think about it all the time. But by concentrating on the business and making it stronger, it affects my photography and art for the better.
I would also have let people critique my work and to take the critique as good, practical advice, not as an insult. Once you start thinking of yourself as a business person and you separate yourself as the artist, then you can learn from critiques and become better.
PM: Do you have any tips for new photographers?
DP: Search out ways to watch others people’s photographs getting critiqued or reviewed and request honest feedback of your work. If you’re feeling scared, a great resource are the video podcasts called Critique and Technique by one of my friends and favourite photographers, Zack Arias in America. He’s an editorial photographer and he found that getting really well known photographers to critique his work for him was massively helpful. He’s put it out there: if anyone wants to send him a link to their online portfolio or gallery, he’ll sit down and critique their work and record a video of it.
I’ll do that as well. If anyone wants me to critique their work privately, I’d be more than happy to and can be contacted through Google+, Facebook or Twitter.
PM: What do you think is going to happen in photography in five year’s time?
DP: On the technical side, I’ve got two things I hope for. I want the camera companies to concentrate on low light photography. We’re getting to a place where we can create beautiful quality photographs in extremely low light. We could never have imagined getting that on film. I’d love to see that develop more.
I’d love to see the iPhone integrated into professional photography. iPhones are fantastic. My fantasy is having a camera that could hook up to an iPhone as its screen with apps to create amazing images.
As far as the industry goes, I think we’ve only just begun to see the wave of new photographers coming into the industry. I think it’s actually a good thing because if everyone is a photographer, then they’ll be educated about what good photography is. As my clients get more into photography they’ll begin to see what makes professionals so special and what makes us worth hiring.
PM: What do you do in your spare time?
DP: Other than spending time with my family ì I’ve got a wonderful wife and three small boys ì I’m a big movie buff. I review movies for a community radio station on the Gold Coast. When I watch films, I’m enjoying them, but I’m also watching as a photographer and appreciating how they’re doing the lighting, thinking about how I could bring some of that influence into my own work. Even though it’s my time off, there’s still a part of my brain as a photographer that I can’t turn off!
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DJ Paine runs Studio Promise, a Gold Coast photography studio. |
