HELEN : OAKES

Are you the type of person that likes to lurk in the background? This was me! I was so much more comfortable staying behind the camera and not being visible. It is something many business professionals I know struggle with. We love having our own business but we don’t want to be in the limelight.

I would always say, “I am behind the camera because I don’t like being in front of it”. I know a lot of people would think photographers are very confident, but some of us are more reserved and are keen to stay in the background. I think I would say I am an introverted, extrovert.

Being guilty of sitting back and not wanting to be visible has led to a stagnation of business. This is something that I knew I had to fix but I was fearful to put myself out there. What if people didn’t like my work? What if they thought I was an imposter? What if they didn’t think I had anything of value to give?

This was me living in a fear mentality and not wanting to change. When you know you have to get out of your comfort zone to get anywhere then you just have to ‘feel the fear and do it’ anyway.

Since I have shown up regularly I have literally 10x my clients. I didn’t think this would be possible but it worked but just being present and showing up consistently.

If you find yourself staying in the background and not wanting to be visible, try these easy tips, they do work:

Show up on Social Media

Ok, we all know we have to be visible on social media but we can be focused on the wrong things. Do you just look at funny cat videos, instead of giving value by writing a post? This is what has to change. Do some value posts on all of your channels. Write one post and use it on each channel you have. Visibility is key.

Be Consistent

We are all guilty of this. We write a post and think that is it, we have shown up and now we can sit back and wait for clients to come to us. It doesn’t happen this way. Showing up consistently with a video, a podcast, posts and other social media will get you noticed. But this has to be on a consistent basis. Everyday is key to what it takes to be seen.

Talk To Others and Interact On Their Posts

Go into your social channels everyday and make comments on other people’s posts. Add value to other people and be willing to give them your knowledge. People will look at you as an authority figure and they will come to you when they want help.

By doing these 3 simple things you will see more people want to connect with you and you will gain more clients.

Let me know what resonated with you.

I hoped this helped show you how being visible can bring you more clients.

If you haven’t already joined my Facebook Group then go to: Make a Great Living from Photography by Helen Oakes and join me for more education, tips, tricks and downloads.

P.S. Please click “like” or provide a comment if you enjoyed this blog, this will motivate me to publish more. Share and inspire. 

When You Don’t Know The Right People To Speak To in The Photography Industry, what do you do?

I hear other photographers saying they don’t know who to contact and they don’t know the right person to talk to about getting jobs. We have all heard the phrase ‘It’s not what you know, it is who you know.’ This is tried and true.

If you know certain people in your industry then you are more likely to get referred for a job as you are known by others. It gets really hard when you don’t even know who to contact as you don’t have many contacts yourself.

I gave up on pursuing some jobs that I would’ve loved to have done as I just didn’t know who I should be talking to. I had no contacts and I didn’t even know where to start to find out how to get into some jobs. You can feel shut out, like you are up against a brick wall.

Many photographers that are in specialised genres or high profile genres will often have known someone that is already in the industry and that is how they got in.

When you don’t know who to contact or how to get into a certain industry or genre it can stifle your prospects. Finding out how to get into contact with people who work in a genre you want to work in can be tough.

After struggling with this for some time I knew it was time to broaden my horizons and join different groups. When you open yourself up to other channels and people it can change your luck and prospects.

READ THE FULL BLOG AT https://www.helen.co.nz/marketing/when-you-dont-have-industry-contacts-you-need-to-do-this/

I am sure as photographers we have all heard this phrase “You’re too expensive” or “I can’t afford that” or “I only paid $100 for my last shoot and got all the images” or “I’m going to have to mortgage my house to pay your prices” and yes that last one was one response I got to a $400 photography shoot!

Finding a good response to these comments is often something photographers struggle with.

Now here’s a snippet:

I just finished editing a shoot and a client and they ended up buying the most expensive package out of 3. Why? Well there was definitely an emotional response to the photos when they saw them and they valued the images and the service I provided. Never assume your client can’t afford your services as you may be surprised at what they will want.

We end up wanting to offer a discount as we know the client is uncomfortable with our prices and we don’t want to lose them. This will devalue your services. Don’t feel flustered and blurt out a number to appease your client. This never works out well. 

Your clients will end up setting your prices if you allow them to. Some photographers allow their clients to do this, they feel bad and think they are doing their clients a favour by reducing their prices. However, if you reduce your price then you are effectively telling your client you are too expensive. 

Some of us find we need to defend ourselves and this is a bad habit to get into. Your prices are your prices and a client doesn’t have to book you if they feel your pricing isn’t a good fit for them. It also works the other way around where as a photographer you don’t have to take clients that aren’t inline with your pricing. They are probably not your ideal client.

You will always get objections around your price so don’t take this personally. It is part of doing business. If you don’t get any objections to your pricing you may not be charging enough so it isn’t always a bad thing.

READ THE FULL BLOG AT https://www.helen.co.nz/tips-advice/what-to-say-when-a-client-says-youre-too-expensive/

Helen Oakes 0:02

Hello, thank you for joining me. I’m Helen from Mode de vie. Welcome to my podcast. This is where I share my experience knowledge and skills.

Danny de Hek  0:15
Oh, it's my podcast, and it's your podcast. So we're doing a jewel podcast, because you haven't figured this out. Helens gonna use this for her new podcast. And I've done about 80 podcasts and I'm slowly getting better at it. But it's open to opinion. So this is Helen, who businesses called Mode de vie Photography and Presets, but when recently I've encouraged you to just say Mode de vie, which means

Helen Oakes  0:41
why of life and print

Danny de Hek  0:43
wildlife. She's very good at creating people's brand photography, so any of the photography see on my website is done by Helen. She's also my partner, and she loves me dearly because I'm just an awesome man. But And who am I

Helen Oakes  1:00
This is Danny Danny de Hek. He is a business networker, entrepreneur, and all around good guy.

Danny de Hek  1:08
Thank you very much very kind. So we thought worth locked down in COVID-19, we thought it'd be a good idea to get more sort of out there. So we decided that a podcast would be good. And so I said, Alan, let's do a podcast. And then we started researching how to do a podcast had a good podcast, and it's quite complicated. So we went for a walk everyday, we've been trying to do a 60 minute walk at the moment, which has been pretty good unless, unless you Hey, let's do let's do a podcast on business networking. And then we thought, well, we built a good template together. So the time we got back from our walk, we actually had a more of an outline sketch on how to what we thought would be ways to do a good podcast. And then we decided, Well, why don't we just do a podcast on how to start a podcast for other people who might thinking about doing a podcast?

Helen Oakes  2:03
podcasts. We did our first podcast two weeks ago. And podcasts are harder than what you think. Hmm, we had a lot of filler words like so. And I'm, and we're trying to get better at taking those words out.

For the complete script check out our website at https://www.modedevie.co.nz/podcast/podcasting-101/

Hello, thank you for joining me. I’m Helen from Mode de vie. Welcome to my podcast. This is where I share my experience knowledge and skills.

Yeah, so welcome along. Helen Oakes and I’m Danny de Hek. If youre interested. Now this is Helen’s first podcast of her own, we’re going to set up Helen. Helen is actually a photographer. She’s also my partner. And since COVID we’ve been looking for, to market ourselves in different wonderful ways. So as you can imagine… a photographer is having a great time at the moment because we can’t get out in public so much. So why don’t you first tell me how you actually first got involved in photography, and why you love doing photography,

Okay, I first got involved probably in my 20s, I would say, even a, well actually even a little bit in my teens, I quite liked photography and I had a tiny little camera, it was like a little flipout camera an Instamax camera. And I got that as a birthday present one time, and I thought that was the bees knees and I went around taking photos. It’s the sort of camera that you put these flashes, big long…um there’s about 12 flashes that you stick on the top of it.

Oh yeah, they look like the blue bottles on the beach.

Yeah, so you put those on the top of the camera, and you take photos. And it was really cool. I thought it was really fun, really cool. And then as I got older, I used to watch my brother taking photos and he had a SLR, which was a Pentax camera and I thought Wow, that looks really cool, professional looking camera. So then I decided I’d get myself a camera. So I got myself a Sigma camera, no, Minolta camera with a Sigma lens on it. And it had all the manual dials on it. And I was like, Oh, this looks a bit tricky, but I’ll have a go. And I used to always put it on one setting and I thought if I put it on this setting I’m bound to get good photos. So I’d always put it on one setting. And then I gradually started playing around a bit more with it and started learning more. And then I used to look at my brother’s photos and go, Wow, they’re really amazing. I want to get further in the photography field. Yeah.

So what type of photography would you say is your genre, as the say?

My genre would be people photography. I love taking photos of people. I love taking photos of sports people.

Right, have you done any events that come to mind that you’re really proud of?

Yeah, yeah, I love doing gymnastic events like National Gymnastic competitions, right. And I love doing just portraits of people, for workshoots and also for sport shoots.

So I mean, photography has taken a bit of a twist over the last few years because I know I’m quite like I used to call myself a professional photographer and then you explained my type of photography that I am but I think because most people have a camera in their pocket, they can pull it out they can take photos. Ah how do you actually compete when you’re at a gymnastic event and there’s mom and dad taking photos with their friend or their daughter or their friends children? Yeah, is that something that makes you industry hard.

For the complete script check out our website at
https://www.modedevie.co.nz/podcast/mode-de-vie-podcast-episode-one-introduction/