What do you think about when you hear the word branding? Do you think logos, colour schemes, fonts? If you said yes, then you are just where I was about a week ago and if you said no, well you are further ahead then I am, or was until I read Dane Sanders’ amazing book Fast Track Photographer.

Ok, you’re right, logos, colour schemes, fonts, websites, matching literature, these are all important aspects of branding , I totally agree. But, I’m starting to see them more as tools used to create something and that something is the brand. In Dane Sanders book, he brings up an interesting idea, you want to sell yourself, not a product and hence you need to build a brand around yourself as a photographer. Here is how I see it, by putting all the emphasis on your product (I.E. you images) you then bring in the matter of cost. There are a lot of photographers out there and a lot of images, so if you market your images you run the chance of competing with all the other photographers out there that may be producing images that a prospective client may like just as much as yours. This is the exact moment price comes into play, your work no matter how good it is just isn’t that rare of an item, it can be compared to and priced against another image. But there is only one of you, so that means that you are rare.

These are all things that I have been thinking about for a while now. I kinda got Dane’s ideas before buying the book, but reading (well actually listening to) Fast Track Photographer made things a little more clear…and troublesome. Why troublesome? Well because, now all your efforts have to turn inwards. Like a lot of photographers I worried about my work, my business knowledge and so one. I was more worried about becoming an amazing photographer who creates timeless images all the while ignoring what was most important to my fledgling photography business. I really don’t know myself, who does? It all really does sound like a self help book doesn’t it? Know yourself, know what you have to offer the world, know your strengths. It may sound corny but it is all very important, how are you going to sell yourself if you really don’t know yourself?

After I got all this down and I starting looking inwards, another thing hit me “Damn, big companies have it lucky!”. When a company like Apples builds a brand, they build it around their company. Sure the employees kinda have to help hold up that brand with their behavior and appearance and the big wigs have to watch what they say and do to some extent, but when you build a brand around yourself, everything you say and do effects that brand. The car that you drive, the clothes that you wear, where you choose to live, all of this can and does affect how people see you. And since your brand is you and you are the brand, you do need to watch it. This can make things a little more interesting because if you decide to fake it, to make up a persona for yourself, you will have to uphold the lie in everything you do. If you try to get people to believe that you are a high class photographer with an attention to detail and you show up in a beat up pickup truck with a mustard stain on your pants…well lets say that your clients will see right through your lie.

I was talking with one photographer who stated “Sell myself? But I’m boring!”. This is something I have to get over as well, some times I wonder exactly how many people actually do like themselves. I was listening to the CBC radio show The Age of Persuasion with Terry O’Rielly. Terry is one of the big names in advertising here in Canada with some great campaigns under his belt. Remember that Hockey Hall of Fame commercial where the guys steps up to the Gordie Howe display and proceeds to get elbowed in the face? That was Terry’s baby. Any ways, he was explaining how some marketers will actually take the product they are to advertise home with them, they would use it and learn to love it. They do this because if you love something it makes the task of selling it so much easier. I think I need to do this, not only do I have to “find myself”, but once I have found myself, I have to learn to like myself.

Liking yourself…Sounds kind of hard doesn’t it? If it were easy, then the section on self help books wouldn’t be so large now would it? Dane Sanders had a killer suggestion here in his book. He pointed out that most people look for their weaknesses and try to improve on them, the whole while completely ignoring their strengths. Dane suggested focusing on your strengths and putting a little less emphasis on improving your weaknesses. I can see this being a legit way of improving your own self value. how many of us spend days, weeks, months beating ourselves up over things we have tried to change?

Now earlier on I stated something that may have been construed as me saying that branding and marketing is more important then the product. I still believe that you have to deliver a solid product, I still do want to be an amazing photographer that delivers timeless images my clients will love and cry over. I’m just not going to make such a big deal out of my pictures in my marketing. There are thousands of images out there with a large majority of them better then mine, even if I were named as one of the top ten photographers in the world, that would mean that there are still 9 other photographers that can produce images just as good. But! There is only one of me and that’s worth something.

I have tried keeping this post as short as possible (didn’t do a very good job now did I lol), but a subject like branding can be a little long winded, I really could go on longer. I know all of this can be hard to swallow sometime, you can hear from experts all day long and still doubt it. I think it may be one of those things that needs to be implemented and the results experience first hand before you can truly believe it. All the way through our education in photography, we have had the the image drilled into your head. You have worked so hard to be technically knowledgeable and creative with your photography. You have always thought that the image is the only thing that matters just to open up the shop and find out a crappier photographer is getting more business. I think this is why so many people fail at this, they have to many problems with this idea that the image is not the end all and be all in the business of photography. I’m still having a problem with this myself, but it is slowly being beaten into me and hopefully it will help me succeed.

J.C. Hutchins’s “Personal Effects: Dark Art” – SuperVlurb from Stephen Eley on Vimeo.

Ok, so you may be asking yourself “Why the hell is this guy posting a video trailer for a horror novel on a photography blog?”. That’s easy, it’s a perfect example of a community coming together to help out one of their own.

Lately I have been looking at my efforts in wedding photography and have noticed that I really need to do things differently. I have always taken my photography very seriously, but when it came to the business side I figured that all I had to do was follow the road map left by others that had made it. The biggest problem with this idea is that the map left behind by those successful photographers may have worked for them, but it isn’t going to work for me. I’m nothing like them, I have different strengths, a different personality, different work. I have fought to make my own way with my photography, to develop my own style, so why would I not do the same in the building of my business.

In my research of marketing, branding (more on my adventures in branding in a later post) and general business, I have been looking at other artistic industries. One field I have been very interested in lately, one that is actually fairly new, is serialized audio books.

Maybe I should give a little back story here. A few years ago I found this great place, Podiobook.com a site that offers free serialized audio books. What is a serialized audio book? Well quite simply, it’s audio book read most commonly by the author and released for free serially once a week/bi-weekly/monthly over the net.

As I was listening to all these great authors, I started to notice something kind of surprising, the authors of these audio books have created a very tight and supportive community. The different authors appear as voice characters on each others audio books and they have even teamed up to write, produce and perform audio books. In general they were promoting and helping each other out, a lot! If you listened to say James Melzer, there is a very good chance you had heard of or listened to the works of Mark Jeffrey, Mur Lafferty, Philippa Ballantine, Seth Harwood, Matthew Wayne Selznick, Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff or Phil Rossi. The community they have build together, all of them working together towards the same goal and supporting each other along the way has produced some amazing results

So what exactly have they done? Well look at Scott Sigler, late last year his book Contagious made it onto the New York Times hardcover bestsellers list. J.C.Hutchinson, the author who’s book is featured in that video at the beginning has had his last series, 7th Son, options by Hollywood and with everyone rallying behind his new book Personal Effect: Dark Art, I expect it to have a very good showing on Amazon. Not back for a couple of guys giving away their work for free eh?

I have talked about community before, I have talked about Twitter, Photography Forms, Facebook and the such, but what these guys and gals have done is truly amazing. It has made me realize that although I have participated in the photographic community to some extent, I need to step up my efforts to play a larger roll in the photographic community, not just locally, but internationally. Thank God for the internet!

Talking about helping out and promoting fellow artists, I wouldn’t want to leave you without mentioning James Melzer’s new audio book, The Invasion coming June 17th. The Invasion is the second book in The Zombie Chronicles. I listened to the first installment, The Escape and it was amazing! Zombies, aliens, clones, how could you go wrong?