Monday, September 24, 2007

Bananas FAQs

Pheewww.... this week is Fan-tas-tic! Mainly, we're all caught up with the major back-load of work that's been pending for quite some time and there is finally time to go through old emails, files, and do some major organization.

I must start this post win a personal apology to anyone who's emailed without hearing back yet. In response to so many of the same requests we get each day for answers on all kinds of things from business to photography to stuff like "can you send me that secret recipe?" we'll be starting a "Bananas FAQ" section of this blog. We'll be tackling a back-log of questions and requests and then move on to any additional FAQs so feel free to post any new ones below :)

Fun stuff!!

The first comes from Cindy in Arizona:

"Hi Liana,

I enjoyed your session at the Chicks conference. I have a couple of questions:

~ what software do you use to design your albums?
~ how do you market and/or how do client's find you as a destination photographer?
~ what software are you using to make your movie shows in?
~ you mentioned showing your movie shows at the reception - are you using your own portable projection equipment?
~ did you mention something about adding video to your new Web site? If so, what video editing software will/or do you use?"


Album Software:

Like I do with most ventures, we've tested out what is know as the http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif"best in the industry" and made our minds up after some use with each. I started using Photoshop but then turned to Photojunction and got great use out of that for some time. After a few constant quirks, we started looking for something with more flexibility and tried out Adobe's InDesign which is our favorite by far! It's MADE for design :) Kevin Swan has a GREAT, quick tutorial available for download/purchase that will tell you get you started real quick. We still use Photojunction for the old albums and they've been super helpful on the phone whenever we need help - so that's a good option too, just not for us now that we've tasted the ease of using InDesign.

How Clients Find me To Photograph their Destination Wedding:
Most of my clients have heard of me through someone they know and then checked out my site online before contacting us. Some hear of us via the WPJA, the Knot chat forums, via Industry publications and forums, and random web searches. I think updating the blog with pics helps a lot too - we have a lot of inquiries come in after I've photographed & blogged about a destination wedding or trip :)

Movie Shows:
I'm not sure if you mean my slideshows that are posted online? For that I use ShowIt Web - it's available at www.ShowItFast.com. Literally thousands are able to enjoy watching pics from a wedding I photographed only days earlier. I've booked jobs off of these alone when my site was under construction.

If you're asking about the actual movies on my liana.tv site we use FinalCutExpress and Apple has a built in iMovie which is easy and quick to use (much easier than any other program out there, in my opinion!)

Slideshows at Receptions:

I hardly ever project a slideshow at a reception unless a client specifically asks us to. We DO however do a slideshow on a laptop at almost every reception. Downloading, sorting, using the "quick collection" function, and slideshow function in Lightroom makes the process SOOOOO quick and easy. I actually go through the exact process in detail on our workflow/Lightroom tutorial that just came out. You can check it out HERE.

Video in New Site:

We're SUPER excited for the new www.liana.tv to premier later this fall :) It's been a work-in-progress for over a year now and will be stock-full of content-rich videos to help clients out. Most of the video is produced in Final Cut but we've got some stuff on YouTube and hidden on our sites now to help in the meantime that is produced on programs that are easier to use like iMovie.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Brand Camp field trip

We are on day two of the Photo Biz Boot Camp and went for an
inspiration field trip ... Here is Amber from Arizona and Dana all the
way from Bahrain scouting their new brand colors, textures, and
patterns.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

The BananasEDU site is LIVE!!

We finally have v1.0 of the BananasEDU site up and ALIVE!!

Check out the DVD section for the SAME GREAT SPECIALS we ran at the Pictage Partner Conference this past week. We'll be running these for a limited time - stay tuned for more!!

Thursday, September 13, 2007

KISS & SHOWit

We're here at the Pictage Partner Conference this week (much more on this coming soon) and Sara put together a fun photo collage from the KISS & SHOWit party last night. It got a little crazy with all of us doing our best to get the NON-dancers to dance - and it worked!! More soon because I have to run out the door now....

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Thursday, September 6, 2007

The TRUE Cost of Photography / PPA ABI

Archive: Originally Published June 7, 2006

WOW. For the past two days, I had the opportunity to participate in a very new and VERY enlightening training at the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) headquarters here in Atlanta. It was awesome because there were another 19 photographers there who came from all over the country and a pretty diverse crowd as far as what we do too (MANY portrait studios there).

Scott Kurkian (CFO of PPA) and the legendary Ann Monteith (previous president of PPA and ABI guru) led us through tons of materials, questions, and methodologies to equip us with becoming Approved Business Instructors for PPA. What these two have done for our industry is amazing and it's awesome the charge they've set forth in helping photographers with their businesses.

On Sunday, class was scheduled from 9am to 9pm so I had the pleasure of dinning with Scott, Lori, and Julia for both lunch and dinner.

Julia Woods, me, and Lori Gragg in class

Approved Business Instructors for PPA

Thanks gals for all the stimulating conversation on pricing and biz in general!

One of the most interesting things about the past two days is when they shared the results of a financial survey that was just completed (and isn't even published yet!) They surveyed and analyzed financial statements on over 180 photography businesses and this is the FIRST time the industry has qualified, in-depth data in this area... which means we will FINALLY be able to analyze and base our financials on an industry-standard!! AWESOME!

Ann and Scott are making sense of these numbers so that they can be published over the next few months, but a few stats that stuck out to me are that:

- On average, a photography studio needs to have 150,000 - 250,000 in net sales to be profitable (enough to make a living off of) !!! The exceptions they showed were few and far between when someone was able to keep the cost of sales, overhead, and asset depreciation down considerably. These numbers are especially shocking when I think about all the small businesses out there that have no idea what their numbers are or where they're at with their numbers.

- The average home studio makes $32,977 (this is net profit / owners income) WOW. WOW. WOW. (and who said photographers were overpaid!!??!)

A final interesting consensus (the class made) is that in the middle-market, a studio needs to be bringing in around $5,000 per wedding to be a profitable wedding photography business, given the average Cost of Sales, Overhead, and the Assets needed to run the business. Again there are exceptions but it's so interesting to see these numbers spelled out finally - it's going to make a huge impact to those who take advantage of this information and get their businesses on-track financially.

UPDATE: The results of this study were published in July 2006 in a report titled "PPA's 2005 Studio Benchmark Survey" that can be downloaded from PPA's members-only section. If you haven't already check it out ASAP!

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Breakfast with Rudy Giuliani

Archive: Originally published May 18, 2006

This morning I had the awesome opportunity to join a bunch of other Atlanta area business people at the AJC's 100 Best Georgia Companies Awards Breakfast with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

We had killer seats right up front and it wasn't until 15 minutes into breakfast that I realized Giuliani was parked at the table diagonal from ours. He talked with us for about an hour about six qualities that strong leaders all have in common. It was interesting because just before he went on, they had a panel of 5 CEOs from the top-ranked Georgia companies for this year answer the question of "what is the most important quality a CEO must have to lead their organization successfully."


www.lianalehman.com


I would love to go in depth about "Rudy's Six" but fear that time is not on my side today so here they are:
1. Strong Beliefs (devote time to thinking and making goals)
2. Optimistic - focus on solutions and remain calm and positive
3. Courage - does not mean a lack of fear, it means recognizing fear and overcoming it. We MUST be willing to take risks.
4. Relentless Preparation - If you prepare for everything you can think of, when the unexpected happens you will still be prepared because it will be a variation of your practiced scenarios. He used specific examples from 9/11 how they had not planned for a disaster of that magnitude, but all the other plans (like triage and evacuation procedures) allowed them to move forward.
5. Teamwork - A leader asks themselves 'what are my weaknesses and how do I balance them with strengths of others.'
6. Communicator - A leader is able to communicate all of the above. i.e. A coach of a football team does not do a thing on the field but is a teacher and a motivator and leads the team to victory because they can communicate effectively with the team.

In the end, Rudy says: "You can do all of these things but none of it matters unless you CARE about people. Organizations are comprised of people. People with emotions, personal lives... you can not ignore these things. If you are successful in this area, you and your organization will be successful too."

If you ever get a chance to hear Rudy in person - go! - He's a phenomenal speaker and quite the comedian too!

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

LinkedIN Myspace : A New Era in Communications

It took my friend Christina about eight emails before I finally gave in and signed up. I had not idea why this "myspace" and "facebook" and "linkedin" were so the rage. Perhaps it's because I'm already on communication-overload and this just adds to it, but looking back it HAS reunited me with many and connected me with many more. Times they-are-a-changing for sure!

Who's IN?


View Liana Lehman's profile on LinkedIn



MySpace Page


liana's myspace

Best Books

Last week I sold one of my plasma TVs as it was never watched but merely a temptation to put down my books to watch something mindless. Granted, the TV stood on a bookshelf that hosted a handful (okay, 50-60) of my favorite books.... and now the shelf is being used elsewhere. With a pile of books all over my floor now and a new shipment in from Amazon last week, I've been inspired to update my "Best Book" list online. (I'll update periodically so feel free to bookmark)

Here ya go...




***CLICK HERE TO SEE MY BOOK LIST***


Liana's List of Best Books

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

August BBC - Day 1



It's the end of a long 12-hour boot camp day and we just got home
from a lovely dinner after a full day of discussing goals, vision,
numbers, and lots of other biz stuff. It's a difficult day because
the number part is mind-boggling and we're all exhausted by the end
of it and have "homework" at night.

The group here is awesome. Here's a shot Kevin Swan shot of us during
our "wine and cheese" break before dinner.

Kimberly, Nicole Kent, Sara Harper, me and KT Merry. We'll have to
get some with Kevin tomorrow...

Shoot for the Moon

Just a quick reminder why we should never stop at creating big goals for ourselves. We should take it a step further and make Big Hairy Audacious Goals!! (BHAGs!) After all...

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Any Day Now...

...we'll be unveiling the BananasEDU site. We have a crazy week coming up with a PhotoBizBootCamp here in Atanta this Tuesday - Thursday, then a bunch of shoots on Friday.


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The Crazy Simple Workflow will be in duplication starting this week so pre-sales will start soon ;)

Thursday, August 9, 2007

KISS your Ads

If you've taken a biz class you've probably heard the importance of "KISS" before: Keep It Simple, S____ (fill in the blank)

I'm not an advocate of traditional advertising but there are a FEW - VERY FEW - exceptions I make. I don't want to go too much into this controversy right here and now because it's a long discussion.... and I could talk forever on it...

... but an exception presented itself and today we were charged with designing an ad to send to the publication ASAP.

The thing is, there's a lot of clutter out there already. The "enemy" is no longer the competition - it's the clutter! So how to combat this clutter? KISS!!! The simpler, the better. It's not an easy thing to do though. Being a visual artist.... it's easy to want to clutter my ad with lots of photos and text and graphics. It's so much easier to pick a few favorite photos and slap them up there with a logo and call it an ad.

So I opted for a more daring approach - strip it bare. Simplify. Completely simplify. Advertise my photography without showing a single photo.

I dare you to apply this principal to your next ad, marketing peice, or even something less visual in nature. Think about what your goal is too! For me, it's to spark intrigue; present my business as timeless, classic, fresh; give them a glimpse of my vision; and ultimately get them to go to my web site.

In the essence of KISSing, I'll close with this:



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Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Crazy Simple Workflow

Without further delay...

We finally are ready to share a little bit about a project we've been working on for the past few months. One of the most expensive things about wedding photography is the time it takes us to process the images and get them to the client. As professional photographers these are just a few of the many decisions we face:

- How to organize files?
- How to back up files to ensure they are secure?
- How to view images?
- How to take the best photos straight out of the camera?
- Should we show a slideshow on-location or online and how should we do that?
- How to spend less time in front of the computer and more time doing what we love - shooting pics!?
- How to get images and products to clients as soon as possible with top quality?
- What software to use and how to use it?
- What shortcuts and templates and tricks will help us use the software better?

All I knew is that There Has GOT To Be A Better Way! So we tested, experimented, researched, designed, and incorporated basic business smarts to our workflow. It's about working smarter, not harder; taking better photos straight out of the camera; starting with an end in mind; and Keeping It Simple.

Watch the video for a quick peak:



The awesome thing is we also added a quick shooting lesson as well and it shows all the key things you need to know about lightroom so the DVD lesson ended up being two hours instead of one. We've got our production time (including blogging, slideshows, AND albums) down to record times ...so that clients can see everything in as short as hours!

I think the DVD ("Liana's Crazy Simple Workflow") will be out in the next week or two with pre-sales starting this weekend. Hop over to BananasEDU.com to sign up for the update and site debut :)

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Fighting Writersblock

... (continued from below)... So how to beat this Procrastination and Perfection problem? The answers, as usual, did not come from me.

Before my re-emergence into full time photography, I was charged with being a voice within corporate America... namely a big four accounting firm. To say I was in over my head was an understatement. My poor boss had to repeatedly correct my on my technical mistakes in particular... let's just say "hooked on foniks didn't werk for mee!" I was sent to training like all the others except this training was special... it was with the company known for being the leaders in communications training. I still look back and know their workshop was one of the most valuable ones I've attended... if even for this advice alone....

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It was the president of the company, Mark Ragan, that solved my problem. He didn't believe in writersblock.... only in a) not having enough information and/or b) trying to be perfect the first time around and never getting anything down on paper because of it.

Thus, the solution is simple...
a) brainstorm and gather additional information. Let the ideas flow freely... do not dismiss an idea until you've dumped everything out on paper. Make google your friend. Seek advice, input, facts, and examples from others. That should solved the lack-of-information problem.

b) then ... in Mark's words... "Write Cra*!" Yep, he says the best way to fight the perfection problem is to try to write garbage... something not perfect... something you'd never think of showing another living, breathing organism. Some people call this "free writing." The thing about this is you have to keep writing until the whole story is on paper... THEN, and only then do you go back and edit, edit, edit. You have to have a chunk of clay before you can sculpt it into something beautiful or worthwhile.

Over the years, I've seen that this concept work in other areas as well. If it's taking forever to get an album design complete, we simply let go of perfection and finish it. It's the editing process that will bring it to it's perfect form... and that comes with the help of many others including the client.

I bet there's some piece of work (ahhem... like all the original bios missing from websites) that's been neglected because you can't find the words or inspiration... I dare you to try Mark's method. Try gathering more information, write cra*, then edit, edit, edit. I dare say that even if it's far from perfection the world will be a better place because of it ... because it's REAL.

But that's a whole other topic....

Monday, August 6, 2007

Perfection Leads to Procrastination

I have this problem. It starts with a capital "P."

I *love* to Procrastinate. I also love to do things right and do the best possible job ... or not do it at all. Yes, sometimes I'm guilty of being a Perfectionist. For months, the emails, notes, scribbles, articles, quotes, inspirations, facts, stories, reviews, and recaps have been piling up on my desk, kitchen table, filing cabinet, inbox, and finally in a so-called-designated-email-folder-titled-"blogstuff."

This new shiny blog has been prepped and tested. It still has a few tweaks but is functional and awaiting my use. But now I don't know where to start. If I had posted about the aforementioned "blogstuff" when I was going through it, it would have been so much easier. Now it's difficult. What to do?

"Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow."

LOL. That one cracks me up. I'm pretty sure it belongs on one of those Demotivator posters that I discovered when working in corporate America. A group of us spent an entire lunch hour one day laughing at all of these until we were crying, all the while contemplating which ones to gift to each other.

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Well... it would be more PERFECT to talk about how to solve this "P" problem in another post... perhaps I'll procrastinate until tomorrow on this one....

In the meantime, I'm going to know that sometimes giving up on perfection is necessary - in all areas of life. Otherwise, I might not press the "publish" button just yet...

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Photo Business Boot Camp

Ever wondered what a BBC is like? Here is a short clip of a few recent participants!

Sunday, July 15, 2007

New Biz Blog!

Hey Everyone!

LOTS of new exciting stuff coming up - we decided to move a lot of the behind-the-scenes photo and biz tips over to a blog dedicated to those things specifically so feel free to post up questions here and this is the place we'll be answering them :)

Lots of tips, tricks, reviews, and industry-happenings comin' in the future.

Off to Greece now but stay tuned for more!!

Cheers!

Liana
 
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