Vintage

One of the biggest problems most photographers suffer from is that we are self-employed artists and not sales or marketing experts so we end up working in the business instead of having others work the business for us. We find it hard to delegate the workflow to others because no one else has our particular vision of how things should look so we end up doing all of the work ourselves. It is this very tendency of being a creative perfectionish that holds us back from growing a business that enhances our lifestyle. Many photographers and artists create a job for themselves that traps us, robs us of our pecious time and stifles our creativity. 

Now I know how you feel. After all somebone has to take care of all the little emegincies that arise each day and you think you can't afford to hire an assistant to help you keep up with all of the work that needs to be been done. Without leveraging our time and profits through employing people and systems we spend far to much of our valuable time putting fires (rushing to get things done) out when simply installing fire prevention systems like an affordable team of photoshop experts will lighten your workflow and  enable you to focus on more important things.

In reality, you can't afford not to hire a photo editor if you want your photography business to support you and your loved ones. My wife Susha and I sell Digital Fantasy Backgounds and Baby Photo Backdrops to thousands of photographers around the world and most of them are so caught up in stomping out fires (working in the business) that they never have time to work on their business so most end up becoming a slave to the business instead of enjoying a business that creates free time and money for them.

Wouldn't you rather spend most of your time being out and about shooting and creating the kind of images you love  instead of hours and hours at the computer performing all of the digital manipulations and enhancements yourself? Now as artists we demand that the finish images match our vision of what we wanted to create so of course you should make sure the final result matches your artistic vision. But that doesn't mean that you have to spend your precious time extracting wispy hair, removing wrinkles and blemishes and enhancing the skin tones of each and every image yourself when we can take care of those mundane and time consuming tasks for you which in turn will free up your time for many more important things like spending quality time with your family, spending more time travelling or just more time behind the lens shooting and selling images (which after all, is what really pays the bills) instead of slaving away behind  a computer screen doing extractions and color balancing when those tasks can simply be delegated to affordable professional photo editors like us! 

Here's a good example... "Vanessa"  (one of our customers from Australia) was using our digital backgrounds in her portrait studio. She took a look at our Moms With Camera Portrait Party Concept and decided that portrait parties would be a good way for her to increase her portrait sittings and did they ever! Each portrait party resulted in a few more parties and the viral word of mouth about her fantasy portraits has resulted in eating up all of her free time until she tested out our professional and affordable photo editing services. Here's what Vanessa had to say the very first time she used our editing service....

 "Thank you so much you have done an amazing job, above and beyond what I was expecting.  I know this is a ‘test bunny’ thing but I would really love to make this a regular thing.  It has saved me so much time and was so convenient and the edits are fantastic.  I cannot praise you enough!"

Now Vanessa grew up in the digital age and was accustomed to doing all of her digital workflow herself but we didn't have PC's or digital cameras when I first got started in portrait photography and I remember what the transition from film to digital was like. Before going digital I mostly worked for several large national photography studios in North America. I would simply focus, compose and crop images in the lens of my camera and at the end of the day my job was done because I would hand my film over to a professional photo lab to work their magic, thus leaving my evenings free to spend with my loved ones. But for some reason, after switching to digital I and most other photographers started to take on all of the work that the labs use to do for us. Thus my workload instantly doubled and I had no time left to enjoy the little things in life that no amount of money can purchase. But Digital Cameras, Digital Backgrounds and Susha's Creative Genius and Artistic Vision finally set me free again to do what I do best and they can do the same for you!

So there are no misunderstandings... What I do best is not photography. Chances are you are a far more talented photographer than I will ever be. You see I stumbled into photography as a career almost by accident. I'm not telling you this to be a bore or brag but to save you from making very common costly mistakes that most real photographers make.  Yes, I said real photographers. But I'm not a real photographer. I got my start as a camera operator clicking K-Mart Baby Portraits and over the years I got to be really good at marketing photography services.

You may have been attracted to photography because you have artistic abilities where as I have no artistic talent to speak of. Yet I earn far more than many real photographers do and I can show you how to easily duplicate what I do. If a no talent camera operator without an artistic bone in his body can earn $1000 per day in the portrait business then what's stopping you from doing the same? It's not time, money, artistic ability or equipment stopping you.  Anyone with a digital camera can hook up with us and immediately start turning out works of art. Now before some real photographer gets overly upset over my speaking the truth about the picture industry we need to establish a working definition of art. We are going to model ourselves after Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention! Frank Zappa was a great artist and musician but he was also a brilliant marketer and businessperson. Here's what Frank Zappa said about art (if you get nothing else from website burn this into your brain)... "Art is making something out of nothing and selling it."

The truth is... the world is filled with many talented artists and photographers, most of whom are starving artists types because they only get one half of Franks equation. They have no problem creating something in the lens of their camera or on canvas for just the investment in their tools because they have natural artistic abilities. They think that having a fantastic product is all it takes so after they create their masterpiece they wait to be discovered.

If your goal is to be a starving artist then do what most photographers do... continue doing all of the workflow yourself and fool yourself into thinking you are saving money. But if your goal is to make a ton of money creating and selling photographic art then focus on the things that really make you money... shooting, selling and marketing your images. Of those 3 things... the least important is shooting images. Now on the surface that statement makes no sense. After all you can't market and sell what you don't shoot right?

The truth is... you can hire and train a camera operator to shoot images for you if you know what I know. You see, I know the secrets to easily flood your studio with portrait clients for little or no cost. And any camera operator can stand the subjects you send them in front of a white background and take the shots. And Susha and her team of professional digital artists can turn those snapshots into very saleable art! Or you can take better images yourself and still have time for a life by using our affordable editing service to colour balance and extract the images for you.

Then you can do the fun part of placing and blending your subject into any digital background scence of your choice which will permit you to express your artistic creativity or if you're just a camera operator like me... you can let Susha and her team of digital artist make you look good like they do for me! But to succeed big in the picture business you need both a really great product and really great marketing and Susha and I can give you both! 

If you are already in the business and simply want to work less and earn more then we can help you with our editing service and marketing system. Or if you never held a camera in your hands before but still want to try doing it all yourself just give us a shout and we will send you a few of our Digital Fantasy Backgrounds at no cost to you to try out for yourself!

Cheers,

Steve (Ski) Shulenski