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Interview with Julia Kelleher

We do have the wonderful and delightful miss julia kelly here here and she is going to be teaching newborn relationship a photo that's what she taught in photo week so let's see how are julia? How are you doing? I'm good how are you guys today doing over there tastic so good, so good so tell us a little bit about your photo week course well, it was a quick course, but was tons of information on opposing newborns with their parents, you know, it's such a it's, a topic that's really intimidating to a lot of photographers because you've got lots of hands, lots of feet, lots of faces, and so adding all those into one image can be intimidating sometimes, so we focused on providing a couple of really solid good poses that newborn photographers can do with parents and create that emotion and an image that's sellable and that parents typically by almost every time so that's what that mean focus of the course was well and it's one of those subjects where the the people that you're photographing...

are in a very vulnerable state they're like have been through a lot recently there essentially if their first time parents they're freaked out of their mind they have no idea what's going on and they want to have that moment and so being able to nurture those relationships it's it's a skill and, you know, it's always, ever since howard, I always tell the work photographers this but whatever, when I had my own baby, you just this we have a whole new reason to exist when you have a child and it is overwhelming, and as a mom, you're hormonal because believe right, and so having a photographer, you know, yes, you want that moment, and you want to capture that feeling of being a new parent for the first time because there is so much love, and when you entrust yourself to a photographer to capture that, you want to give it all of them and let yourself go to them because you're so overwhelmed with the hormones in the baby and the and the new schedule on the lack of sleep that it's really nice to have someone confident who can help you capture that moment in an easygoing way where you don't have to worry and, you know, it's going to be a good a good image, so you're absolutely right? Yeah, and I love that you have to have that confidence in them. And so being able to as a photographer, if you want to be able to take the set of shots, you really do need to know your craft know what you're doing so that people can sense that and feel that confidence I love it so you have done a previous workshop here on creative live that we love pricing and sales for photographers very different from new born photography so emily tell us a little bit about that that was I'm a business guru and I that was the most fun things I've ever done was teach that creative life of course and it was so rewarding for me let alone you know with the feedback and everything so thank you so much to everyone first of all for the amazing feedback and I'm just so tickled that I could help a lot of people but the maine just that course was be a business person learned to find out your purpose why you do what you d'oh and once you have that in place then you can create a sale system in your studio that is that a system is it's a dramatic so you can start people on one end finish him on the other end and pretty much guarantee your average sale every time someone goes through that system so that allows you to predict your income you can start forecasting your revenue you all you have to worry about is getting clients to the door because you know that every single time someone comes in they're going to spend what you need them to spend it it's so important because it gives you that sense of peace your stress level goes down you can focus on marketing your business and really taking good imagery rather than worrying about how much money is coming through the door and those are all fantastic feelings. So the the gist of that course was getting your business and your sales strategy nailed down solid with a purposeful mindset so that you understand why yourself doing what you sell what's important about it it's not just a photograph on paper there's more to it there's emotion to it and how do you take that emotion and transferred into a sale in an effective way that doesn't seem like a hard sell, you know, we don't want to feel like the used car salesman and the car lot we wantto we want to have ah sales where a client super happy and they walk out the door yes spending a lot of money but they're thrilled about it and they're coming back too, so it was a fine class lots of I mean, gosh, I packed in the permission of the class I seriously don't think I could have packed any more into it, so it and the feedback has been great, so fantastic course and of course we've got this one coming up in may, which I'm super excited about as well, yeah, absolutely we'll talk about that one in just a moment, but I love the idea that for me when when a client or customer and the business can both be happy with the result of a transaction that's the ideal because we live in a civilization where business is part of what we do, we live in an economy and everyone needs to be able to make money and so when both the customer and the sales person the business are happy that's the ideal so being able to set it up as a system where you are running this as a business we even when we were talking to underscore bonnie earlier today one of things he said he wished he had known when he first got started was approach it as a business and not as an artist so that's we loved having and and hearing your thoughts and approaching it in a way that is, you know, not a hard sell not a you know, down the line it's it's they let's approach this as recognizing the strength of what we're doing yeah and helping your client get what they want but in a way that that benefit you too and that's really what it's all about and when they walk out the door happy they refer you they want to come back, you know they join the baby plan and the experience gets better as they grow with you and you get attached it's really a marriage in the sense and I I like and the relationship with the client as a courtship you know you begin by courting them and you end up marrying them and that's exactly what you I want them to do and you want them to be a little consumer with you for for years to come because we are a business that can span generations if we are just that a business which is run with profitability in mind literally spanning generations from grand parents two parents two kids tio so their weddings that yet everything I will love it all right so you mentioned earlier your upcoming course which if folks aren't aware we are having the wonderful julia back because how can we not to teach creative a newborn photography so let's hear a little bit of your plans for that what I'm excited about this one this is my inner artistic passion is babies and I love doing babies in ways that are fine art so you know there's lots of ways to do newborn photography and it's one thing to take a photograph it's another thing to elevate it to fine art and that's what we're going to be doing we're going to be learning how to composite image is one of my passions is to put babies and mother isn't fantasy places you know like forest it's and trees and and lovely things that you can't normally do with a little newborn baby and create that sense of mother child bond that has an ethereal quality to it we're going to learn how to paint so he is in coral painter and carell just told me today that they're going to give away a version of painter x three which is like a five hundred dollar value during the class that I'll be fun awesome and we're gonna also learn not a hand paint on your canvas is so once you've painted and carell painter digitally then you get to print it or send it to the lab to be printed and then you get to apply paint like features to it that given that three dimensional texture and really elevated to that level of fine arts so we're going to talk about parent posing we're going to talk about fun in our baby by himself posing we're going to talk about marketing to newborn moms you know where to go how do you find him if you're just starting out what do you do and really taking your newborn art to a level that's beyond what most photographers air doing today you know a newborn it's it's same old, same old everywhere pretty much people are just doing the same thing so how can we be different and how can we take a newborn photography from here to here in different ways that no one else is doing in your market and it's you know of course for anybody whether you're starting out and newborn tart we didn't want to learn some of those skills or if you're he's been doing and newborn photography for a while, and you really want to refine it and take it to that next level, I hope that the information I'm going to give you is going to help you do that. This is a true passion of mine I absolutely adore teaching and to be able to share you know what I know of those sweet little babies with everyone is really exciting for me, so again, it'll be packed, chock full of information once again, we'll enjoy what I love about doing these interviews and getting to talkto instructors ahead of time is that we really can feel how excited you are at how passionate you are about it and that's just I mean, that's. One of the perks of my job personally is that I get to interact with people who really love what they d'oh and way of doing it seriously, all consuming like I can't I wake up it two o'clock in the morning like I put that in the course of a year, but that the class and I write it down to make sure I don't miss it, so it's, it's, it's a little call me crazy way love crazy around here, so we're excited to have you back for more eso you didn't mention like people who are just getting started what is something that you wish you had known when you first started taking pictures? Good question but when it comes to babies I think the biggest thing that I I wish I would have known is how incredibly emotional it is for the parents and how to respect that and really treat it like like a little flower that needs to be cared for and when you do that you're going to endear yourself to your client in ways you never dreamed possible on dh then I think the just cherish that with them really creates that connection with your clients and that's part of what I love so much about what we do it is an emotional deep bonding process with your client and it can be a beautiful thing the other thing that I would have hoped is someone with a really beat me over the head about this being a business and I know you've had a lot of people say that but it is so so important it is you know, eighty percent business and twenty percent art learned to run a business and learn how to market and brand yourself those are number one and number two by far and you know combined that as you go down the ladder with pricing and so sales and all those things that kind of wrapped up into into a business if you can nail those things it doesn't really matter how good of a photographer you are. I mean, really, I've seen mediocre photographers who were raking it in, you know, and I've seen beautiful artists who are struggling like church mice. So I think, it's, that right there, approved that business knowledge and really knowing your numbers, how to market yourself is numero uno. Absolutely, I love that, thank you so much for those thoughts, thank you for joining us, taking the time out of your day. We really love having you here before, and we are excited to have you back again, so thank you again for joining us. You are so welcome, I'm excited to come back. You have no idea.