Well everybody; it’s that time of year again when everybody starts looking backing over the previous year, working out what mistakes they made and what they can do to make things work better in the new year.
My wife and I have spent a lot of time looking at our business over the last couple of months trying to work out how to lift our business off its feet and get it running properly rather than the few drips and drabs we have managed to get over the past year. From this we have drawn up a list of things we want to achieve this year, and ways we are going to achieve them. So here we go... I am sure you will like this and I hope one of the below will affect you in some way:

Weddings

We have always wanted our business to be based around wedding photography and that is the thing we are finding most difficult to attract clients for. We also realise we only have one complete wedding in our portfolio to date which we need to do something about before we can think about getting many enquiries for work in that area. As such, we want to offer two completely free weddings (shoot to CD) for two couples in the Swindon area. The weddings must be off-peak (ie not Friday or Saturday) and we will give you the top of the line package excluding any printed products. This will be both photographers with coverage as follows:

• Engagement Session

One to two hour session on location with bride and groom some days or weeks before the wedding
Relaxed portraits and gives you a chance to get to know us which makes your wedding day itself that little bit less stressful

• Wedding Preparations

Full coverage of Bridal preparations and Groom’s where possible

• Wedding Ceremony

Full coverage of ceremony at church, registry office or other location

• Formal Portraits

Maximum of five groups to be pre-arranged and shot shortly after ceremony
Short couple portrait session with Bride and Groom after ceremony at location nearby

• Wedding Reception

Coverage of reception until organised events finished

The whole wedding will be shot in the photojournalistic style which you see in the vast majority of our event photos
Once the wedding is finished we will treat the photos and hand over hi-res Jpegs on CD.
Should prints or albums be requested we can organise those for cost from our suppliers.
Get in contact if you think this fits you

Portraits

Whilst we want the bulk of our work to be based around Weddings, we want to also keep up a strong portrait business as well. We already have plenty of this kind of thing in our portfolio, but we still want to expand that to be able to split out the different types of work and be more specific in our marketing and pricing.
As such we are lining up some people in different categories but there are still a few things we want to be involved with for which we don’t have direct contacts (or enough of them). So we are looking for the following people under the same terms as above, ie provide a CD of Hi-Res Jpegs for your time and can arrange prints/albums at cost:

• Maternity Session

We are looking for one lady (or couple) for a pregnancy session. At this time of year this is likely to be in the persons house.

• Corporate Photography

We have recently finished a large project for a business which involved some photography that we will be able to post soon however we do want to expand this side of the business. Initially we are looking for local artists or dancers or the like who are looking for some environmental portraits (portraits that show the subject in their environment, in this case as a dancer or artist or something similar). We are looking to help out local arts centres and will be getting in contact with some anyway, however if there are any volunteers we will be more than willing to discuss

From time to time we will continue to give away sessions as we decide on where else we have holes in our portfolio. We might be looking more at baby photography or even boudoir photography but we want to show how good we are in a just a few things at a time and not spread ourselves too thin!

If you think you fit any of the things we need above and want to put yourself forward then please get in contact and mention this post. Make sure if you are sending this to someone else that you link to this original post so they can read the full story.

I will be updating this post as spaces are taken and even if you don’t fit into any of the above, get in contact and let us know what you want and we will see how that fits into out business needs at this time.

Hope to speak to many of you soon! Take Care...