I’m not sure anybody actually reads this little blog, but I have a few minutes and thought I would bring it up to date… it’s only been two years. wow!
It took quite awhile to actually call this home, perhaps in excess of a year for me, but routine brings about familiarity that brings about comfort with surroundings and schedules.
One of the things from a business perspective that I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that the type of Photography that I used to do in the midwest is pretty much non existent here. I loved the creativity and on the spot imagination that high school Senior Portraits demanded, and since we have been here and in spite of spending a lot of money promoting, we have done very few Senior Portraits.
We have done a few model portfolio sessions and lots and lots of family sessions on the area beaches, so the creativity is different. Most of the family sessions are done at sunset and because I deal with groups of people, the patience that it takes for my clients to do multi hour long sessions just isn’t there. For the most part, they would like to be done and over with within an hour..some of the people just would rather not be taking part in them but do so grudgingly because it’s forced family fun.
We try to make it fun and energetic, but we have found that there are times where the families themselves have serious “discussions” before they ever arrive at the shoot and tensions sometimes start high. It’s not hard to detect so that’s when it helps to have developed a good sense of humor and play the psychologist from minute one.
Venice is a beautiful town, and part of what we have discovered, there are a ton of Photographers that make their way here. We have competition, professional and non professionals that very definitely split the pie and it certainly not like in the previous decades where there was plenty of business to go around.
I think on top of the fact that everyone is a Photographer now that owns a cell phone or a camera, Photographs themselves don’t have the same commercial values to them that they used to have. In that sense, the laws of supply and demand are well at play. The supply of Photos and Photographers has reduced the demand for many of the types of photography that we used to get called upon to do.
This has helped photographers to become more specialized in the types of photography that they are good at, but it certainly has affected the bread and butter work we used to do to pay the bills, etc.
With all of that being said, we are being successful because of the diversity we offer in the areas of Video Production, Audio Recording Studio, Website Development and Graphic Design and printing.
We live in North Port and would like to be able to live closer to the studio in Venice but that will have to wait until business develops more or until we come across a really amazing deal.
The area is really growing with construction happening all around us.
Florida is a beautiful beautiful place and if nothing else, you really should come for a visit!!