FocalPower…the blog

The most competitive segment of the photography industry has to be wedding photographers.  Not only are you under pressure to capture a once-in-a-lifetime day for a couple, but you have to differentiate yourself against a growing and crowded market.  Networking and coming up with new services are key to keeping yourself fresh and your business growing.

Sometimes, if your business is not just limited to weddings, you can leverage images from one side of your business in the other.  As an example, check Mark Zanzig’s post about a beautiful idea to enhance a multi cultural wedding that happened to come his way. This was a great chance for him to sell some of his travel photography for use during a wedding celebration.

One can easily take this type of thinking to the next level and start to market your stock images for similar use through your established wedding network (i.e., planners, florists, caterers).  With the increased pressure on the engaged couple to have to a wedding that is unique from all their friends, what better way than to use blown up photos of where they are going on their honeymoon or where the got engaged during their celebration.

It’s an interesting way to put a new twist on your wedding photography offerings.

Yesterday I came across an inventive Wedding Photography service that I hadn’t heard of before: The Proposal Shoot. Fort Worth Texas based and FocalPower Quote Widget patron David Kozlowski recently discribed this concept on his blog.

As a wedding photography this is an interesting option to offer to prospective customers and help increase your revenue per client. You would need to advertise this differently than you do your other serices however. As most grooms (statistically the one who does the proposing still) probably don’t think about wedding photography until well into the wedding planning. A focused advertising model would be needed to get the word out to them somehow before they propose.

The Proposal Shoot also has some risk. One of the most interesting parts of being a wedding photographer is that your dealing with one of the most dramatic moments in people’s lives. Human drama can lead to wonderful photographic experiences. During a wedding the drama should all be in a general positive sense (most negative drama occurs during the reception). With a Proposal Shoot, there is a higher risk of negative drama…imagine if she said now or wasn’t as enthusiastic as the he envisioned her to be.

I would always require payment up front for the Proposal Shoot…just in case.