Cypress College, a community college in Cypress that has numerous photography classes taught by some of the most talented photographers in SoCal, hosted their first ever photo expo last week. At first it was intended to be just an intimate expo for students, but with the help and kind support from Greg Bumatay and many others, the event turned out to be huge. The expo brought together a wide array of student, amateur, and professional photographers from all over SoCal, awesome speakers like Jasmine Star, Lawrence Chan of Tofurious, Doug McNamee + Henry Wang from Tilt N Shift, Vincent Laforet and Dane Sanders came to inspire and speak to us, and sponsors like Showit, KISS books, SmugMug and Canon came to showoff to us their latest products.
I got to listen to 2 speakers which I missed in WPPI back in March, so this time around the expo kind of acted like my WPPI make up session which was great. The 1st speaker I listened to was Jasmine Star, although we lived literally like 5 minutes away from each other, I had never met her personally, but her vibe and joyful personality had always shown through her blog posts and pictures, which made me going back often to checkout her work. Jasmine talked about how she started as a wedding photographer 4 years ago, and how she does “ghetto fabulous marketing”. The 2nd speaker was Lawrence Chen from Tofurious, Lawrence had always amazed me with his business marketing skills. 2010 is his fifth year in the wedding photography business, but how could he be so good at his online presence? I always wanted to understand more on how he did what he did on SEO, it’s really amazing how he could out rank a lot of photographers that had been in the business for a lot more years. Lawrence shared his experiences on “Understanding your target audience”, and it got me thinking a whole lot.
After listening to 2 of the most successful photographers speak, they pretty much summarized one thing, “Be real. Be yourself”. In the wedding photography business, especially in California where it is highly saturated with talented photographers, it is very easy to get suck into the comparing mode. I am talking about comparing photography style: this and that looks cool, I want to do that too, comparing price: am I charging too much, or too little, comparing what to do: am I doing this the right way, “he” is doing the other way, should I follow. To be honest, I am one of them, especially in my first year. The more photographers you meet, and the more pictures and blog posts you read, one could very easily get sucked into that mode, and it is like quicksand, you will find yourself way deep in before you realize. If you have read my blog post a few weeks back, Rob Ninja had basically said the same thing, you don’t need to be the best wedding photographer out there, it is essentially who you are, and your personality that the clients are attracted to if they book you. I am struck after listening to all these speakers talked about basically the same concept, “you” is what’s on the top of the list of what you are marketing. I do agree, brides and grooms do want to hire a photographer that they can connect to, not because you got 10 awards from this and that association.
I had tons of new ideas that I wanted to do now. It’s time to start working on it and change those ideas to real solid tangible things. Check back for what’s more to come.
It’s such a great day besides being brained shocked with all these great ideas from the speakers, I get to meet all my photographer friends from First Shot Fired and Ari and did I say I got Dane Sander’s to sign his book “Fast Track Photographer” for me. :p Can’t wait for what’s coming next year.
Tofurious: Lawrence Chan
Canon booth, my friend Sal checking out some Canon point and shoot for his up coming Trash the Dress session :p
Tilt N Shift: Doug McNamee & Henry Wang on On-Camera Flash
The master behind FSF (First Shot Fired), Mark Rosales
Uncle Tom and Lucas
Innocently checking around if dad is ok with him playing with the iPhone
Yeah!! Got it and proudly showing it to me.
Oooops!! I don’t think he is too happy with losing the game he is playing
Greg Bumatay and Dane Sanders (sorry for the raccoon eyes… i will blame it on bad lighting, direct light on top of head and no flash with me.
